Impact of Supply Chain Operations on Financial Performance (An evidence from 5 big Cement companies in Pakistan)

Today’s supply chains have placed greater demand on companies to manage both risk and costs. As supply chain focuses on sourcing of supply, managing supplier relationships and the costs incurred from manufacturing to customer delivery, finance plays a value added role in providing a comprehensive view and support for risks and costs. CFOs are now turning their attention to supply chains, working closer than ever with their supply chain teams to fashion holistic end-to-end processes that aligns goals and benefit the whole business. Intensive competition in the market place has forced companies to respond more quickly to customer needs through faster product development and shorter delivery time. Increasing customer awareness and preferences have led to an extraordinary increase in product variety. The wrong supply chain operation strategy or agenda could make return on investment thresholds more difficult to achieve by not investing in the right projects at the right time. Traditionally, both of the functions have an arm’s length relationship, this relationship is more difficult as operationally the two functions should be better aligned but have different outlooks that are not fully understood by the other. Key words: Supply chain, Profit & loss, Balance sheet, CFO and CSC

Geospatial Clustering and Hot Spot Detection of COVID-19 Incidence in 2020: A Global Analysis

Emergence and spread of Covid-19 initiated diversified researches based on spatial analysis in visualization, exploration, and modelling of this infection. This short communication is an attempt to comprehend the geographic distribution and spatial clustering of Covid-19 in year 2020. Main objective is to spatially analyze Covid-19 incidence rates, identification of hotspots and clusters outliers at global level. Monthly data of reported cases were taken from World Health Organization dashboard and situation reports. Incidence rate was calculated for each country for each month. Spatial autocorrelation techniques of Global Moran are I and Anselian Local Moran’s I were used to examine the spatial clustering and outlier’s detection of Covid-19 incidence in all months of the year. Hotspots and Coldspots variations are examined by using Getis-Ord G*. Mapping was executed in ArcGIS Pro environment. Results reveal significant spatial variation of Covid-19 incidence in WHO regions in different months of pandemic year 2020. Hotspots and high clustering of the disease incidence shows a shift from Western pacific towards Europe and Americas from January to April. Eastern Mediterranean countries also became a part of disease hotspots from the month of July leaving Africa as coldspot during whole year. Highest Moran’s I value of 0.32 with highest z-score of 14 reflects the highly clustered pattern of this pandemic incidence in the month of December in contrary to least clustering of the disease with lowest Moran’s I of 0.02 and z-score of 1.8 in June. Statistically significant variations in disease clustering pattern provides an opportunity for epidemiologists to further explore the disease incidence from ecological perspective

Customer loyalty toward Nokia Brand

Purpose: The Purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between different variables such as customer satisfaction, product quality, perceived value and service quality to examine that how these variables affect the loyalty of customer for a Brand. The present study attempts to contribute to the knowledge of how customer loyalty could be affected by these variables. Findings: The independent variables perceived value and customer satisfaction were largely correlated with dependent variable customer loyalty. While product quality and service quality have less influence on customer loyalty. Keywords: Customer loyalty, Customer satisfaction, Product Quality, Perceived value and service quality Paper type: Research pape

Advanced energy management system with the incorporation of novel security features

Nowadays, energy management is a subject of great importance and complexity. Pakistan, being in a state of developing country, generates electrical power mainly by using non-renewable sources of energy. Non-renewable entities are fossil fuels such as furnace oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power. Pakistan has been facing a severe shortage of production in energy sector for last two decades. This shortfall is affecting the industrial development as well as economic growth. With the growing population, the load demand is rapidly increasing and there must be a need to expand the existing ones or to build new power systems. In this paper, an autonomous management system has been proposed to enhance quality, reliability and confidence of utilization of energy between end consumers and suppliers. Such objectives can only be fulfilled by making the power supply secure for end consumers. Distributed and centralized control systems are involved for maintaining a balance between renewable energy resources and base power, so that end consumers demand can be fulfilled when required. A reliable Two-way communication system between suppliers and end consumers has been proposed by using Message Digest algorithm which ensures that there would be no energy theft. Simulations have been done in MATLAB/ Simulink environment and results have been presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed model

Lexicogrammatical Features of Covid-19: A Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Corpus Based Analysis

The outbreak of Covid-19 has influenced people worldwide and has led to generate a bulk of literature in the form of awareness campaigns, research reports, blogs, etc. The text and corpus produced, thus is of interest to the language researchers and linguists. According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), the corpus of a language helps to theorize the language as it provides authentic, representative, and quantitative data. The wordCovid-19since its coinage appears in the corpora as a lexeme with a particular grammatical structure. This study focuses on the lexicogrammar of the node word Covid-19in the Covid-19 corpus of 224,061,570 words available on the Sketch Engine. The design of this research focuses on the perspective of systemic functional grammar to analyze the paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of the word COVID-19. We found that it occurred 423× times as a noun in the corpus of 1.51 per million tokens. The word-sketchofCovid-19includesinfect, spread, fight as syntagmatically related and the word pandemic, epidemic, disease, outbreak, caseas paradigmatically related. However, the same lexeme may enter into both relationships like COVID-19 and disease, Covid-19 and epidemic. They enter into a systemic contrast, and they also collocate. The lexico-grammatical environment of Covid-19 in the corpus shows the dichotomy of emergency and safety; chaos and health care responsibility; and pandemic and health care systems. This analysis helps in understanding how lexico-grammatical systems and structures relate to meaning-making process

