Application of Pomegranate Rind Extract for Improvement of Functional Properties of Various Materials—A Critical Review

Pomegranate rind is abundantly available as a waste material. Pomegranate Rind Extract (PRE) can be applied to cotton fabrics for its natural colours, as a mordanting agent and also for imparting certain functional properties such as fire retardancy and antimicrobial properties. This paper reviews the feasibility of Pomegranate Rind Extract to improve the functional properties of cellulosic fabrics. Studies show that varying concentrations and higher temperatures that were used to apply the extract on the fabric, resulted in enhanced functional properties. At a particular concentration, the treated fabric showed a 15 times lower burning rate in comparison with the control fabric. Also, antimicrobial efficacy has been observed against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Due to the natural colouring material, it can be used as a natural dye on cotton material. The fire retardancy of pomegranate rind extract was tested on jute material under varying alkalinity. Research has indicated that pomegranate rind extract could be used to dye polyamide as well. The rubbing and wash fastness of the finished fabrics is good. The light fastness was fair, and its antibacterial efficiency against tested bacteria was good.

Dynamics of volatility spillover between stock market and foreign exchange market: evidence from Asian Countries

Background:The purpose of this study is to examine volatility spillover effects between stock market and foreign exchange market in selected Asian countries;Pakistan,India,Sri Lanka,China,Hong Kong and Japan.This study considered daily data from 4th January,1999 to 1st January,2014.Methods:This study opted EGARCH(Exponential Generalized Auto Regressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity)model for the purpose of analyzing asymmetric volatility spillover effects between stock and foreign exchange market.Results:The EGARCH analyses reveal bidirectional asymmetric volatility spillover between stock market and foreign exchange market of Pakistan,China,Hong Kong and Sri Lanka.The results reveal unidirectional transmission of volatility from stock market to foreign exchange market of India.The analysis reveals no evidence of volatility transmission between the two markets in reference to Japan.Conclusions:The result of this study provide valuable insights to economic policy makers for financial stability perspective and to investors regarding decision making in international portfolio and currency risk strategies.

Literature Review of Open Shop Scheduling Problems

This paper discusses review of literature of open shop scheduling problems. First, the problem is classified as per different measures of performance, viz., minimization of makespan, minimization of sum of completion times of jobs, minimization of sum of weighted completion times of all jobs, minimization of total tardiness of all jobs, minimization of sum of weighted tardiness of all jobs, minimization of weighted sum of tardy jobs, and miscellaneous measures of the open shop scheduling problem. In each category, the literature is further classified based on approaches used and then the contributions of researchers in the respective categories are presented. Directions for future research are discussed in the end.

Dynamics of oil price shocks and stock market behavior in Pakistan:evidence from the 2007 financial crisis period

Background:The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the oil price and its volatility on the stock market of Pakistan before and after the 2007 financial crisis period.Methods:The analyses are carried out on daily data for the period from July 31,2000 to July 31,2014.This study uses several econometric techniques for the analyses,namely,the Johansen-Juselius cointegration test,generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity(GARCH)model,exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity(EGARCH)model,variance decomposition method,and impulse response function.Results:The results of the cointegration method indicate a significant long-run association between stock market and oil prices in the pre-crisis period.The EGARCH model shows that oil price returns have a significant effect on stock market returns in both sub-periods,while the result for the GARCH model is significant only in the postcrisis period.We find a significant effect of oil price volatility on the stock market in both sub-periods from the GARCH model.Furthermore,the EGARCH model shows an asymmetric effect of oil price volatility on the stock market in the pre-crisis period.Variance decomposition shows that stock market variations are mostly explained by selfinnovation.Moreover,the impulse response function results show that oil price shocks affected the stock market adversely in the pre-crisis period but positively in the postcrisis period.Conclusions:This study suggests that economic policymakers and investors should consider the oil price as an important factor affecting stock market returns.

