The Role of Ownership Concentration and Dividend Policy on Firm Performance: Evidence from an Emerging Market of Pakistan

Purpose- The main aim of this study is to determine the role of ownership concentration and dividend policy on the firm performance of chemical sector firms of Pakistan. Design/Methodology- This research used the secondary data collected from the annual reports of the companies listed at the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE). However, inclusion criteria are the 26 listed firms from 2012 to 2017, giving a total of 156 observations. This study used the Generalized Least Squares Model. Findings- The findings reveal that ownership concentration has a significant positive association with firm financial performance. This stated that larger shareholders could attribute to the alignment of managerial incentives with shareholder interests. They also monitor the team very effectively and efficiently. The dividend policy has a significant positive relationship with ROA. Leverage and tangibility have a significant negative relationship with firm performance. Practical Implications- These results potentially can be relevant for policymakers and academic research as well as also helpful for managers and policymakers

Equilibrium, Thermodynamics, and Kinetic Sorption Studies for the Removal of Coomassie Brilliant Blue on Wheat Bran as a Low-Cost Adsorbent

The sorption studies of coomassie brilliant blue (CBB) from aqueous solution have been carried out on wheat bran (WB). Coomassie brilliant blue on wheat bran was used to study the adsorption behavior under various parameters such as pH, dosage amount, and contact time. It was observed that under optimized conditions up to 95.70% dye could be removed from solution onto WB. Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherms were used to elaborate the results. Freundlich model was found to be fitted well and favored multilayer adsorption. The Freundlich constants n and KF were determined as 0.53 and 2.5 × 10−4. Thermodynamic parameters such as ΔG, ΔH, and ΔS studied were taking into account, showed spontaneous and favorable reaction for coomassie brilliant blue on wheat bran. The maximum adsorption capacity qm was found to be 6.410 mg/g. The investigations show that non treated WB is a low-cost adsorbent for the removal of dyes from textile industry effluents

Comparative study to evaluate the prevalence of deranged lipid profile and oral glucose tolerance test in polycystic ovarian syndrome patients with normal females: a prospective observational study

Background: PCOS is a complex endocrine disorder characterized by menstrual dysfunction, anovulation, infertility and hyper androgenic symptoms with dyslipidaemia, cardiovascular diseases, and impaired glucose tolerance and type II diabetes mellitus. Multiple risk factors are involved in the pathogenesis of PCOS.Methods: A comparative evaluation of deranged lipid profile and OGTT in PCOS patients with normal females was done in patients with age group of 15 to 30 years. The Rotterdam criteria for PCOS was used for selection of the participants prospectively and a detailed history regarding period of amenorrhea, menstrual cycles, obstetric history, any past history of medical disorder were taken followed by general physical, systemic and obstetric examination. All the patients underwent Ultrasound examination, OGTT and lipid profile, prolactin, 17-OH progesterone and testosterone level.Results: A significant association of PCOS with deranged lipid profile and blood glucose tolerance and obesity was observed. Patients with PCOS had higher prevalence of oligomenorrhoea, infertility, hirsutism and acne. Furthermore, a statistically significant trend was seen where signs and symptoms like infertility, hirsutism and acne, deranged OGTT and dyslipidaemia were more frequently associated with increased BMI, sedentary life style intake of high calorie diets.Conclusions: An association between obesity, sedentary lifestyle, and dietary factors with PCOS was observed which can be modified to improve the health condition of the women with PCOS

Recurrent neural network and reinforcement learning model for COVID-19 prediction.

Detection and prediction of the novel Coronavirus present new challenges for the medical research community due to its widespread across the globe. Methods driven by Artificial Intelligence can help predict specific parameters, hazards, and outcomes of such a pandemic. Recently, deep learning-based approaches have proven a novel opportunity to determine various difficulties in prediction. In this work, two learning algorithms, namely deep learning and reinforcement learning, were developed to forecast COVID-19. This article constructs a model using Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN), particularly the Modified Long Short-Term Memory (MLSTM) model, to forecast the count of newly affected individuals, losses, and cures in the following few days. This study also suggests deep learning reinforcement to optimize COVID-19's predictive outcome based on symptoms. Real-world data was utilized to analyze the success of the suggested system. The findings show that the established approach promises prognosticating outcomes concerning the current COVID-19 pandemic and outperformed the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model and the Machine Learning model, Logistic Regresion (LR) in terms of error rate

