Archives-J 

The present study empirically investigates the risk and return relationship by loading the macroeconomic information in standard CAPM in addition to market information. One hundred financial and non financial companies listed on Karachi Stock Exchange are investigated over a period of January 2005 to August 2011. Monthly data is used for the company asset prices, market portfolio and macroeconomic variables in this study. The macroeconomic variables are used as additional risk forces in the model. The study makes use of CAPM with unconditional and conditional specification for the prediction of future asset prices. The time varying conditional information and lagged macroeconomic variables are added in the model. The GARCH (1, 1) – M technique is applied to capture the conditional volatility clustering of asset returns. The findings of the current study reveals that conditional multifactor CAPM have better results than unconditional multifactor CAPM model. The residuals and conditional variances have significantly positive impact and are helpful in explaining time varying behaviour of asset returns. The macroeconomic variables such as oil prices, foreign exchange rate, foreign exchange reserves, inflation rate, interest rate, and money supply play significant role while industrial production index, unemployment rate, and market returns have inconclusive role in this study. The study concludes that macroeconomic risk factors play a prominent role in explaining stock returns.

The quality of employees hired depends on an effective recruitment and selection strategy. Recruitment and selection are critical human resource functions for businesses. Recruiting the right type of employees having the organizational fit remain a big challenge to the employers who want to achieve guaranteed success in their business operations. Hiring the right employees for the business can positively affect the turnover rate, company culture, production and profit. HR departments have become strategic entities in their functioning since these have to recruit the best resources, involve them fully in organizational productivity and plan for their value addition in order to ensure retention. This study was conducted to know the recruitment process followed by organizations and challenges faced by the HR recruiters while recruiting and selecting the candidates. The recruitment and selection issues that are prevalent today are not unique to any organization and research has shown that the issues are almost identical. Recruitment should be based on qualification, merit and experience. High unemployment doesn’t necessarily mean that it is easy to find good candidates. Centralized recruitment is advantageous. Line and staff co-operation is essential with regard to recruitment and selection. A fake resume affects the recruitment process badly and affects the efficiency and credibility of the company.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare the watercourse land use of pasture, rainfed and abandoned rainfed which conducted in Bab Karafs watershed (Sarduyeh) in Jiroft County using the artificial rainfall simulator device. In this study three land uses with constant soil type and lithology have been considered and also, rainfall intensities have been created by using rainfall simulator device and in two intensities of 46 mm/hour and 88 mm/hour, and as well as considering the slopes of 5 percent and 15 percent, according to the three repeats in 36 stages of sampling. Also, from adjacent parts of the rainfall simulator device and from 0-20 cm depth of soil, the soil samples were taken for analysis in a soil laboratory. The results showed that the land use changes indicate dramatic impacts on watercourse and erosion amounts in different slopes; so that the maximum amount of watercourse is carried out in the abandoned rainfed use and slope of 15%. The minimum amount of watercourse is carried out in the rainfed use and slope of 5%.

This paper investigates a two multi-component unit parallel system model with imperfect detection and common cause failure. A single repair facility is always available with the system but whenever a regular detector fails in detection of the failure cause, then the unit goes for replacement for which a single replacement facility is always available. Using regenerative point technique various measure of system effectiveness are obtained. The behaviour of MTSF and profit function have been studied in a particular case.

Well-ordered SAMs using adipic acid were formed on the oxide of iron carbon steel surface by immersion method. This leads to ordered, robust monolayers bound to the surface in a tetradentate manner. Monolayer formation takes place when carbon steel is immersed in an aqueous solution containing 60ppm of Cl– and 100ppm of adipic acid for 5 minutes, and rinsing the physisorbed molecules in distilled water and heating in a hot air oven. The adipic acid monolayers on iron oxide steel carbon can withstand rinsing with water, concentrated acid and base exposure. Additionally, these monolayers are stable over the course of at least one week. The formations of monolayers were confirmed by AFM study and FTIR spectra. The SAMs were tested by polarization and EIS electrochemical analysis. The results of this study show that adipic acid monolayers adsorbed on metal surface can reduce electrochemical activity on the surface, often the first step in corrosion.

The growing importance of quality software systems has brought about increasing demand for efficient software testing. Traditionally, there is a typical approach for testing the software manually, which consumes a lot of time and effort. Hence there is a need to decrease the amount of resources needed and to increase the efficiency and throughput. One attractive solution to this problem is test automation, i.e. allocating certain testing tasks to computers. This thesis opens up the discussion on test automation framework made by us. Here we have used Selenium Web driver, Java, HTML and other necessary languages and packages for implementing the framework. The framework uses the Driver Script and allows to automatically fetch data from the spreadsheets and uses them in testing the web application automatically and also generating report automatically for the same.

Piezoelectric materials offer a promising approach to reduce our dependence on conventional source of electricity. Crowd Farming can be a useful technique to extract power from piezoelectric materials. In our work, calculation have been made based on piezoelectric flooring system in crowded area, as the source of pressure is the footsteps of the crowd. Further from the literature study on piezoelectricity, one footstep can provide electrical energy to light two 60-watt bulbs for one second and the effect of large number of people on piezoelectric floor can generate electricity of substantial quantity.

This study seeks to explore the factors determining the capital structure of banking sector of Pakistan. A panel data set of 26 banks for the period of 2007 to 2011 was selected to fulfill the objective of this study. The findings of two econometric techniques of panel data i.e. fixed effects and random effects models reveal that size, tangibility, profitability, growth opportunities and liquidity are the significant determinants of capital structure. The size and liquidity of the banks in the sample have direct impact on leverage, whereas, tangibility, profitability and growth opportunities have a negative association with leverage. These outcomes are in line with corporate finance theories such as Trade-Off Theory, Agency Cost Theory and Pecking Order Theory. This study certifies that banking sector has determinants similar to non-financial sector, so, this study will help financial analysts and managers in understanding the dynamics and underlying premises on capital structure of banking sector of Pakistan.

Fillers added to the matrix material help to enhance the properties of a composite. The present research investigation has aimed to the electrical study on synthesized alumina fibre reinforced epoxy composites at room temperature with different concentration of alumina fibre along with different frequencies. Decrease in dielectric constant and dielectric loss is found on increasing the frequency. Increase in ac conductivity has been found on increasing the frequency as well as concentration of filler. The resultant samples were prepared by hand lay technique. Cluster of alumina fibre is found on the surface of epoxy composite when examined by Scanning electron microscopy.

We are very happy to announce that from 13th September 2016, Dr. Mohammed Mustafa has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He/She will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Dental Sciences. Dr. Mohammed Mustafa working as Assistant Professor & Head of Endodontic Division, Department of Conservative Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, Prince Sattam bin AbdulAziz University, AlKharj. The appointment of Dr. Mohammed Mustafa as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal.