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This paper investigates the health costs and milk productivity losses of farm animals due to pesticide exposure and its impact on farm owners’ profits. This is accomplished using survey data collected from farm owners in Pakistan’s Swat district. For analysis, multiple linear and tobit regressions are utilized. The study finds that the farm owners' experience, the number of lactating buffaloes, pesticide-induced milk losses, disease-induced health costs, and milk losses due to consumption of toxic plants and wastewater significantly affect profits. Specifically, an increase in farm experience by one year leads to a monthly increase in farm profit by Rs. 820.04. Likewise, adding an additional buffalo increases monthly profit by Rs. 535.04. Finally, the monthly loss in milk productivity due to pesticides stands at Rs. 9.71. Farm owners can greatly benefit by improving animal feed along with the know-how of the consequences of grazing animals on pesticide-affected fields.

BACKGROUND: The international spread of poliovirus exposes all countries to the risk of outbreaks and is designated a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by WHO. This risk can be exacerbated in countries using inactivated polio vaccine, which offers excellent protection against paralysis but is less effective than oral vaccine against poliovirus shedding, potentially allowing circulation without detection of paralytic cases for long periods of time. Our study investigated the molecular properties of type 2 poliovirus isolates found in sewage with an aim to detect virus transmission in the community. METHODS: We performed environmental surveillance in London, UK, testing sewage samples using WHO recommended methods that include concentration, virus isolation in cell culture, and molecular characterisation. We additionally implemented direct molecular detection and determined whole-genome sequences of every isolate using novel nanopore protocols. FINDINGS: 118 genetically linked poliovirus isolates related to the serotype 2 Sabin vaccine strain were detected in 21 of 52 sequential sewage samples collected in London between Feb 8 and July 4, 2022. Expansion of environmental surveillance sites in London helped localise transmission to several boroughs in north and east London. All isolates have lost two key attenuating mutations, are recombinants with a species C enterovirus, and an increasing proportion (20 of 118) meet the criterion for a vaccine-derived poliovirus, having six to ten nucleotide changes in the gene coding for VP1 capsid protein. INTERPRETATION: Environmental surveillance allowed early detection of poliovirus importation and circulation in London, permitting a rapid public health response, including enhanced surveillance and an inactivated polio vaccine campaign among children aged 1-9 years. Whole-genome sequences generated through nanopore sequencing established linkage of isolates and confirmed transmission of a unique recombinant poliovirus lineage that has now been detected in Israel and the USA. FUNDING: Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, UK Health Security Agency, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and National Institute for Health Research Medical Research Council.

Schools’ culture is a key indicator for schools’ effectiveness and overall activities of the school. Its influence is much more significant at the level of secondary schools that are having the duty for the provision of quality graduates to institutions of higher education and skilled people to the job market. School culture consists of norms, beliefs, principles, rituals and behaviors which designs the rules of thinking, feelings and action inside an educational organization and ultimately influences school performance. Having the significant role of school culture in the background, the study aimed to investigate the school culture at secondary level. The objectives of the study were; to investigate the schools’ culture at secondary level and recommend strategies for the improvement of school culture in secondary schools. The design of the study was quantitative descriptive survey. The population of the study was 162 male heads of secondary schools in District Swat. The researcher selected a sample of 118 heads through simple random sampling, developed a Likert questionnaire, validated it and pilot tested for the determination of its reliability. The data were gathered through self-administered questionnaires from the respondents and analyzed with mean scores, standard deviation and Chi-square test. The study found a positive school culture with clear chalked out visions and missions, heads of the school took initiatives for achieving the vision of schools, teachers themselves prepared the rules for functioning of the schools and the head and teachers had collegiality for achieving schools’ visions. The administration of the schools were ambitious, friendly and supportive for the students, democratic in decision making, resolved the problems of teachers and students and were competent enough to satisfy the needs of the schools, teachers worked for the academic excellence of their students, regularly assessed students’ academic progress, focused on co-curricular activities and observed positive human relationship. It further forwarded recommendations for the improvement of the school culture at secondary level.

