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Purpose: This study aims to investigate consumer brand loyalty toward halal cosmetics using the theory of planned behavior through repurchase intention, which is primarily relying on the consumer’s attitude toward halal cosmetics. Important predictors such as trust on halal cosmetics, quality of halal cosmetics and religious beliefs of millennial Muslim female consumers shape consumer attitude. Design/methodology/approach: The present study used the quantitative research design and deductive approach to collect the data from 275 halal cosmetics users in Pakistan by using a judgmental sampling approach. Findings: Findings of the study provide useful insights for both theory and practice. The results support product quality, religious belief and trust on halal cosmetics as predictors of consumer’s attitude toward halal cosmetics that further develop consumers’ repurchase intention, which in turn enhances their overall brand loyalty. Besides, the findings also show that consumer repurchase intention has a mediating effect between consumer attitude toward halal cosmetics and consumer brand loyalty. Practical implications: The current study helps in advancing practitioners’ understanding of female consumers’ brand loyalty in the halal cosmetics context. This study is considered to be greatly helpful for managers to gain knowledge about how repurchase intention and brand loyalty of millennial Muslim female consumers can be developed in the halal cosmetics segment, especially in the case of Pakistan. Originality/value: Brand loyalty has been investigated by previous studies through different predictors and antecedents. This study contributes to the literature of brand loyalty by empirically examining and validating the different antecedents of consumer attitude that are accountable for creating consumer brand loyalty in the domain of halal cosmetics within the Pakistani cultural context. The current study also enhances the previous scholarly understanding on halal cosmetics by investigating the mediating role of consumer repurchase intention of halal cosmetics that further extends the discussion for both theory and practice.

Cyanobacteria have numerous biotechnological applications in the environment, industry, pharmaceutics, food, feed, and energy which is why future cascading biorefineries are believed to employ cyanobacteria as their feedstock. The present study evaluated the potential of a newly isolated cyanobacterium for its applications in the multiproduct biorefinery. Based on morphology and the gene sequence of 23S rRNA, the strain was identified as Trichocoleus desertorum. Various abiotic growth factors including light, pH, and nutrients were optimized to achieve enhanced biomass production using various wastewaters as low-cost growth media. Accordingly, a 2.24-fold to 6.97-fold higher biomass production (gL-1) and biomass productivity of 0.86 gL-1d-1with a CO2fixation rate of 1.576 gL-1d-1was achieved when cultured in synthetic wastewater. Besides, the impact of wastewater cultivation was studied on the biosynthesis of valuable metabolites including proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and pigments. Accordingly, the lipid content of the wastewater-cultivated strain was increased from 24 to 30%, and protein content was increased from 27 to 46%. The lipids were trans-esterified to biodiesel which was turned out to be good quality biodiesel, as revealed through GC-MS analysis. Additionally, the wastewater-cultivated strain produced 117.35 mgg-1(11.73 % of the total dried biomass) of phycobilin in response to nutrient manipulation, where phycocyanin was shown to be the most prominent pigment with a yield of 94.7 mgg-1, which covered 80% of the total pigments. These remarkable features reflected the promising potential of this strain to be employed as a feedstock in the multiproduct biorefinery.

The national kidney allocation system (KAS) implemented in December 2014 in the United States redefined the start of waiting time from the time of waitlisting to the time of kidney failure. Waitlisting has declined post-KAS, but it is unknown if this is due to transplant center practices or changes in dialysis facility referral and evaluation. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of the 2014 KAS policy change on referral and evaluation for transplantation among a population of incident and prevalent patients with kidney failure.

ABSTRACTProvision of affordable housing for low-income groups is constrained precariously in Punjab, the largest province of Pakistan, because of a complex institutional framework and overlapping roles of government authorities at federal, provincial, and local levels. This article is a reflexive study that covers a broader aspect of the Punjabi Housing system, drawing a framework of current institutional arrangements in practice for affordable housing provision. Although it draws on an institutional analytical framework, the article is grounded in applying structural analysis to the study of public institutions within the housing sector, which provides a much-needed theoretical framework for analyzing housing institutional arrangements under the current dynamic political environment within the country. The study is an effort to fill gaps in the literature in understanding the intricate practices and processes of public housing institutions with overlapping jurisdictions and roles. The article argues for streamlining the federal, provincial, and local governments to provide an enabling environment to deal with affordable housing policy and provision issues by reexamining the respective institutional structures. Some previous studies relevant to housing policies and projects are also reviewed, followed by an empirical analysis of institutional arrangements; finally, ways forward are suggested toward key policy and empirical implications.

