Although extant literature has covered the differences between unethical behaviors in relation to perpetrators and targets, most of this research has not considered the effects of observed unethical behaviors on employees. In this study, we focus on observed unethical behaviors of peers targeted at their organization and examine how witnessing a peer engage in an organizationally targeted unethical behavior would impact the observer. Drawing on cognitive appraisal theory, we propose that organizational identification will inform emotions, which in turn will shape (...) employee silence, depending on how employees appraise the observed unethical behavior. We theorize that peer unethical behaviors would induce anger, anxiety, and vicarious shame, which will guide employees’ quiescent and prosocial silence behaviors. In addition, we suggest that the proposed relationships would vary with the level of organizational identification. With a sample of 329, results from a between-subject scenario study generally supported our hypotheses. There was a combined effect of peer unethical behaviors and organizational identification on anger, anxiety, and shame, which in turn led to employee silence in the cases of anxiety and shame. (shrink)

To remain competitive, organizations need an engaged workforce. Although ample research has been carried out on the antecedents of employee work engagement, a comprehensive understanding of how and when voice climate is associated with employee work engagement is currently lacking. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study examines the pathway by which voice climate affects employee work engagement. Two studies were conducted to test the proposed linkages. More specifically, in field and experimental studies, we find evidence that (...) voice climate reduces employees’ intention to engage in counterproductive work behavior (CWB), which, in turn, fosters their engagement in their work. In addition, ethical leadership and religiosity were found to act as boundary conditions in the relationship between voice climate and intention to CWB and work engagement. (shrink)

Drawing from research on ethical leadership, psychological capital, and social learning theory, this study investigated the mediating effects of goal congruence and psychological capital in the link between supervisors’ ethical leadership style and followers’ in-role job performance. Data captured from 171 employees and 24 supervisors showed that ethical leadership has a positive effect on followers’ in-role job performance, yet this effect is explained through the role of psychological capital and follower–leader goal congruence, providing evidence of mediation. These findings have significant (...) implications for research and practice. (shrink)

Bringing culture and personality in a combination with emotions requires bringing three different theories together. In this paper, we discuss an approach for combining Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, BIG five personality parameters and PSI theory of emotions to come up with an emergent affective character model.

Machine generated contents note: * FICHTE AND IQBAL 1-21 -- * SCHOPENHAUER AND IQBAL 23-34 -- * NIETZSCHE AND IQBAL 35-87 -- * WILLIAM JAMES AND IQBAL 89-122 -- * BERGSON AND IQBAL 123-173 -- * MCTAGGART AND IQBAL 175-198 -- * BIBLIOGRAPHY 199-211.

The current study proposes a novel conceptual model in which Islamic work ethics has a mediating role in the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ life satisfaction within Pakistan’s banking sector. The model draws on the theory of leader-member exchange. Data from a sample of 240 were evaluated using structural equation modeling using SmartPLS 3.2.7 software. The findings indicate that servant leadership significantly impacts employees’ life satisfaction. Furthermore, Islamic work ethics mediated this effect. This study introduces ground-breaking bank inputs by (...) creating a new integrated model based on LMX theory. While the impact of several dimensions of Islamic work ethics on employees’ life satisfaction has been widely investigated, the present study is the first to explore the roles of servant leadership and Islamic work ethics in leveraging bank employees’ life satisfaction. The results suggest that bank managers should enact servant leadership in their business and serve their employees ethically to improve their life satisfaction. Additionally, this study provides key theoretical contributions to the literature on Islamic banking. (shrink)

Since the establishment of International Relations as an academic discipline in 1918, it has undergone great transformations. The end of World War-II with devastated nuclear technology brought forth national security perspectives impacting the study of IR and giving birth to strategic and security studies as specialized sub-disciplines. Presently the discipline of IR has very distinct and specialized sub-disciplines such as Strategic Studies, Security Studies, Peace and Conflict Resolution and Area Studies. In Pakistan, the first institute dealing with international affairs was (...) established in 1947 and the first teaching department at Karachi University was formed in 1958. However, it suffered due to general apathy by the governments and public alike. In 1970s, Pakistan’s security matrix compelled to create Area Study Centers and Strategic Studies departments. Later, in early 2000s, electronic media played an important role in popularizing these disciplines. Lately, the HEC has established a Consortium of Social Sciences Universities in Pakistan to elevate the status of Social Sciences and launched various scholarship schemes to meet the challenge of qualified human resource. However, there is a need to establish an Academy of Social Sciences and a National Society of International Relations to promote these disciplines on strong financial and institutional footings. (shrink)

