Contemporary challenges confronting Islamic banking & finance

The philosophy of Islamic economics is "brining economics in consonance with Shariah", guiding Islamic banking and finance to abolish interest from operations, has reported a monumental growth, envisaged the most lucrative and unsusceptible segment of the economy. Islamic finance is undoubtedly flourishing worldwide entails trajectory development but at other front it encounters a number of impediments in development since its inception. The emphasis of this study is to encapsulate in tabular form, the contemporary problems and challenges Islamic finance has encountered during the span of last 28-years from 1988 to 2015. The austere Shariah compliance; regulatory and prudential challenges; misconception among western society about Islamic banking philosophy; unavailability of money and capital market for scant Islamic financial instruments; piercing competition; privation of Islamic banking and finance awareness; absence of uniform reporting standards; complexities of regulatory and supervisory issues; lack of central supervisory body, governance and dearth of consensus among Shariah scholars been the precarious challenges among many others. A unified central regulatory and supervisory mechanism required in converging sprinkled Islamic finance practices and to foster a synchronized and standardized regulatory framework consensus need to be developed among all Shariah scholar

A link between internet addiction and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms in Pakistani undergraduates

The current research aims to establish a link between internet addiction and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Symptoms among Pakistani Undergraduates. The sample comprised of (N =1020) undergraduates from Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan (BZU) and The Islamia University of Bahawalpur (IUB), Pakistan, including 255 male and 255 female from each university. A-Priori sample size was estimated with 974 participants, to consider sample size sufficiency, twenty three respondents were taken additionally from each university. There were two questionnaires employed; Chen Internet Addiction Scale by © Ko et al. (2005), and ADHD Adult Self Reporting Scale (ASRS) by © Kessler et al. (2005). Cross-sectional survey research design was used. Data were collected through purposive sampling and analyzed by use of SPSS (21.0). Regression, t-Test, mean, and standard deviation were employed. The result depicts; overall 28% students fulfill the criteria of internet addiction, and comparatively BZU students have higher prevalence of internet addiction with ADHD symptoms as compared to IUB. Likewise, male students are found more vulnerable towards ADHD symptoms and internet addiction as compared to female students. Study proved the significant relation of internet addiction with ADHD symptoms (0.082*). Finally, implications, significance of the study, and limitation are enclosed

Do Mergers and Acquisitions Vacillate the Banks Performance? (Evidence from Pakistan Banking Sector)

Today economy of Pakistan is facing the financial, security and political problems due to which its economic growth badly disturbed. This research has been conducted to analyse either merger and acquisition increased or decreased the performance of Pakistani banks. Secondary purpose of this research paper is to provide information to bankers, government authorities, banking employees, investors and other stake holders. It also helps to the new researchers through its literature. Financial ratios such as profitability ratios (ROA,ROE...) liquidity ratios(DTA,ATD,CTA), investment ratios (ROI, EPS) and solvency ratios (DE, IC, DR) are used to analyze the impact of Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) on banks performance in Pakistan. After analyzing the merger and acquisition literature and financial ratios results it is found that not all banks which go through deal of this process (M&A) and they have not shown significant enhancement in performance and gain on equity when compared to their performance before the deals.  Additionally, it is concluded that M&A have negative relationship with banks performance in Pakistan and it is suggested to Pakistani banking corporations that they should make feasible financial analysis before going to M&A deal. This research relied much on the publically available data for a sample of Pakistani Banks listed in Karachi Stock exchange. It is difficult to collect data of mergers and acquisitions of banks before 2006 and implementation of quantitative analysis. This study results will apply in Pakistan financial sector or in those developing countries which financial environment is same as Pakistan. This study is useful for the banks, employees of banks, Proprietors, Government authorities, insurance companies and manufacturing firms. These above mentioned organizations can developed their capabilities to deal with equitably and effectively to solve the social professional problems of affecters. The value of paper easily identified through its topic, it is not only a specific study of Pakistani banking performance but it may leads toward knowledge about all developing countries banking performance. It may be the first kind of paper that offers evidences on the M&A impact on Pakistani banks profitability which uses a lot of ratios and banks have been used. This study provides useful information that keeps the great value for decision makers (management), businessmen, academics and other stakeholders. Key words: Merger & Acquisition, financial ratios, financial institutions performance, Pakistan