In recent years, microalgae have emerged as an alternative platform for large-scale production of recombinant proteins for different commercial applications. As a production platform, it has several advantages, including rapid growth, easily scale up and ability to grow with or without the external carbon source. Genetic transformation of several species has been established. Of these, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii has become significantly attractive for its potential to express foreign proteins inexpensively. All its three genomes – nuclear, mitochondrial and chloroplastic – have been sequenced. As a result, a wealth of information about its genetic machinery, protein expression mechanism (transcription, translation and post-translational modifications) is available. Over the years, various molecular tools have been developed for the manipulation of all these genomes. Various studies show that the transformation of the chloroplast genome has several advantages over nuclear transformation from the biopharming point of view. According to a recent survey, over 100 recombinant proteins have been expressed in algal chloroplasts. However, the expression levels achieved in the algal chloroplast genome are generally lower compared to the chloroplasts of higher plants. Work is therefore needed to make the algal chloroplast transformation commercially competitive. In this review, we discuss some examples from the algal research, which could play their role in making algal chloroplast commercially successful.

ABSTRACTIntroduction: The THRIVE Clinic provides medical/psychiatric care for human trafficking survivors in Miami. Designed to address the comprehensive healthcare needs of this unique population, the clinic’s goal is to establish stable and consistent healthcare that is respectful, comprehensive, and sensitive to survivor needs.Methods:The THRIVE Clinic is a patient-centered “one-stop shop” model offering multidisciplinary services in a single location. Due to survivors’ chronic multiple morbidities, the model includes primary care, psychiatric, obstetrics/gynecology, and ancillary services. Key components include consistent multidisciplinary professionals, streamlined intake procedures to reduce redundancy of patient histories often painful to repeat, and assistance with securing health insurance.Results: To date, the majority of survivors seen are female, age at first visit is 28.7 years, with 53% reporting childhood sexual abuse and many reporting a history of physical abuse. All survivors left their trafficking encounters as adults, and were trafficked for an average duration of 5.1 years. Multiple chronic medical and psychiatric comorbidities include PTSD, hepatitis C, pelvic pain, major depressive disorder, and chronic headaches.Conclusion: A comprehensive, multidisciplinary, “one-stop shop” model of healthcare for survivors of human trafficking provides patient-centered services in an environment that fosters compassion, trust, support and stability. Reducing the burden on survivors of human trafficking to navigate complicated health systems and providing consistency among providers is an essential component to success.

The main phases of any housing project are planning, design, execution, regulation, and use. All the stakeholders involved in each phase can impact the project's status and progress. The study has explored the dynamics of acquiring five fundamental housing resources, i.e., physical, financial, construction capital, intellectual, and policy. The paper responds to the lack of research on resource acquisition and the patterns of stakeholder engagements, particularly in South Asian countries. The study provides the stakeholder model in the case of Pakistan as an interesting study of relationships between resource-acquiring patterns and engagement mechanisms that can be applied to other geographical contributions. Drawing on qualitative analysis from in-depth interviews with prime stakeholders, this paper concludes by highlighting policy resources as the focal point of resource-wise stakeholder engagement in low-income housing development. This paper highlights the complexities associated with amalgamated engagements with limited transparency on the patterns of resource acquisition for better navigating the provision of low-income housing in developing countries urbanizing at alarming rates.

ABSTRACTHeritage sites and buildings are of vital importance. Study of such heritage sites unfolds exciting information about the history of early civilizations and, most importantly, the architecture of that era. Like other South Asian countries, Pakistan is also rich with heritage sites and buildings. Unfortunately, these heritage sites and buildings have mostly been ignored by the concerning authorities. Recently, a conservation program named as the Royal Trail at Dehli Gate section of Walled City, Lahore was launched through the collaboration of the Punjab Government and the Agha Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), purpose of which was to revitalize the residential architecture and quality of social life of the Gali Surjan Singh by incorporating community participation for conducting the conservation in a sustainable manner. Primarily data has been collected through questionnaires and informal interviews of the residents. An in-depth comparison of the area before, during and after conservation is also included in the layout of conducted research. The aim is to study changes in the physical and social dimensions of the constructed environment of Gali Surjan, which resulted from the intervention of the conservation program. The documented pre- and post-conservation changes mark the significance of the study.

IN APRIL, Frontline Partners with Youth Network (FPYN) announced it would cease operations that month. A support network for youth workers, FPYN was created in response to Toronto's so-called 'summer [...]

The treatment of highly alkaline and toxic industrial organic raffinate (IOR) containing pyridine and its derivatives was studied by coupling of catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO) and a biological process. The CWAO of IOR was performed using 1 wt % platinum catalyst to degrade toxic compounds present in the IOR to biodegradable intermediates. The prepared catalyst was characterized using scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction analysis. High-pressure liquid chromatography of CWAO-treated effluent showed complete degradation of pyridine. The toxicity of the CWAO-treated effluent was checked, and it was found to be nontoxic. The CWAO-treated effluent was post-treated using biological method, and the final effluent was found to be within discharge limits prescribed by the statutory authorities. The reusability of the catalyst was studied, and the catalyst was found effective for four cycles. The present study suggests an effective solution for addressing toxic organic pollutants in wastewater.

