Enabling good housing decisions

To counteract clients’ bad mortgage choices, community groups must first understand the emotional component of housing decisions. The author explains how choice architecture can help prospective homebuyers avoid mistakes.Home ownership ; Mortgage loans

Enabling Good Housing Decisions: Choice Architecture

To counteract clients’ bad mortgage choices, community groups must first understand the emotional component of housing decisions. The author explains how choice architecture can help prospective homebuyers avoid mistakes

An empirical analysis of after sales service and customer satisfaction

In today’s ever changing competitive environment, business cannot survive unless they satisfy their customers. The delivery of after sales service by a company is critical in satisfying customer needs and perceptions. In order to have quality after sales service a proper delivery system has to be in place. This is an empirical study on after sales quality of Pakistan’s automotive battery manufacturer. The research measured the quality of service in Atlas Battery, selling product with the brand name of AGS by using the Servqual method. The data was collected using an instrument from previous study to study the impact of quality of after sales services on customer satisfaction. The main variables effecting customer satisfaction are product quality and social responsibility. The results reveal that customer satisfaction increases with better service delivery.Sales service, customer expectation, human capital, service delivery system, customer satisfaction.

The Effects of Insulin Like Growth Factor -1 (IGF-1) on the Plasticity of Umbilical Cord Blood Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells Colonies to In Vitro Neurogenic Differentiation

Umbilical cord blood derived mesenchymal stem cells (UCB-MSCs) are pluripotent, easily expanded in culture, and has been much interest in their clinical potential for tissue repair and gene therapy. This study was performed to investigate the possibility of obtaining clonally expanded culture of MSCs derived from human UCB then studying the effect of Insulin like growth factor-1 (IGF-I) on the plasticity of MSCs colonies to their in vitro neurogenic differentiation and determining the differentiation pathway using neural marker (nestin). The mononuclear cells (MNCs) were obtained from cord blood after gradient density centrifugation, these cells were cultivated in a culture medium Iscove's Modified Dulbecco's Medium (IMDM)  supplemented with 10% Fetal bovine serum (FBS), then incubated at 37°C and 5% CO2 for three weeks. In most cases, the cultures of plastic-adherent cells proved to be heterogonous. Both spindle-shaped and round cells were observed. Immunophenotypically, the MSCs were found to be positive for CD71 and negative for CD34. These results indicated that MSCs are not hematopoietic in origin. These cells after passage retained their fibroblast –like morphology. Regardless to the concentration of IGF-I, this growth factor stimulates the differentiation of MSCs –toward the neuronal pathway. So, the MSCs colonies showed the ability to maintain their plasticity to form the specialized cells (neuronal like cells) after treated with IGF-I even in culturing for long time and these cells stained positively to the nestin marker. In conclusion: the IGF-I promoted and maintained the plasticity of UCB-derived MSCs and their colonies to differentiate into neuronal-like cells. Key words: Mesenchymal stem cells, Umbilical cord blood, Nestin, Neurogenic differentiation, Insulin like growth factor-1

The influence of IT leaders' leadership behaviour on IT governance performance in higher education: a literature review

IT has become one of the most invested areas of organisations, especially in higher education institutions. To safeguard these IT investments and make the most out them, a good IT governance structure is required. It enables the higher education institutions to strive in the competition and to achieve strategic objectives. To have optimum governance in the institutions, IT leaders play the vital role of carrying the task of IT role models to implement the best approaches in the institutions. The purpose of this study is to explore the existing literature to find out the influence of IT leaders' leadership behaviour on IT governance performance in higher education context. It is aimed to find the linkage between IT leaders' leadership behaviour and IT governance performance in higher education to promote this area for future research. The literature review was done systematically to identify the articles relevant to the three variables, 'IT governance', 'IT leadership' and "higher education'. The results indicated that there is an influence of IT leadership behaviour on IT governance in higher education. Literature showed that improper IT leadership was perceived as a barrier to ITG, IT leadership plays a vital role in effective ITG implementation and specific leadership capacities and skills are shown to promote ITG. However, there are few studies in this area and there is a lack of knowledge on how IT leadership can influence IT governance

