Cash Conversion Cycle Management in Auto Mobile Industry: Relationship with Firm Performance, Leverage, Liquidity and Capital Employed

The business entities seek for different tools to maximize the shareholder wealth. The management of cash conversion cycle is one of the tools that play an essential role to generate maximum earnings to business firm. The recent paper is an effort to find out the different determinants that persuade cash cycle in automobile division in Pakistan. This industry provides employment opportunities to more than 192000 people directly and 1200000 indirectly. The data of eleven companies from this sector is analyzed to establish a relationship between profitability, leverage, capital employed, liquidity and cash conversion cycle. The data selected for this purpose ranges between 2008 and 2013. Multiple linear regression model is adopted for results. The outputs confirm that a negative considerable relation exists between return on assets, liquidity and cash cycle, whilst leverage and capital employed present a positive significant association with cash conversion cycle. Keywords: Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC), Profitability, Liquidity, Leverage (debt) and Capital Employe

Introducing Team Coordination Framework to Support Globally Distributed Teams for Pakistani Software Industry

Collaborative effort is required in DSD (Distributed Software Development) in order to develop software in manageable components. Immense effort is taking place due to the cultural, geographical and temporal distances among project teams in Pakistani Software Industry to this end. The purpose of this study is to propose a solution during DSD that will help the distributed teams in coordinating their activities. Our solution enhances the management associated activities and assists in optimal usage of team coordination in dispersed settings. The method that we used is single case study type, which involved distributed software business to assess the usefulness and efficiency related to Pakistan’s DSD industries, and has shown strong tendency of participants towards the effectiveness of proposed team coordination framework. Results indicate that the predictable solution will look up the group management, which is considered as a vigorous issue of Pakistani DSD industry. Furthermore, it will assist in resolving the problems of team coordination in distributed situation. One of the most significant current discussion about the proposed solution suggested that it helps in human communication methods team coordination in a distributed environment

Exploration of phenolic acid derivatives as inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 main protease and receptor binding domain: potential candidates for anti-SARS-CoV-2 therapy

Severe acute respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the etiological virus of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) which has been a public health concern due to its high morbidity and high mortality. Hence, the search for drugs that incapacitate the virus via inhibition of vital proteins in its life cycle is ongoing due to the paucity of drugs in clinical use against the virus. Consequently, this study was aimed at evaluating the potentials of natural phenolics against the Main protease (Mpro) and the receptor binding domain (RBD) using molecular modeling techniques including molecular docking, molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. To this end, thirty-five naturally occurring phenolics were identified and subjected to molecular docking simulation against the proteins. The results showed the compounds including rosmarinic acid, cynarine, and chlorogenic acid among many others possessed high binding affinities for both proteins as evident from their docking scores, with some possessing lower docking scores compared to the standard compound (Remdesivir). Further subjection of the hit compounds to drug-likeness, pharmacokinetics, and toxicity profiling revealed chlorogenic acid, rosmarinic acid, and chicoric acid as the compounds with desirable profiles and toxicity properties, while the study of their electronic properties via density functional theory calculations revealed rosmarinic acid as the most reactive and least stable among the sets of lead compounds that were identified in the study. Molecular dynamics simulation of the complexes formed after docking revealed the stability of the complexes. Ultimately, further experimental procedures are needed to validate the findings of this study

Trackable CEMB-Klean Cotton Transgenic Technology: Affordable Climate Neutral Agri-biotech Industrialization for Developing Countries

Background: Transgenic technology reflects the incorporation of novel useful traits in crop plants like cotton for economic benefits by overcoming the problems including insects’ pests and weeds in special. The present study is the success story of the continuous effort of CEMB team started back in the 1990s.Methods: This study includes characterization of a large number of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) strains taken from local soil and subjected to direct transformation of isolated BT genes into local cotton cultivars. Protocols for transformation into cotton plants were optimized and validated by the development of double gene codon optimized (Cry1Ac and Cry2A) transgenic cotton varieties.Results: The resulting GMOs in the form of CEMB-33, CA-12, CEMB-66 have been approved by Punjab Seed Council in 2013 and 2016 respectively. Double Bt and weedicide resistant cotton harboring CEMB-Modified and codon optimized cp4EPSPS (GTGene). These varieties can tolerate glyphosate spray @ 1900ml per acre without the appearance of necrotic spots/shedding and complete removal of all surrounding weeds in the cotton field is a significant advance to boost cotton production without spending much on insecticides and herbicides.Conclusion: In the current report, two unique sets of primers which amplify 1.1 Kb for CEMB-double Bt genes and 660 bp product for CEMB-Modified cp4EPSPS (GTGene) were tested. CEMB cotton variety CKC-01 is specially designed as low cost and easy to use by local farmer’s technology has the potential to revolutionize the cotton growing culture of the country.Keywords: Event detection; Bt Cotton; CEMB transgenic technology; GTGen

