Browse Items (11810 total)
Sort by:
-
Linkage Between Brand Value and Firm Performance: An Empirical Examination Using Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis
This study is designed with the data of Interbrand for ranking top 100 global brands. In this study, the linkage between brand values and financial performance was estimated using different performance measures that include both stock market and operating performance using Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) technique. The study investigates the effect of brand value on profitability and shareholder. It is observed that the firms that have superior operating performance result in greater brand valuation. Performance of firms measured through profitability is found to be a significant factor in brand valuation. Brand valuation is also found to be significant determinant of profitability. Thus, higher brand quality improves the likelihood of repurchases and in turn improved cash flows. Firms with high agency conflicts tend to have lower brand value. Higher market valuation positively impacts brand valuation in the context of lower leverage and agency costs. The linkage of brand value to firm performance is the justification for marketers investments toward branding initiatives as a mechanism that creates value. This study is the first of its kind to examine the impact of agency costs on brand value using fsQCA technique to understand valuation impact of brands. To measure the effect of branding and marketing initiatives of the firms on financial performance, this study integrated both econometric and financial modeling. The Author(s) 2023. -
Spatio-temporal Crime Analysis and Forecasting on Twitter Data Using Machine LearningAlgorithms
The concept of social media began to gain popularity in the late 1990s and has played a significant role in connecting people across the globe. The constant addition of features to old social media platforms and the creation of new ones have helped amass and retain an extensive user base. Users could now share their views and provide detailed accounts of events from worldwide to reach like-minded people. This led to the popularization of blogging and brought into focus the posts of the commoner. These posts began to be verified and included in mainstream news articles bringing about a revolution in journalism. This research aims to use a social media platform, Twitter, to classify, visualize, and forecast Indian crime tweet data and provide a spatio-temporal view of crime in the country using statistical and machine learning models. The Tweepy Python module's search function and '#crime' query have been used to scrape relevant tweets under geographical constraints, followed by substring-keyword classification using 318 unique crime keywords. The Bokeh and gmaps Python modules create analytical and geospatial visualizations, respectively. Time series forecasting of crime tweet count is performed by comparing the accuracy of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA), and Seasonal Auto-Regressivee Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) models to determine the best model. 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. -
Fake News Detection Using TF-IDF Weighted with Word2Vec: An Ensemble Approach
Social media platforms' utilization for news consumption is steadily growing due to their accessibility, affordability, appeal, and ability to propagate misinformation. False information, whether intentionally or unintentionally created, is being disseminated across the internet. Certain individuals spread inaccurate information on social media to gain attention, financial benefits, or political advantage. This has a detrimental impact on a substantial portion of society that is heavily influenced by technology. It is imperative for us to develop better discernment in distinguishing between fake and genuine news. In this research paper, we present an ensemble approach for detecting fake news by using TF-IDF Weighted Vector with Word2Vec. The extracted features capture specific textual characteristics, which are converted into numerical representations for training the models and balanced dataset with the Random over Sampling technique. The implementation of our proposed framework utilized the ensemble approach with majority voting which combines 2 machine learning models like Random Forest and Decision Tree. The proposed strategy was adopted empirically evaluated against contemporary techniques and basic classifiers, including Gaussian Nae Bayes, Logistic Regression, Multilayer Perceptron, and XGBoost Classifier. The effectiveness of our approach is validated through the evaluation of the accuracy, F1-Score, Precision, Recall, and Auc curve, yielding an impressive accuracy score of 94.24% on the FakeNewsNet dataset. 2023, Ismail Saritas. All rights reserved. -
Critical point equation on almost f-cosymplectic manifolds