Forecasting directional movement of Forex data using LSTM with technical and macroeconomic indicators

Forex(foreign exchange)is a special financial market that entails both high risks and high profit opportunities for traders.It is also a very simple market since traders can profit by just predicting the direction of the exchange rate between two currencies.However,incorrect predictions in Forex may cause much higher losses than in other typical financial markets.The direction prediction requirement makes the problem quite different from other typical time-series forecasting problems.In this work,we used a popular deep learning tool called“long short-term memory”(LSTM),which has been shown to be very effective in many time-series forecasting problems,to make direction predictions in Forex.We utilized two different data sets—namely,macroeconomic data and technical indicator data—since in the financial world,fundamental and technical analysis are two main techniques,and they use those two data sets,respectively.Our proposed hybrid model,which combines two separate LSTMs corresponding to these two data sets,was found to be quite successful in experiments using real data.

Development and Comparison of Hybrid Genetic Algorithms for Network Design Problem in Closed Loop Supply Chain

This paper presents four different hybrid genetic algorithms for network design problem in closed loop supply chain. They are compared using a complete factorial experiment with two factors, viz. problem size and algorithm. Based on the significance of the factor “algorithm”, the best algorithm is identified using Duncan’s multiple range test. Then it is compared with a mathematical model in terms of total cost. It is found that the best hybrid genetic algorithm identified gives results on par with the mathematical model in statistical terms. So, the best algorithm out of four algorithm proposed in this paper is proved to be superior to all other algorithms for all sizes of problems and its performance is equal to that of the mathematical model for small size and medium size problems.

Market efficiency of gold exchange-traded funds in India

Background:Gold exchange-traded funds,since introduction,are primarily aimed at tracking the price of physical gold in the financial market.This,a category of exchange-traded funds,whose units represent physical gold,is traded on exchanges like any other financial instrument.In the Indian financial market,gold exchange traded funds were introduced a decade ago to facilitate ordinary households'participation in the bullion market.They were also designed to assist in the price discovery mechanism of the bullion market.Presentation of the hypothesis:In this paper,it is attempted to check if one of the constituents of price discovery mechanism,informational efficiency,has been achieved in gold exchange-traded funds’market.Information efficiency becomes evident only when all available information is reflected in the market price of the instrument.Testing the hypothesis:Therefore,in order to assess the weak-form efficiency of the gold exchange-traded funds market,the daily returns of five gold exchangetraded funds traded on the Indian Stock Exchange over the period March 22,2010,to August 28,2015,were used.The non-parametric runs test,the parametric serial correlation test,and the augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test are employed.Implications of the hypothesis:The test results provide evidence that the efficient market hypothesis does not hold for the gold exchange-traded funds’market in India.Further,the test results address several underlying issues with respect to price discovery in the market under study and suggest that the Indian market for this derivative is not weak-form efficient.Hence,the factors affecting gold exchange traded-funds’market warrant the attention of the country’s regulatory bodies,as appropriate legislation in support of market efficiency is needed.

Agri-food Supply Chain Management: Literature Review

The purpose of this paper is to present a critical review of prior literature relating to agri-food supply chain management. An in-depth analysis has been carried out to identify the influential information from the literature. This paper has identified gaps to be explored about agricultural supply chain management (SCM) practices which may be used by researchers to enrich theory construction and practitioners may concentrate on establishing the extent and frontiers of agri-food SCM. This research work is the first attempt to make a critical literature review of available literature on agri-food SCM practices for developing countries like India. The research articles and other materials related to the agri-food supply chain management were collected from online data bases like Scopus, EBSCO and Google Scholar for the period of 10 years (2006-2016). The study performs content analysis and is followed by descriptive analysis. In the next phase, the literature in the field of agri-food supply chain management is classified into four broad categories viz. general literature review of agri-food supply chain, policies affecting the segments of agri-food supply chain, individual segments of agri-food SCM (structure of supply chain segments and conduct of supply chain segments) and performance of supply chain segments. These four categories are comprehensively reviewed and elaborated the research gap in the literature based on agri-food supply chain management. Finally, potato supply chain of India is considered as a case example for comprehensive analysis and elaborated in detail.

