Commercial Context Research Articles

Impact of Skill Development Program for producing Women Entrepreneurs in Pakistan

A fundamental requirement for a competent and successful entrepreneur is knowledge and practice of entrepreneurial skills, particularly in the commercial context. This study investigates the impact of several entrepreneurial skill development programs in Pakistan, including the Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Human Resource Research Development Board (BBSHRRDB) and the National Vocational and Technical Training Commission (NAVTTC). The population of this study consists of 255 entrepreneurs. The broad objective of the study is to examine the impact ofthe Skill Development Program on producing Women Entrepreneurs in Pakistan. The sample size of this study is 280 female entrepreneurs. A systematic random sampling technique was used to analyse the data. Using Araoye’s (2004) sampling procedure, a sample of female business owners is selected for the study. The data were received by distributing a questionnaire to all respondents. For analysing the data, descriptive statistics were used, and the regression test was performed to test the hypotheses. It was determined that BBSHRRDB and NAVTTC have animpact on the development and performance of female entrepreneurs across all evaluated metrics. The study also concluded that social factors such as formal/ business networks, informal networks, and social acceptance have a significant impact on the success of women entrepreneurs in Pakistan.

Selection of Enzymatic Treatments for Upcycling Lentil Hulls into Ingredients Rich in Oligosaccharides and Free Phenolics

In this study, the comprehensive chemical characterization of red lentil hulls obtained from the industrial production of football and split lentils was described. The lentil hulls were rich in dietary fiber (78.43 g/100 g dry weight with an insoluble to soluble fiber ratio of 4:1) and polyphenols (49.3 mg GAE/g dry weight, of which 55% was bound phenolics), which revealed the suitability of this lentil by-product as a source of bioactive compounds with recognized antioxidant and prebiotic properties. The release of oligosaccharides and phenolic compounds was accomplished by enzymatic hydrolysis, microwave treatment and a combination of both technologies. The key role played by the selection of a suitable enzymatic preparation was highlighted to maximize the yield of bioactive compounds and the functional properties of the lentil hull hydrolysates. Out of seven commercial preparations, the one with the most potential for use in a commercial context was Pectinex® Ultra Tropical, which produced the highest yields of oligosaccharides (14 g/100 g lentil hull weight) and free phenolics (45.5 mg GAE/100 g lentil hull weight) and delivered a four-fold increase in terms of the original antioxidant activity. Finally, this enzyme was selected to analyze the effect of a microwave-assisted extraction pretreatment on the yield of enzymatic hydrolysis and the content of free phenolic compounds and oligosaccharides. The integrated microwave and enzymatic hydrolysis method, although it increased the solubilization yield of the lentil hulls (from 25% to 34%), it slightly decreased the content of oligosaccharides and proanthocyanidins and reduced the antioxidant activity. Therefore, the enzymatic hydrolysis treatment alone was more suitable for producing a lentil hull hydrolysate enriched in potential prebiotics and antioxidant compounds.

Insect rearing on biowaste represents a competitive advantage for fish farming

AbstractFeeding cost is among the main drivers in the price competitiveness of intensively‐fed‐aquaculture (IFA) products. As soaring energy prices increase the costs of technologies used to increase the digestibility of plant protein feeds, there is an urgent call for comprehensive knowledge on the mass use of insects as fish feed. This review identifies the key aspects of insect incorporation into established IFA practices and puts them into a commercial context. Larvae of Black soldier fly (BSFL) is identified as the most versatile in terms of (a) variety of biowaste usable for its rearing, (b) automatization and scaling up, (c) nutritional value and (d) circular and environmental aspects. Furthermore, modifications insect diets can increase the levels of valuable compounds such as omega‐3 fatty acids in fish. Other insects such as ants or mealworms have the potential to meet the nutritional requirements of various fish species. While today the production costs of BSFL (mostly around 3.5 € kg−1) are mostly determined by labour costs, it is predicted that intensified industrialization of insect rearing could reduce the production cost below 2 € kg−1. In addition, multiple positive economic impacts, as well as environmental spillovers, have been identified. It is proposed that further research should be directed towards the refining and further valorization of byproducts from insect farming which could further dissolve the rearing cost. Bringing the IFA into compliance with the principles of the circular economy increases its competitiveness by reducing production costs and improving public opinion.