Purpose: Besse first conjectured that the solution of the critical point equation (CPE) must be Einstein. The CPE conjecture on some other types of Riemannian manifolds, for instance, odd-dimensional Riemannian manifolds has considered by many geometers. Hence, it deserves special attention to consider the CPE on a certain class of almost contact metric manifolds. In this direction, the authors considered CPE on almost f-cosymplectic manifolds. Design/methodology/approach: The paper opted the tensor calculus on manifolds to find the solution of the CPE. Findings: In this paper, in particular, the authors obtained that a connected f-cosymplectic manifold satisfying CPE with \lambda=\tilde{f} is Einstein. Next, the authors find that a three dimensional almost f-cosymplectic manifold satisfying the CPE is either Einstein or its scalar curvature vanishes identically if its Ricci tensor is pseudo anti?commuting. Originality/value: The paper proved that the CPE conjecture is true for almost f-cosymplectic manifolds. 2021, H. Aruna Kumara, V. Venkatesha and Devaraja Mallesha Naik. -
Filamentous fungi for pharmaceutical compounds degradation in the environment: A sustainable approach
Pharmaceutical compounds play an important role in enhancing the quality of human life. They substantially increase the life expectancy of humans and the well-being of livestock. The expansion in the global human population has increased the usage of pharmaceuticals in an enormous way. This has led to the emergence of pharmaceutical compounds as environmental pollutants because these components are continuously released to various water sources and terrestrial ecosystems. The pharmaceutical components are released during their synthesis, as waste from human and veterinary healthcare sectors, and dumping of drugs that are not used. Pharmaceutical components are known to persist in their potential even at lower concentrations and can create serious issues for ecosystems, especially aquatic systems. Various efforts are being made to remove or reduce the toxicity of pharmaceutical components in aquatic systems. Bioremediation using fungi is one of the most secure and sustainable ways of decontaminating polluted environments. With their strong morphology and diverse metabolic abilities, Fungi employ different methods including fungal enzymes to clear pollutants. Studies have proven that fungi and fungal enzymes can transform these pharmaceutical compounds into less toxic components. This review highlights the role of fungi in the bioremediation of pharmaceutical compounds. 2023 The Author(s) -
Environmental cost of food wastage: Integrated response through a mix of environmental policy instruments
Food, when wasted, reaches landfills and emits greenhouse gases. The impact of greenhouse gases (GHGs), in turn, is felt by even those who do not waste food in the place. Externalities thus created are known to distort market efficiency and the most widely discussed externality is climate change. This study takes the case of United States of America (USA) to ascertain the GHGs resulting due to food wastage. The difference between cost per capita due to emissions from animal-based products and emissions from plant-based products comes out to be $122. In the year 1997 total GHG emission for the entire population of the USA due to food wastage was 401.98 billion kgCO2eq, costing the country 45.42 billion US dollars. Two decades later, in 2017, the food waste costs went up by 6 billion US dollars amounting to 51.14 billion US dollars and 452.64 billion kgCO2eq of GHG emissions The novelty of this research lies in highlighting the carbon footprints of food wastage in terms of GHG's and monetizing these emissions. The study proposes an integrated response through a mix of environmental policy instruments of economic incentives, command and control and moral suasion. 2023 ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. -
Enhanced Battery Life with Supercapacitor Applied to Renewable Energy Based Electric Vehicles
The main goal of this work is of developing a control approach, which is able to obtain the smooth switching between energy sources, battery, and Supercapacitor (SCAP). With four separate math functions, a new math function-based (MFB) controller is designed, and this MFB will generate four output signals corresponding to the motor's speed. Further, the MFB is combined with an FLC/PI controller to reach the theme of the work. Two-hybrid different controllers are intended as per the proposed control strategy termed as MFB with FLC and MFB with PI and both are implemented individually in MATLAB/Simulink in four different modes. The entire model is implemented including a solar panel to charge the battery, this solar panel (SP) is connected to the battery and UDC through various control switches. Finally, a comparative analysis is made between two hybrid controllers to know the better-performed controller. 2023 Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal. All rights reserved. -
Design and validation of the digital well-being scale
As the reliance on digital products and services continues to increase, there arises the need to measure and understand how the use of digital devices affects our well-being. In order to do so, the researchers attempted to create and validate an instrument. The items for the instrument were identified through an extensive review of literature, followed by a brainstorming session. The statements were then validated by a panel of experts, post which the instrument was administered, and the data was collected and analyzed for reliability and validity. The final instrument returned a Cronbachs alpha score of 0.921, indicating high reliability. The validity of the instrument was also established through a confirmatory factor analysis. 2023, University of Bologna. All rights reserved. -
