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The purpose of this paper is to build a neural network (NN) inverse model for the multi-band unequal-power Wilkinson power divider (WPD). Because closed-form expressions of the inverse input–output relationship do not exist, the NN becomes an appropriate choice, because it can be trained to learn from the data in inverse modeling. The design parameters of WPD are the characteristic impedances, lengths of the transmission line sections and the isolation resistors. The design equations used to train the NN inverse model are based on the even–odd mode analysis.

An inverse model of a multi-band unequal WPD using NNs is presented. In inverse modeling of a microwave component, the inputs to the model are the required electrical parameters such as reflection coefficients, and the outputs of the model are the geometrical or the physical parameters.

For verification purposes, a quad-band WPD and a penta-band WPD are designed. The results of the full-wave simulations verify the validity of the design procedure. The resulting NN model outperforms traditional time-consuming optimization procedures in terms of computation time with acceptable accuracy. The designed WPDs using NN are implemented by microstrip lines and verified by using full-wave analysis based on high-frequency structure simulator (HFSS). The results of the microstrip WPDs have good agreements with the corresponding results obtained by using ideal transmission line sections.

The associated time-consuming procedure and computational burden in realizing WPD through optimization are major disadvantages; needless to mention the substantial increase in optimization time because of the multi-band design. NNs are one of the best candidates in addressing the abovementioned challenges, owing to their ability to process the interrelation between electrical and geometrical/physical characteristics of the WPD in a superfast manner.

The purpose of the paper is to showcase the significant achievements of Egypt's scientists in the 20th century across various fields of study such as medicine, physics, chemistry, biology, math, geology, astronomy and engineering. The paper highlights the struggles and successes of these scientists, as well as the cultural, social and political factors that influenced their lives and work. The aim is to inspire young people to pursue careers in science and make their own contributions to society by presenting these scientists as role models for hard work and dedication. Ultimately, the paper seeks to promote the importance of science and its impact on society.

The purpose of this review is to present the scientific biographies of Egypt's most distinguished scientists, primarily in the field of Natural Sciences, in a balanced and comprehensive manner. The work is objective, honest and abstract, avoiding any bias or exaggeration. The author provides a clear and concise methodology, including a brief introduction to the scientist and their field of study, an explanation of their major contributions, the impact of their work on society, any challenges or obstacles faced during their career and their lasting legacy. The aim is to showcase the important achievements of these scientists, their impact on their respective fields and to inspire future generations to pursue scientific careers.

The group of outstanding scientists in 20th century Egypt were shaped by various factors, including familial upbringing, education, society, political and cultural atmosphere and state support for scientific research. These scientists made significant contributions to various academic disciplines, including medicine, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and engineering. Their impact on their communities and cultures has received international acclaim, making them role models for future generations of scientists and researchers. The history of these scientists highlights the importance of educational investments and supporting scientific research to foster innovation and social progress. The encyclopedia serves as a useful tool for students, instructors and education professionals, preserving Egypt's scientific heritage and honouring the scientists' outstanding accomplishments.

The encyclopedia preserves Egypt's scientific heritage, which has been overlooked for political or other reasons. It is a useful tool for a variety of readers, including students, instructors and education professionals, and it offers insights into universally relevant scientific success factors as well as scientific research methodologies. The encyclopedia honours the outstanding scientific accomplishments of Egyptian researchers and their contributions to the world's scientific community.

The practical implications of this paper are several. First, it highlights the importance of education, family upbringing and societal support for scientific research in fostering innovation and social progress. Second, it underscores the need for continued funding and support for scientific research to maintain and build upon the accomplishments of past generations of scientists. Third, it encourages young people to pursue scientific careers and make their own contributions to society. Fourth, it preserves the scientific heritage of Egypt and honors the contributions of its outstanding scientists. Finally, it serves as a useful tool for students, instructors and education professionals seeking to understand the factors underlying scientific success and research methodologies.

The social implications of the paper include promoting national pride and cultural identity, raising awareness of the importance of education and scientific research in driving social progress, inspiring future generations of scientists and researchers, reducing socioeconomic disparities and emphasizing the role of society, politics and culture in shaping scientific researchers' personalities and interests.

The paper's originality/value lies in its comprehensive documentation of the scientific biographies of Egypt's most prominent scientists in the 20th century, providing unique insights into the factors that contributed to their development and their impact across various academic disciplines. It preserves Egypt's scientific heritage and inspires future generations of scientists and researchers through the promotion of educational investments and scientific research. The encyclopedia serves as a useful tool for education professionals seeking to understand scientific success factors and research methodologies, emphasizing the importance of supportive and inclusive environments for scientific development.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of corporate governance proxies by ownership structure on the likelihood of firms’ financial distress for a sample of 146 Pakistani public-limited companies listed at the Karachi Stock Exchange over the period of 2003-2012.

The dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator and panel logistic regression (PLR) are used to determine the impact of corporate governance on the financial distress. The ownership structure is used as a determinant of corporate governance, while the Altman Z-score is utilized as an indicator of financial distress, as it measures financial distress inversely. The smaller the values of the Z-score, the higher will be the risk of financial distress.

The authors find insignificant impact of ownership structure on firms’ likelihood of financial distress based on the dynamic GMM method. However, the PLR results indicate that foreign shareholdings have a significant negative association with firms’ likelihood of financial distress, in the case of Pakistan. An evidence of a negative and insignificant relationship between institutional ownership and financial distress was observed, which indicates the passive role of institutional investors in Pakistan. The results also reveal a positive and significant relationship between insider’s ownership and likelihood of financial distress. This finding is consistent with the entrenchment hypothesis which predicts that insiders are more aligned with their self-interest than outside shareholders’ interest when their shareholding increases in the business. Furthermore, the results also reveal insignificant association between government shareholdings and the probability of financial distress. The reason could be the social welfare objective of the government entities rather than profit maximization.

The findings of this study provide more insight to corporate managers and investors about the association between the quality of corporate governance and the degree of financial distress, with respect to Pakistani firms. Furthermore, this study contributes to the existing literature by adding new evidence from developing countries like Pakistan which are helpful for regulatory bodies and policymakers in the formulation of long-term corporate governance strategies to manage the financial distress. It is well established that strengthening the quality of corporate governance practices enhances the efficiency of capital markets and reduces the probability of financial distress.

The study extends the body of existing literature on corporate governance and the likelihood of financial distress with reference to Pakistan. The results suggest that policymakers may pay special attention to the quality of corporate governance, specifically ownership structure, while predicting corporate financial distress.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between microfinance institutions (MFIs) governance and performance.

Using a sample of 215 MFIs from six South Asian countries over the period from 2005 to 2009, the authors examine the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) duality, board size, female CEO, urban market coverage, bank regulation and lending type on financial and social performance of MFIs.

The findings provide evidence that, on the one hand, empowered CEO, large board size and individual lending improve the MFI financial performance and, on another hand, bank regulation and serving in the urban market have a significant association with MFIs’ social performance. In an additional analysis, the authors also test this relationship before, during and after the financial crisis of 2007. During crisis period, MFIs’ individual lending reduces the operational cost and bank regulation increases the average loan size in South Asian MFIs.

Those studies that are presented in the literature review conclude their result on the bases of global, European, East African and specific to some countries sample. There is no study presented in the whole literature on South Asian sample, in which all countries really face the problem of poverty.

This study aims to examine the signalling hypothesis of dividends by testing empirically the market reaction to dividends announcements. Furthermore, this study aims to examine the information content of dividends announcements with respect to future earnings changes for a sample of Jordanian industrial firms over the period 2009 to 2015.

The authors mainly used the event study methodology to examine the market reaction to dividend release announcements. The market model is used to generate the expected returns. Also, the t-test is used to examine the significance of the mean and cumulative abnormal return. Furthermore, a simultaneous-equation model developed by Nissim and Ziv (2001) and Grullon et al. (2005), applying the two-stage least squares (2SLS), is used to examine the relationship between dividends changes and future earnings changes.

The results reveal consistency with the limited extant empirical evidence for developing markets and provide some new insights for Jordanian listed firms that support the signalling hypothesis. In applying the event study methodology, the information content of dividends shows that there is a significant positive market reaction to dividends announcements. The study’s findings also present a strong relationship between dividends announcements and profitability in the year of announcements and the subsequent year, whereas this relationship does not exist in the second year. The findings show that there is value-relevance for dividends, suggest that investors recognize the signalling purpose and discern that dividends announcements are useful in predicting favourable and unfavourable future earnings in the short run (the same year and subsequent year) and also show that managers may use dividends to signal earnings prospects in anticipation of expected future market benefits.

The findings of this study could have significant policy implications. The support of a signalling effect implies an existence of information symmetry, at least theoretically, between management and investors. On the other side, this study could not reflect the levels of inside ownership or the existence of signalling substitutes even though these findings could have implications for Jordan’s existing corporate governance practices and firms’ disclosure environment. The results are specific to Jordan, but they do shed light on the generality of the rival models of dividend policy. Many of the structural characteristics of the capital market in Jordan are, however, also present in other emerging markets. The results from this study may, therefore, help provide the basis for comparative research both in the region and in other emerging markets.