A training physician has his first interaction with a pharmaceutical representative during medical school. Medical students are often provided with small gifts such as pens, calendars and books, as well as free lunches as part of drug promotion offers. Ethical impact of these transactions as perceived by young medical students has not been investigated in Pakistan before. This study aimed to assess the association of socio-demographic variables with the attitudes of medical students towards pharmaceutical companies and their incentives.

The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has badly affected the social, physical, and emotional health of workers, especially those working in the healthcare sectors. Drawing on social exchange theory, we investigated the effects of participative leadership on employees’ workplace thriving and helping behaviors among frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we examined the moderating role of a leader’s behavioral integrity in strengthening the relationship between participative leadership, and employees’ workplace thriving and helping behaviors. By using a two-wave time-lagged design and (...) data collected from 244 healthcare workers, a moderated hierarchal regression was implemented to test the proposed hypotheses. As hypothesized, participative leadership predicted employees’ workplace thriving and helping behaviors. The leader’s behavioral integrity strengthened the relationship between participative leadership and employees’ thriving and moderated the relationship between participative leadership helping behaviors. Implications for research, theory, and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Based on the conservation of resources theory, this study developed a model linking social undermining to employees helping behaviors and work role performance via expression of guilt, with religious faith possessed by employees as a first-stage moderator. We argue that individuals will feel guilty if they perceive themselves as the perpetrators of the social undermining against their coworkers. Feeling guilt can potentially trigger prosocial responses (i.e., helping coworkers) and enhance work role performance for improving the situation. We contend that religious (...) faith that commands doing good with others further provides resources for managing these negative emotions to unleash a positive side of social undermining, such that the relation of social undermining with an expression of guilt will be strengthened. A multisource (supervisor-supervisee), multi-wave, and multi-context (education, healthcare, and banking) survey involving 281 employees largely supports our study hypotheses. The results indicated that social undermining is associated with more guilt expressions amid religious individuals, revealing higher prosocial and work role performance. For business ethics research, the current study unveils an important mediator—guilt expressions about wrongdoing—via which individuals’ social undermining behaviors at work, somewhat counterintuitively, lead to boost performance outcomes, and an employee’s religious faith helps a facilitator of this relationship. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reconsider the nature and function of the ‘spiritual’ dimension in literary texts and in literary study in the context of the present state of the discipline of literary studies. The present era is often defined as a ‘post-secular’ era, one in which themes of spirituality and mysticism are increasingly noticeable in literary works. The paper argues that to maintain its relevance to contemporary writers and readers, literary criticism has to address these themes in a concrete and (...) effective way. The paper recommends a comparative approach to the discussion of spirituality and mysticism in contemporary literature and literary criticism. In order to carry effective analytical potential, this approach, the paper emphasizes, has to be developed from specific spiritual traditions. The paper first discusses the disciplinary crisis literary studies have always been exposed to since their inception as a discipline of study in academic institutes. It then reviews the current state of the discipline and describes how the discipline came to be dominated by scientific and social approaches. Finally, it suggests the reinstitutionof the ‘spiritual’ element in literary study as a way out from the state of crisis in the discipline of literary studies. The paper thus attempts to strengthen the disciplinary identify of literary studies while exploring interdisciplinary aspects of the study literature. (shrink)