Synergetic effects of cross-linking and incorporation of Fe-Al bimetallic combination on the properties of polyvinyl alcohol novel films
Polyvinyl alcohol films incorporated with Fe-Al bimetallic combination novel films were synthesized by sol-gel method in the presence of glutaraldehyde (GA). The results of FTIR spectra confirmed the cross-linking between PVA and GA, resulted in the formation of rigid molecular chains. The comparison of thermograms of pure PVA and Fe-Al PVA films cured with GA indicated the enhanced thermal stability of the cured films. The electrical properties of the pure PVA films and bimetallic PVA films cured with GA were studied in the frequency range 100 Hz to 100 kHz. The current study explains the effect of GA and incorporation of Fe-Al bimetallic combination towards the structural modification and dielectric properties like dielectric constant, dielectric loss, ac conductivity, polarization, and permittivity of the cured PVA films. The variation of the storage modulus of cured PVA films as a function of temperature has also been studied. 2023, Qatar University and Springer Nature Switzerland AG. -
Monoclinic yttrium oxide quantum dots surface modified by biotin for bioimaging applications
Semiconductor nanoparticles or quantum dots are one of the central topics of interest in material science research due to its size dependent physical and chemical characteristics and applications in different areas from display to biomedical fields. This work reports the first-time synthesis of biotin functionalized monoclinic yttrium oxide quantum dots at low temperature and its application in live cell imaging. The presence of biotin was confirmed through FTIR measurements. HRTEM analysis confirmed the formation of small spherical quantum dots with an average size of 3.8 nm. Zeta potential measurements gave a negative surface charge of -26.9 mV confirming colloidal stability. The quantum dots show sharp absorption in the short UV region and PL experiments delivered defect related intense blue fluorescence emission. The material is nontoxic to both normal (L929) and cancer (MCF 7) cells and the live cell imaging experiments performed on MCF 7 cells show specific binding to the cells and presented bright fluorescence emission from the cells thus confirming the applicability of the material in both display industry and cancer cell imaging. 2023 Elsevier B.V. -
Populist Protests and the Dynamic Zero-COVID Policy: (Re)emerging Pragmatic Populism in China
Populist protests in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) have recently emerged as a reaction against the Chinese authorities stringent measures under its dynamic zero-COVID policy. Besides the vehement criticism and protests against the dynamic zero-COVID policy, during some protests, there have been ensuing calls across the country for President Xi Jinping to step down. The article argues that this scenario can further deteriorate the overall political legitimacy of the Communist Party of China on a long-term basis. According to the article, the protests indicate the re-emergence of populism in the PRC, which incidentally and historically has parallels to the protests at Tiananmen Square, and the 1919 May Fourth Movement. The article theorizes John Deweys concept of pragmatic populism and the aspect of protests during the period, which inherently provides many ideational and relational facets with the recent protests in China. 2023 Jawaharlal Nehru University. -
Designing coordinatively unsaturated metal sites in bimetallic organic frameworks for oxygen evolution reaction
Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are developing as promising catalysts for oxygen evolution reactions. A bimetallic electrocatalyst MOF using Ni and Cu as metal sources and 1,4-benzene dicarboxylic acid as a linker has been synthesized and evaluated for oxygen evolution reaction. Compared to monometallic MOFs, bimetallic MOFs participate more actively in electrocatalysis due to the higher abundance of active sites, local crystallinity, and lower long-range disorder. When utilized as oxygen evolution catalysts, NiCu MOFs have a low overpotential of 340 mV at 10 mA/cm2 and a low Tafel slope of 65 mV/dec. The study paves the way for the development of highly efficient catalysts for water splitting applications. 2023 Elsevier Ltd -
Individual Effect of Spatially Periodic Vertical Surface Temperatures and Nanoparticles on Natural Convection in Water
