Pakistan’s evolution into a research-centric nation, recognized by Clarivate Analytics, suggests a transition towards a knowledge-based economy. However, the prevalence of academic dishonesty within Pakistan’s academic institutions raises concerns, potentially impeding the realization of its intellectual prowess. This research therefore examines the drivers of academic dishonesty in Pakistani universities, drawing on data collected from 457 students in four prominent public sector universities. Regression analysis of the dataset reveals several noteworthy findings. The study identifies that male gender, larger family size, risk (...) preference, anxiety, and susceptibility to peer influence correlate positively with academic dishonesty. Conversely, students’ socio-economic status and their perception of diminished respect for dishonest behavior act as deterrents. Furthermore, the impact of detection on academic dishonesty exhibits a threshold effect, while personal integrity/morality and punitive measures appear to have limited impact on academic dishonesty. Consequently, this study underscores the importance of addressing socio-cultural and environmental factors as pivotal elements in combating unethical academic conduct within Pakistan. (shrink)

Green innovation plays a critical role in mitigating environmental issues and balancing the interaction between economic growth and the natural environment. Drawing on social network and resource-dependence theory, this article scrutinises the relationship between independent director interlocks and corporate green innovation. Using the data from listed Chinese companies from 2010 to 2022, this study finds that independent director interlocks can significantly promote corporate green processes and product innovation. This research further finds that internal corporate contexts can also influence the relationship (...) between independent director interlocks and green innovation. Moreover, the results indicate that corporate environmental commitment positively moderates the relationships between independent director interlocks and corporate green innovation. This study also provides significant implications for firms seeking green innovation performance and for policymakers seeking ways to fulfill the mission of carbon dioxide abatement. (shrink)

Recently a prospective, observational clinical study was carried out in the department of ophthalmology, at a district general hospital. The main purpose of the study was to evaluate the medicolegal and ethical implication of consent and confidentiality in ophthalmic practice, in accordance with the guidelines provided by medical law. One hundred patients, who had been referred by optometrists to ophthalmologists, were included in the study. The general ophthalmic services (GOS) 18 form, a referral form used by optometrists for referring patients (...) to ophthalmologists, which allows optometrists to share a patient's medical information with ophthalmologists, was used as a …. (shrink)

On Western philosophy from the point of view of Burmese philosophers.

Within the Ideological Surround Model of the social sciences and religion, so-called “universal” perspectives within the psychology of religion can dialogically clarify and be clarified by the “particular” elements of Muslim commitment. This study developed new scales for operationalizing the experience and behavior of Pakistani Muslims during Ramadan. In a sample of university students, one set of experiential factors apparently facilitated, whereas another interfered with the practices of Ramadan. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Personal Religious Orientations correlated with greater and the Extrinsic (...) Social motivation with lower levels of involvement in Ramadan. Relative to these religious orientation measures, Ramadan experience scales displayed incremental validity by explaining additional variance in Ramadan behavior. Women proved to be more religious than men. At the most general level, these data further supported the dialogic assumptions of the Ideological Surround Model of research in the psychology of religion. (shrink)

Aesthetics of art and literature; articles.

The question of the development of aesthetic perception in relation to works of art and phenomena of nature suggests a differentiation between aesthetic education and art education which will be attempted in this study. At the same time the necessary interrelationship between the two will also be analysed.

The New Towns Movement began in England and later spread world-wide in response to the increasing concern felt at the deterioration of the quality of life in the large cities under the impact of industrialization. The New Towns, it was felt, would combine the advantages of life in the country with that of life in the city. They would be small communities of between 30.000 and 60.000 inhabitants. Their principal characteristics were to be a balanced economy and a well-defined pattern (...) of industrial, commercial and residential zones. (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)

Mostly consists of works composed in Tibetan, with translations into Mongolian, on the Soyombo script.

On November 2019, the world commemorated the 30th anniversary of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child. The UNCRC noted that “the press and other media have essential fu...

