South Africa is a country with huge income gaps. Further, currently, there is trust deficit that is pervasive in many sectors of the economy which has been fueled by recent corporate scandals. The study sought to determine whether the regulatory and disclosure framework in relation to the executive compensation currently in place is geared to address these challenges. There are merits for policy makers to consider principles and practices such as mandatory pay-ratio disclosure, claw-back provision, binding shareholders� say on pay, co-determination, inclusivity and mandating the supreme audit institution to conduct monitoring and evaluation as part of regulatory and disclosure regime for executive compensation. The deficiencies of the current regulatory and disclosure requirements open the system up to be exploited by greed. A systematic literature review focusing on cross-country comparative study found several areas in which South Africa�s regulatory and disclosure requirements, particularly as it relates to the executive compensation could be enhanced. Several shortcomings are found in South Africa�s regulatory and disclosure framework relating to executive compensation. In particular, pay-ratio disclosure, claw-back provision, binding shareholders� say on pay, co-determination, inclusivity and monitoring of executive compensation related disclosure and regulatory practices are lacking. As such, the study suggests that practices deployed in countries that have faced trust deficit and are addressing these through enhanced practices could be adopted to enhance South Africa�s position. The study contributes to the literature on executive compensation by identifying the gaps in South Africa�s regulatory and disclosure framework and providing suggestions on how such shortcomings can be addressed by regulators and policy makers.

Tomato pomace a by-product of tomato processing is a potential agroindustrial waste could be used as raw materials and could be used in production of food produce of nutritional value. Peels and seeds are the major constituents of the tomato pomace and represents of about 5 % of tomato weight. These wastes if not used will aggravate the disposal and environmental problems. The aim of this study is to evaluate the chemical composition of tomato pomace collected from local factory in Al-Mafraq governorate located in Eastern part of Jordan to evaluate the use to this waste in Bioethanol production. Moisture content, total soluble sugars, protein, fat, total fiber, and Ash (mineral content). The moisture content (wet matter bases) was 69.5%. Tomato pomace chemical compositions (dry matter bases) used in this study were; 5.8% moisture, 59.2% fiber, 24.6% total sugars, 4.6% protein, 3.8% pectin, 1.1% total fat and 1.8% minerals( Ash). Ethanol produced after one-month fermentation without and with acid hydrolysis, were 100 ppm and 6.3%, respectively.

The variability of gas exchange and hydraulic traits has been studied in four subspecies black pine species of which 19 provenances planted in common garden in Ain Drahem province Northwestern Tunisia (Humid bioclimate) in order to compare and select the best adapted provenances to draught conditions. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the ability of black pine species to cope with draught conditions. Therefore, gas exchanges, hydraulic conductivity and anatomical characteristics were measured for each provenance. Result showed significant differences between provenances to cope with draught conditions. Although, some provenances such as Kustendil (nigra ssp) tends to avoid water stress by an earlier stomata control. However, by reducing it stomatal conductance led to reduce their ability to assimilate carbon. Though, other provenances, such as Olette (salazmanni ssp) and Crimée (pallasiana ssp) showed a very late control of transpiration. It seems that net photosynthesis followed the same trend as stomatal conductance and transpiration. Marghese, Cazorla, Tavola and Olette provenances showed an increase in sapwood and leaf specific hydraulic conductivity which makes it possible to decreases the tension in the xylem. In conclusion, black pine revealed different drought response mechanisms among provenances which may explain by genotypic controls.

Description of subject. Potential hazards caused by pathogenic Aspergillus species, departmental stores and mills production faces a challenge in food safety. To face this hazards caused by Aflatoxins in rice of departmental stores and recommend the public which quality of rice was the best source of healthy food. \nObjectives. Investigation of Aflatoxin contamination in rice using the guidelines provided by local and International standards of food safety.\nMethod. Total 16 white rice samples were selected randomly from low and high socio-economic departmental stores. Grind powdered of rice filtrate was extracted by chloroform. Filtrate applied on TLC plates and amount of Aflatoxin and moisture contents were determined by common formulae.\nResults. In vigorous rice, moisture content was low (9.08 %) whereas high (13.65 %) in infected rice. This value was exceeded from standard value (>12 %). Four out of 8 samples of low quality rice were contaminated with AFB1 and AFB2 (ranging from 2.59 ppb to 7.63 ppb). All the samples except one (2.59 ppb) from high quality rice was certified fit regarding contamination with AFB1, while AFB2 was not detected in any sample of this study. \nConclusion. The present study suggested the detection of fungi and aflatoxins poses a risk for consumer’s health and it is necessary to check the rice grains before distribution for public use.