This paper considers the thermo-convective boundary-layer flow (BLF) of a water-copper mono-nanofluid over a flat vertical surface which is subjected to three types of periodic temperature variations described by the sinusoidal, sawtooth, and triangular waveforms. The temperature of the fluid at the flat surface is greater than the surrounding ambient temperature. The governing equations describing the BLF have been reduced to a non-similar form using an appropriate stream function formulation. The Keller-Box method is used to obtain numerical solution of the boundary-value problem. The effect of the pertinent parameters on the nature of the flow and the heat transfer has been discussed using actual thermophysical data. The results about the shear-stress and heat transfer rate at the surface are presented as well. To study the nature of BLF, the velocity and thermal boundary-layers, the streamline and isotherm plots have been considered, which reveal that the nanoparticle volume-fraction, amplitude of surface temperature variations, and the Grashof number play a pivotal role in enhancing/diminishing heat transfer. The final outcome reveals that the heat transfer is highest for the sinusoidal waveform, followed by that of the triangular and then, the sawtooth. An important inference is that a symmetric periodic temperature distribution at the surface enhances heat transfer more than that of a constant surface-temperature. 2023 by ASME. -
MoS2-TiO2 Nanocomposites for Enhanced Photo-electrocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution
The investigation on the designing and fabrication of highly efficient electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is critical for future applications in renewable sustainable energy. The present work reports the hydrothermal synthesis of two-dimensional MoS2 and MoS2-TiO2 nanostructures. The as-prepared nanostructures were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), Raman analysis, UV-vis-NIR, and photoluminescence spectrophotometry and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). Systematic electrochemical measurements for HER were performed and MoS2-TiO2 nanocomposites demonstrated the lowest onset potential in comparison with MoS2. The results suggest that the nanofusion interface between MoS2 nanoflakes and TiO2 nanoparticles induced an efficient charge transfer from the conduction band of MoS2 to TiO2 and favored the reduction of H+ at active sites. We believe the present work can open up new possibilities that would provide deep insights for the rational design of 2D materials-based catalysts for energy storage and conversion applications. 2023 The Electrochemical Society (ECS). Published on behalf of ECS by IOP Publishing Limited. -
Testing for the Bidirectional Relationship Between FDI in Services and Trade in Services: Evidence from Emerging Economies
We examine the two-way links between foreign direct investments (FDI) in services and trade in services for 26 emerging economies from 2003 to 2015 using sectoral and sectoral disaggregated FDI data. Within a multivariate framework, we use panel unit root tests, recently developed heterogeneous panel cointegration and panel vector error correction model (VECM). Our results confirmed the cointegrating relationship between trade in services, FDI in services, financial services FDI and nonfinancial services FDI. We find the existence of long-run unidirectional causality from trade in services to FDI in services. However, the disaggregated analysis shows a bidirectional link between nonfinancial services FDI and trade in services in the short run. Still, there is no causality between financial services FDI and trade in services both in the short run and long run. The result also shows the evidence of unidirectional causality running from trade in services to nonfinancial services FDI in the long run. It implies that sectoral decomposition matters in the FDItrade nexus in emerging economies. JEL Codes: G20, F14, G20, F23 2022 Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. -
A colorimetric chemosensor for distinct color change with (E)-2-(1-(3-aminophenyl)ethylideneamino)benzenethiol to detect Cu2+ in real water samples
The study reports the synthesis of chemosensor (E)-2-(1-(3-aminophenyl)ethylideneamino)benzenethiol (C1), a highly sensitive, colorimetric metal probe that shows distinct selectivity for the detection of Cu2+ ion in various real water samples. Upon complexation with Cu2+ in CH3OH/H2O (60:40 v/v) (aqueous methanol), the C1 demonstrate significant enhancement in the absorption at 250nm and 300nm with a color change from light yellow to brown which was visualized using naked-eye. Therefore, these properties make C1 as an effective candidate for on-site Cu2+ ions detection. The emission spectrum of C1 illustrated TURN-ON recognition of Cu2+ with a limit of detection (LOD) of 46nM. Furthermore, Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations were performed to better understand the interactions between C1 and Cu2+. The obtained results suggested that the electron clouds present around the NH2 innitrogen and sulfur in SH play a pivotal role in the formation of a stable complex. The computational results were in good agreement with the experimental UVvisible spectrometry results. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.] 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to The Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry. -
Valorization of pineapple peel waste for fungal pigment production using Talaromyces albobiverticillius: Insights into antibacterial, antioxidant and textile dyeing properties
