Role of Institutional Credit on Agricultural Production: A Time Series Analysis of Pakistan

In our predominant and cash-strapped agrarian sector, adequate credit provision is a definite buttress to implant technological advancements, achieve technical efficiency and hire efficient inputs to uplift agriculture output/income collectively and eradicate poverty eventually. In the midst of beleaguered informal credit sector and recent spurt in banking services in last decade diverted the attention to envisage the formal sector’s optimum potential. In this backdrop, this study is going to explore the role of institutional credit in agricultural production using the time series data for the period of 1972 to 2008. Cobb-Douglas production function is estimated using OLS and all the variables are transformed to per cultivated hectare. Results show that agricultural credit, availability of water, cropping intensity and agricultural labor force are positively significantly related to agricultural production.Agricultural Credit, Time series analysis, Pakistan

Institutional credit and agricultural production nexus

Credit plays an important role in the development of agriculture sector. It capitalizes farmers to adopt new technologies. It helps smooth consumption by providing Working capital and reduces poverty in the process. Both formal and informal lenders are active in rural credit market of Pakistan. There is a need to highlight the relationship between institutional agricultural credit and agricultural production. Time series data for the period of 1973-2009 was used. The study utilized Johansen and Juselius (JJ) cointegration approach and Granger causality test to explore the long-run equilibrium relationship and the possible direction of causality between availability of institutional agricultural credit, labor force availability, cropping intensity, water availability and agricultural production. Result shows the long run relationship among variables. Granger causality test shows the uni-directional causality among institutional agricultural credit and agricultural production and among water availability and agricultural production. The bi-directional causality was found among availability of labor force & cropping intensity and among water availability & cropping intensity.Institutional credit, Agricultural credit, Pakistan

Consumer Perception about Green Marketing: Really Green or just Green washed?

Times have changed and global warming is real, it has become a threat due to which people and organizations all over the world has started taking it seriously. These elements gave rise to the concept of green marketing. Green marketing became successful but along with the hype of green marketing a new concept came to light- green washing. Although several researches on green marketing has been carried out worldwide; there is little academic research conducted on consumer perception about green marketing campaigns. This study examines whether consumer thinks of green marketing practices followed by Fast Moving Consumer Goods firms green or green washed. Quantitative Data was collected from 209 participants by circulating questionnaire via social media to accept or reject the hypotheses. Data analysis was done through SPSS software and Microsoft Excel, the final results indicated that consumer believes green marketing practices to be green, they trust in the campaigns and have positive influence on their minds about such firms, the results further exhibited that basic environment knowledge was present among participants but their final purchase was based on their own interests rather than green marketing campaigns

Awareness and Implementation of Total Quality Management: Medical Libraries’ Perspective

The study intended to assess the level of awareness and the status of applications of total quality management (TQM) in medical libraries. A survey method was used to collect data from the library professionals serving in the libraries of medical colleges/institutes/universities of Punjab, Pakistan. The findings revealed that the majority of the respondents claimed a good level of awareness and understanding about TQM applications for medical libraries. TQM applications including “committed leadership and management support; continuous improvement; teamwork; involvement of everyone; and employee empowerment” were practiced in medical libraries to achieve “customer satisfaction”. The medical library professionals (MLPs) considered the indicators of performance measures such as “PMDC registration requirements, staff evaluation criteria, and users’ complaints” as necessary elements. However, the MLPs did not aware of the performance indicator method, benchmark, and ISO 9001 certification application. The study suggested that the leadership and medical library professionals should focus on devising mechanisms for TQM standards/norms for quality library services and facilities, allocating budget, and providing training opportunities for professional development

