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Banking activities have crossed the border and spread worldwide. Internationalization is known as the need of the day for sustainability in height competitive banking sector trends. Is there any effect of internationalization on profitability to sustain in a competitive market or just increases risk factors? Here, the study investigates the need and effect of internationalization on bank risk in developing country like Pakistan by using seven public commercial banks' quarterly data that are being taken for the duration from 2007 to 2016. The study constructs hypotheses to justify the significance or insignificance relation of risk with internationalization variables and some other bank‐specific variables that independently affect the risk‐taking of internationalized banks. The main variables are Z‐score for risk measurement and to evaluate the degree of internationalization. The study used foreign loan ratio and foreign income ratios. To support our work, the study also constructed some control variables like size, income diversification, and listed. We find that internationalization is associated with higher income earning in significant and positive relation with risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oil and gold are considered as the most vigor influencer for any economy. In this research volatility spillover networking among the oil (energy), gold, and Asian leading emerging stock markets are constructed by the coalescence of two approaches BEKK-GARCH and complex networking. The data consists of the daily return of sixteen Asian countries' stock markets, an index of the Asia Pacific, and future prices of oil and gold contracts for the period of 01–01-2010 to 31-05-2020. It covers all the recent shocks of the current decade to study the impact of these crises. The data is further divided into four sub-periods as well for this research. The results of our total period detect that commodities of oil and gold receive more volatility spillover than transfer it to stock indices of Asia Pacific countries. Moreover, it is also observed that, as compared to oil, gold had more strong significant spillover linkages. Among all Asian economies, the Chinese stock markets had more influence on the price movement of oil and gold. Whereas, India had more significant correlations with other neighboring stock indices. The results of this research not only provide the facts about the interconnection of oil, gold, and Asian Pacific countries in the current scenarios but also give very useful directions for future researchers, investors, and hedgers, as well as for policymakers interested in the Asian region. • highlights spillover networking among oil, gold, and Asian stock markets. • applies the coalescence of two approaches BEKK-GARCH and complex networking. • employs the daily returns of sixteen stock markets and future prices. • shows the oil and gold receive more volatility spillover than transfer to stock. • illustrates that compared to oil, gold had more strong spillover linkages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research study is to illustrate the role of the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) and Leadership in Energy and Design (LEED) within low-cost urban housing projects through the analysis of multiple factors and motivations impacting the outcome of construction projects. The rate at which climate change is advancing demands that the construction industry change their practices to decrease the natural resources it consumes as well as improve the environmental efficiency of the world's building stock. The introduction of BREEAM and LEED in 1990 and 2000, respectively, provided a system where buildings are evaluated on their energy performance. Issues, however, began to develop as research that illustrated the system's drawbacks undermined its utility. In turn, the role of the green building certifications ought to be researched so that policy and stakeholder communication frameworks can be developed by contractors and designers to ensure the success of BREEAM and LEED projects. The research study was completed through a literature study of prior research as well as by the publishing of a snowball sampling-based survey questionnaire undertaken between practitioners, architects, engineers as well as researchers involved in the UK construction industry. The results of the survey were then collated using IBM's Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) and then a confirmatory factor analysis as well as a correlation matrix was completed. The confirmatory factor analysis illustrated that the two most important factors were climate change and quality. Thus, contractors and designers ought to develop practical policies and stakeholder frameworks to achieve value for money for the market demographic. The results of this study hold potential to increase the application of BREEAM and LEED. The improvement of practice in low-cost urban housing projects will improve the accessibility of BREEAM and LEED housing projects and, in turn, the energy efficiency and sustainability of new building stock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asia as the largest continent which has the highest consumption of energy, so analyzing the impact of spillover and energy crisis is crucial for this region. In this article the volatility spillovers connections among crude oil, leading Asian oil-exporting and oil-importing countries' stock exchanges are scrutinized. This study applies the VAR-DCC-GARCH model to examine the spillover network structure with the nine years of daily data from September 01, 2009 to August 31, 2018. The results of these analyses have been displayed the network connections using complex networking technique. Overall strong spillover relations were found among oil-exporting as well as with oil prices. The strong interconnection is alarming for these economies, it is recommended to diversify their dependence on other sectors of the economy too. On the other side, oil-importing countries documented low as well as fewer interconnections and also with oil prices. It means these economies are more self-dependent, they also need to make long term planning to deal with future crisis shocks. Further, the findings of this study will provide an insight to researchers and policymakers regarding the spillover networking among oil and leading Asian trading countries' stock markets. The networking of the oil price spillover can be extended for the Asian oil trade and subsequent to the whole world. • Highlights volatility spillovers connections among crude oil, leading Asian oil trading countries' stock exchanges. • Applies the VAR-DCC-GARCH model to examine the spillover network structure. • Displayed the network connections using complex networking technique. • Showed strong spillover relations among oil-exporting as well as with oil prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Present study was aimed to enlighten the antimicrobial and cytotoxic activity of Haplophyllum