Hey Siri: Exploring the Effect of Voice Humanity on Virtual Assistant Acceptance

This work in progress presents a proposed model to measure the acceptance of the use of voiced virtual assistants in commercial contexts. The use of these devices has increased after their implementation in smartphones and with the arrival of smart speakers in any household appliance. We propose the present model emphasizing the anthropomorphic aspect of the assistant to know if it has an emphasis on its acceptance. Unlike other models of acceptance, the contribution of the work is the inclusion of anthropomorphic variables such as human presence and human like voice. The work focuses on the virtual assistant Siri.

Hey Siri: Exploring the Effect of Voice Humanity on Virtual Assistant Acceptance

This work in progress presents a proposed model to measure the acceptance of the use of voiced virtual assistants in commercial contexts. The use of these devices has increased after their implementation in smartphones and with the arrival of smart speakers in any household appliance. We propose the present model emphasizing the anthropomorphic aspect of the assistant to know if it has an emphasis on its acceptance. Unlike other models of acceptance, the contribution of the work is the inclusion of anthropomorphic variables such as human presence and human like voice. The work focuses on the virtual assistant Siri.

Distinguishing Discourses

A key feature of the Enlightenment is the development of a discourse on commerce and economy entangled in larger discussions around politics, morality, and progress. Importantly, this debate was not formalised in the way it may be seen today. Instead, it was an emerging subject incorporating diverse and contested ideas. The objective of this case study, then, is to use various methods to identify the boundaries of these emerging economic, political, and moral disquisitions in a data-driven way, using a unified version of the metadata (e.g. publisher, publication year, format of the print product) of the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) and full texts of the Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO). We approach the task iteratively, first making a separation between broadly defined economic documents and other eighteenth century documents by modeling the features which separate samples from two collections of historical economic texts from the wider ECCO data. Then, based on the previous step, we distinguish works similar to Hume’s Political Discourses (a text at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment) from other branches of commercial and economic discourse, and analyse this set of works in more detail. We also experiment on how a purely unsupervised approach – a contextualized topic model using BERT encodings – groups our set of economic texts. Previous historical scholarship has taken the perspective that we ought to identify language use from large corpora of text. The aim has been to contextually understand language from the perspective of a particular group of historical actors or, as is the case with conceptual historians, detect contested and changing concepts. Our approach is different in that we closely link language use to the material and historical circumstances of the individual texts within which these uses can be found. Essentially, we combine computation and social network analysis with the study of changing concepts and word uses over time, taking individual editions rather than language abstracted from them as the basic object of study. This approach allows us to identify additional contextually relevant works by both their linguistic features, and the material and network history of their production. Jointly, the combination of iterative data-driven discourse detection and the focus on manifested editions allows us not only to extract a significant proportion of the debates forming the Scottish Enlightenment in a data-driven manner, but to link them to the social networks and commercial context in which they were produced and in which they evolved. Thus, this approach allows us to evaluate the existence, scope, and contexts of historical discourses (in this case, economic discourse) in the eighteenth century in a way which is both computationally state-of-the-art and relevant to historical practices and interests. It also demonstrates how data-driven analysis and the traditional hermeneutic approach can be combined to study meanings and their changes over time.