Estimation the level of Neudesin in Polycystic ovarian syndrome patients

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common endocrine disorder characterized by chronic ovulation dysfunction and overabundance of androgens; it affects women at reproductive age. The aim of the current study were to detect the analytic estimation of serum Gremlin as well as studying the relation between this biomarker and Body Mass Index (BMI), age, waist /hip ratio and type of infertility in Polycystic ovarian syndrome patients. Methods: The current study was conducted on 90 women (60 patients with polycystic ovary syndrome and 30 healthy control) ranging in their ages from 15-39 years in period from March to June, 2023. Blood samples were collected from women and serum samples prepare to estimate the serum levels of Gremlin. Results: The results indicated that there was a significant increase (P-Value< 0.05) in Gremlin levels in patients group when compare with control group. Also, after dividing the group of patients into three groups according to ages, we notice a significant increase (P-Value< 0.05) in Gremlin levels in age less than 20 years when compare with age 20-29 years and age 30-39 years, and a significant increase (P-Value< 0.05) in Gremlin levels in age 20-29 years when compare with age 30-39 years. On the other hand, when dividing the group of patients according to body mass index we notice a significant decrease (P-Value< 0.05) in Gremlin level in overweight group when compare with obese group and significant decrease (P-Value< 0.05) in Gremlin level in moderate W/H ratio group when compare with high W/H ratio group and no significant difference found between primary and secondary infertility. Conclusion: The current study concluded that a Gremlin is a prognostic marker in early detection of polycystic ovarian syndrome

Estimation the level of Gremlin in Polycystic ovarian syndrome patients

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common hormonal condition that affects women of reproductive age. The aim of the current study were to detect the analytic estimation of serum Neudesin as well as studying the relation between this biomarker and Body Mass Index (BMI), age, waist /hip ratio and type of infertility in Polycystic ovarian syndrome patients. Methods: The current study was conducted on 90 women (60 patients with polycystic ovary syndrome and 30 healthy control) ranging in their ages from 15-39 years in period from March to June, 2023. Blood samples were collected from women and serum samples prepare to estimate the serum levels of Neudesin. Results: The results indicated that there was a significant decrease (P-Value< 0.05) in Neudesin levels in patients group when compare with control group. Also, after dividing the group of patients into three groups according to ages, we notice a significant decrease (P-Value< 0.05) in Neudesin levels in age less than 20 years when compare with age 20-29 years and age 30-39 years, and a significant decrease (P-Value< 0.05) in Neudesin levels in age 20-29 years when compare with age 30-39 years. On the other hand, When dividing the group of patients according to body mass index we notice a significant increase (P-Value< 0.05) in Neudesin level in overweight group when compare with obese group and significant increase(P-Value< 0.05) in Neudesin level in moderate W/H ratio group than high W/H ratio group and no significant difference found between primary and secondary infertility. Conclusion: The current study concluded that a Neudesin is a prognostic marker and early detection of polycystic ovarian syndrome

Is “nature” a policy solution to mental health in schools?

The UK faces a growing youth mental health crisis (NHS, 2023; RCPsych 2025). Schools may play a key role in preventing these difficulties from worsening. ​ The integration of nature-based programs (NbPs) into school settings has been proposed as a policy solution to address such mental health challenges but robust evidence is lacking (Lomax et al., 2024), particularly at the secondary school level.​ This Sprint utilised an implementation science framework to co-produce evidence on NbPs in secondary schools with stakeholders including policymakers from the Government’s Department for Education (DfE), young people, and educators. ​ Using a range of methodologies we are evaluating effectiveness, amplifying stakeholder voices, and creating actionable, evidence-based education policy insights

Cissus quadrangularis Linn. Stem Ethanolic Extract Liberates Reactive Oxygen Species and Induces Mitochondria Mediated Apoptosis in KB Cells

Background: Cissus quadrangularis Linn. (CQ) commonly known as Hadjod (Family: Vitaceae) is usually distributed in India and Sri Lanka and contains several bioactive compounds responsible for various metabolic and physiologic effects. Objective: In this study, the biological effects of CQ ethanolic extract were evaluated by in vitro and supported by in silico analysis on KB oral epidermoid cancer cell line. Materials and methods: Anti-cancer potential of ethanolic extract of CQ stem against KB oral epidermoid cancer cells was evaluated in terms of morphological analysis, nuclei staining, liberation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), cell cycle arrest, mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) and p53 and Bcl-2 protein expression which reveal the induction of apoptosis along with supporting in silico analysis. Results: Ethanolic extract of CQ stem contains various bioactive compounds responsible for cancer cell morphological alterations, liberation of ROS, G1 phase cell cycle arrest and decreased MMP along with up-regulation of p53 and down-regulation of Bcl-2. By employing in silico approach, we have also postulated that the CQ extract active constituents sequester Bcl-2 with higher affinity as compared to p53, which may be the reason for induction of growth arrest and apoptosis in KB cells. Conclusion: Our data indicate that the CQ extract has a remarkable apoptotic effect that suggests that it could be a viable treatment option for specific types of cancers. Summary: Cissus quadrangularis stem ethanolic extract induces apoptosis and cell cycle arrest at G1 phaseIt liberates (ROS) and mitochondria mediated apoptosisIt upregulates p53 and down-regulates Bcl-2 protein expressionIn silico studies indicates that the active constituents of CQ binds Bcl-2 with higher affinity as compared to p53