Countering Malicious URLs in Internet of Things Using a Knowledge-Based Approach and a Simulated Expert

© 2014 IEEE. This article proposes a novel methodology to detect malicious uniform resource locators (URLs) using simulated expert (SE) and knowledge-base system (KBS). The proposed study not only efficiently detects known malicious URLs but also adapts countermeasure against the newly generated malicious URLs. Moreover, this article also explored which lexical features are contributing more in final decision using a factor analysis method, and thus help in avoiding the involvement of human experts. Furthermore, we apply the following state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) algorithms, i.e., naïve Bayes (NB), decision tree (DT), gradient boosted trees (GBT), generalized linear model (GLM), logistic regression (LR), deep learning (DL), and random rest (RF), and evaluate the performance of these algorithms on a large-scale real data set of data-driven Web applications. The experimental results clearly demonstrate the efficiency of NB in the proposed model as NB outperforms when compared to the rest of the aforementioned algorithms in terms of average minimum execution time (i.e., 3 s) and is able to accurately classify the 107 586 URLs with 0.2% error rate and 99.8% accuracy rate

Comparative study to evaluate the effect of colloid coloading versus crystalloid coloading for prevention of spinal anaesthesia induced hypotension and effect on fetal Apgar score in patients undergoing elective lower segment caesarean section: a prospective observational study

Background: Spinal anesthesia for LSCS has a high incidence of maternal hypotension which can be severe and disastrous for the fetus and the mother. Coloading in these patients is a physiologically more appropriate method for preventing spinal anesthesia induced hypotension.Methods: 100 ASA I patients for elective LSCS were randomly divided into two equal groups to either receive 1000ml colloid (6% Hetastarch) or 1000ml crystalloids (Ringer lactate) as coload. NIBP, heart rate SPO2 and incidence of nausea and vomiting and use of ephedrine to treat any hypotension was recorded. Fetal outcome was measured using APGAR score at 0, 1 and 5 minutes.Results: The incidence of hypotension was lesser with colloid coload group (41.7%) as compared to the crystalloid coload group (58.3%) but the difference between the two groups was statistically insignificant. Similarly, no statistically significant difference was noted in the incidence of nausea and vomiting and Fetal APGAR score between the two groups.Conclusions: Both Colloid and Crystalloid coloading is effective in decreasing the incidence of spinal anesthesia induced hypotension during LSCS with lesser incidence of hypotension and nausea vomiting with colloid coloading

Equilibrium, Thermodynamics, and Kinetic Sorption Studies for the Removal of Coomassie Brilliant Blue on Wheat Bran as a Low-Cost Adsorbent

The sorption studies of coomassie brilliant blue (CBB) from aqueous solution have been carried out on wheat bran (WB). Coomassie brilliant blue on wheat bran was used to study the adsorption behavior under various parameters such as pH, dosage amount, and contact time. It was observed that under optimized conditions up to 95.70% dye could be removed from solution onto WB. Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherms were used to elaborate the results. Freundlich model was found to be fitted well and favored multilayer adsorption. The Freundlich constants n and KF were determined as 0.53 and 2.5 × 10 −4 . Thermodynamic parameters such as ΔG, ΔH, and ΔS studied were taking into account, showed spontaneous and favorable reaction for coomassie brilliant blue on wheat bran. The maximum adsorption capacity q m was found to be 6.410 mg/g. The investigations show that non treated WB is a low-cost adsorbent for the removal of dyes from textile industry effluents

An effective method for lung cancer diagnosis from CT scan using deep learning-based support vector network