Assessment of crop traits retrieved from airborne hyperspectral and thermal remote sensing imagery to predict wheat grain protein content

Wheat (Triticum spp.) is among the world’s most widely grown crops and receives large quantities of nitrogen (N) fertiliser. Grain protein content (GPC) is influenced by genetic, agronomic and weather conditions affecting crops’ physiological status and stress levels; accurate GPC prediction has potential to reduce N losses and improve profit. Success in GPC estimation from remotely sensed plant traits has been limited. For progress to be made, it is necessary to robustly identify imaging spectroscopy-based physiological traits most closely associated with GPC in both experimental and commercial contexts. We present results from piloted hyperspectral flights and ground campaigns at two dryland field experiments with divergent water supply and wide-ranging N treatments, and from two years’ flights over 17 commercial fields planted to either bread (T. aestivum) or durum (T. durum) wheat, in the southern Australian wheat belt. Imagery was acquired with airborne hyperspectral and thermal sensors, with spatial resolutions of approx. 0.3 m and 0.5 m for experimental plots and 1 m/1.7 m in commercial fields. Leaf clip measurements, leaf and grain samples were collected and, in commercial fields, ∼40,000 records obtained from harvester-mounted protein monitors. Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI), solar-induced fluorescence (SIF), reflectance indices and PRO4SAIL radiative transfer model inverted parameters were retrieved for each plot and GPC record location. The photochemical reflectance index (PRI) related to xanthophyll pigments was consistently associated with GPC at both leaf and canopy scale in the plots and transect. In the commercial crops, a gradient boosted machine learning algorithm (GBM) ranked CWSI as the strongest indicator of GPC under severe water stress, while SIF, PRI and inverted biochemical constituents anthocyanins and carotenoids were consistently important under more benign conditions. Structural parameters inverted from the hyperspectral reflectance imagery were not prominent except under severe drought. We attained statistically significant results estimating GPC in unseen samples, with best relationships between predicted and observed GPC of r2 = 0.80 in a model built with thermal and physiological traits obtained from the hyperspectral and thermal imagery.

Artistic properties of natural materials in object design: imitation and interpretation

The purpose of the article is to study the artistic properties of natural materials in modern object design. The focus is on the problems of using the artistic properties of natural materials, as well as their interpretation in morphology and aesthetics.
 An important element of this interaction is the use of natural materials in design, which today is a current trend not only in the artistic, but also in the commercial context. Thus, natural materials often become the main goal of design practices. They are systematically used by artists to express their symbolic ideas, which explore the properties and content of materials.
 My personal experience in both design and fine arts allows us to speak about the important role of the analysis of the artistic properties of natural materials. From my point of view, this area of design requires a separate, deeper reflection. It is necessary to study and generalize the system of artistic representation of materials, which is often considered by researchers as a secondary task.
 As my research showed, an important component in the analysis of the expressive means of natural materials is the subject environment. It is for this reason that natural materials are equally interesting for both designers and artists. Orientation to the subject environment raises the question of the nature of the use of natural and artificial materials, their combination in artworks.
 The methodology. The purpose and objectives of the study determined the methodology. As the main ones, I used the methods of typology and structural generalization.
 The results. The study of the artistic experience of European designers, as well as the study of special scientific literature, allows me to mark out two main groups of formal means of expression. They are formed on the basis of the criterion of interaction with the natural properties of natural materials:
 1) means of expression that transform the original features of natural materials; this group considers those artistic practices that change the original features of the material under the influence of a general design decision;
 2) means of expression, which are the most natural properties and characteristics of the material; this group considers such artistic practices that do not significantly change the basic qualities of natural materials.
 Each group has its own morphological features, which to some extent affect the artistic integrity of the work. Natural materials are natural carriers of textural and textural qualities, the identification and use of which greatly contributes to the quality of the aesthetic solution. The natural aesthetic properties of, for example, stone or wood have a significant impact on the compositional-plastic and figurative-stylistic features of the work. These features form a more expressive artistic language.
 The scientific novelty. The article proposes the author’s typology of the use of natural materials in the design of objects.