A green-house trial was conducted to observe the variance in SPAD reading at various measuring points of leaves at different growth stages of potato genotypes varying in drought resistance. Two potato genotypes (Hopehely and Demon) were grown under control (80% WHC) and drought stress (50% WHC) conditions and CHL was determined using SPAD-502 at three measuring points of top, 1st and 2nd leaflet of 3rd, 4th and 5th leaf from the apex. Results revealed that water stress significantly reduced chlorophyll concentration (CHL) in both potato genotypes. Better water stress-resistant genotype (Hopehely) showed significantly higher CHL at each growth stage and produced higher yield. SPAD readings varied significantly among leaves, leaflets, and measuring points of leaflets in all treatments. The highest SPAD readings were observed for the 3rd leaf, top leaflet, and top measuring point on the leaflet. SPAD reading increased till flowering in both genotypes and then started decreasing. The results showed that SPAD readings in potatoes depend upon measuring point, growth stage, genotypes, and external stress factors.

Shiga toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC) is a food-borne pathogen associated with community health concern. Contamination of food by STEC and toxin causes infectious diseases. Current research deals with the investigation of Shiga toxin in food samples ranging from highly populated areas to less populated areas. E. coli isolated from food samples such as yogurt, apples, tomatoes and milk by applying violet-red bile glucose agar, Triphenyl tetrazolium chloride agar (TTC) and eosin-methylene blue agar (EMB) test after pre-enrichment of food samples in buffered peptone water. E. coli isolates were screened for the existence of shiga toxin genes Stx1 and Stx2 through PCR. A total of 17% apples, 26% tomatoes and 1% milk samples showed positive results for Stx genes. While neither Stx1 nor Stx2 gene was found in any yogurt sample. The presence of Shiga toxin that is protein in nature was confirmed by SDS-PAGE in milk sample. In conclusion, this study illustrates that foods of highly populated areas are reservoir for STEC strains in Pakistan.

Since 2012 deep learning has been playing a vital role in major problems like image analysis, pattern recognition, computer vision and remote sensing applications. In remote sensing applications one of the crucial tasks is to detect the cloud. Semantic segmentation based on convolutional neural network is a vital tool for identifying the cloudy or non-cloudy pixels. The encoder-decoder based U-Net architecture is one of the simple and effective semantic segmentation techniques that gained attention for various segmentation applications. In this paper we propose an upgraded U-Net with more relevant spatial information, improvement in gradient propagation, feature reuse and controlling the network parameters using growth rate by adding dense connections. Further, attention module of two types, Position Attention Module (PAM) and Channel Attention Module (CAM), is incorporated. The attention block helps to learn strong inter-spatial and inter-channel relationship of feature maps adding a few trainable parameters to the network. The two attention blocks focus on important parts of the image by neglecting the redundant information. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method with dense and attention modules could detect cloud with an accuracy of 95.69%.

Elaeagnus angustifolia L. belongs to the family of Elaeagnaceae, and its fruits are consumed as an appetizer. Mesocarp tissue of Elaeagnus fruits contains mainly carbohydrates while endocarp part (kernel) is rich in lipids. In this study, the fatty acid profiles and nitrogen contents of the endocarp tissues of four different Elaeagnus angustifolia varieties naturally grown in the Western Mediterranean Region of Turkey were determined as well as the total phenolic and flavonoid contents and antioxidant activity of their mesocarp and exocarp tissues. The crude fat content of endocarp tissues of Elaeagnus fruits ranged from 24.45 to 30.13%, and the highest nitrogen content (0.205%) was in the Native variety. The dominant fatty acid in endocarp tissue lipids was linoleic acid (ca. 48%), and the content of mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids in this tissue was about 90%. Varietal differences were found in the total phenolic and flavonoid contents and antioxidant activities of mesocarp and exocarp tissues. The mesocarp tissues of Sugar variety had the highest total phenolic content (161.9 mg GAE 100/g dry matter (dm)) and antioxidant activity (118.3 µmol Trolox® equivalent (TE) g dm) while the highest total flavonoid content (216.5 mg catechin equivalent (CE) 100 g dm) was in the exocarp tissue of Native variety. Results indicated that endocarp tissue lipids may be a good source of polyunsaturated fatty acids for human consumption in food, feed and cosmetics industries.