Stock Market Response to Policy Announcement: Evidence from Banking Sector of Pakistan

Monetary policy announcement is important decision which affects the economy. The aim of this study is to identify the impact of monetary policy announcement on stock market in Pakistan for financial year 2014-2015. This is the unique year for studying the impact of announcement on bank’s stock prices, as interest rate has been changed in 4 monetary policies while it remained stable in other announcements. This specific feature can help to uncover the phenomenon. Event study approach has been used to analyze the impact of policy announcement on stock returns. The event window of 15 days is constructed with -7 (pre announcement days) and +7(post announcement days) while 0 is the event day. All commercial banks is the population of study and sample size of 14 commercial banks listed in KSE 100 index. Around the event window, abnormal returns calculated by taking difference of actual return and expected return. Market model is used to calculate the expected returns. Aggregated abnormal return AAR and cumulative abnormal returns CAAR are calculated to find the impact with in event window and across the events window. The results show significant impact of all monetary policy announcements on banks stock returns. Keywords: Monetary Policy Announcement, Stock Return, Event Study, Banking Sector, KSE 100 Inde

Identification of networked tunnelled applications

In protocol tunnelling, one application protocol is encapsulated within another carrier protocol in an unusual way to circumvent firewall policy. Application-layer tunnels are a significant security and resource abuse threat for networks because those applications which are restricted by firewalls such as high data-rate games, peer-to-peer file sharing, video and audio streaming, and chat are carried through via allowed protocols like HTTP, HTTPS and the firewall security policy is thwarted. Protocols such as HTTP and HTTPS are indispensable today for any network which has to be connected to the Internet; hence these become a high value target for running restricted applications via tunnelling. The identification of the actual application running across a network is important for network management, optimization, security and abuse prevention. The existing techniques for identification of applications running across the network, for example port number based identification, and packet data analysis techniques are not always successful, especially for applications which use encrypted tunnels. This work describes a statistical approach to detect applications which are running using application layer tunnels. Previous work has shown the packet size distribution to be an effective metric for detecting most network applications, both UDP and TCP based applications. In this work it is shown how packet stream statistics including packet size distributions can be used to differentiate and identify networked tunnelled applications successfully. Tunnelled applications are identifiable using the traffic statistical parameters. Traffic trace files of the applications were captured, statistical parameters were derived from the trace files, and then these parameters were used for training machine learning algorithms. The trained machine learning algorithm is then able to classify the other packet trace data as belonging to an application. Five different machine learning algorithms have been applied, and their performance accuracy is discussed. The entropy distance based Nearest Neighbour machine learning algorithm and the Euclidean Distance based Nearest Neighbour classifier had better results than others. This method of identification of tunnelled applications can be complimentary to other network security systems such as firewalls and Intrusion Detection Systems.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Checklist of Medicinal Plants of Siran Valley, Mansehra, Pakistan

This study was carried in Siran Valley district Mansehra. (Pakistan). The method adopted for documentation of indigenous knowledge was based on questionnaire consisting of semi-structured interviews employing a checklist of questions and direct observations. The aim of the study was to collect indigenous knowledge of local inhabitants about the use of native plants, which were being utilized by the people for the treatment of different diseases. The ethnomedicinal uses of 80 plant species belonging to 49 families were recorded during field trips from the research area. The cultivated medicinal plants consists of 21 species. The checklist and ethnomedicinal inventory was developed alphabetically by botanical name, followed by local name, family, part used and ethnomedicinal uses. Plant specimens were collected, identified, preserved, mounted and voucher was deposited in the Department of Plant Sciences, Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad, for future references