Critical Examination of Service Quality and Relationship Marketing in Establishing Sustainable Long Term Customer Relations in Commercial Contexts

Service Quality and Relationship Marketing compatibly build and improve customer relationships with the marketers in business environment. The Objective of this paper is critical examination of the interdependent nature between service quality and relationship marketing in establishing sustainable long term relationship with customers in business operations. The paper employed the use of secondary source to obtain information related to the topic. The facets of relationship marketing can be explored, with the greatest emphasis on internal services and marketing. Higher quality services came from continuous improvement, and intensive employee’s training and participation and communication, knowledge and understanding of customers, that built service and relationship culture in business organization. Business enterprise can successfully achieve its service quality delivery and relationship marketing through development strategy, creation of customers value , performance analysis and assessment, and management of information process by ways of targeting the “right” customers, at the right place, at the time and build relationships with them. Poor service delivery created gaps between service providers and receivers; such as Knowledge gap, Policy gap, Delivery gap, Communication gap, Tangibility gap. On the other hand higher services quality closed the gaps consistently to meet customer expectations and satisfaction. Thus, service quality served as resource for building relationship marketing. Offering solutions that meet customers complains. Offering quality package with competitive advantage in Marketing Operations, Creating and delivering specified service to target customers, at the right time, Adhere to consistent quality standards and value provision to customers. Offering high service performance to ensure acceptable costs operations function, Recruit, train and retain the best employees for internal services and marketing activity in every operation, Re-training and motivating employees who work well together in communication and interaction with customers to achieve both performance and customer satisfaction

Adopting and integrating cyber-threat intelligence in a commercial organisation

ABSTRACT Cyber-attacks are increasingly perpetrated by organised, sophisticated and persistent entities such as crime syndicates and paramilitary forces. Even commercial firms that fully comply with industry “best practice” cyber security standards cannot cope with military-style cyber-attacks. We posit that the primary reason is the increasing asymmetry between the cyber-offensive capability of attackers and the cyber-defensive capability of commercial organisations. A key avenue to resolve this asymmetry is for organisations to leverage cyber-threat intelligence (CTI) to direct their cyber-defence. How can commercial organisations adopt and integrate CTI to routinely defend their information systems and resources from increasingly advanced cyber-attacks? There is limited know-how on how to package CTI to inform the practices of enterprise-wide stakeholders. This clinical research describes a practitioner-researcher’s experiences in directing a large multinational finance corporation to adopt and integrate CTI to transform cybersecurity-related practice and behaviour. The research contributes practical know-how on the organisational adoption and integration of CTI, enacted through the transformation of cybersecurity practice, and enterprise-wide implementation of a novel solution to package CTI for commercial contexts. The study illustrates the inputs, processes, and outputs in clinical research as a genre of action research.

An Exploration of the Use of Marketing Public Relations at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa

The Apartheid Museum is a non-profit organisation that relies on the generosity of government and private organisations, as well as the sale of gate tickets. It, thus, relies on building and sustaining a long-term relationship with its visitors to earn their loyalty and support. Marketing public relations (MPR) is a concept which has been explored by numerous studies in commercial contexts. The aim of this study was to explore the use of marketing public relations at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa. In order to do so, a survey involving 384 visitors was conducted. The data from the questionnaires were analysed using the SPSS software. The study found that the museum uses such marketing relations tools as exhibitions, sponsorships, seminars, trade shows, its website, social media, media relations and publications. The practical significance of the article resides in its provision of MPR guidelines for organisations such as the Apartheid Museum for the purposes of building long-term, meaningful relations with its customer stakeholders. In addition, its academic significance lies in the meaningful contribution it makes to MPR scholarship.

The concept of an agroinfiltration kit for recombinant protein production for educational and commercial use-A journey through a forest of regulatory and legal implications.

