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Firm Performance, Sustainability, and Reputation
Get PDFThe first chapter examines the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the performance of Sharia-compliant compared to non-compliant firms across countries within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The study employs panel data comprising 337 publicly listed non-financial companies observed from 2016 through 2022. This research employs Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Random Effects (RE) regression models to analyze critical performance indicators, including Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE), and growth rates, while integrating various firm-specific characteristics. The analysis uncovers that both adherence to Sharia principles and the COVID-19 crisis significantly reduced firm performance. Sharia-compliant companies experienced sharper decreases in profitability and growth, attributed primarily to ethical financing limitations and conservative investment approaches. The adverse effects were worsened by the interplay between Sharia compliance and pandemic conditions, with companies in Asian regions being particularly impacted, thereby illustrating significant regional variability. The second chapter conducts an empirical investigation into the relationship between Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices and corporate reputation, thereby addressing a significant research gap within the area of sustainability studies. The analysis utilizes a comprehensive panel dataset covering 4,000 U.S. companies from 2014 to 2023. Through the application of econometric methodologies, including logistic regression, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS), Propensity Score Matching (PSM), Entropy Balancing, and Heckman selection models, this study tackles the issues of potential endogeneity and selection bias. The findings consistently indicate that companies exhibiting higher ESG scores are significantly more likely to receive corporate responsibility accolades. This relationship is further strengthened by firm-specific factors, including company size, financial stability, and investments in research and development. Robustness checks reinforce these findings, emphasizing the strategic significance of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives in enhancing corporate reputation, encouraging stakeholder trust, and attaining sustainable competitive advantage.
The second essay is an empirical study of the relationship between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and corporate reputation. The goal is to address the existing gap in sustainability literature. This study employs a comprehensive panel dataset that includes 4,000 US firms from 2014 to 2023. The aim of this study is to investigate how ESG performance influences corporate reputation through annual and cumulative corporate responsibility awards. The study utilizes various econometric techniques to tackle issues concerning endogeneity and sample selection bias. The econometric techniques include logistic regression, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS), Propensity Score Matching (PSM), Entropy Balancing, and Heckman selection models. The results consistently show that companies with better ESG performance are significantly more likely to be acknowledged with corporate responsibility awards. The strength of these findings is supported by various robustness analyses. The study examines how firm-specific characteristics, including company size, financial performance, and research and development, influence the relationship between ESG engagement and reputation outcomes. The evidence indicates that these factors enhance the positive impact of ESG performance on corporate reputation. The findings highlight the strategic value of ESG initiatives for corporate leaders and policymakers, which emphasizes their role in enhancing stakeholder trust and securing long-term competitive advantages
Animal Burrow Detection in Levee Systems Using Res-Net 34
Get PDFAnimal burrow detection is a time-consuming and costly task for levee inspectors. Annual budgets run up to approximately $16 million per state. The inspectors typically will have to travel to the inspection sites using government-assigned transportation. Depending on the distance to the site, it may take minutes or hours to arrive before any productive inspections occur. Once at the site, the inspectors were subject to human error, overgrown foliage, severe weather, or prohibitive landscaping that would make any human inspection impossible. Also, animal burrows could be small enough or overgrown, so the human inspector misses the problem areas. We aimed to aid the inspector with a simplified method of inspecting levee systems. We trained ResNet-34 on animal burrow images taken by manual inspection. The model was trained on both positive (animal burrow) and negative (no animal burrow) images using many iterations of the model. Iterations included changing the model weights to classify burrows and bounding boxes where the burrows were located to determine the best accuracy. Batch normalization was used to improve the speed and stability of training the network by normalizing the inputs using re-scaling and re-centering. The initial convolutional layer kernel size was changed from 7 × 7 to 3 × 3. This is because it allows the capture of local and global features of the images. An initial learning rate of 0.0005 was used to train the model, but eventually, this was switched to an exponential learning rate to mitigate noise in the training accuracy. The testing showed that classifying an image as positive or negative with ResNet-34 was effective for extensive burrows, but accuracy suffered with small burrows
The Impact of the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child on Environmental Justice: A Comparative Policy Analysis
Get PDFChildren are the most vulnerable to environmental harms due to their developing stages, heightened health risks, and dependence on adults, despite contributing the least to environmental damage. While children are increasingly in environmental justice frameworks, their rights remain underrepresented in environmental governance. This study explores the potential of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and General Comment No. 26 (GC26) to advance child-centered environmental protections. Through a comparative analysis of Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S., this study examines how countries have (or fail to) incorporate the UNCRC and GC26 into legal systems, national legislation, and children’s participation in national environmental governance. This study finds that even ratifying nations have underutilized the UNCRC and guidance from GC26, highlighting the limited enforceability of the UNCRC and the need for stronger national incorporation. This study contributes to global environmental justice discourse by exploring how children’s rights can advance intergenerational equity and offers recommendations for future research and policy development
Experimental and Computational Investigation of Using Passive Sweeping Mist Jet Film Cooling via Fluidic Oscillators in the Gas Turbine Application
Get PDFAs the energy industry transitions to cleaner fuels like hydrogen, the resulting higher flame temperatures pose significant challenges for gas turbine cooling. Mist-enhanced film cooling using sweeping jets, generated by passive fluidic oscillators, offers a promising solution by providing wider and more uniform coolant coverage. This study combines computational and experimental (using Particle Droplet Phase Analyzer) approaches to evaluate sweeping mist jet performance.
