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The main purpose of this study is to examine household saving behaviour in the district of Peshawar Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Data for this study was conducted through a survey questionnaire and questionnaires were distributed among 400 households of district Peshawar town III. The data was analyzed through the ordinary least square method using SPSS 26. Weighted least square (WLS) was used for estimation. The study explored that there is a strong link between household savings and planned variables. The results show that the total income of households has a direct and significant relationship with the savings of the households, so the result goes with the Keynesian theory of income and saving. Furthermore, a number of adult equivalence and debt have positive and significantly related to household saving in district Peshawar, whereas the dependency ratio has a negative but significant relationship with household saving in the study area which means that when a number of dependents in a family increases the rate of saving of that family decreases. The study suggests that the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa should increase employment opportunities for those who depend on their family.

Automated video-based surveillance is an important area of research to assist the security personnel to detect the incident of any abnormal events in the surroundings. The objective of this paper is to develop a framework for automatic gun detection using closed-circuit television (CCTV) images. The methodology presented in this paper involves the development of a framework for automatic gun detection using closed-circuit television (CCTV) images, with the aim of enhancing the surveillance of crime and improving human security. The proposed approach consists of a dataset of CCTV images containing instances of guns, as well as non-gun images for comparison. These images would be used to train the proposed algorithm to recognize and identify guns in future CCTV images. The proposed framework is designed for an indoor environment and uses Haar-like features for gun detection. The proposed system involves the installation of CCTV cameras in a suitable corner of an indoor environment for surveillance. The CCTV cameras capture the scene and the frames of the scene are compared with a predefined dataset for automatic gun detection. The proposed approach draws a bounding box and raises an alarm if it detects a gun in a frame extracted from a captured scene. This provides a visual indication of the presence of a gun, making it easier for relevant authorities to quickly identify and respond to the threat. The proposed system shows promising results in real-time applications and about 90% accuracy has been achieved.

During armed conflicts, it is witnessed that civilians are subject to inhumane treatment by the members of the opponent’s armed forces. They become victims of torture, persecution, molestation, biological attacks, enforced prostitution, slavery, and rape. These are the frequent crimes whose commission takes place during a conflict mostly when the territory has been occupied by the forces of an adversary state. These crimes are chiefly committed by the subordinates, as the commanders would not participate in the actual combat in many instances. In International Criminal Law, the doctrine of command responsibility plays an imperative role, in determining and prosecuting the perpetrators of these crimes. According to ICL, “A Commander shall be held criminally responsible for the acts of his subordinates if he had the effective control and was in the authority to punish or prevent them”. However, according to Islamic principles, “a leader shall be held liable for the acts of those whom he led”. The aim of this research is to compare the concept of command responsibility in Islamic Law and ICL. In addition, it examines the different perpetrators' prosecution modes under ICL and Islamic Law. It will further inquire into the status of subordinates in both Islamic Law and ICL. This research paper will be based on doctrinal research methodology. The data would be collected from international treaties, conventions, and sources of Islamic Law.

This article aims at highlighting the role of police and the problems of policing in the third world and the involvement of the United States (US) in assisting police forces in these countries to enhance their professional capacities. The article argues that despite its noble goals the US assistance programmes for foreign police have resulted in nothing but human rights violations and militarization of police in the recipient states. Moreover, the US’ lack of competent human resources for such trainings, the lack of internal and external coordination, and absence of clear objectives result in the failure of such programmes. With a clear history of failure of almost all such initiatives, the insistence of the US to train and equip foreign police do not contribute to the globalisation of police and is nothing but arrogance.

Slope stability is an important issue for the construction of roads on hill slopes. 24 slopes cuts have been investigated to determine the slope instability issues and mode of failure along the newly constructed road of Dir-Sheringal Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The major rocks are slates and tuffaceous siltstone which are weak to moderately strong in strength. The main objective of this study is to assess the application of rock mass classification systems and kinematic analysis which affects the slopes. The investigation shows that rock mass rating (RMR-basic), and slope mass rating (SMR) values range from 0 to 73 which is poor to normal while geological strength index (GSI) analysis classified the rock mass from poor to good conditions. The Kinematic analysis shows that three types (plane, wedge and topple) of failure mode are present in these slopes. Most of the slopes are unstable and weak where perspective tools and proper installation provide support and prevent future failure. This study shows a good relationship between RMR-basic, SMR, and GSI for different locations.

In many jurisdictions, legal and regulatory frameworks controlling the protection of employees' health and compensation for disease and injury contracted at work are among the earliest pieces of social legislation; the rules governing prevention date to the 19th century, while workers' compensation laws were first passed in many jurisdictions in the early twentieth century. The same is true for Pakistan, where there is an urgent need for such laws regarding this crucial issue. This article will provide a summary of current regulatory methods to the prevention of occupational illnesses, injuries, and compensation for their effects, while also examining the development of legislation from its inception to the present.