Molecular genetic analysis of leucine tRNA in relevance to type 2 diabetes mellitus

Background. Several point mutations in the mitochondrial DNA cause maternally inherited metabolic disorders. The most common type of mutation A3243G in the gene of transfer RNA leucine (tRNALeu(UUR)) is thought to be responsible for the prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus. This study was designed to analyze the tRNALeu(UUR) gene of mtDNA of the diabetic individuals with familial history of diabetes to identify the point mutations A3243G. Material and methods. Saliva samples were preferred as a source of DNA to minimize the risk of infection. DNA was successfully extracted from their saliva. Samples of high-quality DNA was amplified with PCR and sequenced in Macrogen Inc. Korea. Results. The m.3243A>G mutation in mitochondrial tRNALeu(UUR) gene was not observed. Conclusion. The result shows that the m.3243A>G mutation in mitochondrial tRNALeu(UUR) gene is not frequent cause of type 2 and some other factors may be possible i.e. genetic, behavioral or environmental. It is recommended that the sample size for diabetic individuals need to be increased for a future study and screened for the mitochondrial as well as other mutations of nuclear origin

Facebook addiction: its relation with academic performance of University students

The present study intended to find Facebook addiction and its relation with academic performance of university students from Pakistan. Sample comprised of eighty students (n=80) in total whom are purposefully selected and equally divided according to gender. The universe was public sector higher learning institute named as The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan. Cross-sectional survey research design was employed. Data were collected by use of Bergen Facebook addition scale. Data were analyzed from SPSS (21.0), descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analysis were computed to test the hypotheses. Results depict significant negative relationship between Facebook addiction and academic performance of students (β = -.907, t = -4.554). Conclusively, female students consume more time to use Facebook as compare to male students; hence, male students exhibit better academic performance. Limitations and future implications of current study were enclosed

Ruptured mycotic aneurysms: Report and outcomes of two surgically managed patients

Background: Mycotic aneurysm is a rare potentially life-threatening complication of infective endocarditis (IE). Little data is available on the management and outcomes of ruptured mycotic aneurysms with large intracerebral hematoma. Few cases have been described on the management of mycotic aneurysm in the presence of life-threatening hematoma and mass effect.Case description: We are presenting two cases of ruptured mycotic aneurysm with intracerebral hematoma and impending brain herniation. Both patients had signs of high intracranial pressure and required urgent surgical evacuation of clot. One patient survived while the other patient expired soon after surgery.Conclusion: Mycotic aneurysm of middle cerebral artery (MCA) in IE with intracranial hemorrhage is rare and urgent surgical decompression, and aneurysmal clipping can be lifesaving

Unsupervised Landmark Discovery Using Consistency Guided Bottleneck

We study a challenging problem of unsupervised discovery of object landmarks. Many recent methods rely on bottlenecks to generate 2D Gaussian heatmaps however, these are limited in generating informed heatmaps while training, presumably due to the lack of effective structural cues. Also, it is assumed that all predicted landmarks are semantically relevant despite having no ground truth supervision. In the current work, we introduce a consistency-guided bottleneck in an image reconstruction-based pipeline that leverages landmark consistency, a measure of compatibility score with the pseudo-ground truth to generate adaptive heatmaps. We propose obtaining pseudo-supervision via forming landmark correspondence across images. The consistency then modulates the uncertainty of the discovered landmarks in the generation of adaptive heatmaps which rank consistent landmarks above their noisy counterparts, providing effective structural information for improved robustness. Evaluations on five diverse datasets including MAFL, AFLW, LS3D, Cats, and Shoes demonstrate excellent performance of the proposed approach compared to the existing state-of-the-art methods. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/MamonaAwan/CGB_ULD.Comment: Accepted ORAL at BMVC 2023 ; Code: https://github.com/MamonaAwan/CGB_UL