Search results

This study aims to explore the opportunity offered through mobile learning (m-learning) to tourism education in the developing country context. To achieve this aim, the antecedent impact of self-efficacy and the moderator role of innovativeness on the attitude and intention to adopt m-learning have been investigated using the technology acceptance model (TAM).

A survey of 176 participants from three prominent tourism education institutes in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has been conducted. Partial least squares-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) has been used to analyze the data.

While the findings confirmed the antecedent effect of self-efficacy on the intention to adopt m-learning, the moderating effect of innovativeness was not found to be as significant for the attitude-intention link.

Data have been collected only from one country and from current tourism students. Future studies on several developing countries with different potential users would bring more in-depth insights.

Tourism education institutes need to focus on students’ self-efficacy to build a positive attitude and behavioral intention toward m-learning when launching mobile-based education services.

The study provides theoretical underpinnings enabling tourism educators to better understand tourism students’ behavioral intention to use m-learning, in particular in the developing country context. By applying TAM to tourism education to examine the effects of students’ self-efficacy and innovativeness, a better explanation of the adoption of m-learning in tourism education is provided.

The present paper aims to systematically investigate the influence of building orientations (0°, 15°, 30°, 45°, 60°, 75°) and heat treatment processes on the macro-/micro-structural, mechanical and electrochemical behaviors of selective laser melting (SLM) prepared AlSi10Mg alloy parts.

AlSi10Mg samples were produced by the SLM method using standard processing parameters at 0°, 15°, 30°, 45°, 60° and 75° building angles. The effects of building orientations on the physical, mechanical and electrochemical properties of the alloy were investigated.

With the increase in the building orientation from 15° to 75°, the structural defects were found reducing. The effect of step size of inclined geometries was found to significantly influence the mechanical and electrochemical properties of the AlSi10Mg samples. Tensile strength for samples fabricated at lower angles (0°, 15°, 30°) reported a drop of approximately 11% than SLM 0° samples. Moreover, the tensile strength was found to decrease from 412.35 ± 9.568 MPa for the as-built samples to 290.48 ± 12.658 MPa, whereas the fracture strain increases from 3.32 ± 0.56% to 5.6 ± 0.6% when the as-built sample was treated with T6 treatment. This study indicates that the microstructure and mechanical properties of SLM-processed AlSi10Mg alloy can be tailored by a suitable heat treatment or building angle.

Microstructural and mechanical behavior of horizontal or vertically built SLM components have already been demonstrated several times. However, the influence of different building orientations, such as 0°, 15°, 30°, 45°, 60°, 75°, has not been explored in-depth, particularly on corrosion and general mechanical performance. As a result, this work may be of significant relevance to academics and designers, given the varying orientation of internal component of SLM structures.

Teacher Education has been transforming throughout the world to cater to the emerging needs of quality education. Significant developments have taken place nationally and internationally in political, economic, and cultural fields, influencing education in general and teacher education in particular. The quality of education depends to a great extent on the quality of teachers. And, the quality of teachers depends on the way they are educated and trained. Pakistan has a vast education sector and a huge teaching force but teacher education in the country has not been keeping pace with modernization and development globally. Teacher education curricula, dissemination, evaluation and implementation revolved around traditional models for decades. However, there has been a growing realization to reform the teacher education system lately. The education policy (2009) of Pakistan indicates such realization on the part of the stakeholders. This chapter reports on an important teacher education reform program, which is based on collaboration between the government of Pakistan and the USAID. The Teacher Education Project (TEP), assisted by USAID, is a reform initiative that aimed at restructuring and modernizing teacher education in Pakistan. This chapter aims to provide insights into the objectives, importance and achievements of the project in terms of shaping the future direction of teacher education in Pakistan. It reports on the substantial structural and policy changes that took place in teacher education under the project. This chapter also highlights the possible challenges in the way of useful implementation and sustainability of this and similar education reform initiatives in Pakistan.

The present study aims to investigate the effect of finish machining and aging processes on the surface integrity of the selective laser melted (SLM) maraging steel samples and compared them with those obtained conventionally.

Finish machining and aging were applied on the SLM and wrought maraging samples to investigate and compare their microstructural and mechanical properties such as surface roughness, microhardness and wear resistance.

After applying aging and finish machining treatments, the surface roughness <1 µm, microhardness (542Hv) and wear resistance (COF 0.578) of SLM samples were similar to their wrought counterparts. Compared to finish machining, the effect of aging was more significant on the microhardness and the wear resistance, regardless of sample type.

The knowledge of post-processing is essential to enhance the functional performance of the SLM samples. Aging and finish machining were applied for the first time to evaluate the surface integrity of the SLM prepared maraging steel and compared it with the wrought samples.

The current investigation aims at observing the influence of the cooling channel on the thermal and residual stress behavior of the selective laser melting (SLM)316L uni-layer thermo-mechanical model.

On a thermo-mechanical model with a cooling channel, the effect of scanning direction, parallel and perpendicular and scan spacing was simulated. The effect of underlying solid and powder bases was evaluated on residual stress profile and thermal variables at various locations.

The high heat dissipation of solid base due to high cooling rates and steep thermal gradients can reciprocate with smaller melt pool temperature and melt pool size. Given the same scan spacing, residual stresses were found lower when laser scanning was perpendicular to the cooling channel. Moreover, large scan spacing was found to increase residual stresses.

Cooling channels are increasingly being used in additive manufacturing; however, their effect on the residual stress behavior of the SLM component is not extensively studied. This research can serve as a foundation for further inquiries into the impact of base material design such as cooling channels on manufactured components using SLM.

Continuous professional development is an essential in-service and on-going learning process that provides an opportunity to young and mid-career professionals to update and align their skills in connection with the contemporary needs of library users. This study aims to identify and synthesize the literature on continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities for Pakistani librarians and information professionals.