Objective: This prospective study was conducted to find the maternal outcomes of pregnancy in women with a previous one C-Section in terms of mode of delivery and maternal complication Material & Methods: This prospective cross sectional study was carried out in QHAMC Nowshera from July 2018 to June 2019. A convenient sample of 180 women, all booked and unbooked, with gestational age 37 weeks or more, singleton fetus and cephalic presentation that came to Gynae OPD with history of previous one C/section were included . Informed consent was taken after explaining risks and benefits of planned repeat c/section and VBAC .While those having IUD, placenta previa, breech presentation or gestational age less than 37 weeks were excluded. Data was obtained on pre- designed structured proforma .SPSS 17 software was used for statistical purposes. Results: Results showed that of the total participants 71.1 % had undergone C-section again, and 28.8 % delivered as VBAC. 34.3% of the total C-sections were emergency lower segment C-sections and 65.6% were planned repeat C-sections. Conclusions: It is concluded from our study that VBAC is a safe option for patient with previous one scar with minimal morbidity and no mortality but required good antenatal assessment one to one care and vagilant monitoring with quick resumption to emergency csection when required

Our paper aims to decode the immense fear which is evoked by the word Sharia in the West. For the masses of the West-mainly European and North American, Sharia is no less threatening than Lord Voldemort himself- something which is widely misinterpreted as medieval legal system with only one version of extreme interpretation which is used by bearded mullas to oppress women and give draconian rulings. However, at the back of their minds they also have a deep-rooted suspicion that Muslims want to impose Sharia law in Europe and America to dominate the West, this view is often pumped by the media when they generalize the whole 1.8 billion Muslims based on the actions of a few. Our main purpose is of writing this paper is to convey that this gloomy image of Islam and the massive ignorance at understanding Sharia did not come out of the blue. It is a deliberate manipulation to support western foreign policy goals. Throughout the paper we would elaborate the misinterpretation of Sharia by debunking 5 popular myths and how media made it worse, by quoting these peddlers of hate. We would trace how this fear was exploited by politicians to increase their vote bank and manipulate general population into supporting their interventionist foreign policy. Later on, we establish the link between these Islamophobic statements and spike in hate crime against Muslims-a direct consequence of ingesting fear 24/7. Towards the end, we give an insight about what the word Sharia really is and give solutions to actively combat the underlying hysteria of Sharia threatening the West civilization.

Objective: The aim of this study is to determine the outcomes of uretheral strictures treated with endoscopic urethrotomy and urethroplasty. Study Design: Retrospective study Place and Duration: The study was conducted at Urology department of Saidu Group of Teaching Hospital, Swat for the duration of nine months from 1st January to 31st September 2021. Methods: There were sixty male patients underwent for uretheral strictures were presented in this study. After receiving informed written consent, demographic baseline parameters such as age, BMI, and comorbidities of enrolled cases were determined. Patents were divided into two groups, group I had 30 patients and received urethroplasty and group II received endoscopic urethrotomy. Complete follow up among patients of both groups were taken in duration of 4-6 months. Outcomes among both groups were assessed and compared in terms of post treatment success rate and complications. SPSS 22.0 was used to analyze all data. Results: In group I mean age of the patients was 50.8±13.61 years and had mean BMI 24.6±13.78 kg/m2 while in group II mean age was 52.5±11.91 years with mean BMI 25.7±9.87 kg/m2. Among all 60 cases, dysuria, urinary retention and pollakiuria were the symptoms. Most common cause was infectious found in 38 (63.3%) cases followed by urethral trauma in 14 (23.3%) cases. Membranous urethra was the most common site of urethral strictures. With a p-value of 0.04 after surgical treatment, a significant difference in Q max flowmetry was detected between the two procedures (urethroplasty 15.9±11.45 Vs 9.5 ±10.61 mL/s urethrotomy). Postoperative success rate was greater in group I 25 (83.3%) cases as compared to group II in 15 (50%) cases. Recurrence rate was higher in group II 8 (26.7%) cases as compared to group I 3 (10%). Conclusion: In this study, we found that urethroplasty is safer and more successful than endoscopic urethrotomy, with greater urine flow and a low recurrence rate.

Objective: To investigate the accuracy of the UTI Calculator (UTI Calc) in predicting UTI in children by comparing the results of urine culture sensitivity tests (C/S). Study Design: Cross-sectional/descriptive study Place and Duration: The study was conducted at Urology Ward of Saidu Group of Teaching Hospitals, Swat during the period from 1st June 2020 to 31st December 2020. Methods: A total of eighty five children having ages from 4 to 24-months were presented. Children with fever >38oC were included. Following informed written agreement from the authorities, the demographics of enrolled cases were documented. Efficacy of UTI calculator was assessed in terms of diagnosing urinary tract infection among children. SPSS 21.0 was used to analyze complete data. Results: Among 85 cases, majority were male 50 (58.8%) infants and 35 (41.2%) were females. The mean age of the children was 8.44±7.65 years. Frequency of UTI was found among 9 (10.6%) febrile infants. Among 85 patients clinical UTI was high in 45 (52.9%) cases and by urine examination UTI found among 10 (10.6%) cases. Frequency of sensitivity was 100% and specificity 96%. E. coli was the predominant bacterium in 10 (11.8%) and urine cultures positive in (7.1%). Conclusion: In children, just a few clinical signs and symptoms are helpful in diagnosing or ruling out a urinary tract infection. Clinical prediction rules may be more accurate, but they need be externally verified. Urine collection should not be limited to children who have an unexplained fever or other symptoms that imply a urinary tract infection.

