Trash Rush – Educational Mobile Game For Android Devices

As population grows faster, the rise of garbage collection follows.  Massive information dissemination of waste management has been done by local representatives to educate people but despite the effort exerted still mismanagement of waste exist that caused serious environmental consequences to nature and human beings.  This condition ignites the researchers to develop a technology-based means to help disseminate proper disposal of garbage through the use of mobile phones.  Trash Rush educational mobile game application utilized Lua Scripting Language for game features, system behavior and synchronizes the phone sensor to the system. The Lua tool is decoded to JSON codes and sent to PHP MySQL in the webserver for storage. For tilting motion and orientation of the phone, the researchers employ the accelerometer sensor as the main navigation controller.   For sound and background effects, the Reactable Application is utilized.  The Box2D game engine is used to analyze and interpret the images and graphic effects while the Box2D API is utilized for object movement and animation. The Motion Parallax effect is also used to give more realistic effects in movements of the objects and the graphical background of the game. All these components are extracted through the APK file of Corona SDK to build and publish the app.  Upon reaching to the deployment stage of iterative model, it was found out that the system became viral to grade levels in the campus because of its story and time attack mechanism.

Liquidity Management by Islamic Banks in Pakistan: Analysis of Shariah Legitimacy and an Empirical Investigation

This research was designed to explore the liquidity management mechanisms and practices of Islamic banks in order to gain an insight of difficulties being faced by the Islamic banks in managing liquidity with the ultimate objective of finding Shari’ah compliant way-outs of such difficulties. This research has developed following econometric models (i) Liability Model—that identifies liquidity behaviours of Islamic banking depositors; (ii) Asset Model—that identifies liquidity behaviours of both the Islamic bankers and entrepreneurs; (iii) Liquidity Reserves Model—that explores factors determining the Islamic banks’ optimal liquidity reserves; and (iv) Liquidity DemandSupply Models—that investigate the resilience of the Islamic banking industry by considering different scenarios of unanticipated liquidity withdrawals. This research has found that: (a) Sukūk are the widely used liquidity management instruments by IFIs; (b) IFIs invest their excess liquidity by means of Mudārabah and Wakālah based mechanisms; (c) Commodity Murābahah is another widely used liquidity management instrument; (d) In Malaysia, there are various liquidity management instruments available, which are based on contracts of Bay’ al-‘īnah and Bay’ al-Dayn; (e) conventional liquidity management instruments are debt-based securities, therefore, are not Shari’ah compliant due to the involvement of Islamically prohibited Ribā and Bay’ al-Dayn. This research has found the liquidity behaviours of Islamic banking depositors and Islamic bankers as follows: (a) Islamic banking depositors are classified into the following three segments: (i) depositors with religious motives; (ii) depositors with profit motives; and (iii) depositors with transactional motives; (b) Islamic banking depositors withdraw their funds: (i) to fulfil their transactional needs; (ii) to relocate their term deposits’ tenor for a higher return; (iii) to shift their term deposits into other Islamic banks offering higher returns; and (iv) to place their deposits in their conventional bank’s accounts for a higher return; (c) Islamic banks, on liability side, apply following two approaches: (i) liquidity reserves are maintained for meeting the regular liquidity demands; and (ii) extra liquidity reserves are retained for meeting any unanticipated liquidity demands and for the purpose of safe sailing in times of liquidity run; (d) Islamic banks, on asset side, manage liquidity by: (i) preferring financing proposals of previously well-performed projects; (ii) requiring Rahn (collateral) or Kafālah (guarantee); (iii) preferring short-term financing; (iv) preferring to finance existing account holders; and (v) regularly monitoring the performance of their business partners; (e) Islamic banks would respond to the liquidity withdrawals exceeding the liquidity reserves by: (i) interbank borrowings or borrowing from the parent bank; (ii) selling Sukūk; (iii) withdrawing fund placements in other banks; and (iv) using bank’s equity. If further liquidity is required, Islamic banks would use emergency liquidity facility from State Bank and ask depositors to wait for extra days.