DRIVERS OF CUSTOMER’S SATISFACTION: EVIDENCE FROM ISLAMIC BANKS IN PAKISTAN

The purpose of this study is to investigate the critical drivers of Islamic Banking customer satisfaction in in the Malakand division. Quantitative techniques with survey method of data collection on five-points Likert scale is used. Self-administered questionnaires consist of 18 important questions about customer satisfaction are used to collect data. To ascertain the critical factors/ contributors to customer satisfaction, exploratory factor analysis is applied. The results indicate that the primary determinants of customer satisfaction could be condensed to five factors. Each question is assigned to a component based on its related factor component score

OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE, AUDIT QUALITY & FIRM INNOVATION: EVIDENCE FORM PAKISTAN

Ownership structure is a key element of directing the firm and taking strategic decisions. Separation of ownership and control brings principal- agent conflicts in organizations. Ownership structure is considered as the most powerful remedy to agency problems in firms. R&D investment being the critical and risky decision, gained the attention of researchers. The objective of this study is to determine the association between ownership structure and R&D investment. All non-financial firms listed in Pakistan stock exchange covering data from 2005 to 2018 is the sample of research. Fixed effect model is used based on husman’s test result for analysis. In addition to the ownership structure, the audit quality is taken a moderator in the relationship of ownership structure and R&D. The results of the study suggest that concentrated ownership has a significant positive, restricted ownership has a negative impact on R&D impact. While the relationship between institutional ownership and R&D could not be established. Furthermore, the audit quality had no significant moderating effect in the relationship

OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE, AUDIT QUALITY & FIRM INNOVATION: EVIDENCE FORM PAKISTAN

Ownership structure is a key element of directing the firm and taking strategic decisions. Separation of ownership and control brings principal- agent conflicts in organizations. Ownership structure is considered as the most powerful remedy to agency problems in firms. R&D investment being the critical and risky decision, gained the attention of researchers. The objective of this study is to determine the association between ownership structure and R&D investment. All non-financial firms listed in Pakistan stock exchange covering data from 2005 to 2018 is the sample of research. Fixed effect model is used based on husman’s test result for analysis. In addition to the ownership structure, the audit quality is taken a moderator in the relationship of ownership structure and R&D. The results of the study suggest that concentrated ownership has a significant positive, restricted ownership has a negative impact on R&D impact. While the relationship between institutional ownership and R&D could not be established. Furthermore, the audit quality had no significant moderating effect in the relationship

Electromagnetic Properties of Plant Leaves at Terahertz Frequencies for Health Status Monitoring

The realization of water as an important and fundamental component requires in photosynthesis, nutritional transport, and to the effective and timely growth of plant leaves. In this work, a novel technique has been presented to determine the electromagnetic parameters of plant leaves. The measurements results of electromagnetic parameters are discussed in detail. Upon a close observation, it has been found both permittivity and a refractive index of fresh leaves showed a decline trend in their peak values from day 1 to 4 due to the rapid evaporation of moisture in tissues of leaves, and variations occurred in the morphological structure of fresh and water-stressed leaves. The technique proposed here can be employed for feasible and non-invasive plant leaves health monitoring

Machine learning driven non-invasive approach for the detection of anomalies in living plant leaves and water at cellular level using terahertz sensing