This study is an attempt to explain the nexus between health expenditures, GDP, human development index (HDI), CO2 emissions (COEM), renewable energy (RENE), financial development (FD) and electricity consumption (EC) using data from 2000Q1 to 2014Q4 for Brazil, India, China and South Africa. The study applies CIPS and CADF to determine the integration order. The tests confirmed the unique order of integration. The study further uses the Westerlund panel cointegration, which suggests the existence of a long-run relationship. Moreover, the panels dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) are applied to ascertain the long-run elasticity. The health expenditure and electricity consumption affect the COEM positively. Moreover, HDI and RE affect COEM negatively. The study further confirms the existence of an N-shaped EKC in the long run. The pairwise Dumitrescu and Hurlin, Econ Model 29:1450-1460, (2012) test is used to uncover the direction of the association between the variables. The findings obtained from DH confirm a bidirectional causality between HDI and FD. Likewise, another bidirectional causal relationship has also been found between FD and EC. The findings of our study advocate policies in the direction of HDI and health expenditure by adopting RENE. This study highlights the importance of RENE, which can facilitate a reduction in carbon emissions and decreasing health expenditures. Moreover, the financial sector needs to be improved to create entrepreneurship opportunities for the public in improving the HDI in ensuring sustainable development.

Objective: The aim of current study is to determine the causes, symptoms of penile fracture and post-operative outcomes. Study Design: Prospective study Place and Duration: Conducted at Urology department of Miangul Abdulhaq Jehanzeb Kidney, Swat for the duration of one year from 1st January to 31st December, 2020. Methods: Total 30 patients had penile fracture were presented in this study. Included cases were aged between 20-50 years. After receiving informed written permission, detailed demographic information about the enrolled patients was compiled, including age, body mass index, place of residence, and marriage status. Causes and clinical features of fracture were assessed. Patients were undergone surgery and success rate was observed. Post-treatment rate of complications among enrolled cases were also calculated. We used SPSS 22.0 version to analyze complete data Results: Included patients had mean age 35.7±12.32 years with mean BMI 24.7±4.31 kg/m2. Majority of the cases were married 26 (86.7%) and rest were unmarried 4 (13.3%). 12 (40%) patients had urban residency and majority were had rural 18 (60%). Most common cause of fracture was coital 20 (66.7%), followed by masturbation in 6 (20%) and 4 (13.3%) patients had manipulation during sleep. Deformity, swelling, detumescence and crackling sound was the most common symptoms. Right corpus was the most common tunical tear 24 (80%) and most common site was proximal 22 (73.3%). Success rate was found among 26 (86.7%) cases. Post-operatively complications were found among 5 (16.7%) cases in which plaques/ nodules, curvature, erectile dysfunction, pain and swelling were included. Conclusion: For the purposes of this study, we found the penis fracture to be a rather simple condition to diagnose. Cavernosography may be used to confirm a diagnosis if necessary. Penile fractures may be successfully treated with immediate primary surgical repair, resulting in normal erection without substantial sequelae. Short hospital stays and fast restoration of sexual function are common outcomes of this procedure. Keywords: Surgical Outcomes, Penile Fracture, Complications, Causes

Objectives: Aim of current study is to determine the outcomes of buccal mucosa graft in Hypospaedia repair. Study Design: Retrospective Study. Place and Duration: The study is conducted at Urology ward Saidu Group of Teaching Hospitals, Swat for duration of six months form 1st July 2020 to 31st December 2020. Methods: This research includes 60 hypospaedia reconstruction patients in total. After obtaining written agreement from the patient's attendants/parents, demographic information such as age, sex, and domicile was collected. A surgeon on site performed physical exams on each participant. All patients had buccal mucosa grafts performed in two stages. There were reported complications on follow-up visits one week, three week and six weeks later. We used SPSS 22.0 version to analyze complete data. Results: In our study mean age of the patients was 6.56±7.51 years in which most of the patients 38 (63.3%) had age >5years. After the first stage surgery, there were no complications. At postoperative follow-up after two stage procedure complications were found in 10 (16.7%) cases in which wound infection and urethrocutaneous fistula were mostly. Post-operative success rate was found in 53 (88.3%) cases. Conclusion: After careful consideration, it should be concluded that buccal mucosa transplant in Hypospaedia correction provides superior functional and aesthetic benefits with a lower incidence of problems. Keywords: Fistula formation. Buccal Mucosa Graft, Hypospaedia Repair

Objective: The aim of this study is to determine the frequency of urological carcinomas in patients with gross haematuria. Study Design: Prospective study Place and Duration: Swat Urology Ward Saidu Group of Teaching Hospital, Swat for the duration of six months from 1st April 2021 to 31st September 2021. Material and Methods: There were one hundred and forty five patients with ages 20-55 years were presented in this study. All the included patients had blood in urine.After receiving informed written permission, detailed demographic information about the recruited patients, including age, gender, body mass index, and causes of haematuria, was compiled.Urine cytology and microscopy were used to rule out the presence of malignant cells in haematuria. Every time a cystoscopy or computed tomography (CT) scan was needed to monitor the health of our patients, we sent them for an ultrasound.Frequency of urological carcinomas was calculated. SPSS 22.0 was used to analyze all of the data in the study. Results:There were 90 (62.1%) males and 55 (37.9%) females in our study. Mean age of the patients was 41.8±5.54 years with mean BMI 24.5±4.76 kg/m2. 80 (55.2%) patients were literate. Most common cause was urinary tract infection found in 50 (34.5%) cases, trauma in 45 (31.03%), urolithiasis in 30 (20.7%) cases and smoking in 20 (13.8%) patients. Prevalence of urological carcinoma was found in 27 (18.6%) cases. Conclusion:We found a significant incidence of urological carcinomas in our research. Gross haematuria was most often caused by urinary tract infection or trauma. Keywords: Urological carcinomas, Gross haematuria, Urinary tract infection

