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AA2014 is a copper-based alloy and is typically used for production of complex machined components, given its better machinability. The purpose of this paper was to study the effects of variation in weight percentage of ceramic Al₂O₃ particulates during electrical discharge machining (EDM) of stir cast AA2014 composites. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) examination was carried out to study characteristics of EDMed surface of Al₂O₃/AA2014 composites.

The effect of machining parameters on performance measures during sinker EDM of stir cast Al₂O₃/AA2014 composites was examined by “one factor at a time” (OFAT) method. The stir cast samples were obtained by using three levels of weight percentage of Al₂O₃ particulates, i.e. 0 Wt.%, 10 Wt.% and 20 Wt.% with density 1.87 g/cc, 2.35 g/cc and 2.98 g/cc respectively. Machining parameters varied were peak current (1-30 amp), discharge voltage (30-100 V), pulse on time (15-300 µs) and pulse off time (15-450 µs) to study their influence on material removal rate (MRR), tool wear rate (TWR) and surface roughness (SR).

MRR and SR decreased with an increase in weight percentage of ceramic Al₂O₃ particulates at the expense of TWR. This was attributed to increased microhardness for reinforced stir cast composites. However, microhardness of EDMed samples at fixed values of machining parameters, i.e. 9 amp current, 60 V voltage, 90 µs pulse off time and 90 µs pulse on time reduced by 58.34, 52.25 and 46.85 per cent for stir cast AA2014, 10 Wt.% Al₂O₃/AA2014 and 20 Wt.% Al₂O₃/AA2014, respectively. SEM and quantitative energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) analysis revealed ceramic Al₂O₃ particulate thermal spalling in 20 Wt.% Al₂O₃/AA2014 composite. This was because of increased particulate weight percentage leading to steep temperature gradients in between layers of base material and heat affected zone.

This work was an essential step to assess the machinability for material design of Al₂O₃ reinforced aluminium metal matrix composites (AMMCs). Experimental investigation on sinker EDM of high weight fraction of particulates in AA2014, i.e. 10 Wt.% Al₂O₃ and 20 Wt.% Al₂O₃, has not been reported in archival literature. The AMMCs were EDMed at variable peak currents, voltages, pulse on and pulse off times. The effects of process parameters on MRR, TWR and SR were analysed with comparisons made to show the effect of Al₂O₃ particulate contents.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of audit quality on the cost of capital in Ghana.

Non-financial firms listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) as well as non-listed firms from the database of Ghana Club 100 were included in the sample. Series are yearly, covering a sample of 40 firms during the six-year period, 2008-2013. The study employed the positivist research paradigm to establish the relationship between audit quality and the cost of capital.

There is evidence to suggest that the cost of debt and the overall cost of capital of firms in Ghana can be explained by the quality of the external auditors. The results also show that the large size of the board is associated with low cost of debt.

The fact that the choice of quality measure is based on firm size only and other measurements of audit quality could not be measured. Future research may examine how other approaches to measuring audit quality affect cost of capital.

The results significant for those charged with assurance and regulation, as well as lenders and managers of companies.

The authors investigate how external auditing quality affects the cost of capital of firms operating in Ghana.

India's engagement with Afghanistan readily became multi-dimensional after the defeat of the Taliban and the installation of an Interim Authority in 2001. This was reflected in an immediate upgradation of Indian representation in Afghanistan from Liaison Office to full-fledged Embassy in 2002. India actively participated in the Bonn Conference and was instrumental in the emergence of post-Taliban governing and political authority in Afghanistan. Since then, India's main focus has been to support the Afghan government and the political process in the country as mandated under the Bonn agreement of 2001. It has continued to pursue a policy of high-level engagement with Afghanistan through extensive and wide-ranging humanitarian, financial, and project assistance, and participation in international efforts aimed at political reconciliation and economic rebuilding of Afghanistan.

This paper aims to focus on the issue of high employee turnover in the Indian tech industry. An integrative review is conducted to analyse the past and current state of literature, as well as prepare a research agenda for future studies.

A pool of 72 articles published between 2010 and 2022 is reviewed with a special focus on Indian tech employees. This study elucidates the extent and impact of employee retention strategies through content analysis.

Two broad perspectives have been established in the literature: the reasons for quitting and the explanations for staying. By means of a comprehensive review, this paper combines these two aspects of literature and suggests factors under organization’s control to retain competent tech employees.

The study is designed to integrate the two theoretical viewpoints of employee turnover literature by consolidating the reasons behind quitting behaviour and staying intention. Codes combining the two aspects are presented as a valuable resource to retain tech talent.

This study aims to examine the effects of audit quality on earnings management and cost of equity capital (COE) considering the impact of two owner types: government ownership and foreign ownership.

The study uses a panel data set of 236 Vietnamese firms covering the period 2007 to 2017. Because the two main dependent variables of the COE capital and the absolute value of discretionary accruals receive fractional values between zero and one, the paper uses the generalised linear model (GLM) with a logit link and the binomial family in regression analyses. The paper uses numerous audit quality measures, including hiring Big 4 auditors or the industry-leading Big 4 auditor, changing from non-Big 4 auditors to Big 4 auditors or the industry-leading Big 4 auditor, and the length of Big 4 auditor tenure. Big 4 companies include KPMG, Deloitte, EY and PwC, whereas the non-big 4 are the other audit companies.

The study finds a negative relationship between audit quality and both the COE capital and income-increasing discretionary accruals. The effects of audit quality on discretionary accruals and the COE capital depend on the ownership levels of two important shareholders: the government and foreign investors. Foreign ownership is negatively associated with discretionary accruals; however, the effect is more pronounced in the sub-sample of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the firms where the government owns 50% or more equity, than in the sub-sample of Non-SOEs.