The hybridization of two or more energy sources into a single power station is one of the widely discussed solutions to address the demand and supply havoc generated by renewable production, heating power, and cooling power) and its energy storage issues. Hybrid energy sources work based on the complementary existence of renewable sources. The combined cooling, heating, and power is one of the significant systems and shows a profit from its low environmental impact, high energy efficiency, low economic investment, and (...) sustainability in the industry. This paper presents an economic model of a microgrid system containing the CCHP system and energy storage considering the energy coupling and conversion characteristics, the effective characteristics of each microsource, and energy storage unit is proposed. The random forest regression model was optimized by the gravitational search algorithm. The test results show that the GSA-RFR model improves prediction accuracy and reduces the generalization error. The detail of the MG network and the energy storage architecture connected to the other renewable energy sources is discussed. The mathematical formulation of energy coupling and energy flow of the MG network including wind turbines, photovoltaic, CCHP system, fuel cell, and energy storage devices are presented. The testing system has been analysed under load peak cutting and valley filling of energy utilization index, energy utilization rate, the heat pump, the natural gas consumption of the microgas turbine, and the energy storage unit. The energy efficiency costs were observed as 88.2% and 86.9% with heat pump and energy storage operation comparing with GSA-RFR-based operation costs as 93.2% and 93% in summer and winter season, respectively. The simulation results extended the rationality and economy of the proposed model. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cities of Alexander the GreatMuhammad Usman ErdosyP. M. Fraser. Cities of Alexander the Great. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. xii 1 263 pp. Cloth, $72.Fraser’s survey aims at determining “what cities [Alexander] did indeed found, how many out of the large number attributed to him by our various sources are actually historical, and in what sense” (vi). Resolving these issues requires the analysis of sources which are plagued (...) by inconsistent geographical information on the one hand, and a general silence concerning Alexander’s motives behind his foundations on the other. Consequently, Fraser opens with a critical survey of the Alexandrias listed in Stephanus of Byzantium’s as well as in the corpus of texts preserving, or inspired by, the Western traditions of the Alexander Romance. This is followed, in chapter 2, by an analysis of lists found in the Perso-Arabic and Syriac versions of the Romance. Having disposed of the baggage of mythical foundations, Fraser then identifies those Alexandrias which are authenticated by historical and geographical texts, in chapters 3 and 4, and attempts, in chapter 5, to locate them on the ground. In conclusion, chapter 6 considers Alexander’s motives in founding cities, and the Epilogue surveys the subsequent fortunes of those few foundations which Fraser feels justified at the end of his analysis in attributing to Alexander himself. The book is also supplied with appendices detailing the formation of the Alexander Romance and the accounts of Chinese pilgrims to India, with a table summarizing references to Alexander foundations known from literature, and with detailed indices.As in his Ptolemaic Alexandria, Fraser brings an encyclopedic knowledge of sources—both primary and secondary—to the issues at hand, reserving the text for general discussion and relegating detailed argumentation to the notes. Although the material available to him had been known to previous generations, his study is the first comprehensive survey of the various Alexander foundations since Tarn’s The Greeks in Bactria and India (Cambridge 1951). Unlike Tarn, however, he prefers to dismiss (or assimilate to attested foundations) most of the Alexandrias named in Stephanus and the Romance; some because they are unsubstantiated in historical and geographical texts, and others because they represent cities actually founded by the Seleucids. In doing so, he lays strong emphasis on identifying the “pre-texts” of the Alexander Romance (in appendix 2), as well as the political motivations of their Ptolemaic authors (in chapter 1), and while he concedes that his conclusion can “only be reached by as much unverifiable argument as that of Droysen and Tarn” (viii), this part of the book is highly valuable for creating a framework with which to approach the mythical accretions to Alexander’s historical achievements.Similarly useful is the analysis of Alexander’s aims in creating a network of new cities, in chapter 6, even if it is based only partly on statements attributable to Alexander, and relies heavily on patterns observable in his foundations, on general geopolitical considerations, and, consequently, on our ability to locate [End Page 133] the historical Alexandrias. As above, there is little to quarrel with in the general conclusion that the foundations represent rather Alexander’s ambition to recreate the Achaemenid Empire under Macedonian domination than an attempt to spread Greek culture, and that even reduced to a historical scale they are of a magnitude to foreshadow the strategic thinking of the British Raj.Although Fraser considers the task of locating authentic Alexander foundations subordinate to the study of sources, his assertion (102) that the historicity of the foundations does not rest, even partly, on their precise identification on the ground is surprising, given the inability of the textual evidence to resolve many geographical and historical questions, and the difficulty, just mentioned, of establishing Alexander’s motives in founding cities without pinpointing their location. Consequently, the lengthy excursus on topography, making up chapter 5, carries considerable importance. It also testifies to the complexity of the issues, since the evidence consists of conflicting geographical data regarding cities, which remain frequently unreconcilable with the archaeological record even when supplemented by the presumed course of troop movements, in turn determined by logistics and by the presumed political motives of... (shrink)