gilesii (Hemsl.) C.C. a narrow endemic plants of northern areas of Pakistan. The antimicrobial potential of H. gilesii extracts in different solvents was assessed using agar well diffusion method against bacterial and fungal strains, while cytotoxic activity was studied in the methanolic extract using brine shrimp's lethality assay. All the extracts showed significant biological activity against Gram positive, Gram negative bacteria and selected fungal strains. Acetone, chloroform and methanolic extracts showed maximum activity i-e 39mm, 44mm and 35mm followed by ethyl acetate 27mm and n-hexane 26mm against microorganisms studied. Standard antibiotics were used as a positive control for bacteria and fungi respectively. The cytotoxic assay results showed that methanolic extracts of stem and root of H. gilesii had toxic effects on brine shrimp larvae with LD50 values of 116.72 µg/ml and 168.16 µg/ml respec tively. The antimicrobial and cytotoxic parameters reported can be considered as quality standards of H. gilesii in herbal industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today Asia accounts for about 40% of the world oil trade and most of the trade is transpired within the region. This study presents an investigation of the volatility spillovers among leading Asian oil exporting countries and oil importing countries' stock exchanges and crude oil returns. The model selection from multivariant GARCH models include BEKK-GARCH, DCC-GARCH, ABEKK-GARCH and ADCC-GARCH estimation techniques which are applied using daily data from 1st September 2009 to August 31st, 2018 for the three oil exporting countries (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iraq) and four oil importing countries (China, Japan, India, South Korea) stock exchanges with spot crude oil. Further, these estimation results are used to analyze the optimal portfolio weights for oil-stock portfolios. The bidirectional spillover is accepted for the correlation of two oil exporting countries (Saudi Arabia, Iraq) and South Korean stock return with oil returns. the Overall the results of all the oil exporting and oil importing countries show a different level of significant correlation with oil but the influence of oil shock are more pronounced on oil exporting countries. We also present a graphical picture of the stock correlation with oil by employing DCC-GARCH model that shows great shock and volatility correlation in the period of the oil crisis of 2014–2016. According to optimal portfolio weights and hedge ratios, the oil assets are a useful instrument to minimize the portfolio risk in studied markets. The investors, however, should choose more stocks than oil assets to form an optimal portfolio in case of oil importing countries and equal ratio for the oil exporting countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable construction can be defined as efficient resource use with ecological design. Three pillars are required to achieve sustainable construction: environmental protection, social well-being and economic prosperity. An increase in sustainable construction awareness among industry stakeholders could help improve levels of implementation. This paper aims to assess levels of awareness among UK practitioners and identify the barriers that inhibit sustainable construction. A mixed-method approach with questionnaire surveys and interviews was adopted. Questionnaire were distributed using MS Forms through social media (e.g., LinkedIn, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp) and the researcher's contacts. The survey concluded with 127 useable responses. Interviews were also conducted over MS Teams with eight professionals with different backgrounds. Respondents for the interview were conveniently gathered through snowball sampling. Data from the questionnaire survey were analysed using SPSS. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach's Alpha and RII were calculated for the level of awareness of sustainable construction practices and barriers to adoption of sustainable construction. Transcripts from the interview were thematically analysed using NVivo. The findings showed that the industry practitioners have above-average levels of awareness. Sustainable construction practices that respondents were most aware of was reduce, reuse and recycle. Respondents were not as aware of newer sustainable practices such as digital twin. Surprisingly, the most prevalent barrier was not cost. According to the respondents, the most prevalent barrier was a tendency to maintain current practices. Many real-life experiences are documented in this research. Insights into current practice in the industry and key barriers to adopting sustainable construction are identified. Addressing these barriers could improve the adoption of sustainable construction in the UK. • investigates up-to-date techniques for attaining sustainable construction in the UK. • assess the level of awareness among industry practitioners. • identifies the hurdles faced by the industry to attain sustainable construction. • explains the current practices of construction and areas for potential improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy projects (REPs) are constructed to contribute to the eradication of global warming and supporting a sustainable aspect of economies. However, due to their entrepreneurial nature, such REPs are quite prone to severe project variations. Mostly, REPs deviate from their allocated plans, which lead them to the time and cost overrun outcomes alongside numerous other hindering impacts. The current research was intended to understand the critical impacts of project variations during the building activities of REPs. Utilizing a sample of 253 field experts engaged with such REPs at Pakistan, we employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze and confirm our propositions. It was found that cost-related effects were the most significant outcomes in the REPs and their severity was higher than other variation consequences of time-overrun effects, productivity-related effects, risk-related effects, and reputation related effects. Nevertheless, an unexpected outcome was observed regarding the variations, which do not show their negative effects on reputation related aspects in the REPs of Pakistan. Considering its critical findings, this research is a useful tool for project executives that they can formulate certain techniques to tackle such variations and their consequences in REPs. This research likewise aimed to add and extend pertinent literature for REPs by following the outcomes of the current research concerning the impacts of project variations. Unlabelled Image • It identifies variation effects for renewable energy projects from pertinent literature. • It categories the project variation effects into five critical clusters. • It affirms a framework that envelops project variation order to effect renewable energy projects. • It suggests policy formulations to avoid variation orders in renewable energy projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]