To the best of the knowledge, no prior similar study exists that used the GLM with a logit link and the binomial family regression. Global investors may be interested in understanding how unique institutional settings and capital markets of each country impact the financial reporting quality and cost of capital. Further, policymakers of developing markets may have incentives to improve the quality of financial reporting and reduce the cost of capital which should result in attracting more foreign investments.

Several industries including banking are booming because of COVID-19. However, it is still unknown whether this growth is momentary or permanent in nature. Hence, this study aims to identify the role of health-related concerns and trust as stimuli on M-payment loyalty.

Data were collected through Google Forms from 431 participants. Subjects were M-payment users. The hypothesized model was tested using structural equational modeling.

Results of the study indicate that perceived severity and trust act as stimuli for M-payment loyalty. Further, trust not only influences loyalty directly but also through intimacy. Additionally, no linear relationship was found between perceived usefulness and M-payment loyalty.

This work is an early attempt to consider health-related concerns and trust as stimuli to predict M-payment loyalty. Further, this study focused on three new constructs, namely perceived severity, perceived susceptibility and intimacy, that are underexplored in digital banking literature.

A long history of literature has considered the role of information risk in determining the cost of equity. The question that has remained unanswered is whether information risk plays any systematic role in determining the cost of equity. One of the fundamental decisions that every business needs to make is to assess where to invest its funds and to re-evaluate, at regular intervals, the quality of its existing investments. The cost of capital is the most important yardstick to evaluate such decisions. Greater information is associated with the lower cost of capital via mitigating transaction costs and/or reducing estimation risk and stock returns. This study aims to investigate the impact of information risk on the cost of equity and corporate stock returns.

The research sample consists of 960 firm-year observations for companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange from 2009 to 2018. The research hypotheses were tested using multivariate regression models based on panel data.

The results reveal that information risk has a significant positive impact on the firm’s cost of equity. However, the impact of information risk on stock returns is not statistically significant.

To the best of the knowledge, the current study is almost the first of its kind in the Iranian literature which investigates the subject matter; therefore, the findings of the study not only extend the extant theoretical literature concerning the information risk in developing countries including the emerging capital market of Iran but also help investors, capital market regulators and accounting standard setters to make timely decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to present the growth trends in IT industry after the period of globalization in 1990s and to investigate the short-run and long-run dynamics between IT software and service exports, globalization and economic growth in India.

Annual time series data on IT exports, net national product and openness index have been collected from National Association of Software and Service Companies, the Reserve Bank of India database on Indian economy and the World Bank for the present study. The methodology adopted for studying the first objective are growth trend models, descriptive statistics and graphs prepared on the basis of data from the IT sector. Growth trends in key performance variables, such as total output, export, domestic output and employment have been analyzed. In the case of second objective, vector auto regression model has been used based on variance decomposition and impulse response function to capture the short-run and long-run dynamics between IT exports, globalization and economic growth in India.

Results of the growth trend model show the relative growth performance of software services receipts shows its strong advancement compared to the other sub-components of current account of balance of payments of India. It is found that economic growth responds positively to the shocks in IT exports and openness of economy. Further, IT software and service exports and openness index contribute to economic growth more in the long-run rather than in the short run.

The IT software and service exports is dynamic field of economic activity amid heavy dependence on both domestic and external economic and political environment; hence, the rate of change is so rapid, and the relevance of factors may change over time.

The paper has implications for achieving sustainability in IT software and service exports growth. It is recommended that economic growth can be enhanced by implementing policies that not only improve the efficiency of the sector but also focus on optimization of the potential of the Indian IT industry.

This paper focuses on originality in delineating the growth trends and analysis of capturing the short-run and long-run dynamics between IT exports, globalization and economic growth in India.

This paper aims to present the methods of improving selectivity and sensitivity of resistance gas sensors.

This paper compares various methods of improving gas sensing by temperature modulation, UV irradiation or fluctuation-enhanced sensing. The authors analyze low-frequency resistance fluctuations in commercial Taguchi gas sensors and the recently developed tungsten trioxide (WO₃) gas-sensing layers, exhibiting a photo-catalytic effect.

The efficiency of using low-frequency fluctuations to improve gas detection selectivity and sensitivity was confirmed by numerous experimental studies in commercial and prototype gas sensors.

A more advanced measurement setup is required to record noise data but it will reduce the number of gas sensors necessary for identifying the investigated gas mixtures.

Fluctuation-enhanced sensing can reduce the energy consumption of gas detection systems and assures better detection results.

A thorough comparison of various gas sensing methods in resistance gas sensors is presented and supported by exemplary practical applications.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of personal relevance, source credibility and advertising appeal type on the emotional and cognitive processing of a direct to consumer pharmaceutical ad for a meningitis vaccine.

A 2 × 2 experiment was used, and path analysis was undertaken to test the hypotheses.

Resultant models indicated that unvaccinated (more at risk) and vaccinated (less at risk) participants are persuaded through different pathways. More specifically, vaccinated participants rely more on message credibility than creative strategy to form their cognitive evaluation of the message, whereas non-vaccinated subjects’ cognitive evaluations of the message depend on creative strategy (advertising appeal type) more than message credibility. Differences between individuals who were certain of the vaccine status and those who were not certain of their vaccine status were also apparent. Implications and areas for future research are also presented.

When using direct to consumer pharmaceutical ad for a vaccine, advertisers should take into account the perceived risk level of and relevance to audience members.

Personal relevance and risk are issues which impact the effectiveness of different types of advertising appeals, but less prior research has focused on this aspect of the target audience for direct to pharmaceutical vaccine advertisements.