PurposeSocial exchange theory and social learning theory are widely employed in many disciplines but there is little application on the intention to leave and job performance among academic staff. Therefore, this study intends to examine the relationships among supervisor support, intention to leave and job performance along with mediating role of self-confidence in a developing context.Design/methodology/approachData were collected through questionnaires from the academic staff of private Pakistani universities. The model was tested using data collected from 295 respondents by using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique.FindingsThe results revealed that supervisor support influenced job performance positively through the mediating role of self-confidence. Conversely, supervisor support influenced intention to leave negatively through the mediating role of self-confidence. In addition, the results also showed the direct effect of supervisor support on employees' job performance and intention to leave.Practical implicationsThe results of this study suggest that the supervisor must provide adequate support to the academic staff, which helps them to develop their self-confidence. In addition, self-confidence is helpful for the employees to improve their job performance and reduce their intention to leave.Originality/valueThe study contributes to theory building in the area of supervisor support by enriching the understanding of the processes carrying the effect of supervisor support on desirable workplace outcomes. In addition, the study also explicates the less understood nature of relationship between supervisor support, job performance, and intention to leave through the mediating role of self-confidence in the Pakistani context.

This study aims to identify the effects of foreign remittances on school enrolment and the educational expenditures of children in the Peshawar district. Primary data were acquired by simple random sampling and a questionnaire. Correspondingly, the logit approach and Heckman selection theory were utilized to examine school enrolment and educational expenses. The marginal effects were evaluated to determine the co-efficient. The study's findings indicate that Per Capita Remittances (PCRM) have a highly substantial and beneficial effect on children's school attendance, with a (10.8%) point increase in school enrolment for every 100 rupees rises in Per Capita Remittances (PCRM). Suppose a household's Per Capita Income (PCIM) improves by one hundred rupees, the probability of children enrolling in school increases by (0.17). The results indicate that PCRM and educational costs per kid are significantly and positively correlated. Educational spending per child increases by 12.01 rupees for every 100 rupees rise in family remittances per capita, whereas every 100 rupees increase in per capita income increases educational expenditure per kid by (8.38 PKR). Which leads to an 8.38 % marginal propensity to spend on child education.

Purpose This study aims to examine the impact of social advertising (informative, entertainment, credibility, ease of use, privacy and contents) on the buying behavior of Muslim consumers toward the fashion clothing brands during the Holy Month of Ramadan along with the moderating role of brand image. Precisely, it focuses on the marketing techniques and strategies in social advertising to enhance buying behavior. Design/methodology/approach Using the convenience sampling technique, data was collected from 304 Muslim consumers during the Holy Month of Ramadan. Questionnaires were self-administered, and data was analyzed via Smart partial least square structural equation modeling. Findings Social advertising (informative, entertainment, credibility, privacy, ease of use, contents) and brand image have a positive relationship with the buying behavior of Muslim consumers toward the fashion clothing brands during the Holy Month of Ramadan, while the brand image has nonmoderating effects. Furthermore, social advertising has a positive and significant relationship with the brand image. Research limitations/implications This study is only limited to fashion clothing brands in the Malaysian Muslim community and is based only on the few dimensions of the theory of reasoned action and technology acceptance model (TAM). Practical implications Results clarified the impact of social advertising and brand image on the buying behavior of Muslim consumers toward the fashion clothing brands during the Holy Month of Ramadan and the moderating role of brand image in achieving the business objectives. Originality/value This study has evaluated the effects of social advertising and brand image in enhancing the buying behavior of Muslim consumers during the Holy Month of Ramadan toward the fashion clothing brands along with the moderating role of brand image based on the theory of reasoned action and TAM model. Precisely, this study examined the unique characteristics of social advertising and the relative importance of informative, entertainment, credibility, ease of use, privacy and content in enhancing the buying behavior of Muslim consumers during the Holy Month of Ramadan, where consumers are emotionally involved in buying fashion clothing brands due to Eid al Fitr celebration.