The present study explores natural pigments as sustainable alternatives to synthetic textile dyes. Due to their therapeutic applications and easy production, fungal pigments have gained attention. However, data on pigment production using solid-state fermentation and optimization is limited. Milk whey was used to grow Talaromyces sp., followed by an evaluation of pigment production in solid and liquid media. Pineapple peels were used as a cost-effective substrate for pigment production, and a one-factor-at-a-time approach was used to enhance pigment production. Pineapple peel-based media produced 0.523 0.231 mg/g of pigment after eight days of incubation. The crude pigment had promising antibacterial and significant antioxidant properties. The extraction fungal pigment's possible use as an eco-friendly textile dye was assessed through fabric dyeing experiments with different mordants. This work contributes to the valorization of agricultural waste and provides insight into using fungal pigments as sustainable alternatives to synthetic textile dyes. 2023 Elsevier Inc. -
Study of Surface Waves Transmission in Orthotropic Bilateral Structure
This research work depicts the study of transmission of surface Rayleigh elastic waves in orthotropic layer having corrugated boundary resting over a pre-stressed orthotropic substrate. As a result, this study is made to spot the Rayleigh elastic wave transference under the consequence of initial stress in orthotropic material medium. Consequence of corrugation parameter, layer width parameter, initial stress parameter and density parameter on Rayleigh elastic wave propagation are marked separately. Distinguished parametric graphs are drawn following numerically the analytical study to exhibit the influence of distinct considered parameters on Rayleigh wave phase velocity of propagation. Frequency equations are obtained in closed determinant form under certain boundary conditions. Some particular cases have been deduced. Parametric results on the phase velocities yield a significant conclusion of which some are: (a) The corrugation parameter affects the more on phase velocity in comparison to initial stress (b) The orthotropic height stiffening can monotonically decrease the speed of phase. The present models may be applicable in engineering composites and for seismologist. 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature India Private Limited. -
PANI/Bi2O3 polymeric nanocomposite for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol
Nitro-aromatics pollute the aquatic environment and reach human beings via drinking water. 4-Nitrophenol (4-NP) is the most common pollutant among them and can be reduced to non-toxic 4-aminophenol in the presence of sodium borohydride (NaBH4). Polyaniline/bismuth oxide (PANI/Bi2O3) nanocomposite is synthesized from aniline and Bi2O3 by chemical oxidative polymerization. The composition and structural properties of PANI/Bi2O3 composite are identified by various characterization methods like X-ray powder diffraction, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis , and zeta potential analysis. The synthesized PANI/Bi2O3 shows high catalytic efficiency towards the reduction of 4-NP in the presence of NaBH4 under optimized reaction conditions. The numerous active sites on the composite and the presence of PANI/Bi2O3 interface are the reasons for the reduction of 4-NP to 4-aminophenol. A complete degradation is achieved in 15min with 0.1g of the composite. This nanocomposite shows good stability for five cycles without losing efficiency. PANI/Bi2O3 possesses a high reduction capacity and can be used to reduce other nitro organic pollutants in water. The aim of the study is to study the effective catalytic reduction of 4-NP using PANI/Bi2O3. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.] 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. -
A Novel Survey for Young Substellar Objects with the W-band Filter. VI. Spectroscopic Census of Substellar Members and the IMF of the ? Orionis Cluster
Low-mass stars and substellar objects are essential in tracing the initial mass function (IMF). We study the nearby young ? Orionis cluster (d ? 408 pc, age ? 1.8 Myr) using deep near-infrared (NIR) photometric data in the J, W, and H bands from WIRCam on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. We use the water absorption feature to select brown dwarfs photometrically and confirm their nature spectroscopically with IRTF-SpeX. Additionally we select candidate low-mass stars for spectroscopy and analyze their membership and those of literature sources using astrometry from Gaia DR3. We obtain NIR spectra for 28 very-low-mass stars and brown dwarfs and estimate their spectral type between M3 and M8.5 (masses ranging between 0.3 and 0.01 M ?). Apart from these, we also identify five new planetary-mass candidates which require further spectroscopic confirmation of youth. We compile a comprehensive catalog of 170 spectroscopically confirmed members in the central region of the cluster, for a wide mass range of ?19-0.004 M ?. We estimate the star-to-brown-dwarf ratio to be ?4, within the range reported for other nearby star-forming regions. With the updated catalog of members we trace the IMF down to 4 M Jup and we find that a two-segment power law fits the substellar IMF better than a log-normal distribution. 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.