The effect of country of origin image, ethnocentrism, and religiosity on purchase intentions: an empirical investigation on Bangladeshi consumers

This research endeavour was undertaken in order to understand the effect of three different aspects namely, Country of Origin, Ethnocentrism, and Religiosity on Bangladeshi consumers' intention of purchasing imported or foreign products. At the initial stage of the study, 260 questionnaires were given out to Bangladeshi consumers in the cities of Dhaka and Chittagong. However, out of the 260 questionnaires, 230 were validated and tested for the purpose of statistical analysis. Descriptive analysis was conducted first in order to assess the demographic characteristics of the respondents, after which, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted, and finally, the hypotheses were tested, and the proposed model was verified through the application of structural equation modelling (SEM). The findings demonstrated that Country of Origin Image, Ethnocentrism, and Religiosity significantly affected Bangladeshi consumers' intention of buying imported products. The findings generated from this study will provide useful information to marketers who are selling imported or foreign products in the Bangladeshi market as well as help them in developing effective marketing strategies. At the same time, this study is also a meaningful contribution to literature, given the scarcity of research studies on this topic pertaining to Bangladesh. Keywords: country of origin, ethnocentrism, religiosity, purchase intention, foreign product

Training program effectiveness of service initiators: measuring perception of female employees of bank using logistic approach

Banking sector is one of the vital parts of the financial sector that has significant influence in the economy of Bangladesh. Due to lack of skilled manpower, banks often fail to generate quality services to the customers which can be an obstacle for the growth of this sector. Therefore, training programs are conducted for the employees in order to improve their skills for providing quality service activities. This study aims to assess the female employee’s perception of increased services after participating in the training program. Female employees were chosen due to its dominance in providing few banking services. Samples were collected from female employees working in different banks using the simple random technique. For investigating how different variables influence the dichotomous dependent variable Logit model has been implemented. The ultimate outcomes of the study have demonstrated that effective training program is influenced by few factors that have an impact on the performance of the female employees. Keywords: Training effectiveness, Logistic Approach, perception of female employees

Nitrogen enriched chemically produced carbon supplementary impacts on maize growth under saline soil conditions

Poor organic matter and nitrogen (N) deficiency along with salinity in arid and semiarid region soils are major hurdles to optimization of cereal's yield. In different cereals, maize productivity is significantly decreased due to less availability of N in low organic matter soils. Scientists suggest the incorporation of organic fertilizers to overcome this issue. That’s why the current study was conducted to explore the effectiveness of chemically produced nitrate blended acidified carbon (NBC). There were 3 levels of NBC i.e., 0, 0.50 and 1.00% applied under naturally normal and saline soils having EC 2.75 and 6.19 dS/m respectively. Results showed that the addition of 1.00NBC was significantly better compared to 0NBC for improvement in maize growth attributes i.e., root (32.86 and 77.84%) and shoot (74.17 and 67.57%) length, shoot fresh (53.98 and 97.42%) and dry weight (53.20and 84.20%), root dry (45.97 and 53.66%) and fresh weight (45.62 and 25.14%) in normal and saline conditions respectively. A significant enhancement in chlorophyll a, b, total and carotenoids of maize leaves also validated the imperative role of 1.00NBC than 0NBC in saline and normal soil. Application of 1.00BC also significantly decreases leaves electrolyte leakage and Na concentration in root and leaves over 0NBC in saline soils. In conclusion, 1.00NBC is an effective amendment to improve maize growth in saline soil. More investigations are suggested on different cereal crops under variable agroclimatic zones to declare 1.00NBC as the most effective amendment for alleviation of salinity stress

Purchase intention of foreign products: a study on Bangladeshi consumer perspective

The current research aims to investigate various factors that influence consumers’ intention of buying foreign products. The data were collected by means of self-structured questionnaires from a total of 260 Bangladeshi consumers residing in the two major cities of the country, Dhaka and Chittagong. At the initial stage, statistical analyses, particularly descriptive analysis as well as exploratory factor analysis, were conducted using SPSS, after which structural equation modeling was run by using AMOS. The findings have established that brand image and quality of foreign products carry significant positive influence on purchase intention of foreign products. However, religiosity leaves a significant negative effect on the purchase intention of foreign products. Furthermore, findings have also revealed that the image of the country of origin carries a significant positive effect on brand image but ethnocentrism carries a significant negative effect on perceptions about the quality of foreign products in their purchase intention. The major contribution of the current study is that it focuses on Bangladesh, as there is a vacuum in contemporary literature on this topic in the context of Bangladeshi consumers. The findings derived from the study could facilitate marketers in the creation of effective marketing strategies and at the same time are also valuable for academicians as well as consumers at large