Experiences like pains, pleasures, and emotions have affective phenomenal character: they feel pleasant or unpleasant. Imperativism proposes to explain affective phenomenal character by appeal to imperative content, a kind of intentional content that directs rather than describes. We argue that imperativism is on the right track, but has been developed in the wrong way. There are two varieties of imperativism on the market: first-order and higher-order. We show that neither is successful, and offer in their place a new theory: reflexive (...) imperativism. Our proposal is that an experience P feels pleasant in virtue of being constituted by a Command with reflexive imperative content, while an experience U feels unpleasant in virtue of being constituted by a Command with reflexive imperative content : More of P!Less of U! If you need a slogan: experiences have affective phenomenal character in virtue of commanding us Get more of me! Get less of me! (shrink)

This study examines the effect of directors’ human and social capital on the level of corporate social responsibility disclosures by drawing on insights from a resource-based view. It also investigates the effect of chief executive officer power on this relationship. Data were obtained from annual reports of companies listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange in Bangladesh from 2005 to 2013. We employ outside directors’ experiences and expertise as a proxy for board capital and measure CEO power using a ‘power index’ (...) that comprises CEO duality, ownership, tenure and family CEO status. Results show that board capital is positively associated with CSR disclosure levels; however, CEO power is negatively associated with CSR disclosures and reduces the effect of board capital on CSR disclosures. Thus, we conclude that although board capital can improve CSR practices, CEO power can also inhibit these practices. (shrink)

This article analyzes the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) decoupling and financial market outcomes. CSR decoupling refers to the gap between CSR disclosure and CSR performance. More specifically, we analyze the effect of CSR decoupling on analysts’ forecast errors, cost of capital, and access to finance. We also examine the moderating effect of forecast errors on relationships between CSR decoupling and cost of capital and access to finance. For a sample of U.S. firms consisting of 7,681 firm-year observations for (...) the period 2006–2015, our empirical evidence supports the idea that a wider gap results in higher analysts’ forecast errors, a greater cost of capital, and reduced access to finance. In addition, our results show that forecast errors enhance the effect of the CSR decoupling on cost of capital and access to financial resources. We also note that external monitoring, in the form of greater analysts’ coverage, reduces CSR decoupling. (shrink)

This study aims to investigate the impact of stakeholders’ views on the practices of green innovation (GI), consequent effect on environmental and organizational performance (OP), and moderating influence of innovation orientation. A quantitative method was employed for the sample size of 515 responses. To accumulate the data from the respondents, convenient random sampling was used. Data were collected from manufacturing and services firms through a field survey by using a closed-ended questionnaire based in the Punjab province of Pakistan. The analysis (...) was done using the structural equation model of the partial least square analysis method. Our findings proved a positive and significant link between stakeholders’ views on GI practices. A significant association has been found between GI practices and environmental and OP. The moderating effect was found to be negative but statistically significant. This research offers numerous contributions and provides decision-making insinuations. (shrink)

Constrained optimization plays an important role in many decision-making problems and various real-world applications. In the last two decades, various evolutionary algorithms were developed and still are developing under the umbrella of evolutionary computation. In general, EAs are mainly categorized into nature-inspired and swarm-intelligence- based paradigms. All these developed algorithms have some merits and also demerits. Particle swarm optimization, firefly algorithm, ant colony optimization, and bat algorithm have gained much popularity and they have successfully tackled various test suites of benchmark (...) functions and real-world problems. These SI-based algorithms follow the social and interactive principles to perform their search process while approximating solution for the given problems. In this paper, a multiswarm-intelligence-based algorithm is developed to cope with bound constrained functions. The suggested algorithm integrates the SI-based algorithms to evolve population and handle exploration versus exploitation issues. Thirty bound constrained benchmark functions are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The test suite of benchmark function is recently designed for the special session of EAs competition in IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation. The suggested algorithm has approximated promising solutions with good convergence and diversity maintenance for most of the used bound constrained single optimization problems. (shrink)