The support of the signalling effect implies the existence of information symmetries, at least theoretically, between management and investors. These findings could have implications for Jordan’s existing corporate governance practices and firms’ disclosure environment.

This paper contributes to the literature by providing a workable test for the dividend signalling hypothesis, applying a simultaneous-equation model that incorporates the market reaction to dividends announcements and future earnings changes. Moreover, this paper uses a recent data set of dividends announcements in Jordan. This study provides additional insight to support the signalling hypothesis in emerging markets. Overall, current and previous studies have focused typically on investigating dividend policy in developed markets, especially the US and European markets, although there has been limited analysis of dividends changes on earnings changes for developing markets.

The purpose of this study is to examine if the cash flow and short-term accruals and long-term accruals together have a role to play in explaining the change in dividends.

The authors’ mainly used the same models developed by Atieh and Hussain (2008) and expanded on this model by including contextual factors: firm growth, firm size, gearing and quality of earnings. Using 344 observations from Jordanian firms, the association of variables with dividend changes was analyzed using the generalized least square regression.

The results reveal consistency with previous studies that disaggregated earnings outperforms the cash flow model in explaining the changes in dividends. Also, the explanatory power of the Lintner (1956) model is improved by replacing earnings with cash flow and short-term and long-term accruals, which is in line with previous studies. Regarding the effect of contextual factors, the superiority of the accrual model is affected by the contextual factors proposed, except for geared firms. The accrual model is superior for high growth, large firms and poor quality of earnings.

The paper contributes to the existing literature that the Lintner (1956) model’s explanatory power can be improved by replacing earnings with its components mainly cash flows and short-term and long-term accruals. These results support the evidence related to developed markets. The paper also provides evidence of the importance of firm characteristics on the information content of the components of earnings.

The article aims to rely on the global wealth chains theory to study the effect of tax amnesty on anti-money laundering (AML) in Bangladesh. This theory is an analytical framework intended to identify how wealth is repackaged and disguised to move it out of spheres of state oversight, regulation and taxation. It introduces the law on AML in Bangladesh, pointing out the revised Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendation that has expanded the scope of money laundering predicate offences to cover both indirect and direct tax crimes and smuggling in relation to customs and excise duties and taxes.

Interviews in Bangladesh and desk research.

There are some gaps in the scope of the offence, the coverage of predicate offences and the types of property covered by the money laundering offence. There is also an absence of financial penalties available to effectively sanction legal persons. The current money laundering offences are derived from the ordinance issued in 2008 by the caretaker government (2006-2008). The current act contains detailed definitions of money laundering and property and a list of predicate offences and sanctions for the offence. However, there are some gaps in the physical elements of the offence, and the range of its predicate offences remains too narrow. Adding tax evasion to its list of predicate offences will, given the history of money laundering in Bangladesh, aid in combating illegal transfer of assets abroad and recovery of the same and abolish tax amnesty.

There is no paper that has analysed the linkages between money laundering and taxation in developing countries, especially Bangladesh.

This study seeks to deepen the understanding of the political process underlying the establishment and evolution of corporate governance (CG) regulations in a developing country.

Drawing on regulatory space concept (Hancher and Moran, 1989) and Oliver's (1991) typology of strategic responses, the authors identify which actor participated in and benefitted from the establishment of a new transnational CG regulation in Pakistan. Data were collected through interviews and from the published secondary sources.

The findings highlighted regulations are being influenced and shaped up by the political process of negotiation, bargaining, manipulation and domination between powerful and resourceful actors in a given regulatory space. National regulators and regulatees can be indeed fervent opponents to the transnational regulations when it comes to protecting their well-rooted national interests.

This study contributes to the accounting literature by illustrating political processes through which internationally recognised CG practices are resisted, negotiated and implemented in the developing countries. The regulator must pay attention that the outcome of the regulatory change process is the result of carefully crafted and conscious strategies of actors in the regulatory space.

This study aims to analyze the Prandtl fluid flow in the presence of better mass diffusion and heat conduction models. By taking into account a linearly bidirectional stretchable sheet, flow is produced. Heat generation effect, thermal radiation, variable thermal conductivity, variable diffusion coefficient and Cattaneo–Christov double diffusion models are used to evaluate thermal and concentration diffusions.

The governing partial differential equations (PDEs) have been made simpler using a boundary layer method. Strong nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) relate to appropriate non-dimensional similarity variables. The optimal homotopy analysis technique is used to develop solution.

Graphs analyze the impact of many relevant factors on temperature and concentration. The physical parameters, such as mass and heat transfer rates at the wall and surface drag coefficients, are also displayed and explained.

The reported work discusses the contribution of generalized flux models to note their impact on heat and mass transport.