Liquidity Creation and Liquidity Risk Exposures in the Banking Sector: A Comparative Exploration between Islamic, Conventional and Hybrid Banks in the Gulf Corporation Council Region

Banks as intermediary institutions raise funds by offering deposits and invest them in assets, by means of which they transform the maturities of their positions on the balance sheet. Such a function enables the banks to channel available liquidity into investments whereby they contribute to economic growth. In other words, when banks use their liquid liabilities to finance illiquid assets, they consequently create liquidity and hence promote productive investments that boost the economy. However, as a result of such a function, banks may face the risk of illiquidity that may cause an early liquidation of productive business activities, which in turn may lead to a disruption to the economy. Given the importance of the liquidity transformation function of banks, this research examines the ability of Islamic banks in creating liquidity in a comparative manner with conventional and hybrid banks in the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) countries. In doing so, this study also explores the key determinants of such a function in the identified bank types. This study, furthermore, assesses the liquidity risk that Islamic banks are exposed to in comparison with conventional and hybrid banks and investigates the significant factors that may affect such exposures in the case of the GCC region. In conducting the empirical study, this research examined 58 GCC commercial banks during the period between 1992 and 2011 through developing two empirical models through panel data regressions with a fixed effects model in relation to the identified aims. In the first empirical model, the results demonstrate that Islamic banks create higher levels of liquidity than conventional and hybrid banks in the examined sample. The results also show that officially supervisory power, stringency on capital regulations and banking activity restrictions negatively and significantly determine the liquidity creation of the examined banks. The empirical results also detect a positive and significant impact of restrictions on the banking market entry standards on liquidity creation. In addition, while this study found that credit risk has a negative and significant impact on liquidity creation, the results show a positive and significant association between liquidity creation and bank size. This study also finds insignificant positive association between GDP and liquidity creation of the examined GCC banks. In the second model in this study, further statistical and empirical evidence demonstrates that Islamic banks are more exposed to liquidity risk than conventional and hybrid banks in the case of the examined sample of the GCC region. In addition, the results show that the stringency on capital regulations, credit risk, banks size and GDP has a negative and significant impact on liquidity risk. Moreover, the results detect that liquid assets and long- term debts are positively associated with liquidity risk exposures. While the empirical results show that the liquid assets significantly affect liquidity risk, the results detect an insignificant impact of long-term debt on the liquidity risk exposures of the examined banks in the GCC region. Accordingly, it can be stated that the empirical results of this study, consistently with the conceptual framework of Islamic financial principles as well as with previous studies, stress the importance of exploring the liquidity creation and liquidity risk in promoting the role of banks in the economic system and highlighting their key determinants that need to be well examined to fully understand the liquidity creation and liquidity risk issues

Proximity-Labeling of Near Neighbors of Lamin A and Lamin A-Δ50 (PROGERIN).

In an attempt to isolate and identify proteins that differentially interact with or locate near lamin A and progerin, we used a previously described method named BioID (proximity-dependent biotin identification). This method is based on fusion of a promiscuous E. coli biotin-protein ligase (BL) to a targeting protein (in this study, lamin A-GFP and progerin-GFP). The biotin ligase biotinylates amino residues in proteins that are near-neighbors of the fusion protein. To create the fusion proteins, BL was sub-cloned from a pcDNA3.1 MCS-BirA(R118G)-HA plasmid donated by Kyle Roux from University of South Dakota. The BL fragment was ligated into a pNEBR-X1-lamin A-GFP and pNEBR-X1-progerin-GFP which inducibly express the fusion proteins in mammalian cells, under control of pNEBR-R1 Rheoswitch regulator plasmid. Two stable cell lines expressing the GFP-BL-lamin A and GFP-BL-progerin chimeras were created. The expression of the chimeras was induced by incubation with 500nM of GenoStat for 24 hours in the presence of 50mM Biotin. Biotinylated proteins were isolated from cell lysates by incubation with streptavidin magnetic beads. Proteins were separated by SDS-PAGE and sent for identification by mass spectrometry. In conclusion, we isolated multiple proteins that differentially associate with and/or are proximate to lamin A and progerin in vivo. The identification of such proteins may shed light into the mechanism by which progerin causes its deleterious effects. The purpose of this research is to attempt to identify the neighboring proteins that differentially interact with or locate near lamin A and progerin