The finance and natural resources revenue nexus play a critical role in an economy. The recent development and significant increase in academic literature regarding the resource-finance nexus are the primary motivations for conducting this study. This study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of 363 documents published between 1976 and 2021 collected from the Scopus database. The results have been demonstrated via graphs, tables, knowledge maps about the past trends, growth, and prospects using co-occurrence, co-authorship, and co-citation analysis via the VOSviewer tool. This study has identified prolific authors, journals, countries, academic institutions, and future pathways. The findings indicate that China has the highest share of publications (88, 24.2%), followed by Pakistan (58, 15.9%) and Turkey (37, 10.2%). The most productive academic institution is the Beijing Institute of Technology in China (13, 3.6%). This study proposes new avenues for further research concerning the resource-finance nexus, such as ecological footprint, sustainability, fiscal decentralization, green investment, energy prices, environmental quality, technological innovation, financial resource curse (especially the stock market resource curse), human capital, and renewable energy in policy development and sustainability towards the achievement of the SDGs.

This research article aims to analyze the recent on-going conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has disturbed the peace of Europe after 30 years. Since, Russia is among the global powers of the world and a major exporter of oil and grains and Ukraine serves as a transit route, so if the sanctions and war is prolonged, the world will face dire consequences much more than it is experiencing at the moment. Amidst all the chaos there has to be a way out which assists in broking a peace deal between the two adversaries. And therefore, the article mentions that adapting a mode of ADR for resolving the conflict is the best bet. It also visits the course of history to highlight how mediation was successfully used in the past conflicts to resolve the issues and the same can be true for the present conflict. Though many countries by now have shown willingness to mediate between both countries but Turkey enjoys an upper hand over them due to its significance in the region. In view of all these factors and the present deadlock that has clouded the fate of peace in Europe, recommendations have been given in the end which can prove to be effective in putting an end to this fiasco.

The duty of state is to provide the low-cost and speedy justice and through the Alternate Dispute Resolution system, the settlement of disputes can be done expeditiously without resort to the formal litigation in Pakistan. As many of us does not want to indulge in formal litigation as it is too expensive, extra lengthy, having potential of being public (as no one can stop public to see the proceedings of the court), hence, confidentiality is on stake. Due to these reasons and some others (Pakistan being on 130th out of 139th in the list of states having bad judicial system and implantation of the rule of law), people have started resolving their disputes through informal means such as mediation, negation and arbitration etc. The research is aimed that what will be the future of Alternate Dispute Resolution Act 2017 in Pakistan and How it will be effective for speedy and expeditious justice for people who are not satisfied with the litigation system.

Background: Image processing based catheter selection is a newly developed procedure in which a catheter is selected based onpatient's image data, acquired prior to the intervention. In this technique, the arteries are extracted from the data followed by thecomputation of geometric parameters for all available catheters.Objectives: To propose an improved algorithm for estimating geometric parameters such as coronary artery curve angle andlength of the coronary artery curve.Material& Methods: We propose a new framework to compute the geometric parameters from the patient magnetic resonance /computed tomography images. In order to meet the clinical time constraint, we calculate CACA and CACL in 3D MR cardiacimages of the patients.Results: The method has been tested on seven MR cardiac images provided by Unieklinikum Wrzburg. The results show moreaccuracy and less computation time as compared to the already developed method.Conclusion: The proposed algorithm uses an enhanced method for extracting 3D curve to calculate the angle and there by greatlyreduces the computation time and improves the accuracy.Keywords: Optimal catheter; Right coronary angiography; Catheter selection; Landmarks; Geometricparameter

Automatic gunshot detection technology allows incidence response system to counteract the potential of crimes. However, the surveillance systems suffer from various detection problems, such as difficulty in differentiating gunshot, fire work and other similar sounds. To improves the accuracy and reduces processing time, we have proposed hybrid algorithm for automatic detection of gunshots in indoor environment. In the proposed approach, we have used pre-processing steps which filters the input audio signals with a threshold. During pre-processing, the signals having smaller energy than the threshold value are discarded because these low energy signals are normal sound signals. When energy of audio signal is more than the threshold value and deemed ambiguous audio, such signal is forwarded to next step for further processing. The second step of the proposed approach is based on features based algorithm, in which antilog energy features are implemented to increase accuracy. These features extend energy band to easily differentiate between gunshot and normal scream. For classification purpose, SVM, Tree and KNN classifiers are used comparatively to differentiate a classifier which will show more accuracy with minimal computational cost. The proposed approach provides 94.97% accuracy for SVM,92.56% accuracy for KNN classifier, and 91.65% accuracy for Tree classifier. The pre-processing step reduces computational time by 5%, 13.61% and 34.56% for KNN, Tree and SVM classifiers respectively. The pre-processing step in the proposed algorithm requires 5.80% processing time of features based approach to filter an audio signal.