Measuring the influences of supplier selection and supply chain tasks on firm performance among manufacturing firms in India

The primary objective of this research is to empirically probe the various aspects and variables that have been already addressed in the previous literature related to supplier selection criterion, supply effort management and firm performance. Further, this research aims to develop a measurement framework and pragmatically prove the framework through a measurement model. First, a factor structure for various constructs is made and the initial validity is determined from practicing managers and academicians. This research employs survey method and the data is collected from 358 supply chain professionals working in manufacturing firms in India. A measurement model is developed and proved with various tests of reliability and validity. Finally, three major latent constructs were formulated, namely, criterion of supplier selection, supply effort management and firm performance. The factor scores of these latent variables were used for further analysis. A six-stage approach was followed in the analysis of data. Firm performance was regressed against supplier selection criterion and supply effort management. The results indicate that the predictive variable has positive and significant effect on firm performance and they do not have any interaction and multicollinearity effects.

Need Saliency and Academic Behavior of Technical Students in India: Implications for Career Sustaining Competences

In the current scenario of rapid expansion of higher education, it becomesimperative to study the dynamic factors underlying quality education,student motivation and learning outcomes. Most of the literature availableas on date are predominantly based on western studies, where theindividual’s personal achievement, autonomy, control, power are consideredto be most important. But these western models often influenced by theirindividualistic philosophy and cultural values are quite inapplicable forpluralistic Indian society, where we believe in collaboration and teamwork.Rare attempts have been made to develop an indigenous model to measurethese attributes in our society. The present study is first of its kind to assessthe salient and non-salient needs of technical students pursuing their studiesin India. Authors have identified measures of the students’ engagement invarious academic, co-curricular activities and their performance outcomes.A sample of Four-hundred and Sixty-five (N=465) engineering/sciencestudents were collected through purposive sampling exclusively from IITKharagpur , a premier technical institute in eastern India where studentsacross the country got selected and joined on merit basis, through thenational level joint entrance examination for Engineering and Science, thetoughest examination in the country, known as IIT-JEE. Career implicationsare discussed in light of the major findings.

An Exploratory Study on the Electronic Word of Mouth Communication in Promoting Brands in the Online Platforms

This study discusses on the communication method followed by most of the brands called. “Electronic Word of Mouth” in a short form is called as eWOM in order to reach the customers effectively in a short span. Social media having become a new hybrid component of integrated marketing communication allows the brands to establish strong relationship with the customers. With the establishment of customer relationship online, the brands create a platform for the customers to discuss about the product features, quality, price and write a review about the product online. This research analyses about the social media and its impact in spreading the messages about the brands to the end customers and the impact of gender, age groups, income, designation and the demographic details of the customers in trusting the information that is spread through electronic media and the level at which the eWOM helps the customers to select the brand.

Duality Relations for a Class of a Multiobjective Fractional Programming Problem Involving Support Functions

In this article, for a differentiable function , we introduce the definition of the higher-order -invexity. Three duality models for a multiobjective fractional programming problem involving nondifferentiability in terms of support functions have been formulated and usual duality relations have been established under the higher-order -invex assumptions.

Implementation of Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for CLSC Network Design Problem—A Case Study on Fashion Leather Goods Industry

The implementation of closed loop supply chain system is becoming essential for fashion leather products industry to ensure an economically sustainable business model and eco-friendly industrial practice as demanded by the environmental regulations, consumer awareness and the prevailing social consciousness. In this context, this research work addresses a closed loop supply chain network problem of fashion leather goods industry, with an objective of minimizing the total cost of the entire supply chain and also reducing the total waste from the end of life product returns. The research work commenced with a literature review on the reverse and closed loop supply chain network design problems of fashion and leather goods industry dealt in the past. Then, the identified CLSCND problem is solved using a mathematical model based on Mixed Integer Non-Linear Programme (MINLP) and then a suitable Hybrid Genetic Algorithm (HGA) developed for the CLSCND is implemented for obtaining optimum solution. Both the MINLP model and HGA are customized as per the CLSCND problem chosen and implemented for the industrial case of an Indian Fashion Leather Goods Industry. Finally, the solutions obtained for MINLP model in LINGO 15 and for HGA in VB.NET platform are compared and presented. The optimum solution obtained from the suitable HGA is illustrated as an optimum shipment pattern for the closed loop supply chain network design problem of the fashion leather goods industry case.