A Macroscopic Traffic Model Based on the Safe Velocity at Transitions

The increasing volume of vehicles on the road has had a significant impact on traffic flow. Congestion in urban areas is now a major concern. To mitigate congestion, an accurate model is required which is based on realistic traffic dynamics. A new traffic model is proposed based on the conservation law of vehicles which considers traffic dynamics at transitions. Traffic alignment to forward conditions is affected by the time and distance between vehicles. Thus, the well-known Lighthill, Whitham, and Richards (LWR) model is modified to account for traffic behavior during alignment. A model for inhomogeneous traffic flow during transitions is proposed which can be used to characterize traffic evolution. The performance of the proposed model is compared with the LWR model using the Greenshields and Underwood target velocity distributions. These models are evaluated using the Godunov technique and numerical stability is guaranteed by considering the Courant, Friedrich, and Lewy (CFL) condition. The results obtained show that the proposed model characterizes the flow more realistically, and thus can provide better insight into traffic behavior for use in controlling congestion and pollution levels, and improving public safety. Doi: 10.28991/cej-2021-03091710 Full Text: PD

The influence of IT leaders’ leadership behavior on IT governance performance in higher Education: a literature review

IT has become one of the most invested areas of organisations, especially in higher education institutions. To safeguard these IT investments and make the most out them, a good IT governance structure is required. It enables the higher education institutions to strive in the competition and to achieve strategic objectives. To have optimum governance in the institutions, IT leaders play the vital role of carrying the task of IT role models to implement the best approaches in the institutions. The purpose of this study is to explore the existing literature to find out the influence of IT leaders’ leadership behaviour on IT governance performance in higher education context. It is aimed to find the linkage between IT leaders’ leadership behaviour and IT governance performance in higher education to promote this area for future research. The literature review was done systematically to identify the articles relevant to the three variables, ‘IT governance’, ‘IT leadership’ and “higher education’. The results indicated that there is an influence of IT leadership behaviour on IT governance in higher education. Literature showed that improper IT leadership was perceived as a barrier to ITG, IT leadership plays a vital role in effective ITG implementation and specific leadership capacities and skills are shown to promote ITG. However, there are few studies in this area and there is a lack of knowledge on how IT leadership can influence IT governance

Re-Scaling of Energy in the Stringy Charged Black Hole Solutions using Approximate Symmetries

This paper is devoted to study the energy problem in general relativity using approximate Lie symmetry methods for differential equations. We evaluate second-order approximate symmetries of the geodesic equations for the stringy charged black hole solutions. It is concluded that energy must be re-scaled by some factor in the second-order approximation.Comment: 18 pages, accepted for publication in Canadian J. Physic

Abstracts from the 7th annual neurology research day, shifa international hospital, islamabad

:It\u27s a cross sectional study conducted at CP clinic of Armed Forces institute of Rehabilitation medicine Rawalpindi from Jan 2012 to Jan 2013. All cerebral palsy children above 2 years of age and both genders were included in study. SPSS version 17 was used for data analysis

Effect of Polyvinyl Pyrolidone on Morphology and Performance of Cellulose Acetate Based Dialysis Membrane

Polyvinyl pyrolidone (PVP) was added as filler in cellulose acetate (CA) to produce mixed matrix membrane (MMM) for hemodialysis operation. Phase separation induced by diffusion (DIPS) was used for fabrication of mixed matrix CA/PVP flat sheet membranes. The effect of adding PVP was investigated on the morphology and permeation efficiencies of CA membranes. The surface arrangement of polymer and additives in pure and blended membrane was studied by FTIR, contact angle and SEM. Results revealed homogenous and significant mixing of PVP content into pure CA matrix. Performance efficiency of blended membranes was investigated by means of pure water flux (PWF), urea clearance and % rejection of bovine serum albumin (BSA). The observable decrease of contact angle from 83° to 69° in CA/PVP MMM membranes of varying composition effectively revealed enhancement in hydrophilicity of MMM membrane surface. For protein rejection, all CA/PVP membranes rejected>90% of BSA relative to 25% for pure CA membrane. Furthermore, urea clearance behavior for CA/PVP membranes was 62.4% in comparison to 52% for pure CA membrane. The incorporation PVP i.e 1% by weight (Mpvp1) significantly improved the hydrophilicity, PWF, BSA rejection and urea clearance percentages of modified CA membrane for dialysis application