All-inorganic lead halide perovskite nanocrystals (NCs) are potential candidates for fabricating high-performance light-emitting diodes (LEDs) owing to their precisely tunable bandgaps, high photoluminescence (PL) efficiency, and excellent color purities. However, the performance of pure red (630-640 nm) all-inorganic perovskite LEDs is still limited by the halide segregation-induced instability of the electroluminescence (EL) of mixed halide CsPbI3-xBrx NCs. Herein, we report an effective approach to improving the EL stability of pure red all-inorganic CsPbI3-xBrx NC-based LEDs via the passivation of potassium bromide on NCs. By adding potassium oleate to the reaction system, we obtained potassium bromide surface-passivated (KBr-passivated) CsPbI3-xBrx NCs with pure red PL emission and a photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) exceeding 90%. We determine that most potassium ions present on the surface of NCs bind with bromide ions and thus demonstrate that potassium bromide surface passivation of NCs can both improve the PL stability and inhibit the halide segregation of NCs. Using KBr-passivated CsPbI3-xBrx NCs as an emitting layer, we fabricated stable and pure red perovskite LEDs with emission at 637 nm, showing a maximum brightness of 2671 cd m-2, maximum external quantum efficiency of 3.55%, and good EL stability. The proposed KBr-passivated NC strategy will open a new avenue for fabricating efficient, stable, and tunable pure color perovskite NC LEDs.

Background The automatic detection of common subregions and registration in multimodal functional and structural images is challenging. This article gives an overview of multimodal image registration and the developments and technical issues with automatic detection and registration of subregions of interest in multimodal images. Discussion The available knowledge about subregion detection and registration in multimodal images are described in detail. Besides the provision of compact knowledge on subregion detection and registration, the challenges and proposed solutions are also discussed. Conclusion This article provides research guidelines for the development of automatic detection and registration of subregions of interest in functional and structural images with high accuracy and efficiency.

Accurate and efficient image registration, based on interested common sub-regions is still a challenging task in medical image analysis. This paper presents an automatic features based approach for the rigid and deformable registration of medical images using interested common sub-regions. In the proposed approach, interested common sub-regions in two images (target image and source image) are automatically detected and locally registered. The final global registration is performed, using the transformation parameters obtained from the local registration. Registration using interested common sub-regions is always required in image guided surgery (IGS) and other medical procedures because it considers only the desired objects in medical images instead of the whole image contents. The proposed interested common sub-regions based registration is compared with the two states-of-the-art methods on MR images of human brain. In the experiments of rigid and deformable registrations, we show that our approach outperforms in terms of both the accuracy and time efficiency. The results reveal that interested common sub-region based registration can achieve good performance, regarding both the accuracy as well as the the time efficiency in monomodal brain image registration. In addition, the proposed approach also indicates the potential for multimodal images of different human organs.

User interface has special importance in immersive virtual environments. Interactions based on the simple and conceivable gestures of a hand may enhance immersivity of a Virtual Environment (VE). However, due to the structural issues like small size and complex shape of human hand, recognition of hand gestures are more challenging. This work introduces a novel interaction technique to perform the basic interaction tasks by the simple movement of hand instead of distinct gestures. With an ordinary camera, the fist posture of hand is segmented out from the image stream using the optimal segmentation model. Like pressing a button with a thumb, the status of thumb is traced for the activation or deactivation of the interactions. After the activation of interaction, the trajectory of hand is followed to manipulate a virtual object about an arbitrary axis. Without training and comparison of gestures, the basic interactions required in a VE are performed by the perceptive movement of a hand. By incorporating image processing in the realm of VE, the technique is implemented in a case-study project; FIRST (Feasible Interaction by Recognizing the Status of Thumb). A group of 12 users evaluated the system in a moderate lighting condition. Outcomes of the evaluation revealed that the technique is suitable for Virtual Reality (VR) applications.

Feature selection aims to eliminate redundant or irrelevant variables from input data to reduce computational cost, provide a better understanding of data and improve prediction accuracy. Majority of the existing filter methods utilize a single feature-ranking technique, which may overlook some important assumptions about the underlying regression function linking input variables with the output. In this paper, we propose a novel feature selection framework that combines clustering of variables with multiple feature-ranking techniques for selecting an optimal feature subset. Different feature-ranking methods typically result in selecting different subsets, as each method has its own assumption about the regression function linking input variables with the output. Therefore, we employ multiple feature-ranking methods having disjoint assumption about the regression function. The proposed approach has a feature ranking module to identify relevant features and a clustering module to eliminate redundant features. First, input variables are ranked using regression coefficients obtained by training $L1$ regularized Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machine and Random Forests models. Those features which are ranked lower than a certain threshold are filtered-out. The remaining features are grouped into clusters using an exemplar-based clustering algorithm, which identifies data-points that exemplify the data better, and associates each data-point with an exemplar. We use both linear correlation coefficients and information gain for measuring the association between a data-point and its corresponding exemplar. From each cluster the highest ranked feature is selected as a delegate, and all delegates from the three ranked lists are combined into the final feature set using union operation. Empirical results over a number of real-world data sets confirm the hypothesis that combining features selected using multiple heterogeneous methods results in a more robust feature set and improves prediction accuracy. As compared to other feature selection approaches evaluated, features selected using linear correlation-based multi-filter feature selection achieved the best classification accuracy with 98.7%, 100%, 92.3% and 100% for Ionosphere, Wisconsin Breast Cancer, Sonar and Wine data sets respectively.