Acute Myeloid Leukemia is a kind of fatal blood cancer with a high death rate caused by abnormal cells’ rapid growth in the human body. The usual method to detect AML is the manual microscopic examination of the blood sample, which is tedious and time-consuming and requires a skilled medical operator for accurate detection. In this work, we proposed an AlexNet-based classification model to detect Acute Myeloid Leukemia in microscopic blood images and compared its performance with LeNet-5-based model in Precision, (...) Recall, Accuracy, and Quadratic Loss. The experiments are conducted on a dataset of four thousand blood smear samples. The results show that AlexNet was able to identify 88.9% of images correctly with 87.4% precision and 98.58% accuracy, whereas LeNet-5 correctly identified 85.3% of images with 83.6% precision and 96.25% accuracy. (shrink)

This paper examines incorrect use of oral contraceptives (OCs) in rural Bangladesh by using data from an OC compliance survey. Of the 1031 current users of OCs interviewed, about 13% took their pills out of sequence, while 17% left incorrect intervals between pill packs. Forty per cent of the women reported missing one active pill during the 6 months prior to the survey, and 74% of them took correct action with the missed pill. Of the women who missed two active (...) pills (16%), only 9% took correct action. Multivariate analyses revealed that women support helped protect against taking incorrect action with a missed pill. The fieldworker support is essential to improve the pill-taking behaviour of Bangladeshi women. (shrink)

This manuscript reviews recent evidence supporting the utility of telomeres and mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNAcn) in detecting the biological impacts of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and outlines mechanisms that may mediate the connection between early stress and poor physical and mental health. Critical to interrupting the health sequelae of ACEs such as abuse, neglect, and neighborhood disorder, is the discovery of biomarkers of risk and resilience. The molecular markers of chronic stress exposure, telomere length and mtDNAcn, represent critical biological (...) links between ACEs and poor health outcomes. We examine how telomeres and mtDNAcn may exacerbate health disparities and contribute to the intergenerational transmission of trauma. Finally, we explore how these molecular markers of early stress exposure may help define the role of resilience and develop effective interventions to moderate ACE health risk impact. (shrink)

Nielsen Busch and Mjaaland (2023) raise important considerations, but confuse certain critical issues and overlook others, and questions emerge about how these decisions should be made in our socie...

The number of comments/reviews for movies is enormous and cannot be processed manually. Therefore, machine learning techniques are used to efficiently process the user’s opinion. This research work proposes a deep neural network with seven layers for movie reviews’ sentiment analysis. The model consists of an input layer called the embedding layer, which represents the dataset as a sequence of numbers called vectors, and two consecutive layers of 1D-CNN for extracting features. A global max-pooling layer is used to reduce dimensions. (...) A dense layer for classification and a dropout layer are also used to reduce overfitting and improve generalization error in the neural network. A fully connected layer is the last layer to predict between two classes. Two movie review datasets are used and widely accepted by the research community. The first dataset contains 25,000 samples, half positive and half negative, whereas the second dataset contains 50,000 specimens of movie reviews. Our neural network model performs sentiment classification among positive and negative movie reviews called binary classification. The model achieves 92% accuracy on both datasets, which is more efficient than traditional machine learning models. (shrink)

Based on the nationally representative sample data from the Chinese General Social Survey, this study examines the relationship of education levels and health status with an individual's probability of being employed in China. The findings obtained from the binary logistic regression estimator suggest that people with a higher level of education were more likely to be employed than those who have less or no education. The individual with university or above education was found to be 85% more likely to be (...) employed than college or equal diploma holders. Further, the healthier individual was found to be 11% more likely to be employed than relatively less healthy. Moreover, the resulting coefficients obtained from the moderation effect suggest that all of the two-way interaction effects among health status and education levels with gender are not statistically significant even at the 10% level. The results suggest that there was no multiplicative effect of gender with health status and level of education on an individual's probability of being employed. Further, the study also suggests important policy implications in the light of China's active labor force market and the gender gap in employment. (shrink)

