Marketing Expenses & Profitability: Evidence from Telecom Sector in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The study focuses on statistical significance of the relationship of Selling & Marketing Expenses with profitability of all the listed Telecom companies in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for a period of 4 years (2011 -2014), with a total of 16 firm years. Multiple Correlation & Regression Analysis were used to test the effectiveness. Gross Operating Profitability (GOP) is used as dependent variable. Four independent variables were used. There is a positive correlation among all the independent variables i.e. the selling and marketing expense, dealers’ commission, advertising expenses and salary, wages, employee benefits paid to the selling and marketing staff of these companies. There is no significant impact of Selling & Marketing Expenses on Gross Operating Profitability. However,  other components of Selling and Marketing Expenses viz. dealers commission, advertising expenses, salary, wages and employees benefit expenses  have significant effect  on the profitability of the these firms. Keywords: KSA, Profitability, Selling & Marketing Expenses, Teleco

Saudi Cement Industry - A Comparative Study of Profitability Position during Economic Slowdown

Infrastructure is one of the favorite projects of every developed and developing nation. Construction industry occupies a prominent place in the infrastructure development of a country. Cement is one the elementary material components in the construction industry. Saudi Arabia has shown a weaker performance in generation of revenue over a period of five years from 2015 to 2019. In a situation of economic slowdown it becomes a challenge for the business concerns to maintain their profitability. The present study is designed to analyze and compare the profitability position of cement companies in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia during this period. The study belongs to top five cement companies in terms of market value and revenue generation in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. To measure the profitability gross profit ratio, operating ratio, operating profit ratio, net profit ratio and return on investment have been used as variables. One way anova has been used to test the hypotheses. The study shows that these companies do not differ significantly from one another in terms of gross profit, operating profit and net profit but they differ significantly when return on investment is compared. Cement companies can increase their profitability by improving the components of those ratios that have been the cause of decline in profitability

Optimization and analysis of cutting parameters using cryogenic media in machining of high strength alloy steel

In this research, liquid Argon is used as a cryogenic media to optimize the cutting parameters for evaluation of tool flank wear width of Tungsten Carbide Insert (CNMG 120404-WF 4215) while turning high strength alloy steel. Robust design concept of Taguchi L9 (34) method is applied to determine the optimum conditions. This analysis revealed is revealed that cryogenic impact is more significant in reduction of the tool flank wear

CpG methylation of the FHIT, FANCF, cyclin-D2, BRCA2 and RUNX3 genes in Granulosa cell tumors (GCTs) of ovarian origin

BACKGROUND: Granulosa cell tumors (GCTs) are relatively rare and are subtypes of the sex-cord stromal neoplasms. Methylation induced silencing in the promoters of genes such as tumor suppressor genes, DNA repair genes and pro-apoptotic genes is recognised as a critical factor in cancer development. METHODS: We examined the role of promoter hypermethylation, an epigenetic alteration that is associated with the silencing tumor suppressor genes in human cancer, by studying 5 gene promoters in 25 GCTs cases by methylation specific PCR and RT-PCR. In addition, the compatible tissues (normal tissues distant from lesion) from three non-astrocytoma patients were also included as the control. RESULTS: Frequencies of methylation in GCTs were 7/25 (28 % for FHIT), 6/25 (24% for FNACF), 3/25 (12% for Cyclin D2), 1/25 (4% for BRCA2) and 14/25 (56%) in RUNX3 genes. Correlation of promoter methylation with clinical characteristics and other genetic changes revealed that overall promoter methylation was higher in more advanced stage of the disease. Promoter methylation was associated with gene silencing in GCT cell lines. Treatment with methylation or histone deacetylation-inhibiting agents resulted in profound reactivation of gene expression. CONCLUSIONS: These results may have implications in better understanding the underlying epigenetic mechanisms in GCT development, provide prognostic indicators, and identify important gene targets for treatment

BREAST CANCER DIAGNOSIS USING WRAPPER-BASED FEATURE SELECTION AND ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK

Breast cancer is commonest type of cancers among women. Early diagnosis plays a significant role in reducing the fatality rate. The main objective of this study is to propose an efficient approach to classify breast cancer tumor into either benign or malignant based on digitized image of a fine needle aspirate (FNA) of a breast mass represented by the Wisconsin Breast Cancer Dataset. Two wrapper-based feature selection methods, namely, sequential forward selection(SFS) and sequential backward selection (SBS) are used to identify the most discriminant features which can contribute to improve the classification performance. The feed forward neural network (FFNN) is used as a classification algorithm. The learning algorithm hyper-parameters are optimized using the grid search process. After selecting the optimal classification model, the data is divided into training set and testing set and the performance was evaluated. The feature space is reduced from nine feature to seven and six features using SFS and SBS respectively. The highest classification accuracy recorded was 99.03% with FFNN using the seven SFS selected features. While accuracy recorded with the six SBS selected features was 98.54%. The obtained results indicate that the proposed approach is effective in terms of feature space reduction leading to better accuracy and efficient classification model

Current State of the Diagnosis of Invasive Pulmonary Aspergillosis in Lung Transplantation

As the number of lung transplants performed worldwide each year continues to grow, the success of this procedure is threatened by the incidence of non-CMV infections such as invasive aspergillosis. Despite tremendous efforts and the availability of numerous diagnostic tests (especially in hematological malignancies) the diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis continues to be a challenge. Lung transplantation remains a unique clinical scenario, where additional host defenses are immunocompromized, making many of the available tests unsuitable. In this review we will navigate through the myriad of diagnostic tests currently available and how they apply to this unique patient population, as well as have a look into what the future holds

Bleomycin induced pneumonitis: a case successfully managed with high-dose steroids

Bleomycin is a chemotherapeutic agent used in a number of solid organ malignancies.1-3 It accumulates in the skin and lungs resulting in skin ulceration and associated pulmonary toxicity. Its use is somewhat limited due to its significant pulmonary adverse effects with bleomycin induced pnemonitis (BIP) as the commonest and most dreaded complications. The overall incidence of pulmonary toxicity is as high as 10% and it is fatal in 1-2%.3,4 We present a case of BIP which was successfully managed by the aggressive use of high dose steroids with complete resolution

Designing of Wide Area Network with the use of Frame Relay Concept in Real Time Environment: a Proposal

Thes e days inter-domain routing protocol, i.e., BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), is getting complicated day by day due to policy mis-configuration by individual autonomous systems. Existing configuration analysis techniques are either manual or tedious, or do not scale beyond a small number of nodes due to the state explosion problem. To aid the diagnosis of mis-configurations in real -world large BGP systems, this paper presents BGP based on Packet Switching Technology and Inter-VLAN where as packet switching technology is WAN technology. Inter - VLAN is a technology to communicate between two ormore VLAN. A company can send or receive any type of data, either text image, video etc. Another important part of network is security. This network would make use of following protocol for security purpose such as PAP, CHAP, ACL, and NAT. The key idea is that, all transmissions are broken into units called packets, each of which contains addressing information that identifies both the source and destination nodes. These packets are then routed through various intermediaries, known as Packet Switching Exchanges(PSEs), until they reach their destination.And there are two parameters associated with a Frame Relay connection are; Committed Information Rate (CIR), Peak Information Rate (PIR) Cisco configuration guidelines, as well as arbitrary user -defined networks. This method improves theapplicability, efficiency, and benefits of the network deployment, it also introduces an infrastructure that enables networking researchers to interact with advanced formal method tool