The aim of this research study is to find the association between political events in Pakistan and Pakistans stock exchange. The study considered 10 most big political events in Pakistan in the duration of 2012 to 2017. To calculate the results, the study used moving average method for calculating expected and abnormal returns. Further, t-statistics is used to explore the relationship between political events and behavior of PSX (100). The study has explored in results that political events, on which investor believes some change in Government policies do have impact on PSX. Investors respond positively when government organizations look strong and free from political pressure. The study recommended that government should make strong their organization, rather than alter government policies frequently.

The performance of high-rate supercapacitors requires fine morphological and electrical properties of the electrode. Polyaniline (PANI), as one of the most promising materials for energy storage, shows different behaviour on different substrates. The present study reports on the surface modification of fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) with the sodium phytate doped PANI without any binder and its utilization as a novel current collector in symmetric supercapacitor devices. The electrochemical behaviour of the sodium phytate doped PANI thin film with and without a binder on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) as current collector was investigated by cyclic voltammetry (CV). The electrode without a binder showed higher electrocatalytic efficiency. A symmetrical cell configuration was therefore constructed with the binder-free electrodes. The device showed excellent electrochemical performance with high specific capacities of 550 Fg−1 at 1 Ag−1 and 355 Fg−1 at 40 Ag−1 calculated from galvanostatic discharge curves. The low charge transfer and solution resistances (RCT and RS) of 7.86 Ωcm² and 3.58 × 10−1 Ωcm², respectively, and superior rate capability of 66.9% over a wide current density range of 1 Ag−1 to 40 Ag−1 and excellent cycling stability with 90% of the original capacity over 1000 charge/discharge cycles at 40 Ag−1, indicated it to be an efficient energy storage device. Moreover, the gravimetric energy and power density of the supercapacitor was remarkably high, providing 73.8 Whkg−1 at 500 Wkg−1, respectively. The gravimetric energy density remained stable as the power density increased. It even reached up to 49.4 Whkg−1 at a power density of up to 20 Wkg−1.

The anatomy of red blood cells (RBCs) in blood smear images plays an important role in the detection of several diseases. The automated image-based technique is fast and accurate for the analysis of blood cells morphology that can save time of both pathologists as well as that of patients. In this paper, we propose a novel method which segment and identify varied RBCs in a given blood smear images. In the proposed method, the central pallor and whole cell information are used, after using color processing followed by double thresholding of blood smear images. The shape and size variances of cells are calculated for the identification of abnormalities in peripheral blood smear images. We used cross-validation accuracy weighted probabilistic ensemble (CAWPE). It is a heterogeneous ensembling technique of nearly equivalent classifiers produced on averagely significant better classifiers (regarding errors and probability estimates) as compared to a wide range of potential parent classifiers. The proposed method is tested on 3 sets of images. The sets of images were prepared in a local government hospital by expert pathologists. Each image set has varied photographic conditions. The method was found accurate in term of results, closer to the ground truth. The average accuracy of the proposed method is 97% for the segmentation of single cells and 96% for overlapped cells. The variance (σ2) of accuracy is 3.5 and the deviation (σ) is 1.87.

All-inorganic lead halide perovskite nanocrystals (NCs) are potential candidates for fabricating high-performance light-emitting diodes (LEDs) owing to their precisely tunable bandgaps, high photoluminescence (PL) efficiency, and excellent color purities. However, the performance of pure red (630-640 nm) all-inorganic perovskite LEDs is still limited by the halide segregation-induced instability of the electroluminescence (EL) of mixed halide CsPbI

Coastlines mapping techniques or the coastline automated analyses have been sought after. In practice, various sorts of seacoasts, for example, biological, silty, arenaceous, artificial, and bedrock coasts, have their own attributes, which force various degrees of intricacy on coastline mapping. As an extraordinary kind of complex artificial coast, aquaculture coast is shaped by the farming of aquatic organisms on silt tidal flats. With the rapid growth of coastal aquaculture in recent years, aquaculture coasts have increased in some developing countries. It has been estimated that aquaculture coasts constitute about 30% of all coastlines in mainland China. In order to identify, monitor, model, and manage the vast expanse of coastal aquaculture, effective methods of extracting aquaculture coastlines from remotely sensed imagery are desired. Secondly, with the rapid economic development in coastal areas, the development of coastal zone resources is also increasing day by day, which benefits the development of island coastal zone. Using oneself has become an important link in the development of marine economy. Due to the limited coastal resources and low environmental carrying capacity, the overexploitation and utilization of coastal resources will lead to a series of problems, such as coastal erosion, coastal migration and accumulation, island area reduction, etc., Both man-made activities and natural factors will lead to coastline changes, which will lead to corresponding changes in coastal ecological environment, thus affecting the coordinated development of coastal economy and the survival of coastal residents. Therefore, efficient, accurate and timely acquisition of coastline information and research on the spatial-temporal changes of coastline are of great significance to the protection of the living environment of coastal residents, the effective development of island and coastal resources, the coordination of sustainable economic development in coastal areas and the mitigation of marine disasters. This paper presents a review of those papers reporting coastline extraction and land use and land cover (LULC) change analysis using remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) technology.

