294 research outputs found

    Growth Instability and Forecasting of Non-Frozen Citrus Juice Export from Pakistan: A Markov Chain Approach

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    The retention and switching behavior of the importing nations are regarded as critical for the exporting nations to keep their consistency as well as growth, where random variables, i.e., the export of non-frozen citrus juice in this study from Pakistan, play an important role. Therefore, in this study, we endeavor to examine the behavior of the big five importers (i.e., Afghanistan, the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), the United Arab Emirate (UAE), and Germany), where Pakistani exports constitute above 50 percent of its non-frozen citrus juice. For measuring the occurrence probability of a random variable, the Markov chain analysis is applied to the time series data from FY 2013–14 to FY 2019–20 collected from secondary sources. The Markov chain process with the transition probability matrix (TPM), the compound annual growth rate (CAGR), the coefficient of variation, and the Cuddy Della Valle instability index (CDVI) have displayed interesting results. The TPM results for non-frozen citrus juice exports in terms of quantity revealed that the United States, other countries, Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom demonstrated the highest retention level and are consistent with Pakistan's non-frozen citrus juice exports. In terms of quantity, according to the results of the CAGR, except for Afghanistan and other countries, the remaining importing countries showed growth. The results of CDVI in terms of quantity showed inconsistent growth for all the importing nations for the exports of non-frozen citrus juice from Pakistan. &nbsp

    The Problem Of Adverse Selection In Business Education

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    The quality of output from a process, to a substantial extent, depends upon quality of the input. The performance of an educational institution badly suffers when it faces a ‘wear out’ in the quality of its in-take. Sometimes it is a deficient induction criterion due to which inappropriate elements hold majority in admitted population of an institution. In this paper, the case of a business education institute, which has been facing a similar problem, is discussed. The authors construct various propositions concerning the relevant ‘concepts of interest’ and then gauge their truth value through a survey of archival records of admitted students with an intent of establishing a cause-and-effect relationship between admission policy and the students’ academic performance

    Squamous cell carcinoma of oral tongue in young patients — A 10 years tertiary care experience

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    Abstract OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the clinical and pathological profile of young patients with squamous cell carcinoma of tongue. METHODS: The retrospective study was conducted at Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, and comprised record of patients20. RESULTS: Of the 29 patients, 17(58.6%) were men and 12(41.3%) were women. The overall mean age at presentation was 29.6+/-4.4 years. All patients (100%) had some sort of addiction, with 15(51.7%) having more than one addiction. Of the total, 20(68.9%) patients had moderately differentiated carcinoma. At presentation, 20(68.9%) had advanced stage (III-IV) disease. Surgery was the primary modality used in all the patients (100%). Median follow-up period was 36 months (range: 1-6 years). During follow-up, 7(24.1%) patients developed recurrence. CONCLUSIONS: Squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue was more commonly seen in males, and multiple addictions were a common risk factor

    Firm-Level Determinants Of Export Performance

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    Contribution of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in global export is becoming significant but still a large number of these are unable to outperform in international market.  In this study, we have identified and classified the firm-level controllable determinants of export performance.  Based upon a comprehensive and systematic literature study we finally developed a synthesized model which may provide a broader understanding of the export behavior of the SMEs to enhance their export performance.  Many information sources have been explored to collect the relevant literature.  The determinants found from the literature are classified into firm’s characteristics, management characteristics, and export marketing strategic capabilities. In this paper, we have proposed a synthesized model for the researchers who are interested to investigate the issue further (i.e. about SMEs export performance determinants)

    PRAKTIK POLITIK TRANSAKSIONAL PADA SISTEM DESENTRALISASI ASIMETRIS DI ACEH (STUDI ANALISIS 10 TAHUN PENGELOLAAN DANA OTONOMI KHUSUS PERIODE 2008/2018)

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    Penerimaan Dana Otonomi Khusus Pemerintah Aceh dalam waktu 10 tahun periode 2008/2018 telah mencapai Rp64.968 Triliun. Capaian penerimaan tersebut tidak membuat masyarakat menjadi lebih maju dan sejahtera. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengelolaan dana otonomi khusus di Pemerintah Aceh sebagai daerah yang berlandaskan sistem desentralisasi asimetris tidak dapat dilaksanakan dengan baik merujuk pada perspektif politik transaksional dan untuk mengetahui peran elite lokal dalam membuat perencanaan dan program kegiatan pada dana otonomi khusus. Untuk menganalisis permasalahan dalam penelitian ini menggunakan Teori Desentralisasi Asimetris dan Teori Politik Transaksional. Adapun pendekatan yang dilakukan menggunakan kualitatif deksriptif. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa 10 tahun pengelolaan dana otonomi khusus Aceh adanya faktor politis dalam perubahan regulasi yang ditetapkan pada Qanun No.2/2008, Qanun No.2/2013, dan Qanun No.10/2016 sehingga muncul tarik-menarik kepentingan dalam pengelolaan dana otonomi khusus di level Pemerintahan Provinsi dan Kabupaten/Kota. Tidak adanya pengawasan dalam pengelolaan dana otonomi khusus didasarkan pada permainan proyek tanpa perencanaan yang baik, dan adanya perencanaan yang berbasis kepentingan dalam pengelolaan dana otonomi khusus didasarkan pada program kegiatan yang populis sesuai keinginan para politisi yang berdampak pada lemahnya laju pertumbuhan ekonomi daerah, lambannya perbaikan indeks kualitas pembangunan manusia, tingginya angka kemiskinan, serta tingginya angka pengangguran di Aceh. Berdasarkan temuan tersebut dapat disimpulkan bahwa pelaksanaan dana otonomi khusus Aceh belum optimal, sehingga diperlukan evaluasi oleh Pemerintah Pusat dalam regulasi UU No.11/2006 untuk memperkuat tata kelola pemerintah daerah yang lebih baik terutama dalam peningkatan efisiensi perencanaan dan pelaksanaan anggaran serta memperkuat regulasi dan menerapkan sistem e-planning untuk menseleksi program kegiatan dari dana otonomi khusus Aceh.Kata Kunci: Dana Otonomi Khusus Aceh, Sistem Desentralisasi Asimetris, dan Praktik Politik Transaksiona

    Manipulation Planning Among Movable Obstacles Using Physics-Based Adaptive Motion Primitives

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    Robot manipulation in cluttered scenes often requires contact-rich interactions with objects. It can be more economical to interact via non-prehensile actions, for example, push through other objects to get to the desired grasp pose, instead of deliberate prehensile rearrangement of the scene. For each object in a scene, depending on its properties, the robot may or may not be allowed to make contact with, tilt, or topple it. To ensure that these constraints are satisfied during non-prehensile interactions, a planner can query a physics-based simulator to evaluate the complex multi-body interactions caused by robot actions. Unfortunately, it is infeasible to query the simulator for thousands of actions that need to be evaluated in a typical planning problem as each simulation is time-consuming. In this work, we show that (i) manipulation tasks (specifically pick-and-place style tasks from a tabletop or a refrigerator) can often be solved by restricting robot-object interactions to adaptive motion primitives in a plan, (ii) these actions can be incorporated as subgoals within a multi-heuristic search framework, and (iii) limiting interactions to these actions can help reduce the time spent querying the simulator during planning by up to 40x in comparison to baseline algorithms. Our algorithm is evaluated in simulation and in the real-world on a PR2 robot using PyBullet as our physics-based simulator. Supplementary video: \url{https://youtu.be/ABQc7JbeJPM}.Comment: Under review for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) journal with conference presentation option at the 2021 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl
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