Problems of Small and Medium Enterprises in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

The role of SMEs in the economic development of any economy can hardly be over emphasized. In developing country like Pakistan SMEs is the major sector of employment. The SMEs in a province like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa attains moreimportance because of its rich mineral potential, irrigated agricultural land with very hard working labor force and entrepreneurial talents. In spite of these natural blessings out of a total 2222 SMEs there are more than 330 units which have been closed their business for one reason or the other. The failure or slow growth of SMEs in the province warrants intensive study for finding out the root cause and suggest/recommend/ measures which can help revive and rejuvenate the existing SMEs and also pave way for expansion in this vital sector of the economy. This study focuses on the existing situation of SMEs in province, identifies problems confronted by the SMEs and on the basis of first-hand information collected through a questionnaire makes recommendations for improving the situation

Audiovisual Saliency Prediction in Uncategorized Video Sequences based on Audio-Video Correlation

Substantial research has been done in saliency modeling to develop intelligent machines that can perceive and interpret their surroundings. But existing models treat videos as merely image sequences excluding any audio information, unable to cope with inherently varying content. Based on the hypothesis that an audiovisual saliency model will be an improvement over traditional saliency models for natural uncategorized videos, this work aims to provide a generic audio/video saliency model augmenting a visual saliency map with an audio saliency map computed by synchronizing low-level audio and visual features. The proposed model was evaluated using different criteria against eye fixations data for a publicly available DIEM video dataset. The results show that the model outperformed two state-of-the-art visual saliency models.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, 4 table

Carbon pricing and environmental response: A way forward for China’s carbon and energy market

Addressing the conflict between fossil fuel exploitation, usage, and greenhouse gas emissions is a top priority for China’s low-carbon socioeconomic development. Scalable Axisymmetric Matrix “a computerized general equilibrium model” is used to assess the impact of carbon tax policies on energy usage, carbon pollution, and macroeconomic drivers at reduction levels of 10%, 20%, and 30% of emissions. In the meantime, we examine the impact of various carbon tax recycling schemes in line with the tax neutrality concept. Although the carbon tax successfully reduces carbon emissions, we conclude that it will have a detrimental effect on the economy and social well-being. To cope with China’s increasing pollution emissions and ecological imbalances, the Chinese government promulgated the environmental protection tax law of the people’s Republic of China, which was officially implemented in 2018. Although carbon dioxide is not included in the Taxable Pollutants and Single Quantity Table attached to this law, China has almost reached a consensus on taxing carbon emissions. In 2021, the State Council of China issued the opinions on completely, accurately, and comprehensively implementing the new development concept and doing a good job in carbon peak and carbon neutralization, which made a comprehensive deployment to achieve the “double carbon” goal and improved the carbon tax policy and legal system, which is an essential part of it. Therefore, based on fiscal neutrality, an effective carbon tax recycling scheme can mitigate the adverse effects of its adoption. However, due to the current development in China’s energy-generating and transportation sectors, even minor steps can have huge effects on emissions with marginal economic implications

La perception des visages en vidéos : contributions à un modèle saillance visuelle et son application sur les GPU

Studies conducted in this thesis focuses on faces and visual attention. We are interested to better understand the influence and perception of faces, to propose a visual saliency model with face features. Throughout the thesis, we concentrate on the question, "How people explore dynamic visual scenes, how the different visual features are modeled to mimic the eye movements of people, in particular, what is the influence of faces?" To answer these questions we analyze the influence of faces on gaze during free-viewing of videos, as well as the effects of the number, location and size of faces. Based on the findings of this work, we propose model with face as an important information feature extracted in parallel alongside other classical visual features (static and dynamic features). Finally, we propose a multi-GPU implementation of the visual saliency model, demonstrating an enormous speedup of more than 132 times compared to a multithreaded CPU.Les études menées dans cette thèse portent sur le rôle des visages dans l'attention visuelle. Nous avons cherché à mieux comprendre l'influence des visages dans les vidéos sur les mouvements oculaires, afin de proposer un modèle de saillance visuelle pour la prédiction de la direction du regard. Pour cela, nous avons analysé l'effet des visages sur les fixations oculaires d'observateurs regardant librement (sans consigne ni tâche particulière) des vidéos. Nous avons étudié l'impact du nombre de visages, de leur emplacement et de leur taille. Il est apparu clairement que les visages dans une scène dynamique (à l'instar de ce qui se passe sur les images fixes) modifie fortement les mouvements oculaires. En nous appuyant sur ces résultats, nous avons proposé un modèle de saillance visuelle, qui combine des caractéristiques classiques de bas-niveau (orientations et fréquences spatiales, amplitude du mouvement des objets) avec cette caractéristique importante de plus haut-niveau que constitue les visages. Enfin, afin de permettre des traitements plus proches du temps réel, nous avons développé une implémentation parallèle de ce modèle de saillance visuelle sur une plateforme multi-GPU. Le gain en vitesse est d'environ 130 par rapport à une implémentation sur un processeur multithread

Effect of Food Quality and Nutritional Attributes on Consumer Choices during the COVID-19 Pandemic

(1) Background: During COVID-19, disruption in food demand and supply chain led to changes in food choices in response to consumer demand, frequency of delivered items, and production setup during a pandemic. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of quality and nutritional attributes on consumer food consumption behavior, attitude, and practices. (2) Methods: In this regard, cross-sectional survey research was conducted through a structured questionnaire. (3) Results: The results of the study showed that there was no difference in the receptiveness of COVID-19 infection between both genders. Quality perspective (p = 0.001) was deemed a significant positive predictor in the change of food consumption patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also stated price (p = 0.045) and purity (p = 0.009) as a quality factor while sugar (p = 0.028) and fiber (p = 0.034) content, as nutritional attributes, influenced the consumption frequency of food groups. The overall experience of online shopping was in the neutral category. (4) Conclusions: It was concluded that food quality cues as well as nutritional attributes affected consumer food choices during the COVID-19 pandemic regardless of gender. Online shopping trends were influenced but overall experience remained neutral during the pandemic

Effect of Food Quality and Nutritional Attributes on Consumer Choices during the COVID-19 Pandemic

(1) Background: During COVID-19, disruption in food demand and supply chain led to changes in food choices in response to consumer demand, frequency of delivered items, and production setup during a pandemic. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of quality and nutritional attributes on consumer food consumption behavior, attitude, and practices. (2) Methods: In this regard, cross-sectional survey research was conducted through a structured questionnaire. (3) Results: The results of the study showed that there was no difference in the receptiveness of COVID-19 infection between both genders. Quality perspective (p = 0.001) was deemed a significant positive predictor in the change of food consumption patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also stated price (p = 0.045) and purity (p = 0.009) as a quality factor while sugar (p = 0.028) and fiber (p = 0.034) content, as nutritional attributes, influenced the consumption frequency of food groups. The overall experience of online shopping was in the neutral category. (4) Conclusions: It was concluded that food quality cues as well as nutritional attributes affected consumer food choices during the COVID-19 pandemic regardless of gender. Online shopping trends were influenced but overall experience remained neutral during the pandemic