Considering the current global trend in the digital economy, Facebook commerce is an indispensable component of today’s digital commerce. The purpose of this research is to test the proposed model to validate current theories that evaluate the relationships between online trust and customer f-commerce usage intentions. It has also been proposed to improve usage intention by integrating the relationship between perceived value and trust in electronic commerce. The data was gathered using a structured questionnaire and analyzed with structural equation modeling. (...) In this study, gender has been discussed as a moderating factor. The findings describe the positive relationships that exist between antecedents of trust and user intentions toward f-commerce. Furthermore, according to the findings of the study, females are more concerned than males about developing their intentions to utilize f-commerce for online shopping. Theoretical and practical implications are also presented in this study. (shrink)

This article explores the substitution and complementary effects between political and social strategies on firm performance in the context of an emerging market (EM). Using in‐depth, historical case‐study approach, the article investigates how companies integrate political and social resources in this market. Corporate performance includes traditional measures, such as accounting performance and nonfinancial measures like the ease of doing business. The study finds that social strategies are stronger enablers of firm long‐term performance than political strategies. The latter have a short‐term (...) impact on performance, but their success over time is limited. The main drawback of reliance on political resources in EMs is the lack of political stability, fragmented polity, and weak political coalitions. We identify rather limited evidence of firms using these two strategies as complements. Thus, we suggest that firms should employ both these strategies in the EM. (shrink)

Non-naturalist realists are committed to the belief, famously voiced by Parfit, that if there are no non-natural facts then nothing matters. But it is morally objectionable to conditionalise all our moral commitments on the question of whether there are non-natural facts. Non-natural facts are causally inefficacious, and so make no difference to the world of our experience. And to be a realist about such facts is to hold that they are mind-independent. It is compatible with our experiences that there are (...) no non-natural facts, or that they are very different from what we think. As Nagel says, realism makes scepticism intelligible. So the non-naturalist must hold that you might be wrong that your partner matters, even if you are correct about every natural, causal fact about your history and relationship. But to hold that conditional attitude to your partner would be a moral betrayal. So believing non-naturalist realism involves doing something immoral. (shrink)

A modern classic of Universal Sufism that explores the mystical dimensions of music-and the musical dimensions of mysticism. Music, according to Sufi teaching, is really a small expression of the overwhelming and perfect harmony of the whole universe-and that is the secret of its amazing power to move us. The Indian Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927), the first teacher to bring the Sufi mystical tradition to the West, was an accomplished musician himself. His lucid exposition of music's divine (...) nature has become a modern classic, beloved not only by those interested in Sufism but by musicians of all kinds. This newly reissued edition includes a foreword by Pir Zia Inayat Khan, Hazrat Inayat Khan's grandson and the current leader of the Inayati Order, the widespread Western Sufi organization that Hazrat Inayat Khan founded. (shrink)

Based on the Lotka–Volterra system, a pest-natural enemy model with nonlinear feedback control as well as nonlinear action threshold is introduced. The model characterizes the implementation of comprehensive prevention and control measures when the pest density reaches the nonlinear action threshold level depending on the pest density and its change rate. The mortality rate of the pest is a saturation function that strictly depends on their density while the release of natural enemies is also a nonlinear pulse term depending on (...) the density of real-time natural enemies. The exact impulsive and phase sets are given. The definition and properties of the Poincaré map corresponding to the pulse points on the phase set are provided. We investigate the existence and stability of boundary and interior order-1 periodic solution. The theoretical analysis developed in the present paper combined with nonlinear controlling measures as well as nonlinear action threshold methods and techniques laid the foundation for the establishment and analysis of other state-dependent feedback control models. (shrink)