Producción CientíficaThe diagnosis of early-stage lung cancer is challenging due to its asymptomatic nature, especially given the repeated radiation exposure and high cost of computed tomography(CT). Examining the lung CT images to detect pulmonary nodules, especially the cell lung cancer lesions, is also tedious and prone to errors even by a specialist. This study proposes a cancer diagnostic model based on a deep learning-enabled support vector machine (SVM). The proposed computer-aided design (CAD) model identifies the physiological and pathological changes in the soft tissues of the cross-section in lung cancer lesions. The model is first trained to recognize lung cancer by measuring and comparing the selected profile values in CT images obtained from patients and control patients at their diagnosis. Then, the model is tested and validated using the CT scans of both patients and control patients that are not shown in the training phase. The study investigates 888 annotated CT scans from the publicly available LIDC/IDRI database. The proposed deep learning-assisted SVM-based model yields 94% accuracy for pulmonary nodule detection representing early-stage lung cancer. It is found superior to other existing methods including complex deep learning, simple machine learning, and the hybrid techniques used on lung CT images for nodule detection. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach can greatly assist radiologists in detecting early lung cancer and facilitating the timely management of patients

Tensile Strength of Novel Experimental Hydrophilic Vinyl Polysiloxane Impression Materials Compared to Control and Commercial VPS Impression Materials

Objective: To measure the tensile strength of novel experimental hydrophilic (medium bodied) vinyl polysiloxane impression materials developed from ab initio in comparison to control and commercial vinyl polysiloxane impression materials. Materials and Methods: This experimental study was conducted at the Department of Oral Growth and Development, Bart’s and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary, University of London, UK from 1st Oct 2010 to 28th February 2014. Five novel experimental (medium bodied) VPS impression materials (Exp-I, II, III, IV and V) were developed and evaluated for their effect as crosslinking agent and surfactant on the tensile strength and percent elongation-at-break in comparison to control and three commonly used commercial (medium bodied) VPS impression materials (Aquasil Ultra Monophase, Elite HD Monophase, Extrude. These properties were evaluated using Tenius Olsen (mechanical testing machine). Results: Aquasil Ultra Monophase (Aq M) had a significantly higher Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS) compared to all commercial and Experimental VPS. Although Exp-III showed the lowest UTS among all the materials but this was only significant for Aq M. On comparing Exp-I (control) with Exp-II, after adding TFDMSOS into Exp-II there was a slight, but not significant, increase in UTS. After adding the surfactant to hydrophilic Exp-III, IV and V, the UTS decreased slightly, but not significantly, compared to Exp-II. After addition of cross-linking agent (TFDMSOS) there was a significant increase in elongation-at-break of Exp-II compared to the control (Exp-I), which was further significantly increased after incorporating the surfactant (Rhodasurf CET-2) in the Exp hydrophilic VPS formulations (Exp-III, IV and V). Elongationat-break was significantly increased after incorporating the surfactant (Rhodasurf CET-2) in the Exp hydrophilic VPS formulations (Exp-III, IV and V) compared to Exp-II. Conclusion: All Exp VPS had significantly higher % elongation-at-break (more than double) than commercial VPS. Percentage elongation-at-break further increased significantly after adding Rhodasurf CET-2 (Surfactant).&nbsp

Efficiency of Crystal Violet Stain to Study Mitotic Figures in Oral Epithelial Dysplasia

AIM: To evaluate mitotic activity in the different grades of oral epithelial dysplasia using 1% crystal violet stain. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A descriptive study was conducted in the Department of Histopathology of the Post Graduate Medical Institute, Lahore on a total of thirty-three cases of the Oral Epithelial Dysplasia (OED). Fresh, frozen paraffin-embedded archival tissue blocks were collected from Lahore General Hospital, Lahore & Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery Department of Nawaz Sharif Hospital, Yakki Gate, Lahore. The representative sections were taken and, after processing, mounted on glass slides and stained with H&E and crystal violet stains. The stained slides were then examined under an optical microscope. The efficacy of 1% crystal violet stain to identify mitotic figures in the different grades of oral epithelial dysplasia was assessed with the sample t-test. A difference of p < 0.05 was considered to be significant. RESULTS: A comparison of the mitotic figure count in two categories in sections stained with both stains showed a statistically significant difference. An increase in the mean mitotic count was noted in the sections of OED stained with crystal violet in comparison to the sections of OED stained with H&E which was statistically significant (p = 0.00). CONCLUSION: Counting of mitotic cell is the rapid and simplest way of evaluating the proliferative activity of cells. Crystal violet stain can be a rationalised step in the staining of mitotic figures compared to the usual H&E staining and can be employed as a selective stain during routine histopathological procedures