Relationship between crude oil prices and global sukuk (islamic bond) index: evidence from Dow Jones Citygroup sukuk index

The global Islamic bond started gaining attention in capital markets just a few years ago. Since the launch of Dow Jones Citygroup Sukuk Index in 2006 , the number of issuance of global Islamic bonds has been sharply increasing. Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar had become major issuers of global bonds which are highly demanded by the investors .The rationale behind this might be because of religious commitment to get involved in riba (interest)-free investment or might be due to some other contributing factors. Realizing that the majority of global sukuk issuer is from the oil exporting countries, it might be related to the price of crude oil. This study attempts to find out the possible impact of the oil price on the global sukuk index using standard time series techniques. The findings evidence a significant relationship between the crude oil price and the global sukuk index. The US interest rate also influenced the global sukuk index based on the fact that the sukuk is denominated in US dollar and the interest rate had an inverse relationship with the bond price. Thus, crude oil price and the US interest rate should be taken into consideration by the global sukuk issuer as well as the investors. From this study, the investors might take the increase in crude oil prices as a positive signal and be motivated to buy global sukuk especially from the oil producing countries as it would give them a good yield on global sukuk. From the perspective of bond issuers, the appreciation or depreciation of US dollar against other currencies was one of the factors which affected their decision to issue global sukuk or not. An US interest rate affected the exchange rate of US dollar, since an increase in US interest rate led to the appreciation of US dollar in the short term and therefore influenced the global sukuk prices as well

Fuzzy linear programming for supply chain management in steel industry

Linear programming is one of the frequently applied tools in supply chain management. However, managers and decision makers may lack information about exact values of most of the parameters used in the optimization models. Fortunately, fuzzy linear programming comes up with a powerful tool to deal with this kind of incomplete data. In this paper, the exible approach of fuzzy linear programming is proposed and used to solve supply chain management of steel manufacturing company. This approach reformulated some constraints from conventional linear programming to fuzzy linear programming and provides alternative solutions to decision makers. The results obtained indicate that the fuzzy linear programming gives more exibility to the decision maker to achieve some aspiration level in order to choose what he considers as the best optimal solution.Scopu

Generalized Logarithmic Penalty Function Approach For Invex Nonlinear Constrained Optimization And Its Application

A penalty function approach is used widely in the field of mathematical programming, and it served as an alternative to conventional non-linear constrained optimization approach. In a quest to make an advancement theoretically and progress practically, we proposed a continuously differentiable penalty function to handle the nonlinear constrained optimization problem; it is called logarithmic penalty function (LPF) method

Stock returns and macroeconomic factors in an emerging economy: Malaysian evidence

This paper investigates the relationship between stock returns and macroeconomic variables in an emerging economy. Malaysia is taken as a case study. The evidence based on variance decompositions tends to indicate that interest rate is relatively most exogenous followed by stock returns, while consumer price index has been most endogenous. The findings reveal that all other endogenous variables are highly affected by stock returns. Impulse Response Functions to one standard deviation shock to the equation for Stock Returns and Exchange rate received significant responses from other variables. However, none of the variables reacted to a shock on oil price. The results have strong policy implications

Public debt and GDP growth in the Malaysian islamic economy

The Malaysian economy was in the last stretch of its 30-year aim to become a high-income developed nation by the year 2020. Although the original vision has been modified since it was first formulated, it largely remains intact, however, the goal appears challenging to achieve. There are significant structural impediments to achieving sustained and inclusive growth, especially to break through the “middle-income barrier” i.e. to become a high-income. Furthermore, Malaysia is particularly an open economy, sensitive to events in the global economy, including China but also the USA and Eurozone. Public debt levels are a secular concern of government noting that Malaysia promotes Islamic economics and finance (which generally proscribes indebtedness as well as outlawing interest and gambling) and it is considered a major tool in the goal towards achieving growth and stability. This paper explores the relationship between public debt levels and GDP growth in Malaysia using time series techniques to ascertain the significance of public debt to growth in the Malaysian context. The findings are limited by data availability and the techniques employed, but suggest that financial variables such as debt and savings have a relative leading impact on GDP growth. Consequently, policy makers would be advised to continue with structural reforms and not relaxing discipline over financial variables as there is a temptation while seeking an extraordinary growth path

A new logarithmic penalty function approach for nonlinear constrained optimization problem

This paper presents a new penalty function called logarithmic penalty function (LPF) and examines the convergence of the proposed LPF method. Furthermore, the LaGrange multiplier for equality constrained optimization is derived based on the first-order necessary condition. The proposed LPF belongs to both categories: a classical penalty function and an exact penalty function, depending on the choice of penalty parameter. Moreover, the proposed LPF is capable of dealing with some of the problems with irregular features from Hock-Schittkowski collections of test problems

Sonographic patterns of retained products of conception among women attending Murtala Muhammed Specialist Hospital Kano, Nigeria