Simulations were conducted under laboratory conditions to investigate the influence of droplet wall boundary conditions—reflect, trap, and wall-film—on cooling effectiveness and droplet dynamics. The wall-film model, motivated by observed liquid streaks, demonstrated the best agreement with experiments. Additional simulations at elevated pressures and temperatures assessed the viability of mist cooling under realistic turbine conditions.
The results showed that liquid droplets coalesce inside fluidic oscillators, producing larger droplets and achieving more uniform and more extended downstream cooling
Candid Living
Get PDFThis collection discusses the strange truths about humanity: how we often find beauty, hope, and an appreciation for the crazy reality we all find ourselves doing the best we can in
After Ida, Long-Term Disaster Recovery in Cancer Alley Louisiana, the Political Culture Perspective: A Case Study
Get PDFLouisiana and other disaster-prone locales are in an insurance crisis. Climate change findings predict an increase in severity and occurrence of weather-related disasters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency utilizes the Disaster Management Cycle of mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery to address U.S. disaster concerns. Current disaster policy focuses on disaster risk reduction through resilience. Resilience refers to the ability of an individual or locale to “bounce back” after disaster. Case study was conducted to determine the duration of long-term disaster recovery in “Cancer Alley” Louisiana after Hurricane Ida, by examining homeowner’s insurance.
The presence of homeowner’s insurance is a primary indicator in determining duration of recovery after disaster. Generally, insurance is required for homeowners with a mortgage. However, only around 13% of American homeowners are insured. Insured homeowners experience the shortest duration of recovery. When an insured homeowner’s insurance company becomes insolvent, duration of recovery is increased. When uninsured and underinsured homeowners experience property damage from disaster, they turn to government and non-governmental organizations for aid. Uninsured homeowners experience the longest duration of recovery after disaster. Future policy and resiliency efforts should seek to reduce the prevalence of underinsured and uninsured homeowners. The duration of long-term recovery has a direct impact on resilience levels of individuals and communities. This study seeks to add to the literature by providing a baseline for duration of long-term recovery
Boy Skin / Boy Ride
Get PDFBoy Skin / Boy Ride is a queer Latinx poetry manuscript by Lin Flores that navigates cycles of abuse, survival, gender identity, and reclamation through a lyrical lens. Interweaving mythologies—Greek, Christian, and Indigenous—with autobiographical testimony, the collection confronts the trauma of grooming and spiritual manipulation by a Sunday school teacher. Through precise syllabics, duplexes, and an Americanized ghazal, Flores renders their journey from victimhood to voice, culminating in queer joy. Influenced by poets such as Jericho Brown, Ocean Vuong, and Saeed Jones, Flores\u27 work foregrounds the healing power of language through the craft of poetry
Regulation, Competition, Risk and Performance of the Banking Industry
Get PDFThe first essay explores the impact of banking regulations, particularly capital requirements, liquidity requirements, and supervisory powers, on liquidity risk and overall financial stability in European markets. By analyzing a dataset of banks from various European economies, this paper utilizes a dynamic panel data model to assess how these regulations influence banks\u27 liquidity positions and their ability to maintain stability during periods of economic stress. Bank regulations positively and significantly impact the level of bank’s Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) and Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR), mitigating the banks’ liquidity risk. The findings contribute to the understanding of the effectiveness of banking regulations in different economic contexts, offering insights into the design of regulatory frameworks for European markets.
The second essay adopts a quantitative research design that focuses on establishing the impact of the multi-market contact (MMC) hypothesis on the performance and stability of banks. The data used comprised of the 20 top US Banks from 51 states spanning 2012 to 2023 and was sourced from Bankscope. The dependent variables of interest focused on the measurement of the performance of the banks and included the earnings per share (EPS), the market to book value, non-performing loans, capital adequacy ratio and the z-score. The three independent variables of interest associated with the multi-market contact hypothesis were average MMC (MMC1), the weighted MMC (MMC2) and the alternative weighted MMC (MMC3). According to the results, there is a negative and significant relationship between MMC1 and for ROA (-0.0001*), ROE (-0.0002*), CAR (-0.0009*), and EPS (-0.0135*) which implies that collusion or mutual forbearance is associated with lower returns for the four-performance metrics of the banks. The same results were reported for MMC2 and MMC3, with slight deviations. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that Multi-Market Contact Hypothesis has a negative statistically significant impact on the performance of the banking industry in the US which is contrary to what the existing literature says
Precooling Ventilation Air for Hospital Operating Rooms and the Affects on Terminal Box Reheat
Get PDFThis study evaluates the impact of climate on the energy performance of two HVAC system configurations—AL1, a conventional air handling system, and AL2, which incorporates a pre-cooling coil and discharge air temperature (DAT) reset strategy. Using EnergyPlus simulations, each system was modeled across multiple U.S. cities representing a wide range of climate zones. Results show that AL2 significantly reduces plant energy consumption, with an average energy savings of 66.61\% compared to AL1. These savings were nearly evenly split between reductions in heating and cooling demands.
A weather normalization analysis using cooling and heating degree days (CDD65 and HDD65) revealed a moderate correlation between climate severity and energy savings. Specifically, AL2 showed a slight positive correlation with CDD65 and a stronger negative correlation with HDD65, suggesting improved performance in colder climates. However, a substantial portion of the variation in energy savings remains unexplained by climate alone. Additionally, the implementation of AL2 was found to increase the system’s sensitivity to local weather conditions, especially in cooling performance.
These findings underscore the potential of control-based HVAC strategies to reduce energy use across diverse climates while highlighting the importance of climate-specific system design. The study provides valuable insights for optimizing HVAC system performance in healthcare and similarly demanding indoor environments