Household empowerment as the key to eradicate poverty incidence

Muhammad Abrar ul haq,Mohd Razani Mohd Jali,Gazi Md Nural Islam 한국사회복지학회 2019 Asian Social Work and Policy Review Vol.13 No.1

The current study aimed to investigate how the household empowerment can potentially reduce the rural poverty incidence. The data were collected through multistage random sampling from the rural households of 24 villages in Southern Punjab, Pakistan. A total of 600 households were selected as sample pool. Face-to- face interviews with the household heads were conducted. The household empowerment was measured through an index that was adopted from Abrar-ul- haq (“An assessment of the role of household empowerment in alleviating poverty in Southern Punjab, Pakistan” (Ph.D. Dissertation), School of Economics, Finance and Banking, Universiti Utara Malaysia, 2017). The binary logit model was used to analyze the impact of household empowerment with other control variables on poverty incidence. The results of the current study confirm the negative nexus between household empowerment and poverty incidence of rural households as the study reported that the probabilities (odds ratio: 0.877) of being poor are reduced by increasing the empowerment (in every aspect, economically, politically, and socially) of the households, and the results are statistically significant at the 1% level of significance. Based on empirical results, this study suggests that household empowerment has significant potential to reduce poverty incidence in the rural areas of Southern Punjab, Pakistan

Public Policy in Early Childhood Education and Care

Abrar Hasan 육아정책연구소 2007 International Journal of Child Care and Education Vol.1 No.1

The paper has two main objectives. First, it presents an analytical framework for examining and developing policies for early childhood education and care (ECEC) in advanced industrialized countries. This framework highlights the link between the fundamental determinants of ECEC policy in terms of society’s view of childhood and their implications for the respective roles of the family and the state, on the one hand, and the relative importance accorded to education versus care, on the other. Second, the paper applies this analytical framework to the policy experience gathered from two rounds of the Thematic Review of ECEC Policy conducted by the OECD in 20 countries. Policy questions of what (types and quality of provision), for whom (access and participation trends), how (level of investment and governance mechanisms), and who pays are examined. The analysis is supplemented by data (mostly referring to 2005) drawn from the second round of the Review and published in Starting Strong II.

Can CSR Alone Sufficiently Alleviate Investment Inefficiency? An Evidence from China, Korea and Japan

Abrar Maira,Kook-Hyun Chang 한국재무학회 2019 財務硏究 Vol.32 No.3

This study investigates whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) alone sufficiently alleviates the problem of inefficient investment or not? This study considers firms registered on the Shanghai Exchange (China), Korean Exchange (South Korea)and Tokyo Exchange (Japan) for the period 2012 to 2016. Key findings are as follows. First, higher levels of CSR engagement have a positive role in alleviating investment inefficiency. Second, national culture plays a moderating role in the relationship between CSR and investment inefficiency for the entire sample. However, for China, national culture did not play any moderating role (weak culture). Korean national culture displays a partially moderating role (partially strong culture). Japan emerged as the strongest national culture because of the strong moderating role of its national culture. Third, information asymmetry has a mediating role between CSR and inefficient investment by solving the problem of underinvestment. Fourth, agency cost plays a mediating role between CSR engagement and inefficient investment by overcoming the problem of overinvestment. It concludes that CSR engagement alone is not sufficient for alleviating inefficient investment. However, the relationship between CSR and inefficient investment is explained more effectively, through the moderating effect of national culture and the mediating effect of information asymmetry and agency cost.

Prototyping a Quantum Clustering Algorithm for NISQ Computing

Abrar Ul Haque,Shehbaz Tariq,Haejoon Jung,Hyundong Shin 한국통신학회 2023 한국통신학회 학술대회논문집 Vol.2023 No.2

Information Technologies for Engineering Asset Management – Cultural and Technical Barriers

Abrar Haider 한국경영정보학회 2011 한국경영정보학회 학술대회논문집 Vol.2011 No.06

Incorporating Anti-Windup Gain in Improving Stability of Actuator Constrained Linear Multiple State Delays Systems

Abrar Ahmed,Muhammad Rehan,Naeem Iqbal 제어·로봇·시스템학회 2011 International Journal of Control, Automation, and Vol.9 No.4

This paper proposes the design of anti-windup compensator gain for improving stability of actuator input constrained linear multiple state delays systems. The system state delays are classified into mixed delay-dependent/delay-independent analysis and described by delay-differential equations. The real scalar delays are assumed to be fixed and unknown, but with known coefficient matrices. It is shown that the closed-loop system containing the controller plus the anti-windup gain can be modeled as a linear system with dead-zone nonlinearity. The formulation of anti-windup compensator gain is based on convex optimization using linear matrix inequalities (LMI) that ensure closed-loop asymp-totic stability of the system while accounting upper-bound delays. The devised LMIs based on Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals prove significantly less conservative in giving higher upper bounds delays in the formulation of anti-windup gain besides ensuring closed-loop asymptotic stability.