Information is considered to be the major part of an organization. With the enhancement of technology, the knowledge level is increasing with the passage of time. This increase of information is in volume, velocity, and variety. Extracting meaningful insights is the dire need of an individual from such information and knowledge. Visualization is a key tool and has become one of the most significant platforms for interpreting, extracting, and communicating information. The current study is an endeavour toward data modelling and (...) user knowledge by using a rough set approach for extracting meaningful insights. The technique has used different rough set algorithms such as K-nearest neighbours, decision rules, decomposition tree, and local transfer function classifier for an experimental setup. The approach has found its accuracy for the optimal use of data modelling and user knowledge. The experimental setup of the proposed method is validated by using the dataset available in the UCI web repository. Results of the proposed study show that the model is effective and efficient with an accuracy of 96% for KNN, 87% for decision rules, 91% for decision trees, 85.04% for cross validation architecture, and 94.3% for local transfer function classifier. The validity of the proposed classification algorithms is tested using different performance metrics such as F-score, precision, accuracy, recall, specificity, and misclassification rates. For all these performance metrics, the KNN classifier outperformed, and this high performance shows the applicability of the KNN classifier in the proposed problem. (shrink)

With the increasing prevalence of Internet usage, Internet-Delivered Psychological Treatment (IDPT) has become a valuable tool to develop improved treatments of mental disorders. IDPT becomes complicated and labor intensive because of overlapping emotion in mental health. To create a usable learning application for IDPT requires diverse labeled datasets containing an adequate set of linguistic properties to extract word representations and segmentations of emotions. In medical applications, it is challenging to successfully refine such datasets since emotion-aware labeling is time consuming. Other (...) known issues include vocabulary sizes per class, data source, method of creation, and baseline for the human performance level. This paper focuses on the application of personalized mental health interventions using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and attention-based in-depth entropy active learning. The objective of this research is to increase the trainable instances using a semantic clustering mechanism. For this purpose, we propose a method based on synonym expansion by semantic vectors. Semantic vectors based on semantic information derived from the context in which it appears are clustered. The resulting similarity metrics help to select the subset of unlabeled text by using semantic information. The proposed method separates unlabeled text and includes it in the next active learning mechanism cycle. Our method updates model training by using the new training points. The cycle continues until it reaches an optimal solution, and it converts all the unlabeled text into the training set. Our in-depth experimental results show that the synonym expansion semantic vectors help enhance training accuracy while not harming the results. The bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) architecture with an attention mechanism achieved 0.85 Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC curve) on the blind test set. The learned embedding is then used to visualize the activated word's contribution to each symptom and find the psychiatrist's qualitative agreement. Our method improves the detection rate of depression symptoms from online forum text using the unlabeled forum texts. (shrink)

Presently, there is armed conflict in Darfur, Sudan. Armed conflict has adversely affected the social, economic and educational development of Darfur, Sudan. Purpose of this study is to know the impact of armed conflict on managerial behavior of the principals of secondary schools in Darfur, Sudan. In this study, the impact of armed conflict on performance of the secondary school principals was analyzed in perspective of their managerial behavior. Based on the findings of the study significant impact of armed conflict (...) was found on the managerial behavior of the principals. It was found that principals coordinated with the staff in activities of the school but were frightened and unable to perform their administrative and managerial duties freely and independently. There was communication gap between the principals, teachers and parents. The principals did not possess the skills to maintain school budget & finance properly. It was concluded that the principals need administrative and managerial training. Government of Sudan may establish academies of Educational Administration & Management to impart training to the principals of secondary schools and to take steps to control the existing armed conflict. (shrink)