Cohort comparison studies have traditionally been hypothesis driven and conducted in carefully controlled environments (such as clinical trials). Given two groups of event sequence data, researchers test a single hypothesis (e.g., does the group taking Medication A exhibit more deaths than the group taking Medication B?). Recently, however, researchers have been moving toward more exploratory methods of retrospective analysis with existing data. In this article, we begin by showing that the task of cohort comparison is specific enough to support automatic computation against a bounded set of potential questions and objectives, a method that we refer to as High-Volume Hypothesis Testing (HVHT). From this starting point, we demonstrate that the diversity of these objectives, both across and within different domains, as well as the inherent complexities of real-world datasets, still requires human involvement to determine meaningful insights. We explore how visualization and interaction better support the task of exploratory data analysis and the understanding of HVHT results (how significant they are, why they are meaningful, and whether the entire dataset has been exhaustively explored). Through interviews and case studies with domain experts, we iteratively design and implement visualization and interaction techniques in a visual analytics tool, CoCo. As a result of our evaluation, we propose six design guidelines for enabling users to explore large result sets of HVHT systematically and flexibly in order to glean meaningful insights more quickly. Finally, we illustrate the utility of this method with three case studies in the medical domain.

Abstract: In this paper, we propose an application for 3D cameras by reversibly hiding the depth map in the corresponding 2D images. The proposed technique is prospective in cameras capable of capturing simultaneously the 2D image and resultant depth map of an object. 3D cameras equipped with self-embedding capability can serve two additional purposes, protection of the captured image and secure transmission of its depth map. The reversible watermarking, in addition to other features, guarantees the lossless recovery of an original image and separation of its depth map when required. For this purpose, a reversible watermarking scheme, based on genetic algorithm (GA), has been proposed which computes suitable threshold for each block of coefficients in the wavelet domain. Thus, a tradeoff is made between watermark imperceptibility and capacity using GA. The threshold map is embedded in addition to the actual payload and thus the proposed approach does not require histogram pre-processing in order to avoid overflow/underflow. The same threshold map has been used for authentication purpose by correlating it with the low-frequency coefficients of the 2D transformed image. Further to exploit the inherent redundancy in the depth map, which is the actual payload in this case, lossless compression has been employed before its embedding. Similarly, besides secret key-based permutation, a cryptographic layer is overlaid on the watermarking layer for security purposes. Experiments conducted on images and depth maps, obtained using a 3D camera and an optical microscopic system, validate the proposed concept. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In response to the global challenge of low-income housing provision, research on understanding the housing provision mechanisms has gained a reputation among emerging scholars and practitioners in architecture, urban development, housing, and public policy. An effective provision system entails the institutions and stakeholders comprehending their interrelations within the housing market context, lacking conceptual clarity. Challenging roles of institutions and stakeholders within the domain of housing provision necessitates the groundwork to study the contextual positions and relations of stakeholders as an analogous component and the analysis of institutional frameworks. The paper provides the theoretical foundations within the metaphorical bases for integrating the respective analytical approaches, i.e., institutional analysis (IA) and stakeholder analysis (SA), drawing on critical theoretical constructs. By analytical comparison of empirical evidence of IA and SA in housing research against the prompting keywords, critical reflections offer the conceptual foundation of new research agenda through IA-SA integrated approach. The study thereby advances the theoretical understanding between the regulatory level (institutions) and engagement level (stakeholders). It proposes a multi-level analysis process that complements the IA-SA integration for examining the provision systems in the context of low-income housing.

Highlights: [•] A high capacity reversible watermarking approach for authenticating images. [•] The novel technique uses histogram processing and block selection. [•] Enhanced block skipping approach ensures the correct message bit embedding. [•] The idea of down-sampling; employed in a new way, improves the tradeoff. [•] The location map is also used for authentication besides helping in reversibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The art of secretly hiding and communicating information has gained immense importance in the last two decades due to the advances in generation, storage, and communication technology of digital content. Watermarking is one of the promising solutions for tamper detection and protection of digital content. However, watermarking can cause damage to the sensitive information present in the cover work. Therefore, at the receiving end, the exact recovery of cover work may not be possible. Additionally, there exist certain applications that may not tolerate even small distortions in cover work prior to the downstream processing. In such applications, reversible watermarking instead of conventional watermarking is employed. Reversible watermarking of digital content allows full extraction of the watermark along with the complete restoration of the cover work. For the last few years, reversible watermarking techniques are gaining popularity because of its increasing applications in some important and sensitive areas, i.e., military communication, healthcare, and law-enforcement. Due to the rapid evolution of reversible watermarking techniques, a latest review of recent research in this field is highly desirable. In this survey, the performances of different reversible watermarking schemes are discussed on the basis of various characteristics of watermarking. However, the major focus of this survey is on prediction-error expansion based reversible watermarking techniques, whereby the secret information is hidden in the prediction domain through error expansion. Comparison of the different reversible watermarking techniques is provided in tabular form, and an analysis is carried out. Additionally, experimental comparison of some of the recent reversible watermarking techniques, both in terms of watermarking properties and computational time, is provided on a dataset of 300 images. Future directions are also provided for this potentially important field of watermarking. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]