Investigating the role of knowledge management in driving the development of an effective business process architecture

Business Process Architecture (BPA) modelling methods are not dynamic and flexible enough to effectively respond to changes. This may create a barrier that contributes to a lack of knowledge and learning capabilities which can affect the BPA regarding its support for a sustainable competitive advantage in an organisation. New business challenges are driving business enterprises to adopt Knowledge Management (KM) as one means of making a positive difference to their performance and competitiveness. However, shortcomings still remain in utilising knowledge management in business processes where efforts were mostly directed towards the integration of knowledge management with business process management but not including BPAs. The idea of applying KM as a memory to be timely retrieved and updated as needed is no longer sufficient. The resource-based view suggests a number of key factors to be investigated and taken into consideration during the development of knowledge management systems. These key factors are known as Knowledge Management Enablers (KMEs). KMEs are crucial for representing KM and understanding how knowledge is created, shared and disseminated. They are also essential to identify available assets and resources, and to clarify how organisational capabilities are created and utilised.This research is aimed at investigating the role of the knowledge management enablers in the development of an effective process architecture. An effective process architecture needs to be dynamic and supports a sustainable competitive advantage in an organisation. Identifying the KMEs, selecting an appropriate BPA method, aligning these KMEs with this method as well as undertaking a critical evaluation of this alignment are the main objectives set for this research. In order to accomplish the research aim and objectives, a resource-based and semantic-enriched framework, namely the KMEOntoBPA has been designed using KMEs to drive the process of BPA development. Organisational structure, culture, information technology, leadership, knowledge context and business repository have been selected as representatives of the KMEs. The object-based BPA modelling, specifically the semantically enriched Riva BPA (srBPA) method, has been adopted in order to embrace the knowledge resources generated by KMEs and utilise them in the derivation and re-configuration of its constitutional elements. These knowledge resources are employed as business objects. They are considered as Candidate Essential Business Entities (CEBEs) in the Riva method, that characterise or represent a form of business of an organisation. The Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) is used to guide the research phases with an emphasis on the design and development, demonstration and evaluation of the research framework. The KMEOntoBPA has been demonstrated using sufficient and representative core banking case studies of the Treasury, Deposits and Financing. These case studies have been applied to the DSRM iterations beginning with the Treasury as the 1st case study, followed by the Deposits and the Financing case studies.The results have revealed that KMEs utilisation provides an agile generation of representative CEBEs and their corresponding Riva BPA elements, which reflect the real business in each of the core banking business studies. This research also demonstrated the semantic Riva BPA method as an appropriate object-based method that is well aligned with KMEs in exploiting knowledge resources for the development of a dynamic BPA with reference to robustness and learning capabilities. In addition to these results, the research framework, i.e, the KMEOntoBPA has shown an understanding of the flow of knowledge in the bank and has provided several possible advantages such as the accuracy of service delivery and the improvement of the financial control. It also supports the sources of sustainable competitive advantage (SCA): technical capabilities, core competences and social capital.Finally, a number of significant contributions and artefacts have been attained. For example, there is the aKMEOnt which is the abstract ontology that utilises six KMEs in this research to investigate the effectiveness of using such KMEs in driving the development of the BPA. These contributions along with the research results provide a guide to future research directions such as using the aKMEOnt in the development of different business process modelling and deriving the Enterprise Information Architecture (EIA) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

ReDy: A Novel ReRAM-centric Dynamic Quantization Approach for Energy-efficient CNN Inference