A faint smell of rosemary permeates the room; it is a soft and soothing smell. Weaving into it is another, not as sweet but an amiable one, and a few more sniffs will reveal that it is the comforting smell of a sweating body after a long, tiring walk. Small drops of sweat sit on the broad forehead of a young male figure sitting on a bedstead, quiet except for an occasional deep and very prolonged breath that inhales decades of (...) struggle and exhales uncountable moments of grief, tiredness, and regret. The man on the bedstead, wearing old jeans soaked in his sweat, is holding a black pen. His bare feet are neatly crossed in front of him; with a leaning hand, he unwillingly and reluctantly, but carefully, takes a note... (shrink)

This study investigates whether female Audit Committee Financial Experts (ACFEs) at Chinese listed companies reduce earnings management by examining their influence under different ownership structures and cross-listing scenarios. Our findings reveal that female ACFEs negatively affect earnings management, with their impact varying by ownership type. Specifically, female ACFEs in privately owned enterprises (non-SOEs) are more effective at reducing earnings management than those in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Furthermore, our analysis indicates that female ACFEs in cross-listed firms are better at mitigating earnings (...) management compared with their counterparts in domestically listed firms. These results have significant implications for regulators, market authorities, investors, and corporate managers, highlighting the crucial role of female ACFEs in improving corporate transparency across diverse ownership frameworks and cross-listing conditions. (shrink)

In the educational hypermedia domain, adaptive systems try to adapt educational materials according to the required properties of a user. The adaptability of these systems becomes more effective once the system has the knowledge about how a student can learn better. Studies suggest that, for effective personalization, one of the important features is to know precisely the learning style of a student. However, learning styles are dynamic and may vary domain-wise. To address such aspects of learning styles, we have proposed (...) a computationally efficient solution that considers the dynamic and nondeterministic nature of learning styles, effect of the subject domain, and nonstationary aspect during the learning process. The proposed model is novel, robust, and flexible to optimize students’ domain-wise learning style preferences for better content adaptation. We have developed a web-based experimental prototype for assessment and validation. The proposed model is compared with the existing available learning style-based model, and the experimental results show that personalization based on incorporating discipline-wise learning style variations becomes more effective. (shrink)

The influential stage of Internet of Things has reformed all fields of life in general but specifically with the emergence of artificial intelligence has drawn the attention of researchers into a new paradigm of life standard. This revolution has been accepted around the globe for making life easier with the use of intelligent devices such as smart sensors, actuators, and many other devices. AI-enabled devices are more intelligent and capable of doing a specific task which saves a lot of resources (...) and time. Different approaches are available in the existing literature to tackle diverse issues of real life based on AI and IoT systems. The role of decision-making has its own importance in the AI-enabled and IoT systems. In-depth knowledge of the existing literature is dire need of the research community to summarize the literature in effective way by which practitioners and researchers can benefit from the prevailing proofs and suggest new solutions for solving a particular problem of AI-enabled sensing and decision-making for the IoT system. To facilitate research community, the proposed study presents a systematic literature review of the existing literature, organizes the evidences in a systematic way, and then analyzes it for future research. The study reported the literature of the last 5 years based on the research questions, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and quality assessment of the selected study. Finally, derivations are drawn from the included paper for future research. (shrink)

Intelligent big data analysis is an evolving pattern in the age of big data science and artificial intelligence. Analysis of organized data has been very successful, but analyzing human behavior using social media data becomes challenging. The social media data comprises a vast and unstructured format of data sources that can include likes, comments, tweets, shares, and views. Data analytics of social media data became a challenging task for companies, such as Dailymotion, that have billions of daily users and vast (...) numbers of comments, likes, and views. Social media data is created in a significant amount and at a tremendous pace. There is a very high volume to store, sort, process, and carefully study the data for making possible decisions. This article proposes an architecture using a big data analytics mechanism to efficiently and logically process the huge social media datasets. The proposed architecture is composed of three layers. The main objective of the project is to demonstrate Apache Spark parallel processing and distributed framework technologies with other storage and processing mechanisms. The social media data generated from Dailymotion is used in this article to demonstrate the benefits of this architecture. The project utilized the application programming interface of Dailymotion, allowing it to incorporate functions suitable to fetch and view information. The API key is generated to fetch information of public channel data in the form of text files. Hive storage machinist is utilized with Apache Spark for efficient data processing. The effectiveness of the proposed architecture is also highlighted. (shrink)