Recombinant expression using Agrobacterium-mediated transient transformation (ATT) of plants has developed into a robust and versatile method to rapidly produce proteins. The capability of plants to efficiently synthesize even homo- and hetero-multimeric complex folded proteins featuring disulfide bonds and other post-translational modifications such as N-linked glycosylation makes them superior to most of the established microbial, especially prokaryotic expression hosts. Compared to production in mammalian cell cultures, ATT requires lower skills, simple technical equipment and cheaper media components. Taken together these features make the method optimally suited for R&D applications involving the development and engineering of recombinant proteins for various purposes ranging from vaccine candidates, therapeutic proteins, towards enzymes for different pharmaceutical and technical applications. Despite these advantages the technology is currently not being used outside the community of plant research. The design and realization of a kit containing all the information, instructions and ideally also the material required to perform recombinant protein production using ATT in an educational or commercial context was one of the objectives of the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project Pharma-Factory. While it is pretty straightforward to assemble a comprehensive instruction manual describing the procedure, the clarification of regulatory and legal aspects associated with the provision, dissemination and use of the different materials and organisms required to perform ATT is a complex matter. In this article, we describe the initial concept of an ATT kit for educational as well as research and development (R&D) purposes and the specific regulatory and legal implications associated with the various kit components. We cover aspects including intellectual property rights, freedom-to-operate (FTO), safety regulations for distributing genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), as well as export and import regulations. Our analysis reveals that important components of the ATT kit are freely available for research purposes but not or only with considerable effort for commercial use and distribution. We conclude with a number of considerations and requirements that need to be met in order to successfully disseminate such a kit in the future.

Religious-based discrimination in the commercial context on the basis of sexual orientation: A comparative perspective

This paper considers how three jurisdictions, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, have sought to reconcile freedom of religion with equality rights, particularly in the commercial context, and particularly in relation to sexual orientation. The recent decisions of the United Kingdom Supreme Court and United States Supreme Court form the backdrop for that discussion. It is argued that the former made piecemeal, and misleading, use of American case law, and a fuller consideration of that jurisdiction’s position was warranted, and would have led to a different view of the recent American decision. It argues that the United Kingdom Supreme Court was in error in viewing a message on a cake ordered from a baker as an example of the baker's expression, leading it to an incorrect conclusion at odds with statutory mandates in the commercial sphere around refusals of service. Both high court decisions risk undermining progress on the equality front.

The economy of Melitene/Malaṭya and its role in the Byzantine-Islamic trade (seventh to eleventh centuries)

Abstract The city of Melitene in eastern Asia Minor/western Armenia presents a peculiar case in the study of Byzantine-Islamic commerce in the early Middle Ages, because, unlike Trebizond or Attaleia, its commerce was entirely based on land-route connections, and the available evidence does not identify it as a town deliberately designated as a commercial exchange point by the Byzantine authorities. My purpose is to find an answer to the question of how Byzantine- Islamic trade took place in a location on the eastern land frontier where the coexistence of war and trade was a daily reality. The products and export items as well as the routes of the Melitene zone and its neighboring regions (Cappadocia, Pontos, Armenia) are examined in order to situate Melitene in a larger commercial context. I argue that Melitene prospered commercially in the middle of war zone for centuries and that its commercial fortunes began to improve especially by the beginning of the tenth century, reaching their climax in the eleventh century.

Autonomy and Institutionalism in the Law of Contract

Abstract This article considers the extent to which the law of contract is dictated by promise, agreement or intention rather than prevailing norms and standards. It argues that, over the last century, contract law has developed along two different lines. Through statute, policy objectives have been increasingly implemented in contract, in particular, with respect to consumer protection. By contrast, judge-made law has developed, particularly in the commercial context, so as to place greater emphasis on giving effect to what parties promise, agree or intend. This article analyses these changes through an empirical investigation of the law as it has developed in practice. It shows that contract law involves a balance between autonomy and institutionalism; it demonstrates that, beyond consumer protection under statute, contract has shifted in favour of party autonomy.

Principal forms of commercial trusts in the UK and the rethinking of traditional approaches

Abstract Trusts, which originated in common law and are used to protect family landholdings over generations, have developed into a vehicle that is more often used for commercial purposes. This shift has occurred without any systematic understanding of in what form and to what extent trusts can be adopted in a commercial context. Furthermore, few have considered whether existing trust law can adequately govern commercial trusts; that is, whether or not the commercial use of trusts requires a redeveloped trust law regime, distinguished from traditional approaches. This article offers a critical analysis of these issues, identifying and categorising the principal forms of commercial trusts that are currently employed in the UK. It argues that, given the different settings and contexts in which commercial trusts are found, trust law should be developed to serve the way in which trusts are now used in a commercial context.