The primary operation in DNNs is the dot product of quantized input activations and weights. Prior works have proposed the design of memory-centric architectures based on the Processing-In-Memory (PIM) paradigm. Resistive RAM (ReRAM) technology is especially appealing for PIM-based DNN accelerators due to its high density to store weights, low leakage energy, low read latency, and high performance capabilities to perform the DNN dot-products massively in parallel within the ReRAM crossbars. However, the main bottleneck of these architectures is the energy-hungry analog-to-digital conversions (ADCs) required to perform analog computations in-ReRAM, which penalizes the efficiency and performance benefits of PIM. To improve energy-efficiency of in-ReRAM analog dot-product computations we present ReDy, a hardware accelerator that implements a ReRAM-centric Dynamic quantization scheme to take advantage of the bit serial streaming and processing of activations. The energy consumption of ReRAM-based DNN accelerators is directly proportional to the numerical precision of the input activations of each DNN layer. In particular, ReDy exploits that activations of CONV layers from Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), a subset of DNNs, are commonly grouped according to the size of their filters and the size of the ReRAM crossbars. Then, ReDy quantizes on-the-fly each group of activations with a different numerical precision based on a novel heuristic that takes into account the statistical distribution of each group. Overall, ReDy greatly reduces the activity of the ReRAM crossbars and the number of A/D conversions compared to an static 8-bit uniform quantization. We evaluate ReDy on a popular set of modern CNNs. On average, ReDy provides 13\% energy savings over an ISAAC-like accelerator with negligible accuracy loss and area overhead.Comment: 13 pages, 16 figures, 4 Table

Selfhood and otherness at the Wailing Wal

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1990.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 90-91).Few groups in the world have as long-standing a claim to "peoplehood" as do Jews. Despite the longevity of that claim, however, the problem of instability inherent in objectifying a collective identity has not yet been resolved. The existence and salience of a collective self is assumed at the same time that statements and actions within the group suggest that individuals are not sure of either the group's boundaries or its cultural content. The relationship between "Israeli society" and "the Jewish people" in Israel is loaded with tension, though there is little question in Israel or elsewhere that it is the "fact" of the latter that is responsible for the "fact" of the former. What about the conceptualization of the collective self in terms of a conceptualization of the collective "other"? The Israeli-Arab conflict is not a typical struggle between oppressor and oppressed, but is rather a struggle between stereotypes. When someone tells us who we are and has the power to impose their version of who we are on us -- according us certain rights and duties and denying us others by virtue of their representation of us -- we readily see it as an act of manipulation of the "facts" and the exercise of political power whose relation to reality we may question, even challenge. This analytical work is an attempt at examining some of the controversies generated by the dynamics and politics of manipulation as they structure in Israeli media in general. Architecture will be examined as a special representational medium that deals with signals of high symbolic values. In this endeavor, a recent Israeli project will be employed as an indicator of how architecture can become a viable channel of communication, where opposing groups can talk to each other, using this representational arena as a testing ground for new tendencies.by Sabri M. Jarrar.M.S

Using collaborative research methodologies in humanitarian supply chains

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop an existing collaborative research methodology process (Sabri, 2018), contextualise it for application in humanitarian supply chains and test it empirically. Design/methodology/approach: Building on collaborative research methodology and humanitarian supply chain literature, the Sabri’s (2018) collaborative research methodology process is further developed to comprise eight phases of collaborative research contextualised for the humanitarian supply chain domain. The process is applied in a collaborative research case of academia–practitioner knowledge co-creation in a humanitarian supply chain setting, focussing on environmental sustainability improvement. The collaborative case analysis suggests a number of refinements to the elements of the process. This study undertook two cycles of academia–practitioner collaborative research. Findings: In testing the process, a noticeable improvement in the collaboration among different humanitarian stakeholders was observed, leading to improved stakeholder management. The implementation improved the sustainability awareness and social inclusion of the affected population. Rurality, remoteness, security issues and resistance of field staff against change were among the main challenges for supply chain researchers to engage in collaborative research in the humanitarian domain. Originality/value: The paper addresses the rigour‒relevance‒reflectiveness debate in the humanitarian supply chain domain. A collaborative research methodology process derived from action research is further developed using humanitarian literature, and then it is applied in a humanitarian logistics case focussed on environmental sustainability. The present collaborative research process facilitates engaged scholarship among the humanitarian stakeholders, as the researchers’ roles move from observatory to participatory knowledge broker