Behavioral Finance is an evolving field that studies how psychological factors affect decision making under uncertainty. This study seeks to find the influence of certain identified behavioral financial biases on the decision-making process of investors in developing countries. This research examines the moderating effect of Information asymmetry on the two most important and commonly used cognitive biases, namely Anchoring bias and Optimism bias and decision making and investigates whether Risk perception mediates the relationship between them or not. Quantitative research has (...) been conducted using a structured questionnaire for data collection. After completing the pilot study, a questionnaire was designed and sent to investors via online channels. Data has been collected from 317 real estate investors. Mediation analysis has been performed using model 4 and moderation analysis by applying model 15 of Process Macros for the interaction effect. The study investigated that both cognitive biases have a significant positive effect on investors’ decisions and Risk perception also significantly mediates the relationship between them. Consistency with other studies suggests that Information asymmetry has a significant moderating effect. The proposed conceptual model provides insight into how investors’ decisions are influenced by behavioral biases in the real estate sector and enhances the understanding of cognitive biases in the real estate sector. This study is recommended for real estate investors and policymakers of emerging and developed countries. The current study is the first of its kind, focusing on cognitive biases on investment decisions with mediating role of Risk perception and the moderating effect of Information asymmetry. (shrink)

Research on the base-of-the-pyramid (BoP) approach and the associated business case for deprived participants in informal markets now appears frequently in a range of business ethics and management-related journals. The present analysis of how supply chain management (SCM) and sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) concepts are habitually used in base-of-the-pyramid research serves to strengthen the theoretical foundation of BoP research by addressing the related business case. Based on a content analysis of BoP papers published in English-speaking peer-reviewed journals between 2000 (...) and 2014 from the Web of Science database, this literature review comprehends existing research in the context of established SCM and SSCM frameworks, using both frequency and contingency analyses. The frequency analysis indicates that supply chain management and sustainable supply chain management [(S)SCM] constructs regularly discussed in the BoP literature include supplier integration, strategic purchasing, decommoditization, long-term relationship and enhanced communication among supply chain actors. The identified contingencies reflect linkages between BoP research and (S)SCM constructs. The highest number of links was found between the SCM constructs of strategic purchasing and long-term relationship and the SSCM constructs of supplier integration and communication and coordination with suppliers. These can be regarded as the most crucial (S)SCM constructs in the BoP business environment. This analysis facilitates the development of future research propositions at this intersection, including the use of tools from (S)SCM theories to evaluate BoP propositions and projects. Granted the limited range of BoP-related papers analyzed, the findings provide a coherent understanding of (S)SCM practices crucial to the functioning of BoP markets and why they matter, so contributing to the related ethical rationale. These findings will be of use to researchers and practitioners alike for the formulation of business development strategies and their subsequent implementation in informal market economies. (shrink)

The role of leadership in the twenty-first century is challenging and varied, with changes often impacting across national borders. Leadership is a process, involving reciprocal influence. It has shortcomings and limitations, but in optimum conditions it can harmoniously harness and synthesize relevant knowledge, make sense of environmental features and changes, and co-generate new knowledge, usually in response to strategic demands and exigencies. Leadership responsibilities are all encompassing and require a holistic overview. Participatory action research is the chosen methodological vehicle, supported (...) by various research instruments. There is ongoing active engagement, including with a non-governmental organisation ABC, where the researcher has an advisory role. (shrink)

Khalafzai, Rida Usman The legalization of egg donation for medical research has resulted in the use of assisted reproductive techniques for the creation of embryos for research. This carries significant risks for the women undergoing these procedures and has brought humankind to a major ethical and moral crossroads.

Khalafzai, Rida Usman This article explores race as a social construct, discrimination based on race, and its impact on health.