Social networking services (SNSs) provide massive data that can be a very influential source of information during pandemic outbreaks. This study shows that social media analysis can be used as a crisis detector (e.g., understanding the sentiment of social media users regarding various pandemic outbreaks). The novel Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19), commonly known as coronavirus, has affected everyone worldwide in 2020. Streaming Twitter data have revealed the status of the COVID-19 outbreak in the most affected regions. This study focuses on identifying COVID-19 patients using tweets without requiring medical records to find the COVID-19 pandemic in Twitter messages (tweets). For this purpose, we propose herein an intelligent model using traditional machine learning-based approaches, such as support vector machine (SVM), logistic regression (LR), naive Bayes (NB), random forest (RF), and decision tree (DT) with the help of the term frequency inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) to detect the COVID-19 pandemic in Twitter messages. The proposed intelligent traditional machine learning-based model classifies Twitter messages into four categories, namely, confirmed deaths, recovered, and suspected. For the experimental analysis, the tweet data on the COVID-19 pandemic are analyzed to evaluate the results of traditional machine learning approaches. A benchmark dataset for COVID-19 on Twitter messages is developed and can be used for future research studies. The experiments show that the results of the proposed approach are promising in detecting the COVID-19 pandemic in Twitter messages with overall accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score between 70% and 80% and the confusion matrix for machine learning approaches (i.e., SVM, NB, LR, RF, and DT) with the TF-IDF feature extraction technique. © This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

PurposeThis empirical study aims to explore the linkage among authentic leadership traits and job performance via the mediating role of high-performance human resource practices (HPHRPs) in a developing country context. Social exchange theory and trait theory are widely employed in many disciplines but seldom applied to job performance among Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) employees.Design/methodology/approachThe sample of the study is PTCL's employees. A cross-sectional design was employed and data was collected from 377 employees via questionnaire. This is an exploratory study; therefore, partial least square–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed to answer the research questions.FindingsThe findings of this study revealed that relational transparency, directly and indirectly, influenced job performance with the partial mediating role of selective staffing and extensive training. Furthermore, balance processing, directly and indirectly, influenced job performance with the partial mediating role of incentive reward, while self-awareness, internalized moral perspective, employment security and result-oriented appraisal were insignificant influences on job performance.Practical implicationsThe results of the study delineated practical applications for both the researchers and policymakers. The results of this study would also augment the body of knowledge on human resource practices in both developed and developing countries.Originality/valueThis study found and reported authentic leadership traits and HPHR as the main sources of job performance in PTCL. This study empirically examined the influence of authentic leadership traits on job performance with the mediating role of a bundle of HPHRPs in a developing context.

With the massive spike in the use of Online Social Network Sites (OSNSs) platforms such as Web 2.0, microblogs services and online blogs, etc., valuable information in the form of sentiment, thoughts, opinions, as well as epidemic outbreaks, etc. are transferred. With the OSNSs being widely accessible, this work aims at proposing a novel approach for disease (dengue or flu) detection based on social media posts. For this purpose, an automated approach is designed with the help of LSTM (Long Short Term Memory) and word embedding techniques. Then the performance of the proposed approach is validated using a set of standard evaluation matrices. In addition, the effectiveness of the selected models is evaluated with performance measurement techniques. The accuracy of the proposed research approach is evaluated using two word embedding techniques; Word2Vec with Skip-gram (SG) and Word2Vec with Continuous-bag-of-words (CBOW). Based on the results conducted in this paper the LSTM Word2Vec with CBOW achieved better results compared to LSTM with Word2Vec SG features embedding technique. Our findings prove that the proposed method yields 94% accuracy compared to state-of-the-art approaches. Consequently, LSTM performed better than other leading methods in the detection of disease-infected people in tweets. In the end, spatial analysis is performed to identify the disease infected region.

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the influence of authentic leadership on knowledge sharing and employee’s creativity through the mediating role of team environment of psychological safety and trust. Design/methodology/approach The participants in this study were 60 team leaders and 300 team members’ working in different Overseas Employment Promoters Agencies (OEPA) at Islamabad region, Pakistan. In addition to the authentic leadership of their supervisors, employees reported their perception of being psychologically safe and in the environment of team trust at work, whereas supervisors rated employee’s creativity at work areas. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out using structural equation modelling (SEM) for validation of results among the variables. Findings The major findings of the study were (a) authentic leadership positively predicted knowledge sharing and employees’ creativity through the mediator’s role of team environment (psychological safety and team environment of trust), and (b) team environment of psychological safety and team environment of trust affected both the knowledge sharing and employee’s creativity. Practical implications Authentic leadership has to be synergized with environment of psychological safety and team environment of trust, to enhance employees’ creativity. The results of the study delineated practical applications for both the researchers and policymakers. The results of this study would also augment the body of knowledge on human resource practices in both developed and developing countries. Originality/value This is one of the first studies to empirically examine the influence of authentic leadership on knowledge sharing and employee’s creativity through the mediator role of team environment of psychological safety and trust in OEPA in Pakistan.