In recent times, an increasing global aridification due to climate transformations and unceasing expansion of population have posed enormous challenges on the environment and its agricultural provision. Researchers and scientists are faced with significant challenges to enhance yield while facing shortage of fertile land due to environmental changes. In this regard, many technologies have been employed to monitor and enhance the crops production. However, certain limitations such as low resolution, destructive nature, cost, sensitivity and reactive nature of technology have markedly reduce their application in modern agriculture. The mounting pressure of more yield with limited fertile land due to environmental changes demands for proactive, cost-effective, real-time, feasible and non-destructive technique in perpetual plants’ health monitoring in order to maintain a healthy physiological status of plants leaves, and to drive the crops productivity and achieve economic benefits. With this motivation in mind, we potentially highlight the evolving application of terahertz (THz) technology (due to its non-ionising and less pervasive radiation properties) with machine learning (ML) for the proactive vegetation monitoring. In this thesis, we proposed a novel, non-invasive, and cost-effective technique to characterise and estimate the real-time information of water contents (WC) in plants leaves and fruits at cellular level in terms of electromagnetic parameters at THz frequency range from 0.75 to 1.1 THz. It is was noticed that loss observed in WC on day 1 was in the range of 5% to 22%, and increased from 83.12% to 99.33% on day 4. Furthermore, we observed an exponential decaying trend in the peaks of the real part of the permittivity from day 1 to 4, which was reminiscent of the trend observed in the weight of all leaves. The study also highlights the proactive approach by integrating THz with ML for the accurate and precise estimation of WC in plants and fruits slices including apple and mango, respectively. The results obtained from the amalgamation of ML with THz for the estimation of WC in plants leaves demonstrated that support vector machine (SVM) outperformed other classifiers using tenfold and leave-one-observations out cross-validation for different days classification with an overall accuracy of 98.8%, 97.15%, and 96.82% for Coffee, pea shoot, and baby spinach leaves respectively. In addition, using sequential forward selection (SFS) technique, coffee leaf showed a significant improvement of 15%, 11.9%, 6.5% in computational time for SVM, K-nearest neighbour (KNN) and Decision-tree (D-Tree). For pea-shoot, 21.28%, 10.01%, and 8.53% of improvement was noticed in operating time for SVM, KNN and D-Tree classifiers, respectively. Lastly, baby spinach leaf exhibited a further improvement of 21.28% in SVM, 10.01% in KNN, and 8.53% in D-tree in overall operating time for classifiers. The results illustrated that the performance of SVM exceeded other classifiers results using 10-fold validation and leave-one-observation-out-cross-validation techniques. Moreover, all three classifiers exhibited 100% accuracy for day 1 and 4 with 80% Moisture content (MC) value (freshness) and 2% MC value (staleness) of both fruits’ slices, respectively. Similarly, for day 2 and 3, an accuracy of 95% was achieved with intermediate MC values in both fruits’ slices. In addition, in this work, the preservation of clean water without any harmful impurities is also addressed for the health, environmental protection, and economic development. For this purpose, a realistic technological solution method and application of Fourier transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) operates at THz waves enabled by ML is also discussed in detail. The suggested technique can provide the approximate prediction and detection of even the smallest of contaminants in distilled water due to high sensitivity and non-destructive nature and also produce high optical throughput. Moreover, it was found that random forest (RF) with 97.98%, outperformed other classifiers for estimation of salts concentration added in aqueous solutions. However, for sugar and glucose concentrations, SVM exhibited a higher accuracy of 93.11% and 96.88%, respectively, compared to other classifiers. The proposed novel study using THz wave and incorporating ML are beneficial and provide prolific recommendations, and insights for cultivators, and horticulturists to take proactive actions in relations to both vegetation and water health monitoring, which in turn, can help in reducing the health and purification expenses by providing early alerts to protect the public health, increase yield with limited land, which will ultimately optimise economic benefits

Corporate Governance and Board Compensation: A Case of listed Non-Financial Firms in Pakistan

The study addresses the impact of corporate governance (CG) on board compensation for the listed non-financial firms on Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) for the period 2005-2015. We incorporated female directors, board size, ownership concentration, board independence, and adoption of CCG (code of corporate governance) as channels of CG. Board compensation was measured by the natural log of the total baord compensation. The study has controlled for firm size, firm performance, leverage, and cash flow from operation. By using ordinary least square (OLS) regression analysis technique together with robust standard error, we find significant relationship between CG characteristics and board compensation.Findings suggest that CG characteristics and ownership structure plays a significant role in the board compensation determination. Board size and board independence exhibits significant positive relationship with board compensation. Additionally, consistent with literature, we find negative relationship between gender diversity and board compensation. Ownership concentration shows positive relationship with board compensation. Implementation of code of CG exhibits positive and significant relationship with board compensation. Finally we find positive relationship between CG index developed via Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and board compensation.Key Words: Corporate Governance; Board Compensation; Ownership Concentration; Gender Diversity; Corporate Governance Inde