In the present study, mixed-metal ceramic Fe0.01Al0.5La.0.01Zn0.98O particles and their composites with polyaniline (PANI) were prepared via sol-gel and in situ free-radical polymerization techniques, respectively. Particles and composite formation was confirmed by FT-IR spectroscopy. SEM studies showed the Fe0.01Al0.5La.0.01Zn0.98O particle’s homogeneous dispersion in the polymer matrix. Ceramic particles were found to be in microdimensions. XRD analysis confirmed crystallite size in the range from 22 to 28 nm. Extensive rheological characterization was performed to check the durability of the materials for possible applications. Flow-curve tests suggested that the prepared materials are non-Newtonian (shear thinning) in nature. Increasing temperature have no appreciable effect on the viscosity which confirmed the mechanical stability of the materials. Based on frequency sweep test findings, the mechanical rigidity of the polymer has been enhanced (G′ = 2 × 102−5.22 × 103 Pa) by the introduction of ceramic particles. Conversely, creep compliance has been decreased considerably.

Navigation is moving inside a virtual environment to reach to a desired object or location. This paper presents a new egocentric navigation technique for exploring a virtual scene by tracking the 3DOF moves of index finger along x, y and z axis. With image processing at backend, the finger’s position in 2D image frame is traced dynamically to travel inside the designed frontend 3D scene. Mimicking a camera in hand, the system can also support Panning. Dynamic mapping is performed to interactively follow the trajectory of index finger. For either of the interactions, movement of index finger controls orientation and position of virtual camera. Linking the libraries of OpenCV and OpenGL, the technique is implemented in a visual studio project navigation by index tracing (NBIT). With NBIT, parallel processing is performed for backend index tracking and front-end rendering of virtual scene. The system was evaluated by fourteen participants for a total of 336 trails whereas applicability of the approach in virtual reality based computer aided design was assessed by five professional designers. Un-biased statistical evaluation of the system reveals that the approach suits well for interactive virtual and augmented reality applications.

Multimodal images of a patient obtained at different time, pre-surgical planning, intra-procedural guidance and visualization, and post-procedural assessment are the core components of image-guided surgery (IGS). In IGS, the goal of registration is to integrate corresponding information in different images of the same organ into a common coordinate system. Registration is a fundamental task in IGS and its main purpose is to provide better visualization and navigation to the surgeons. In this paper, we describe the most popular types of medical image registration and evaluate their prominent state-of-the art issues and challenges in image-guided surgery. We have also presented the factors which affect the accuracy, reliability and efficiency of medical image registration methods. It is not possible to achieve highly successful IGS until all the issues and challenges in registration process are identified and subsequently solved.

This study is conducted to investigate the nexus between GDP, FDI, oil prices, and tourism using yearly data from 1995 to 2017. The integration order is investigated by applying the ADF, PP and Zivot and Andrews unit root tests that identify the integration order in the presence of one endogenous break. After identifying the unique order of integration, this study applies the Fourier autoregressive distributed lag model (FADL) to investigate the evidence of a long-run relationship. Moreover, the Maki (2012) test confirms the results of FADL in the presence of multiple breaks. This study also confirms the hidden cointegration among the negative components of the variables using the FADL test. Moreover, oil prices and tourist arrivals have a negative and positive effect on GDP under the symmetric framework. However, the effect of FDI is insignificant. Furthermore, the negative component of oil prices have a negative and significant effect, while negative components of FDI and tourist arrivals have positive and significant effect on GDP under the asymmetric framework. The results of the symmetric and asymmetric causality suggest the existence of a causal relationship from FDI to GDP and tourism. This highlights the importance of FDI that affects GDP and tourism. The findings suggest that more inward movement of FDI promotes tourism using the channel of oil prices and GDP. This study also validates the FDI-led growth hypothesis for Turkey in both symmetric and asymmetric (positive components). This highlights that the Turkish government must promote tourism to attract more FDI by ensuring sustainable development.

Purpose. This article attempts to elucidate the nature of chemicals causing major and minor skin burns, and their associated characterization across different industries, using Fujian provincial ho...

Visually impaired people face difficulty during mobility and they need some external mobility aid that helps them in detecting obstacles in their way. In this paper, we are presenting a mobile camera based solution for blind navigation. The algorithm is also capable of guiding the visually impaired for selecting an alternate path if it finds some obstacle on their way. The algorithm uses few pre-stored images of the floor for finding any obstacle. The algorithm compares the current floor images with the free stored images and based on some similarity metric, it decides if there exists any obstacle on the floor. If the algorithm finds any obstacle, then it guides the visually impaired to follow an alternate path for navigation. Accuracy of the algorithm is 90% in controlled environment.

Various cognitive aids (such as change of color, arrows, etc.) are provided in virtual environments to assist users in task realization. These aids increase users’ performance but lead to reduced learning because there is less cognitive load on the users. In this paper we present a new concept of procedural guidance in which textual information regarding the procedure of a task is provided to users. The users convert this information into physical actions to complete the task, which enhances their learning by creating a consolidated mental model. We use Multimodal Virtual Chemistry Laboratory, where students simulate a chemistry experiment with the help of procedural guidance. Evaluations reveal that the proposed guidance enhances students’ learning and consequently increases their performance in real-world situations.

A lot of research has been done during the past 20 years in the area of medical image registration for obtaining detailed, important, and complementary information from two or more images and aligning them into a single, more informative image. Nature of the transformation and domain of the transformation are two important medical image registration techniques that deal with characters of objects (motions) in images. This article presents a detailed survey of the registration techniques that belong to both categories with detailed elaboration on their features, issues, and challenges. An investigation estimating similarity and dissimilarity measures and performance evaluation is the main objective of this work. This article also provides reference knowledge in a compact form for researchers and clinicians looking for the proper registration technique for a particular application.