Antiquity market trends in Cycladic figurines, 2000–19: Studies in price, prevalence, and provenance

AbstractWhile the illicit trade in Cycladic figurines is a well-known phenomenon, and the escalatory impact of auction sales upon the looting of Cycladic deposits is widely accepted, there has been to date no systematic study of commercial transactions in Cycladic figurines. This study addresses this gap by performing a quantitative market analysis of auction house sales in Cycladic figurines between 2000 and 2019, examining the frequency with which they appear on the market, fluctuations in their price, and the nature of their provenance. In doing so, it sets out a methodology for navigating the ambiguous nature of antiquity market data, which can often give the misleading impression of a reforming market if the latent commercial contexts are not considered. Overall, a comprehensive insight is gained into the present state of the antiquities market in Cycladic figurines. This insight contributes much needed empirical data on the illicit antiquities trade and offers a new interpretative methodology that can be incorporated in future studies that seek to understand the true nature of antiquity market data.

Redefining Shareholder Value Maximization: Identifying key sustainable investment strategies and their role in rehabilitating corporate purpose

The purpose of this essay is to situate investing in a commercial context where consideration of ESG and impact factors at the least does not compromise investment returns, and hence excludes discussions on non-profits, private foundations and charitable organizations. Instead, I look into pension funds, private equities and hedge funds whose primary fiduciary duty is to serve the economic interest of beneficiaries. Grounded in case studies and real-life interviews, this essay explore ways in which investors can transcend their roles of merely financiers to become gatekeepers, value creators and reformers of corporate mission, steering companies towards the path of sustainability. Ultimately, by examining the regulatory framework, valuation models and implementation tactics of various sustainable investment strategies, this essay seeks to illuminate a new understanding of ‘value maximization’ that ties positive externalities to long-term portfolio performance.

Juridical Ontologies of Production and the Ricardian Machine

Abstract This article uses doctrinal analysis of UK tax law to address the question in political economy of where the ‘production boundary’ around value creation lies. It concludes that the ‘classical’ production boundary around material production may be encountered as an emergent feature of forensic investigations of the ontology of surplus in real world commercial contexts. This is particularly important for political economists of the global production network because of the contrasting structural phenomenon whereby value is predominantly added in immaterial production processes.

Decentralized and Privacy Sensitive Data De-Duplication Framework for Convenient Big Data Management in Cloud Backup Systems

The number of customers transferring information to cloud storage has grown significantly, with the rising prevalence of cloud computing. The rapidly rising data volume in the cloud, mostly on one side, is followed by a large replication of data. On the other hand, if there is a single duplicate copy of stored symmetrical information in the de-duplicate cloud backup the manipulation or lack of a single copy may cause untold failure. Thus, the deduplication of files and the auditing of credibility are extremely necessary and how they are achieved safely and effectively must be addressed in academic and commercial contexts urgently. In order to tune in this task by using application recognition, data similitude, and locality to simplify decentralized deduplication with two-tier internode and application deduction, we suggest a flexible direct decentralized symmetry deduplication architecture in a cloud scenario. It first distributes application logic to the contents of the directory through implementation-oriented steering to maintain a deployment location and also attributes the same kind of information to the cloud backup node with the storage node specificity by means of a hand printing-based network model to attain adequate global deduplication performance. We build up a new ownership mechanism during file deduplication to ensure continuity of tagging and symmetrical modeling and verify shared ownership. In addition, we plan an effective ownership policy maintenance plan. In order to introduce a probabilistic key process and reduce key storage capacity, a user-helped key is used for in-user block deduplication. Finally, the protection and efficiency audit demonstrate that the data integrity and accuracy of our system are ensured and symmetrically effective in the management of data ownership.