Corporate Governance and Board Compensation: A Case of listed Non-Financial Firms in Pakistan

The study addresses the impact of corporate governance (CG) on board compensation for the listed non-financial firms on Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) for the period 2005-2015. We incorporated female directors, board size, ownership concentration, board independence, and adoption of CCG (code of corporate governance) as channels of CG. Board compensation was measured by the natural log of the total baord compensation. The study has controlled for firm size, firm performance, leverage, and cash flow from operation. By using ordinary least square (OLS) regression analysis technique together with robust standard error, we find significant relationship between CG characteristics and board compensation.Findings suggest that CG characteristics and ownership structure plays a significant role in the board compensation determination. Board size and board independence exhibits significant positive relationship with board compensation. Additionally, consistent with literature, we find negative relationship between gender diversity and board compensation. Ownership concentration shows positive relationship with board compensation. Implementation of code of CG exhibits positive and significant relationship with board compensation. Finally we find positive relationship between CG index developed via Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and board compensation.Key Words: Corporate Governance; Board Compensation; Ownership Concentration; Gender Diversity; Corporate Governance Inde

Experimental Investigation of Impact Load Effect on the Flexural Behavior of Reactive Powder Concrete Slabs with Different Thicknesses

Recently, buildings have been exposed to terrorist attacks that generate impact loads on their elements and affect their serviceability loads, which is the thing that inspired researchers to investigate the properties of reactive powder concrete, such as strength, serviceability loads, impact load, and the influences of impact loads on standard weight concrete separately. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is studying the flexural behavior of reactive powder concrete after applying impact load caused by the attacks. For this study, three reactive powder concrete slabs: the first one is with 80-mm thickness, the second one is with 60-mm, and the third one is with 40-mm thickness, were statically loaded after being subjected to impact load. Moreover, then a number of the three slabsꞌ properties were investigated, such as flexural load capacity, deflection, and number and widths of cracks. The laboratory tests have approved that the slab with the higher thickness and steel fiber has improved and provided the best serviceability loads after being dynamically loaded

Improvement of Soil Health through Residue Management and Conservation Tillage in Rice-Wheat Cropping System of Punjab, Pakistan

In South Asia, soil health degradation is affecting the sustainability of the rice-wheat cropping system (RWCS). Indeed, for the sustainability of the soil quality, new adaptive technologies, i.e., conservation tillage and straw management resource conservation, are promising options. This investigation was focused on the interaction of tillage and straw management practices and their effects on Aridisols, Yermosols soil quality, and nutrients dynamics with different soil profiles within RWCS. The long-term field experiment was started in 2014 with the scenarios (i) conventional tillage (SC1), (ii) residue incorporation (SC2), (iii) straw management practices (SC3 and SC4) and conservation tillage (SC5). Conservation tillage practice (SC5) showed significant impact on properties of soil and availability of nutrients in comparison with that of conventional farmers practice (SC1) at the studied soil depths. The SC5 showed significant results of gravitational water contents (25.34%), moderate pH (7.4), soil organic-matter (7.6 g kg(-1)), total nitrogen (0.38 g kg(-1)), available phosphate (7.4 mg kg(-1)), available potassium (208 mg kg(-1)) compared to SC1 treatment at 0 to 15 cm soil depth. Whereas, DTPA-extractable-Cu, Mn, and Zn concentration were significantly higher, i.e., 1.12 mg kg(-1), 2.14 mg kg(-1), and 4.35 mg kg(-1), respectively under SC5 than conventional farmer's practices, while DTPA (diethylene triamine pentaacetic acid) extractable Fe (6.15 mg kg(-1)) was more in straw management practices (SC4) than conventional and conservation tillage. Therefore, conservation tillage (SC5) can surge the sustainability of the region by improving soil assets and nutrients accessibility and has the potential to minimize inorganic fertilizers input in the long run