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In the course of China’s rapid economic development, the coexistence of industrial development and dominant industrial agglomeration (AGG), along with growing environmental problems, has attracted widespread attention from scholars. Although the linear relationship between the two has been analyzed in depth in the research literature, a concomitant phenomenon, i.e., the gradual expansion in the scale of foreign direct investment (FDI), has been overlooked. By employing threshold panel regression model, this paper attempts to construct a theoretical model with embedded AGG and FDI, and incorporates other factors affecting environmental pollution (POL). For examining the mechanism of AGG on POL, we proposed a testable theoretical hypothesis, and conducted an empirical study by combining panel data of POL and AGG at the provincial level in China. The measurement index of a control variable was changed to check the robustness of our results, and the coefficient sign of each explanatory variable was not changed, confirming the robustness of main results. Overall, AGG improves regional POL, but the impact of FDI is stage-specific and roughly there are three stages. Specifically, the positive effect of AGG on POL is strong when FDI is at a low level. When the level of FDI crosses the first threshold and continues to rise, the positive effect of AGG on POL reaches its strongest; until the second threshold is crossed, the positive effect of AGG starts diminishing slowly. Concluding this, for promoting economic development and environmental protection in the region in parallel, government and enterprises should prioritize the increment in FDI, with an equalization of levels of AGG and FDI, in order to enhance the improvement effect of AGG on POL.

This study covers the methodological gap in determining adoption of adaptation strategies towards changing climate by farmers, in semi-arid region of Pakistan. By considering significance as well as scale of adoption, the study derived an adaptation index and studied determinants and barriers affecting successful adoption of different adaptation strategies, mainly by conducting Focal Group Discussion (FGD), experts’ interviews and household survey. Based on survey from 200 rice growers of Pakistan, the adaptations identified include elevated rates of irrigation, on-farm storage, alteration in fertilizer rates, weather forecasting and soil conservation techniques. Further, influence of different socioeconomic factors on adoption of adaptations is unraveled by using multiple linear regression approach. Results reveal the impact of farming experience, education of farmer, family size, access to credit, involvement in non-farm activities, belief on climate change and relevant adaptations is significant on adoption of adaptations. It suggests that implementation policies for adaptations should be revised, by considering vital role of these socioeconomic characteristics as well as local level actions of farmers.

Pairings have been used to develop a wide range of cryptographic protocols to solve problems beyond the reach of traditional public-key cryptographic schemes. At the same time, they are mathematically complex and involve a rich hierarchy of operations over finite fields and extension fields. Performing a pairing operation involves large number of modular multiplications, additions, and subtractions that require cumbersome manual scheduling of operations. Due to large sequence of operations and custom hardware architectures designed for a specific pairing algorithm, it becomes infeasible to change the underlying pairing type, elliptic curves, or even parameter sets without redesigning the entire architecture. We present the design of a configurable and generic execution unit, capable of being used for any pairing algorithm, and serving as a coprocessor to perform all the underlying operations. The execution unit is supported by a software static scheduler to automate the process of manual scheduling of operations at the lowest level of hierarchy, i.e., at the level of prime field arithmetic. We develop a hierarchical input format to support the tower of fields used to represent extension field elements involved in pairings. We optimize the overall performance of the cryptoprocessor by using an optimal number of multiplier units, capable of taking full advantage of the parallelism present in the algorithm and a single modular adder/subtractor, working in parallel with multipliers.

Purpose- Life satisfaction is a level in which feelings of people are affected positively or negatively about their lives. Employees whose lives are more satisfied are generally more committed with their works, reveal low absenteeism and more efficient in doing duties. This study aims to investigate what factors affect life satisfaction of employees in the banking sector specifically in the Pakistani context. Design/Methodology- The target population of this study was non-managerial employees of banks in Lahore. Total 340 questionnaires were distributed among employees in which 60 were filled incomplete and 30 were lost. The data were collected through self-administered questionnaires distributed to 250 respondents. Findings- The findings of structural equation modeling showed that economic hardship, prospective anxiety, and work stress has a negative impact on life satisfaction. Results also show that economic hardship and prospective anxiety has a positive impact on the financial threat. The financial threat is negatively related to life satisfaction. Practical Implications- It can also help managers to understand the insight of employee adverse financial decision making. Managers also make guidelines which may minimize all the consequences of psychological distress. It also helps in identifying methods to reduce anxiety, stress and economic hardship.

This detailed study is conducted to examine different temporal data Information Visualization (IV) techniques in Electronic Health Records (EHR). A number of visualization techniques have been developed and proposed for temporal data and events in medical domain. The main objective behind this study is to facilitate stakeholders from different backgrounds that involved in different phases from designing process to evaluation regarding How these techniques helped in handling, exploring and analyzing patients records either from single EHR or multiple EHR. This study followed a systematic literature review methodology. Multiple EHR visualization techniques were evaluated on the basis of different Usability matrices as learnability, easy to use, simplicity and complexity. This study concluded that more the system is easy to use and simple, it will enhance exploring and analysis capabilities of stakeholders that can take more precise decisions on patient's data.

Public-key cryptosystems such as RSA have been widely used to secure digital data in many commercial systems. Modular arithmetic on large operands used during modular exponentiation makes RSA computationally challenging. Traditionally, software implementations of these algorithms provided the highest flexibility but lacked performance. On the contrary, custom hardware accelerators provided the highest performance but lacked flexibility and adaptability to changing algorithms, parameters, and key sizes. In this paper, we present a hardware/software codesign of RSA cryptosystem that improves performance, while retaining flexibility. We adopted Xilinx Zynq-7000 SoC platform, which integrates a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processing system along with Xilinx programmable logic. The software part of our implementation is based on RELIC library (Efficient Library for Cryptography). The performance vs. flexibility trade-off is investigated, and the speed-up of our codesign implementation vs. the purely software implementation of RSA on the same platform is reported. Our results show a speedup of up to 57 times when compared with the software implementation for 2048-bit operand size. We also propose a generic model for HW/SW codesign focused on flexibility with comparable performance to existing HW/SW implementations.

The job satisfaction is more important in any firm. This research has a bearing of HR practices e.g. performance analysis, promotional practices, compensation practices, operating atmosphere and superior association on job satisfaction of workers in banking sector of Pakistan. Research study reveals that however workers operating in numerous native and foreign banks in Lahore have totally different levels of satisfaction. This analysis conducted on the premise of primary information collected from the branches of Bank Alfalah, Habib Bank Ltd. and NIB bank in Lahore. SPSS sixteen is employed to research the information by mistreatment T take a look at, correlation and multivariate analysis. OLS-regression methodology is employed to test the normality and one-dimensionality of knowledge and alternative assumptions helps to test the link between variables. By applying simple regression model, we have a tendency to determine that there's a powerful & positive relationship between the various human resource practices and job satisfaction of workers.

In this paper, we present results of a comprehensive study devoted to the optimization of FPGA implementations of modern cryptographic hash functions using embedded FPGA resources, such as Digital Signal Processing (DSP) units and Block Memories. Fifteen hash functions, including the current American hash standard SHA-2 and 14 candidates for the new hash standard SHA-3, have been included in our investigation. Our methodology involves implementing, characterizing, and comparing all algorithms with a focus on minimizing the amount of reconfigurable logic resources, and achieving a better balance between the use of reconfigurable logic resources and embedded resources in four FPGA families, representing major low-cost and high-performance families of Xilinx and Altera.