Bound-constrained optimization has wide applications in science and engineering. In the last two decades, various evolutionary algorithms were developed under the umbrella of evolutionary computation for solving various bound-constrained benchmark functions and various real-world problems. In general, the developed evolutionary algorithms belong to nature-inspired algorithms and swarm intelligence paradigms. Differential evolutionary algorithm is one of the most popular and well-known EAs and has secured top ranks in most of the EA competitions in the special session of the IEEE Congress on (...) Evolutionary Computation. In this paper, a customized differential evolutionary algorithm is suggested and applied on twenty-nine large-scale bound-constrained benchmark functions. The suggested C-DE algorithm has obtained promising numerical results in its 51 independent runs of simulations. Most of the 2013 IEEE-CEC benchmark functions are tackled efficiently in terms of proximity and diversity. (shrink)

The foremost aim of this research was to forecast the performance of three stock market indices using the multilayer perceptron, recurrent neural network, and autoregressive integrated moving average on historical data. Moreover, we compared the extrapolative abilities of a hybrid of ARIMA with MLP and RNN models, which are called ARIMA-MLP and ARIMA-RNN. Because of the complicated and noisy nature of financial data, we combine novel machine-learning techniques such as MLP and RNN with ARIMA model to predict the three stock (...) market data. The data used in this study are taken from the Pakistan Stock Exchange, National Stock Exchange India, and Sri Lanka Stock Exchange. In the case of Pakistan, the findings show that the ARIMA-MLP and ARIMA-RNN beat the individual ARIMA, MLP, and RNN models in terms of accuracy. Similarly, in the case of Sri Lanka and India, the hybrid models show more robustness in terms of forecasting than individual ARIMA, MLP, and RNN models based on root-mean-square error and mean absolute error. Apart from this, ARIMA-MLP outperformed the ARIMA-RNN in the case of Pakistan and India, while in the context of Sri Lanka, ARIMA-RNN beat the ARIMA-MLP in forecasting. Our findings reveal that the hybrid models can be regarded as a suitable option for financial time-series forecasting. (shrink)

The research paper addresses the unresolved linguistic vacuum that accounts for the authorial and fictional abrogation and appropriation of language in Lessing’s works. This research paper attempts to take a holistic view of these implications. Lessing has used a number of methods to overcome this inadequacy and the abrogation and appropriation of language thus seen is clearly evident in her novel The Grass is Singing. The concepts of hegemony of language by the colonizers and their control over the means of (...) communications as well as the attempts to liberate the language by the blacks were seen in the novel. In order to analyze the post-colonial aspects of the novel, one has to keep in mind the colonial features that were seen in The Grass is Singing. Thus, the process of abrogation and appropriation will be seen through the fictional characters of Mary and Moses. With these characters Lessing highlights the larger reality of the center-margin, colonizer-colonized relation in the novel. Natives on acquiring control over the Language and the ability to control the means of communication then reveal the hollowness of the colonial ideas based on oppression and exploitation of the indigenous people. (shrink)

Clinicians have an obligation to ensure that patients with adequate capacity can make autonomous decisions. Thus, patients who choose to forego treatment and leave hospitals “against medical advice” are typically allowed to do so. But what happens when they require clinicians’ assistance to physically leave? Is it incumbent upon clinicians to not only respect and fulfill patients’ requests with which they disagree, but to physically assist in their fulfillment? We attempt to develop an ethical framework wherein clinicians can honor patients’ (...) wishes without necessarily sacrificing their own moral position. (shrink)

Affective experiences such as pains, pleasures, and emotions have affective phenomenology: they feel pleasant. This type of phenomenology has a loopy regulatory profile: it often motivates us to act a certain way, and these actions typically end up regulating our affective experiences back. For example, the pleasure you get by tasting your morning coffee motivates you to drink more of it, and this in turn results in you obtaining another pleasant gustatory experience. In this article, we argue that reflexive imperativism (...) is the only intentionalist account of affective phenomenology—probably, the only account at all—that is able to make sense of its loopy regulatory profile. (shrink)