Retain products of conception (RPOC) remains a major concern because its complications are among the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among women with postpartum uterus. Every locality should have a documented findings of postpartum uterus predicting retained products of conception. This study was aimed at evaluating the sonographic pattern of RPOC among women attending Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital, Kano. The study was prospective, conducted from January 2021 to August 2021. A total of 200 patients referred on the suspicion of RPOC on the basis of history or clinical examination were enrolled in the study. Transabdominal ultrasound with 3.5MHtz transducer was performed in all referred cases. The findings obtained were recorded on data capture sheet. Data was analyzed using SPSS Version 23.0. Mean age of the patients was 21.7 ±6.7 years and the mean gestational age was 11.7 ±4.8 weeks. Most of the patients present with per vaginal bleeding, lower back pain or fever as their clinical history. Sonographic findings of RPOC were mix-echogenic content 106(53%), hypoechoic fluid collection 52(26%) and hyperechoic mass 42 (21%). The correlation between clinical history and sonographic pattern of RPOC shows a significant weak positive correlation (r= 0.15 and p= 0.03). The correlation between RPOC size and gestational age also shows a significant weak positive correlation (r= 0.27 and p= 0.00). Sonography is an accurate tool for diagnosis of retained products of conception, with mixed echogenic content as the most common sonographic pattern RPOC

A Systematic Review on Sonographic Evaluation of Renal Size in Apparently Healthy Adults

The normal size of a kidney is variable and is affected by both physiologic and pathological conditions. Since renal size is affected by various factors, it is necessary to establish population specific normative values. Ultrasonography has shown its usefulness as an essential tool in the evaluation of renal size. The study aimed at reviewing published articles in the evaluation of renal size and identifying gaps in order to make recommendation for further studies. All articles included in this review are prospective in design with the smallest sample size used being 100 participants and the largest 4,035 participants. The age of the participants ranged from 13 to 80 years. The overall mean renal size reported in this review ranged from 63±18.1 cm3 to 164.3±38 cm3 for the right kidney and 69.1±25.1 cm3 to 183.3±48.9 cm3 for the left kidney. Six of the reviewed articles reported a statistical significant difference between male and female mean renal size (p<0.05), while two articles revealed no statistical significant difference between male and female mean renal sizes (p>0.05). However, the remaining seven articles did not compare the mean renal size between male and female participants. Seven out of the articles reported a significant positive correlation between kidney dimensions and BMI, while other eight articles did not check the association between kidney dimensions and anthropometric parameters. This review showed only one article out of fifteen used a probability sampling method and only two articles used larger sample size. Eight of the reviewed articles did not perform creatinine clearance test before recruitment of their participants

New Key Expansion Function of Rijndael 128-Bit Resistance to The Related-Key Attacks

A master key of special length is manipulated based on the key schedule to create round sub-keys in most block ciphers. A strong key schedule is described as a cipher that will be more resistant to various forms of attacks, especially in related-key model attacks. Rijndael is the most common block cipher, and it was adopted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA in 2001 as an Advance Encryption Standard. However, a few studies on cryptanalysis revealed that a security weakness of Rijndael refers to its vulnerability to related-key differential attack as well as the related-key boomerang attack, which is mainly caused by the lack of nonlinearity in the key schedule of Rijndael. In relation to this, constructing a key schedule that is both efficient and provably secure has been an ongoing open problem. Hence, this paper presents a method to improve the key schedule of Rijndael 128-bit for the purpose of making it more resistance to the related-key differential and boomerang attacks. In this study, two statistical tests, namely the Frequency test and the Strict Avalanche Criterion test were employed to respectively evaluate the properties of bit confusion and bit diffusion. The results showed that the proposed key expansion function has excellent statistical properties and agrees with the concept of Shannons diffusion and confusion bits. Meanwhile, the Mixed Integer Linear Programming based approach was adopted to evaluate the resistance of the proposed approach towards the related-key differential and boomerang attacks. The proposed approach was also found to be resistant against the two attacks discovered in the original Rijndael. Overall, these results proved that the proposed approach is able to perform better compared to the original Rijndael key expansion function and that of the previous research

Sonographic features of radiologically non-functioning kidneys on intravenous urography (IVU) in Kano Metropolis, Nigeria

Background: Despite technological advancement in uro-radiology, renal ultrasonography remains the imaging modality of choice for evaluating various pathological conditions affecting urinary tract (GIT) system.Aim: This study was aimed at evaluating sonographic features of radiologically nonfunctional kidneys in Kano metropolis, Nigeria.Methods: A prospective study involving 94 each of disease and control group were conducted in Kano metropolis from January 2019 to January 2021. Renal scans were performed using a digital ultrasound imaging system; model DP-8800Plus fitted with a 3.5MHz curvilinear transducer. The maximum length, width, and thickness were measured. The renal echogenicity was assessed and graded. Data was analyzed using SPSS Version 22.0Results: The mean values of the right and left renal volumes among adult patients was 400.5 ± 527.3 cm3 and 177.6 ± 174.3 cm3 respectively. For pediatric patients it was 272.3 ± 308.6 cm3 and 241.6 ± 228.7 cm3 for the right and left kidney respectively. The renal parenchymal echogenicity of the right kidney among adult patients were sored as grade II 2 (5.3%), grade III 27 (71%), and grade IV 9 (23.7%), while that pediatric patients were Grade 0 (11.1%), and 8 (88.9%) as grade III. The adults left kidney were scored grade II 2 (6%), and 16 (47%) each as grades III and IV, while the pediatric group scored 3 (25%) as grade II, and 9 (75%) as grade III.Conclusion: Increased renal volume, shrunken kidney, increased renal parenchymal echogenicity, and severe hydronephrosis were strong sonographic indicators of nonfunctional kidneys