Electroconductive polymeric patches are being developed in the hope to interface with the electroresponsive tissues. For these constructs, conjugated polymers are considered as conductive components for their electroactive nature. Conversely, the clinical applications of these conductive polymeric patches are limited due to their short operational time&mdash, a decrease in their electroactivity occurs with the passage of time. This paper reports on the polymerization of aniline on prefabricated chitosan films on microscopic glass slides in the presence of sodium phytate. The strong chelation among sodium phytate, aniline and chitosan led to the formation of electoconductive polymeric patch. We assume that immobilization of sodium phytate in the polymeric patch helps to prevent electric deterioration, extend its electronic stability and reduce sheet resistance. The patch oxidized after three weeks (21 days) of incubation in phosphate buffer (pH 7.4 as physiological medium). This feasible fabrication technique set the foundation to design electronically stable, conjugated polymer-based patches, by providing a robust system of conduction that could be used with electroactive tissues such as cardiac muscles at the interface.

In roller follower valve train, proper rolling of roller reduces the chances of fatigue failure and power losses. During engine operation, the roller does slip on the camshaft surface. The oil film thickness plays an important role on the roller sliding which necessitates experimental investigations. A modern gasoline engine valve train has been instrumented using advanced sensors for real time measurement of oil film thickness and roller slip, simultaneously. Rise in oil film thickness at cam/roller interface increased the tendency of roller slip. Drag due to shear of lubricant and rise in contact loading at very high camshaft speeds resulted in reduction of roller sliding. Presence of anti-wear agents and friction modifiers increased the tendency of roller sliding.

Aorta is the main artery in the human body, originating from the left ventricle of the heart and extending down to the abdomen. The aorta distributes oxygenated blood to all parts of the body. The aorta branches off into two main arteries called coronary arteries. For investigating the heart related diseases, it is very important to know the exact geometry of the aorta and coronary arteries. One of the important parameters is to compute the centerline or skeleton of the aorta. Skeletonization is a process in which foreground image data is reduced to a single line that preserves the extent and connectivity of the original object region. From the skeleton, then different geometric parameters like the diameter of the aorta, branching angles and branching locations of the coronary arteries can be computed. The challenge in geometry computation is faced when the input image data is noisy. In this paper, we propose a new method for computing the centerline of the aorta using 3D Computed Tomography or Magnetic Resonance images. The experimental results show that the suggested algorithm performs well on image data even if the data is noisy.

Anemia is a condition caused due to the deficiency of Red Blood Cells (RBCs) and hemoglobin in blood. It is an indication to a specific disorder in the human body. Different types of anemic diseases infect the shapes of Red Blood Cells in different ways and the infected cells form various geometric shapes, such as elongated ellipse, triangular shapes, cut circles, boundary interruption in ellipse or circle etc. Leveraging these shapes the type of anemia can easily be identified. We have used various boundary based shape descriptors like shape signatures and color profiles as features for the infected RBCs recognition. The algorithm is followed by preprocessing steps like color channel separation, segmentation through quantization, feature extraction and finally classification of Red Blood Cells and the diseases associated with them. We have achieved 92 % accuracy and the proposed method is cost effective and easy to use.

Bio-metric based recognition is rapidly replacing the non-biometric based recognition systems. Face recognition is one of the most important bio-metric based recognition technique. Different algorithms exist for face recognition that works well on high resolution digital images. The aim of this work is to check whether these existing face recognition algorithms work on low quality Closed Circuit Television images? We have considered three such algorithms. These algorithms are Artificial Neural Network, Principal Component Analysis and Single Value Decomposition. We have experimentally evaluated these for Closed Circuit Television images. Our experiments show that using the CCTV images the accuracy rate of ANN for face recognition is 85%, for PCA the accuracy rate is 75% and for SVD the accuracy rate is 65%. The experiments also show that the accuracy of all the three algorithms reduces when the number of input faces increases.

The past two decades have seen abundance of applications of Augmented Reality (AR), from gaming to medical, engineering, and academic fields. Certain work has been done to employ AR techniques for assisting the blind and visually impaired people to navigate in large indoor environments. This research contributes to the existing solutions by providing a viable technique, using merely a mobile phone camera and fiducial markers. The markers are detected and connected to generate a floor plan with the help of our proposed automatic path generation algorithm. Similarly, path augmentation algorithm efficiently populate the generated path with auditory and textual information. The proposed solution also provides a way to edit an already stored path when we need to extend the floor plan for inclusion of additional paths. An android application is developed to implement these algorithms. Time benchmarking the system shows effective results in automatic path generation, path augmentation, and path extension processes.

Collaboration and teamwork is important in many areas of our lives. People come together to share and discuss ideas, split and distribute work or help and support each other. The sharing of information and artefacts is a central part of collaboration. In this paper, a new task distribution model is proposed to increase user performance in CVEs. The model defines the task distribution strategy among multiple users in CVEs which is based on task selection and distribution mechanism among users via awareness mechanism for increasing user performance in CVEs. The effect of tight and loose coupling is also discussed in the model for user performance. The main objective of proposed model is to manage and control the concurrent user actions for better user’s performance.