Land Tenure Reform and Its Implication for the Forest. Case Study from Oromia Regional State of Ethiopia

Abrar Juhar Mohammed,Makoto Inoue 강원대학교 산림과학연구소 2014 Journal of Forest Science Vol.30 No.4

With consideration of proximate and intricate relationships among rural livelihood, farm land and forestry; this paper examined impact of land tenure reform on local peoples’ forest dependency by taking Ethiopia as case study. The post 1975 major land tenure reform and associated activities such as land distribution and forest demarcation were found to be short of minimizing pressure on the forest as has been evidenced by percentage of new households established inside the forest and current level of dependency on the forest. With most of recently established households all making up the poor and very poor categories, together with overall of household composition which is dominated by dependent members coupled by current land tenure system that tie farmers with their land, future dependency on the already diminished forest seems to increase unabated. Reconsidering the existing land tenure system backed by policy for livelihood diversification, improvement in rural education and awareness on demographic issues can minimize future dependency on the forest.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON BLOCKCHAIN DATA MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS: BIGCHAINDB VS FALCONDB

Abrar Alotaibi,Sarah Alissa,Salahadin Mohammed International Journal of Computer ScienceNetwork S 2023 International journal of computer science and netw Vol.23 No.5

The widespread usage of blockchain technology in cryptocurrencies has led to the adoption of the blockchain concept in data storage management systems for secure and effective data storage and management. Several innovative studies have proposed solutions that integrate blockchain with distributed databases. In this article, we review current blockchain databases, then focus on two well-known blockchain databases-BigchainDB and FalconDB-to illustrate their architecture and design aspects in more detail. BigchainDB is a distributed database that integrates blockchain properties to enhance immutability and decentralization as well as a high transaction rate, low latency, and accurate queries. Its architecture consists of three layers: the transaction layer, consensus layer, and data model layer. FalconDB, on the other hand, is a shared database that allows multiple clients to collaborate on the database securely and efficiently, even if they have limited resources. It has two layers: the authentication layer and the consensus layer, which are used with client requests and results. Finally, a comparison is made between the two blockchain databases, revealing that they share some characteristics such as immutability, low latency, permission, horizontal scalability, decentralization, and the same consensus protocol. However, they vary in terms of database type, concurrency mechanism, replication model, cost, and the usage of smart contracts.

Can CSR Alone Sufficiently Alleviate Investment Inefficiency? An evidence from China, Korea and Japan.

Abrar Maira,Kook-Hyun Chang 한국재무학회 2019 한국재무학회 학술대회 Vol.2019 No.05

This study investigates whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) alone is enough to alleviate the problem of inefficient investment, or certain moderating or mediating factor loadings are required. The moderation effect of national culture and the mediation effect of information asymmetry and agency cost are analyzed. This study considered firms registered on the Shanghai Exchange (China), Korean Exchange (South Korea), and Tokyo Exchange (Japan) for the period 2012 to 2016. The findings of the study are as follows. First, higher levels of CSR engagement have a positive role in alleviating investment inefficiency. Second, national culture plays a moderating and influencing role in the relationship between CSR and investment inefficiency for the entire sample. However, in the context of China, national culture did not play any role in moderating the relationship between CSR and investment inefficiency (weak culture). Korean national culture displays a partially moderating role, in removing inefficient investment through CSR (partially strong culture). Japan emerged as having the strongest national culture because of the strong moderating role its national culture plays in the relationship between CSR and investment inefficiency. Third, information asymmetry has a mediating role between CSR and inefficient investment in terms of solving the problem of underinvestment for the entire sample as well as the samples for each country. Fourth, agency cost plays a mediating role between CSR engagement and inefficient investment by overcoming the problem of overinvestment for the entire sample as well as the samples for each country. It is concluded that CSR engagement alone is not sufficient for alleviating inefficient investment. However, the relationship between CSR and inefficient investment can be explained through the moderating effect of national culture and the mediating effect of information asymmetry and agency cost.

Behavior of composite structures orientations towards their failure and damage

Baluch, Abrar H,Kim, CG SAGE Publications 2015 Journal of composite materials Vol.49 No.29

<P>In this paper, carbon/epoxy composites were employed as a potential candidate for spacecraft structural shielding along with the new concept of geometric configurations according to the threat severity to maximize the impactor energy absorption to improve performance. Carbon/epoxy composites of quasi-isotropic 16 layers [0/ ± 45/90]<SUB>2s</SUB> were manufactured using an autoclave, and the specimens were exposed to a low Earth orbit environment, which produced an average total mass loss of 0.42%, mainly due to outgassing. Al2017-T4 spherical projectiles with a diameter of 5.56 mm weight of 0.25 g were used as the impactor in the velocity range of 1500 ± 500 m/s. Earlier experimentations showed the superiority of obliquity towards energy absorption for single bumpers. Double bumpers with one 45° obliquity at 100 mm standoff absorbed 14% more specific energy than double bumpers with one at 30°; both of them were found to be superior to normal–normal bumpers by 40% and 30% on average, respectively. By CSCAN, it was also found that oblique impact on the first bumper resulted in less damage on the rear bumper and resulted in the superiority of the proposed geometric configurations, which enabled enhanced protection and designs according to threat severity.</P>