Terrorism is a global phenomenon that constantly challenges human survival. Based on the social structure, human beings adopt different strategies to overcome its negative consequences on their mind and behavior. Coping strategies and those processes essential for adjustment and survival illustrate how individuals perceive, consider, deal with, and realize a stressful situation in the era of terrorism. The study focuses on exploring coping strategies and avoidance of terrorism impacts. This research study was qualitatively designed to explore the coping strategies adaptation (...) and their influence on the former FATA individuals during the wave of terrorism in the region. The study was undertaken in five districts of erstwhile FATA, including Dara Adam Khel, Orakzai Agency, Khyber Agency, and North and South Waziristan agency. A sample size of twenty-five (25) participants was purposively selected and interviewed, ten (10) focused group discussions (FGDs) were done from each district, and the other 50 participants were chosen for ten (10) FGDs. The collected data were analyzed via the thematic analysis technique. The findings revealed that coping strategies included four different phases: the welcome, resistance, acceptance, surrender, and flee phases for overcoming threats of terrorism. Furthermore, it was also found that fear of terrorism had strongly influenced the individuals’ physical, socio-economic, psychological, emotional stress and fear, education, and social integration. The study recommended that social integration and solidarity among the people, as well as their cooperation with the government, can eliminate the threat of terrorism. (shrink)

Based on applied linguistics, this study looked at the decision support system for emphasizing self-assurance in academic writing. From a generic perspective, academic writing has been considered both a process and a product. It has highlighted the planning composite processes, editing, composing, revising, and assessment, which depend upon the familiarity of someone with confidence in their capability for engagement in these activities. As a product, it has focused on the writing results through the product’s characteristics. These contain specific content areas (...) in acceptable depth and well-structured technical vocabulary. Higher education aims to support students in optimizing their potential for achieving satisfactory outcomes. For example, the assessment of grades involves academic writing, contributing to the degree course classification. Students have differences in many respects, such as expectations, background knowledge, and study and learning approaches. There were varying students’ beliefs about what academic writing is for evaluation. Modern-day motivations and theories highlight the significance of students’ confidence in their studies. The role of high confidence can support students to apply more effort toward setting challenging goals. Students may find it more difficult to succeed in higher education if they lack confidence in their academic writing abilities. A DSS has many applications in diverse areas and can play a significant role in the ranking and prioritization process. The current study has considered the DSS for prioritizing self-assurance in academic writing based on applied linguistics. Various criteria were considered for the evaluation of the research. The Super Decision software was used for the experimental process of the proposed research. The results of the study show the effectiveness of the proposed research. (shrink)

Internet of Things is expanding and evolves into all aspects of the society. Research and developments in the field of IoT have shown the possibility of producing huge volume of data and computation among different devices of the IoT. The data collected from IoT devices are transferred to a central server which can further be retrieved and accessed by the service providers for analyzing, processing, and using. Industrial Internet of Health Things is the expansion of the Internet of Health Things (...) which plays an important role in observing, consulting, monitoring, and treatment process of remote exchange data processes. The linkage of computation and interoperability are supported through various intelligent sensors, controllers, and actuators. The role of parallel computing for efficient and Intelligent Industrial Internet of Health Things is obvious to analyze and process different healthcare situations. A detailed overview of this existing literature is needed through which the research community will provide new solutions for efficient healthcare with the help of IoT based on parallel computing. Therefore, the current study presents a detailed overview of the existing literature for facilitating IIoHT. (shrink)

Khalafzai, Rida Usman; Hameed, Imran Obstetric fistula is the most devastating complication of parturition. The impact of this ailment extends beyond physical morbidity, with immense social repercussions for the women who suffer from it.