Common Medicinal Folk Recipes of Siran Valley, Mansehra, Pakistan

The present studies were aimed to investigate ethnomedicinal folk recipes used to cure different diseases in the study area. Questionnaire method was adopted for documentation of folk indigenous knowledge. The interviews were carried out in local community, to investigate local people and knowledgeable persons (Hakims, Women and Herdsmen) who are the main user of medicinal plants. The ethnomedicinal data on 44 plant species belonging to 31 families were recorded during field trips from different villages of the area. The botanical name, followed by local name, family, part used and ethnomedicinal uses in different folk recipes was recorded. Plants were collected, pressed, dried, preserved, mounted and identified through the available literature (Nasir& Ali, 1971-2001) and were confirmed by the experts in Department of Biology, Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad. The specimens were deposited in the Herbarium, Department of Plant Sciences, and Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan (ISL)

Endoscopic Diagnosis in Patients with Acute Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding

Objective: To determine the causes of acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding using upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. Patients and Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted at Peoples University of Medical and Health Sciences (PUMHS), Lakyari Endoscopic suit, Nawabshah from Jan 2015 to March 2016. Patients presenting with acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding were inducted in the study. After stabilizing the patients, upper gastrointestinal endoscopy was performed. Data was entered and analyzed by statistical software package SPSS version 10.0. Mean ± SD was calculated for quantitative variables and qualitative variables like gender and endoscopic findings were expressed as frequencies and percentages. Results: Out of 208 patients, 139 (67%) were males and 69 (33%) were females. Mean age of the patients was 52.77±14.5 SD years. Haematemesis was the main presenting complaint followed by melena. Bleeding related to portal hypertension was present in 112 (53.84%) patients, followed by peptic ulcer disease in 74 (35.57%) patients. Malignant lesions were present in 11(5.28%) patients while miscellaneous lesions were found in 11(5.28%) patients. Conclusion: Gastro esophageal variceal bleeding was the leading cause of upper GI bleeding followed by ulcerative disease

Re-recurrent Dermatofibrosarcomaprotuberans of the chest wall.

Dermatofibrosarcomaprotuberans is a rare, soft tissue tumour with high rate of recurrence. It is locally aggressive, with a low rate of metastasis. We describe the case of a 42 year old man who presented with a re-recurrent, large tumour situated on the anterior chest wall in the sternal region. We did a wide local excision and covered the resulting defect by using bilateral, pectoralis major myocutaneous flaps. Histopathology and immunohistochemical staining findings were consistent with the diagnosis of Dermatofibrosarcoma Protuberance. Post operatively the patient was treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy

Traditional Medicinal and Economic Uses of Gymnosperms of Kaghan Valley, Pakistan

The ethnobotanical data of total 12 gymnosperms belonging to four families was collected from the local people of the Kaghan Valley. A complete list of the plants is given with their name, family and ethnobotanical use, distribution and occurrence. Indigenous knowledge of local inhabitants about the use of native plants were collected during field trips through questionnaire The inhabitants of the area have to use the medicinal plants for various purposes and have for a long time been dependent on surrounding plant resources for their food, shelter, fodder, health care and other cultural purposes. Pinus roxburgii, P. wallichiana, Cedrus deodara, Abies pindrow and Taxus wallichiana are prominent gymnosperms of Kaghan Valley which are not only source of timber but also utilized as fuel wood and for medicinal purposes

How Consumer Confidence, Corruption and Credit Rating Effect the Exchange Rate: Emerging Market Perspective

The paper empirically examines whether the international rating influences the rate of exchange of an economy in the long run? The paper employs Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bounds testing methodology on the exchange rate of China and contemporary international rating, using time series data from 1996Q1 to 2016Q4. The empirical analysis confirms the presence of a cointegration relationship between country rating and the exchange rate. To be more specific; corruption index, credit rating, and inflation are significantly and negatively cointegrated with the exchange rate of China. Conversely, consumer confidence is uncorrelated with the exchange rate over the long run. The paper focuses only on the exchange rate of CNY-USD; this may limit the generalizability of results for exchange rate with other nations. Nevertheless, the results add to the exchange rate determinants literature by including country-rating indicators in the analysis. Prior literature documents that there is some relationship between inflation and exchange rate. This research is novel in the application of robust ARDL and bounds testing to examine the long and short-run association of country rating of China with its exchange rate, after controlling for inflation