This article is centered on the development of a robust position control and disturbance compensation strategy for a mechatronic aero-pendulum using the soft computing paradigm. The pendulum arm is rotated about its pivot via the thrust generated by two coaxial contra-rotating motorized propellers installed at its free end. The tracking error in arm’s angular position is fed to a multi-loop feedback controller. The proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller, in the outer loop, stabilizes the arm at the reference position. The reference current control signals generated by the PID position controller are fed to two PI controllers, in the inner loop, that are responsible for regulating the current consumption of each motorized propeller. Initially, the fixed PID controller gains are evaluated by selecting the optimal value of the system’s closed-loop pole using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. However, to mitigate the inefficacies of fixed gain controller and further enhance the system’s robustness against bounded exogenous disturbances and damping against oscillations, the closed-loop pole is dynamically adjusted via fuzzy inference system, after every sampling interval. The fuzzy membership functions are calibrated offline via PSO algorithm. The superior time optimal control behavior rendered by the proposed controller is validated by comparing its performance with fixed gain controller via credible real-time experiments.

Children dropping out from schools is one of common phenomena in the modern world. Different demographic, socio-economic, psychological, school based, and community factors are responsible for the number of children school dropout across the globe. Using convenient sampling technique, through questionnaire and interview methods primary data was collected from 400 household heads whose children were dropped out from schools in rural areas of district Peshawar during last five years. For this purpose, a structured questionnaire and interviews were conducted to obtain the required data. Results of the study reveal that, in case of boys, more than 60% of the respondents were of the view that poverty is the main reason for children's school dropout. In the case of girls school dropouts, 45% left studies incomplete because of poor financial position. Other determinants such as father education, mother education, school distance, illiterate community, the parental perception was also considered more or less responsible for school dropout of the children. This study recommends that government should provide free education along with monetary incentives to those household heads who do not send their children to schools due to financial constraints.

This study aims to analyze the influence of organizational justice (OJ) on job performance (JP) intention via the mediating influence of high-performance human resource practices (HPHRPs) in a developing context. Equity theory and expectancy theory are widely employed in many disciplines but seldom applied to JP among Pakistan Telecommunication Limited (PTCL) employees. The respondents in this study were 377 employees working in PTCL. Partial least square (PLS), specifically ̣ structural equation modeling was used for the data analysis. The study found a significant direct and indirect influence of distributive justice (DJ) on JP through the partial mediating role of selective staffing (SS) and extensive training (ET). Procedural justice (PJ) also, directly and indirectly, influenced JP through the partial mediating role of the incentive reward (IR). While interactional Justice (IJ), result-oriented appraisal (ROA), employment security (ES) had an insignificant influence on JP. OJ has to be synergized with HPHRPs to enhance JP. The results of this study would also augment the body of knowledge of JP in developed and under-developing countries. OJ has to be synergized with HPHRPs to enhance JP. The results of this study would also argue the body of knowledge of JP in developed and under-developing countries.

The main aim of this empirical study is to explore the mediation role of the leader-member exchange (LMX) between organizational justice and job performance in several tobacco companies in Pakistan. Two models are represented in this study, the first showing the influence of the dimensions of organizational justice on job performance, and the second the influence of organizational justice on job performance with the mediating role of LMX. The data was collected from 290 employees working within several tobacco companies in Pakistan. The results of the statistical analysis found that the dimensions of organizational justice had both a direct and indirect stronger effect on job performance. It was proved empirically that LMX plays a vital role not only on organizational justice but also on employee performance. This is one of the first studies to empirically examine the mediating role of LMX in the relationship between the dimensions of organizational justice on job performance in tobacco companies in Pakistan. The study highlights the importance of job performance theory when designing strategies to promote performance.

This paper investigates the Organizational Learning Capabilities (OLC) affect Organizational innovativeness (OI) on organizational performance (OP). The mediating role of IO on relationship between OLC and OP was also been studied. Analysis is based on data collected from 200 respondents drawn from Pakistan’s Telecom Sectors. Multiple regression analysis had been used to test the hypotheses. This study found that both OLC and OI have a positive impact towards OP. OI also mediates the relationship between OLC and OI. Key word: Organizational Learning Capabilities (OLC), Organizational Performance (OP), Organization Innovativeness (OI).