Modelling and Simulating Dynamics Efficiency of Rural-Community Banks (RCBs) in Ghana

The present work seeks to develop a model for measuring efficiency of RCBs in Ghana by means of financial key performance indicators pairing macroeconomic indicators. A stochastic differential equation model for predicting the efficiency of RCBs in the future is developed and simulated using gaussian jumps to evaluate the models’ performance in unpredicted situations with four distinct phases of efficiency. Unique solution Exit multiple 4-dimensional stochastic differential equations and Macroeconomic model is proven to be the best-fitting model for the data with the lowest information criterion.

Women Entrepreneurship Index Prediction Model with Automated Statistical Analysis

Recently,gender equality and women’s entrepreneurship have gained considerable attention in global economic development.Prior to the design of any policy interventions to increase women’s entrepreneurship,it is significant to comprehend the factors motivating women to become entrepreneurs.The non-understanding of the factors can result in the endurance of low living stan-dards and the design of expensive and ineffectual policies.But female involve-ment in entrepreneurship becomes higher in developing economies compared to developed economies.Women Entrepreneurship Index(WEI)plays a vital role in determining the factors that enable theflourishment of high potential female entrepreneurs which enhances economic welfare and contributes to the economic and social fabric of society.Therefore,it is needed to design an automated and accurate WEI prediction model to improve women’s entrepreneurship.In this view,this article develops an automated statistical analysis enabled WEI predic-tive(ASA-WEIP)model.The proposed ASA-WEIP technique aims to effectually determine the WEI.The proposed ASA-WEIP technique encompasses a series of sub-processes such as pre-processing,WEI prediction,and parameter optimiza-tion.For the prediction of WEI,the ASA-WEIP technique makes use of the Deep Belief Network(DBN)model,and the parameter optimization process takes place using Squirrel Search Algorithm(SSA).The performance validation of the ASA-WEIP technique was executed using the benchmark dataset from the Kaggle repo-sitory.The experimental outcomes stated the better outcomes of the ASA-WEIP technique over the other existing techniques.

Does higher tax rate affect tobacco usage?Unravelling the nexus between tobacco regulatory control and public health concern

Objectives:Bangladesh stands as a prominent global consumer of tobacco,with alarming consequences on public health.The Global Adult Tobacco Survey reported that tobacco consumption claimed over 126000 lives in 2018,contributing to 13.5%of all deaths in the country.This study aims to explore the effectiveness of higher tax rates and tobacco use regulation as control mechanisms in mitigating tobacco consumption and health care cost burden,with a particular emphasis on its implications for public health.Methods:This study is based on the annual time series data over the period 2000-2020.The study employs the ordinary least square method to analyze the quantitative confirming the stationarity of data at level.This research uses different models to investigate individual effects and combined effects on both tobacco consumption and tobacco health care cost burden.Results:The study finds a negative relationship between tobacco tax rate and tobacco consumption.More specifically,the higher tax rate of tobacco(low(β=-0.3495),medium(β=-0.2319),high(β=-0.9033),premium(β=-0.7322),filtered(β=-0.2114),and non-filtered(β=-0.3452)categories)is significant to reduce tobacco use at 1%level of significance.The study finds similar results when it applied tobacco retail price instead of tobacco tax rate as the independent variable.Finally,the study investigates the impact on health care cost through tobacco consumption,tobacco control law,growth rate,export-import,and tobacco production.The results indicate that tobacco consumption,export-import,and tobacco production increases health care cost burden while tobacco use regulatory decreases it.By reducing tobacco consumption,higher taxes and tobacco use regulation contribute to alleviating the burden on the healthcare system,promoting healthier lifestyles,and aligning with global health objectives.Conclusions:Higher tax rate on tobacco products is necessary to increase the retail price so that tobacco users cannot consume tobacco.Specific tax and uniform tax base are needed so that tobacco users cannot switch to lower priced brands.Tobacco control laws need to revised and proper implementation should be ensured as well,to achieve the goal of tobacco free Bangladesh by 2040.Tobacco-related diseases,responsible for a significant proportion of deaths in the country,could witness a considerable decline with the successful implementation of higher tax rates and tobacco use regulation.This study provides insights that not only contribute to the economic discourse but also accentuate the broader public health benefits arising from effective tobacco taxation policies.