This study is based on descriptive literature review published by Pakistani researchers with specific reference to Pakistani librarians and information professionals.

The findings revealed that albeit many initiatives have been taken by library and information science (LIS) schools and professional associations for developing the capabilities of librarians and information professionals, however, these initiatives remained spasmodic and limited to developing surface-level skills. Some emerging areas need to be addressed including information/digital literacy, research data management, data analysis and visualization and the skills to establish institutional repositories.

The study was limited to CPD literature contributed by Pakistani researchers and the efforts taken by LIS schools and professional associations.

There is an immediate need to initiate a cohesive approach involving key stakeholders and to establish a platform purely working for CPD of librarians and information professionals focusing on current and future needs. The finding will be helpful for drawing foundation guidelines by library associations, LIS schools and librarian’s parent’s organizations regarding CPD opportunities.

In addition to quantitative analysis, the purpose of this paper is to measure the quality of articles published in foreign LIS journals by Pakistani authors based on their Impact Factor (IF) scores reported in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) of 2010; also to discuss the significance and implications of this study for the current and potential authors in Pakistan and other developing countries.

The data for this study were collected from two sets of sources: first, online sources of Google Scholar, LISA, LISTA, an online 50‐year cumulative index of Pakistani LIS literature, and web pages of several authors; and second, printed indexes and bibliographies. The data collected were manually entered into MS Excel for tabulation and created nine tables, which formed the basis of discussion in the paper.

The contribution of Pakistani authors to foreign LIS journals is reasonable in number and below average in quality, according to the JCR IF scores. The authorship patterns show that there is a shift from single‐authorship to collaborative authorship. The contribution of academics is several times higher than that of library practitioners. Likewise the non‐resident Pakistani authors' share in the global LIS literature is much larger as compared to their counterparts living in Pakistan.

This is the first study that evaluates the quality of Pakistani LIS literature using the more popular journal ranking method, JCR IF. The results of this study are expected to have a positive impact on Pakistani authors as they start preparing articles according to the quality requirements of JCR‐ranked journals in the future.

This study aims to evaluate the nature and extent of sustainability disclosure practices of publicly listed companies in India. Further, it investigates the impact of potential determinants on the sustainability disclosure of companies.

The study analyzes data of 75 top listed nonbanking companies operating in India included in NIFTY100 Index for the years 2014-2015 to 2018-2019. In the present study, environment, social and governance disclosure dimensions were considered to evaluate the sustainability reporting performance of companies using content analysis. Panel data analysis was conducted to investigate the impact of various factors on the extent of sustainability information disclosure.

Results indicate that environmentally polluting industries disclose significantly higher sustainability information than non-polluting industries in India. The empirical findings suggest that determinants such as company size, age, free cash flow capacity, government ownership and global reporting initiative (GRI) usage positively related to the extent of corporate sustainability disclosure. Contrary to the expectations, financial leverage and profitability were found to be negatively related to the sustainability disclosure of companies in India.

This study provides empirical evidence for regulators, practitioners and corporate strategists to assess the progress in the sustainability reporting landscape in India. The finding implies that large and established companies can reduce legitimacy costs through higher sustainability information disclosure. Interestingly, this premise did not hold in the case of high leveraged and profitable companies. Overall findings can also help policymakers to incorporate necessary reforms to improve sustainability reporting in India.

This study is one of the first studies to investigate the nature, extent and potential determinants of corporate sustainability disclosure in India. The paper adds to the existing literature on sustainability reporting by providing empirical evidence on the relationship between sustainability reporting and potential determinants such as government ownership, size, leverage, profitability, age, free cash flow capacity, industry and GRI usage.

The current study aims to use bioecological theory to examine the effects of different contextual factors such as husbands’ desire for children, visit by a family planning worker, media messages, and province level on women’s use of contraception in Pakistan. Two cross-sectional data sets were taken from the Pakistan Demographic and Health Surveys (PDHS), conducted in 2006–07 and 2012–13, which included 3,811 and 4,871 currently married, lower socioeconomic status (SES) women aged 15–49 years, respectively. Using logistic regression, the results showed that women’s perception of a husband’s desire for children and visit by family planning workers were significant predictors of women’s use of contraception in both periods (i.e. PDHS 2006–07 and PDHS, 2012–13). Specifically, those women who had a desire for children similar to their husband were more likely to use contraception than those who either were not sure about their husband’s desire for children or whose desire for children was less or more than their husband. Moreover, those women who had at least one visit from a family planning worker during the 12 months prior to the survey were more likely to use contraception than their counterparts.

The purpose of this research study is to extract and identify named entities from Hadith literature. Named entity recognition (NER) refers to the identification of the named entities in a computer readable text having an annotation of categorization tags for information extraction. NER is an active research area in information management and information retrieval systems. NER serves as a baseline for machines to understand the context of a given content and helps in knowledge extraction. Although NER is considered as a solved task in major languages such as English, in languages such as Urdu, NER is still a challenging task. Moreover, NER depends on the language and domain of study; thus, it is gaining the attention of researchers in different domains.

This paper proposes a knowledge extraction framework using finite-state transducers (FSTs) – KEFST – to extract the named entities. KEFST consists of five steps: content extraction, tokenization, part of speech tagging, multi-word detection and NER. An extensive empirical analysis using the data corpus of Urdu translation of Sahih Al-Bukhari, a widely known hadith book, reveals that the proposed method effectively recognizes the entities to obtain better results.

The significant performance in terms of f-measure, precision and recall validates that the proposed model outperforms the existing methods for NER in the relevant literature.

This research is novel in this regard that no previous work is proposed in the Urdu language to extract named entities using FSTs and no previous work is proposed for Urdu hadith data NER.