Security Issues in Internet of Things: A Comprehensive Review

IoT devices can be insecure and may not be able to defend themselves against a wide variety of security threats. This is primarily due to the reason that resources on IoT devices are limited. Standards that govern the development of these devices are not yet mature. Moreover, the design, development and deployment of the software and hardware is not at all secure. The solution to these problems is that a global mechanism should be developed that is robust for securing the IoT layers. Major bottleneck in this approach is that the resources in IoT devices are very diverse in nature, based on several technologies and protocols which make it quite challenging to develop a universal protocol to meet the security threats. These threats have been divided into low level, middle level and high level layers of IoT. In this article, various mechanisms for handling security issues at different IoT layers have been reviewed. Attacks in IoT, their implications, solutions and role of Blockchain technology to address these problems are briefly presented

Filtering Approaches in Medical Image Processing: A Tutorial

This paper presents popular filtering approaches adopted in medical image processing. It is aimed to serve as a beginner’s guide in Medical Image processing to undergraduate and graduate students of Electrical engineering and Computer science. A general overview of various steps involved in medical image acquisition and analysis is presented. Various statistical distributions representing practical noise problems in images are indicated and corresponding filtering techniques like statistics based filters, frequency domain filters, optimal and adaptive filters have been briefly discussed

Does corporate social responsibility matter to management forecast precision? Evidence from China

This article investigates whether socially responsible companies differ from other firms in the quality of earnings forecasts issued by management. Specifically, using 5192 earnings forecast observations of 669 Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2016, we examine whether companies that perform better in corporate social responsibility (CSR) still provide higher-precision management earnings forecasts compared with companies with poor CSR performance, thereby presenting an image of transparent and accountable disclosures. Through empirical research, this paper finds that CSR is positively associated with management forecast precision. This result is robust to using alternative measures of CSR, considering mandatory disclosure sample and voluntary disclosure sample, and controlling for potential endogeneity concern by adopting the instrumental variable method. Furthermore, we find the relationship between CSR and management forecast precision is stronger in non-state-owned firms. Our findings suggest that socially responsible companies will comply with higher ethical standards and hence maintain their well-established social reputation by disclosing high-quality earnings forecasts, which lends support to the transparent forecast hypothesis. This paper enriches the existing studies regarding the economic consequences of CSR and adds empirical evidence from emerging markets

Emergency Presentation of Abdominal Pain with Unusual Etiology

Abdominal pain has vast differentials and routine etiologies are diagnosed easily. Difficulty arises with uncommon presentation. This is a case of 28 years old lady presenting to emergency department of Holy Family Hospital, Rawalpindi with worsening abdominal pain, vomiting and loose stools over 2 weeks. Routine examination and workup did not help to find any cause. Ultrasound abdomen suspected matted gut loops with enlarged lymph nodes. CECT abdomen confirmed a non-differentiating tissue collection in right iliac fossa. Later diagnosis of complicated gossybioma (retained gauze surrounded by fibrotic tissue with entero-enteric fistula and fecolith in appendix) was confirmed by laparoscopy that was surgically removed. Conclusion: Gossybioma is infrequent but avoidable complication that needs to be considered by surgeon meticulously especially by swab counting, avoiding staff change over during procedure and consideration in follow up visit

Emergency Presentation of Abdominal Pain with Unusual Etiology

Abdominal pain has vast differentials and routine etiologies are diagnosed easily. Difficulty arises with uncommon presentation. This is a case of 28 years old lady presenting to emergency department of Holy Family Hospital, Rawalpindi with worsening abdominal pain, vomiting and loose stools over 2 weeks. Routine examination and workup did not help to find any cause. Ultrasound abdomen suspected matted gut loops with enlarged lymph nodes. CECT abdomen confirmed a non-differentiating tissue collection in right iliac fossa. Later diagnosis of complicated gossybioma (retained gauze surrounded by fibrotic tissue with entero-enteric fistula and fecolith in appendix) was confirmed by laparoscopy that was surgically removed. Conclusion: Gossybioma is infrequent but avoidable complication that needs to be considered by surgeon meticulously especially by swab counting, avoiding staff change over during procedure and consideration in follow up visit