An Automatic Threshold Selection Using ALO for Healthcare Duplicate Record Detection with Reciprocal Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System

ESystems based on EHRs(Electronic health records)have been in use for many years and their amplified realizations have been felt recently.They still have been pioneering collections of massive volumes of health data.Duplicate detections involve discovering records referring to the same practical components,indicating tasks,which are generally dependent on several input parameters that experts yield.Record linkage specifies the issue of finding identical records across various data sources.The similarity existing between two records is characterized based on domain-based similarity functions over different features.De-duplication of one dataset or the linkage of multiple data sets has become a highly significant operation in the data processing stages of different data mining programmes.The objective is to match all the records associated with the same entity.Various measures have been in use for representing the quality and complexity about data linkage algorithms,and many other novel metrics have been introduced.An outline of the problem existing in themeasurement of data linkage and de-duplication quality and complexity is presented.This article focuses on the reprocessing of health data that is horizontally divided among data custodians,with the purpose of custodians giving similar features to sets of patients.The first step in this technique is about an automatic selection of training examples with superior quality from the compared record pairs and the second step involves training the reciprocal neuro-fuzzy inference system(RANFIS)classifier.Using the Optimal Threshold classifier,it is presumed that there is information about the original match status for all compared record pairs(i.e.,Ant Lion Optimization),and therefore an optimal threshold can be computed based on the respective RANFIS.Febrl,Clinical Decision(CD),and Cork Open Research Archive(CORA)data repository help analyze the proposed method with evaluated benchmarks with current techniques.

对性别助长假设的初步验证:在场观众的性别影响作业效绩吗?

为了检验金盛华于 1 989年提出的“性别助长假设” ,采用现场实验探讨观众魅力对性别助长效应的干涉作用。 32个中专学生 (男女各半 )在 4种观众条件下测试BAH时间。结果表明 ,观众条件对女性被试的作业效绩无影响 ;而高魅力异性观众的在场能助长男性被试的效绩 ,而低魅力的异性观众在场会削弱其效绩。因此 ,性别助长效应受到诸多因素 (如被试的性别、观众的魅力 )的干涉 ,男性易出现助长现象 ,且高魅力的异性观众才对作业效绩具有助长作用。

自我监控性作为性别助长效应的干涉变量

采用双手调节器操作任务进一步验证"性别助长"假设。20个自我监控者与20个我行我素者(男女各半)分别按抵消顺序接受两种实验处理:男性观众和女性观众。结果表明,异性观众可以助长男性被试的操作速度,而削弱女性被试的操作速度;对于作业效绩也存在着同样的交互作用;自我监控性是性别助长效应的一个重要干涉变量,男自我监控者表现出明显的异性助长,女自我监控者表现出明显的异性抑制,而我行我素者没有表现出明显的观众效应。由于自我监控性对相应的异性效应有一种放大作用,可知性别助长效应的基础是以印象管理动机为主。

A Survey on the Vehicle Routing Problem and Its Variants

In this paper, we have conducted a literature review on the recent developments and publications involving the vehicle routing problem and its variants, namely vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) and the capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) and also their variants. The VRP is classified as an NP-hard problem. Hence, the use of exact optimization methods may be difficult to solve these problems in acceptable CPU times, when the problem involves real-world data sets that are very large. The vehicle routing problem comes under combinatorial problem. Hence, to get solutions in determining routes which are realistic and very close to the optimal solution, we use heuristics and meta-heuristics. In this paper we discuss the various exact methods and the heuristics and meta-heuristics used to solve the VRP and its variants.