This paper aims to explore the effects of authentic leadership on knowledge-sharing behavior and moderating role of Islamic work ethics. There is limited research devoted to the authentic leadership and knowledge-sharing behaviour within the Telecom sectors of Pakistan. The objective of this study is to analyze the impact of authentic leadership on knowledge sharing behavior with moderating role of Islamic work ethics. This is a quantitative research study. Convenience sample method was used as a sampling technique for this research. The data was collected from different two organizations (Mobilink and Ufone) and questionnaire was distributed to 220 employees, working in various multinational organizations of Islamabad (Pakistan). The data was analyzed using SPSS. The result showed that authentic leadership at Telecom organizations was developed positive behavior through knowledge-sharing. Therefore, the association between authentic leadership, Islamic work ethics and knowledge-sharing behavior is positive. The contribution of this study is Islamic work ethics using first time between authentic leadership and knowledge sharing behavior which not used so far.

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between the human capital management (HCM) practices which include training and development, recruitment and selection, Performance appraisal and employee's job performance in the telecom sector of Pakistan. To find the influence of HCM practices on employees job performance within telecom sector of Pakistan. This is a survey based research study. The sample of the study is employees' who are working in public and private sector telecommunication companies in Pakistan. Data are collected through questionnaires. Sample size was (n=272); therefore, descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analysis have been used. The overall results support that HCM practices have prominent and indispensable role in the performance level of employees; knowledge and skill through training and development, compatibility & competence through recruitment and selection, confidence and morale through performance appraisal. HCM practices are highly correlated with each other and also correlated with employee's job performance.

Modelling user interests for time sensitive domains like RSS feeds and spontaneous social media has been a vibrant research activity in recent times. Although numerous efforts have been invested in to the personalisation of dynamic web content, the voluminous and diversified production of continuous online information still poses significant research challenges. In this paper, we propose a profiling mechanism that learns the user access patterns in a dynamic environment like RSS feeds. Main goal of the proposed mechanism is the retrieval optimisation and personalised recommendation of RSS feeds in close to real time. The mechanism allocates personalized time windows based on the learned access patterns and tries to minimize the chances of time-sensitive information from being missed by the user using a delay minimisation algorithm based on Non-homogenous Poisson Process. The mechanism acquires implicit feedback from the user interaction to calculate potential recommendations. The experiments conducted prove the significance of the mechanism in terms of optimised information retrieval and faster adaptation process where it clearly outperforms the other mechanisms in the literature on these properties.

Although the World Wide Web has evolved to be an enormous resource over the last decade, sifting through all the information available poses a significant challenge to users as there is simply too much information available. Therefore, systems that support users by performing personalized information filtering or search are becoming increasingly important. This paper presents a mechanism which provides recommendations based on a user profile that adapts to the changing user interests. Taking the multiple and diverse information needs of the user into consideration, the proposed mechanism constructs a user profile that adapts according to the changing user requirements.

Although the World Wide Web has evolved to be an enormous source of information over the last decade, finding the required information poses a significant challenge to users as there is simply too much information available. Therefore systems that enable users to perform personalised information searches are becoming increasingly important. This paper presents a mechanism which provides recommendations based on a user profile that adapts to the changing interests of the user. Taking the multiple and diverse user interests into consideration, such as the short-term, long-term and periodic interests, the proposed mechanism constructs a user profile that evolves according to these interests. Articles from different news sources are presented to the users that they have subscribed to through an RSS aggregator and are ranked according to the user's profile. The mechanism adapts the user profile according to the changing user interests automatically and makes recommendations based on this profile.

In this paper we present a new mechanism for representing the long-term interests of a user in a user profile. Semantic relatedness between the profile terms is measured by using the web counting based method. Profile terms are associated through their sets of inductions words, representing highly related words to the terms that are found out through their co-occurrence in the web documents and semantic similarity. The relation between the two profile terms is then calculated using the combination of their corresponding sets of induction words. Although we have used the mechanism for long-term user profiling, applications can be more general. The method is evaluated against some benchmark methods and shows promising results.