Study of Bacterial infection associated with male infertility in Hillah city-Iraq

Objectives: To identify bacterial species present in the lower genital tract of males and to investigate the relationship with semen quality and male infertility. Methods: The microscopic analyses, cultures and ELISA technique of 175 semen and serum specimens, collected over 9 months from males investigated for infertility, were prospectively assessed. Results: One hundred and seventy five seminal fluid, blood and serum specimens were collected from men investigated for infertility over a period of 9 months (from April 2011 to December 2011) were analyzed. The seminal fluids and serum of patients mentioned to the laboratory from the fertility clinics of Babylon maternity and children Hospital and outer clinics. The results had shown that from 17 microbial species there are, Ureaplasma urealyticum 4.938272 %, Ureaplasma parvum 2.160494 %, Mycoplasma hominis 2.469136 %, Mycoplasma genetalium 5.864198 %, Chlamydia trachomatis 9.876543 %, Streptococcus pyogenes 8.641975 % , Staphylococcus aureus 11.11111 %, Staphylococcus epidermidis 12.03704 %, Staphylococcus saprophyticus 0.925926 %, Escherichia coli 20.06173 %, Proteus mirabilis 1.234568 %, Proteus vulgaris 2.469136 %, Klebsiella pneumoniae 0.925926 %, Pseudomonas aeuroginosa 1.54321 %, Neisseria gonorrhoeae 2.777778 %, Toxoplasma gondii 6.17284 % and Candida 6.790123 %. Also the infection with microorganisms revealed that it is higher in azoospermic patients than normospermic group (control).   Keywords: Male infertility, ELISA technique, Bacterial infection

Extended Spectrum β-lactamases and antimicrobial susceptibility among clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in the West Bank, Palestine

Objectives: Class D oxacillinases are frequently acquired by gram negative bacteria in general and P. aeruginosa in particular.P. aeruginosa is commonly implicated in causing nosocomial infections. The evolution of antibiotic resistance inP. aeruginosa and the acquisition of blaOXA genes interfere with successful treatment.Methods: A total of 49 clinical isolates of P. aeruginosa were obtained from Rafidia Hospital, West Bank, Palestine.Antimicrobial susceptibility testing of the isolates was performed by the standard disc diffusion method following theguidelines of CLSI. The prevalence of class D β-lactamases (OXA groups I, II and III) as well as the pseudomonas specificenzymes (CARB-3) were determined by PCR.Results: Susceptibility of P. aeruginosa to carbapenems was the highest 89%, and lowest to ticarcillin/clavulanic acid70%. This study revealed that P. aeruginosa produced oxacillinase enzymes at rates of: OXA-10 (40.8%), OXA-2 (20.4%)and OXA-1 (18.4%). All ceftazidime resistant strains expressed OXA-1 and OXA-2, 18.4%. PSE group was expressed in10.2%.Conclusions: This is the first research conducted to investigate the correlation between OXA genes (blaOXA-1, bla-OXA-2 and blaOXA-10) and antimicrobial resistance among P. aeruginosa clinical isolates in Palestine. The results obtainedcould contribute to better treatment and reduction of the evolution of resistant strains. In addition, it will provideimportant information regarding the geographical distribution of class D β-lactamases. J Microbiol Infect Dis 2013; 3(2):56-60Key words: P. aeruginosa, β-lactamase, susceptibility, oxacillinases, blaOXA gene