The connected and acyclic components contained in a network are identified by the computation of its complexity, where complexity of a network refers to the total number of spanning trees present within. The article in hand deals with the enumeration of the complexity of various networks’ operations such as sum, product, difference K 2, n ⊖ K 2, and the conjunction of S n with K 2. All our computations have been concluded by implementation of the methods of linear algebra (...) and matrix theory. Our derivations will also be highlighted with the assistance of 3D plots at the end of this article. (shrink)

In modern day technology, the level of knowledge is increasing day by day. This increase is in terms of volume, velocity, and variety. Understanding of such knowledge is a dire need of an individual to extract meaningful insight from it. With the advancement in computer and image-based technologies, visualization becomes one of the most significant platforms to extract, interpret, and communicate information. In data modelling, visualization is the process of extracting knowledge to reveal the detail data structure and process of (...) data. The proposed study aim is to know about the user knowledge, data modelling, and visualization by handling through the fuzzy logic-based approach. The experimental setup is validated through the data user modelling dataset available in the UCI web repository. The results show that the model is effective and efficient in situations where uncertainty and complexity arise. (shrink)

Security has become one of the important factors for any network communication and transmission of data packets. An organization with an optimal security system can lead to a successful business and can earn huge profit on the business they are doing. Different network devices are linked to route, compute, monitor, and communicate various real-time developments. The hackers are trying to attack the network and want to draw the organization’s significant information for its own profits. During the communication, if an intrusion (...) or eavesdropping occurs, it will lead to a severe disfigurement of the whole communication network, and the data will be controlled by wrong malicious users. Identification of attack is a way to identify the security violations and analyze the measures in a computer network. An identification system, which is effective and accurate, can add security to the existing system for secure and smooth communication among end to end nodes and can work efficiently in the identification of attack on data packets. The role of information security is to design and protect the entire data of networks and maintain its confidentiality, integrity, and availability for their right users. Therefore, there is a need for end to end security management, which will ensure the security and privacy of the network and will save the data inside networks from malicious users. As the network devices are growing, so the level of threats is also increasing for these devices. The proposed research is an endeavor toward the detection of data packets attack by using the rough set theory for a secure end to end communication. The experimental work was performed by the RSES tool. The accuracy of the K-NN was 88% for the total objects of 8459. For cross validation purposes, the decision rules and decomposition tree algorithms were used. The DR algorithm showed accuracy of 59.1%, while the DT showed accuracy of 61.5%. The experimental results of the proposed study show that the research is capable of detecting data packets attack. (shrink)

Background and ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to draw the attention toward the implications of COVID-19 and the related restrictions imposed worldwide especially in Pakistan. The primary objective was to highlight the levels of psychological distress, anxiety, family violence, suicidality, and well-being due to COVID-19 and the secondary objective was to associate it to social demographic factors.Materials and MethodsIt is designed as a cross-sectional study by employing an online questionnaire in the English language and obtaining responses using a snowball (...) sampling technique. We used three validated measures including Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) index and World Health Organization Well-Being Index (WHO-5).ResultsA sample of 420 participants was recruited from across Pakistan, with most participants were females (79%), students (89.8%) and belonging to Punjab (54%). Nearly one-fourth of the participants (23.8%) scored above the minimum value set for moderate or high psychological distress (K10 > 12). There was a higher prevalence of distress among females and resident of province Punjab. The majority of individuals reported that they were living with their family (94.5%) and more than half (52.6%) were neutral regarding their satisfaction with their living conditions. 40.5% believed that the lockdown has had a negative impact on their mental health. 31.4% have reported that they themselves have experienced abuse from a family member. 48.6% scored high on the GAD-7 scale and low wellbeing score was found among 80.2%. Students were found to be more vulnerable to mental illness and anxiety.ConclusionWith the lockdown restrictions, psychosocial distress has become prevalent in Pakistan. (shrink)

Khalafzai, Rida Usman Female genital mutilation (FGM) is thought to be a custom practiced for the subjugation of women. The significance of FGM for practicing communities, however, is much more profound. The best hope of eradicating this practice lies in the recognition and comprehension of its cultural and social meanings.

Khalafzai, Rida Usman A summary of Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls, the book edited by Melinda Tankard Reist on the issue of early sexualisation of girls.

Khalafzai, Rida Usman Obesity is the bane of modern times. Its ever-rising incidence and the frequent lack of success of conventional weight loss methods, has lead to the evolution of surgical weight loss techniques. Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding (LAGB) is one such procedure aimed at assisting in the loss of weight in obese individuals for whom traditional methods have failed.