Working capital management requires a careful attention by the corporate managers because it plays an important role in corporate stability. Social belongingness of managers induced them to learn from their society, colleagues and from overall industrial movement. They also learn from their peers which have more strategical efficiency. In line with these arguments, the objective of current study is to explores the peer influence on corporate working capital management practices. To making analysis, ten-years data (2009-2018) of non-financial publicly listed firms at PSX were collected and the cash conversion cycle (CCC) uses as a proxy variable of working capital management (WCM). To estimate the regression, an econometric technique named the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) was used. The empirical findings suggest the significant impact of peer WCM on corporate WCM. It also suggests the significant impact of other variables that determine the WCM. This study recommends social learning policy to corporate managers. They can learn from their peers to manage the working capital. Most previous studies discuss the peer influence on investment decisions, corporate cash holding and financing policy, etc., but no study explores such a relationship specifically in the Pakistani non-financial sector data set.

"The wisdom of crowd'' is so often observed in social discourses and activities around us. The manifestations of it are, however, so intrinsically embedded and behaviorally accepted that an elaboration of a social phenomenon evidencing such wisdom is often cheered as a discovery; or at least an astonishing fact. One such scenario is explored here, namely conceptualization and modeling of a food safety system, a system directly related to social cognition. Food safety is an area of concern these days. Models representing the food safety systems are recently published to study the effect of interactions between important entities of the system. For example, Knowles’s model finds conditions leading to a more efficient and dependable system of entities like consumers, regulators and stores with specific focus on regulators behavior and their impact on the food safety. The first contribution of this paper is reevaluation of Knowles’s model towards a more conscious understanding of ``the wisdom of crowd'' effects on inspection and consuming behaviors. The second contribution is augmenting of the model with social networking capabilities, which acts as a medium to spread information about stores and help consumers find stores which are not contaminated. Simulation results reveal that stores’ respecting social cognition improve effectiveness of the food safety system for consumers and stores both. Simulation findings also reveals that an active society has a capability to self-organize effectively even in the absence of any regulatory compulsion.

This paper presents a symmetrical topology for the design of solid-state transformer, made up of power switching converters, to replace conventional bulky transformers. The proposed circuitry not only reduces the overall size but also provides power flow control with the ability to be interfaced with renewable energy resources (RESs) to fulfill the future grid requirements at consumer end. Solid state transformer provides bidirectional power flow with variable voltage and frequency operation and has the ability to maintain unity power factor, and current total harmonic distortion (THD) for any type of load within defined limits of IEEE standard. Solid State Transformer offers much smaller size as compared to that of the conventional iron core transformer. MATLAB/Simulink platform is adopted to test the validity of the proposed circuit for different scenarios by providing the simulation results evaluated at 25 kHz switching frequency.

Neurological disorders, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease, are commonly associated with persistent neuro-inflammation, and there is an urgent need to discover new therapeutic agents that may target the various pathways involved in neurodegeneration. In this study, we investigated the therapeutic potential of folecitin, a flavonoid isolated from Hypericum oblongifolium, against lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced oxidative stress associated with neurodegeneration, amyloidogenic Aβ production pathway, and memory dysfunction in mice. LPS was administered i.p. at 250 µg/kg/day for 3 weeks, followed by the administration of folecitin at a dose of 30 mg/kg/day for the last two weeks. A Western blot technique was used to assess the expression of different proteins involved in oxidative stress, neurodegeneration, and neuronal synapse. Results indicated that folecitin significantly reduced LPS-induced apoptotic neurodegeneration, including the expression of BAX, Caspase-3, and PARP-1 proteins, inhibited BACE1, and the amyloidogenic Aβ production pathway. Folecitin improved both pre- and post-neuronal synapse, as well as memory dysfunction. Furthermore, folecitin significantly activated endogenous antioxidant proteins such as Nrf-2 and HO-1 via stimulating the phosphorylation of Akt proteins. These findings suggest that folecitin may be a suitable lead to design new drugs for neurotoxin-triggered neurodegenerative disorders.