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Objective: In every country, authorities develop strategies for the awareness, education and information at the time of a crisis. This study explored the communication strategies of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Government of Pakistan during the Corona virus (COVID-19)pandemic. Methods: Data was collected from the information department of KP. Secondary data was analyzed which was collected from the main information department Peshawar and the regional offices: Mardan, Abatabad, DI Khan, Malakand and Swat. Data was presented in a tabulated form in frequency distribution. Findings: The information department has used all type of methods, tactics and sources of information for the education, awareness and information of the public regarding Coronavirus (COVID-19) and made it possible to control the outbreak to a greater extent. KP government used all kind of media communication strategies including print media, radio, information departments, social media, videos and public service message for creating awareness among public. Recommendations: It is recommended that KP government until now has applied impressive communication strategies. It has been suggested to the government to use local influential public figures and places for the awareness of the people to overcome and control the pandemic. Keywords: Coronavirus (COVID-19); communication strategies; tactics; methods; sources of information; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; Pakistan

This paper studies the welfare properties of competitive equilibria in an economy with incomplete markets subject to idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks. We focus on the role of securitization, whereby borrowers can reduce idiosyncratic asset risk, which enables increased leverage and investment. In the absence of frictions in the securitization process, we show that the ability to securitize assets completes markets. When there are frictions in the market for securitized assets, requiring originators to hold some skin-in-the-game, markets remain incomplete and risk-sharing is limited. In this case, fire-sales are required to repay debt and finance new investments when the economy is hit by a negative shock. Moreover, the equilibrium may be constrained inefficient due to the existence of a pecuniary externality that can result in over or under-investment. We examine policies to correct over-investment and find that a leverage ratio restriction generates a Pareto improvement, while forcing originators to hold additional skin-in-the-game reduces welfare. Both policies reduce leverage and raise prices in a fire-sale, however tightening skin-in-the-game also directly reduces the resources available to those who most need them, which dominates the positive effect of higher prices.

This paper has focused on the role of corporate finance law in corporations. Corporations, in Pakistan has been governed by the Companies Act, 2017, aims to maximize the profit by minimizing the risk, possesses a separate legal personality having rights and duties towards the outside world. As the word corpus means body; Companies enjoys separate legal personality from its shareholder, members and directors. British East India Company was the first business corporation that have earned profit for its members. A company is formed by due process of law and not otherwise. Company if is created by limited number of shareholders i.e. two to fifty it is a private company and in other case it is a public company. A public company formulated by due process of law possesses separate corporate personality, the liability of its members is limited and also has many other distinct characteristics. Corporate Finance Law is legal aspect of financial management of a public corporation and focuses to manage the finance of a company in legal ways. It governs the decision making process in the company and provide a six step process of financial decision making, it helps to reduce agency cost and transaction cost by tackling agency relations between different limbs of the company i.e. shareholders, managers and third party. By all these means it objects to achieve the basic aim of a company i.e. to earn profit and minimize the risk.

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the major global public health concern particularly affecting population of low-income countries. Early detection of disease coupled with other parameters help in treatment and reducing disease transmission. Methods: The current study was conducted to assess the sensitivity and specificity of the GeneXpert MTB/RIF (Cepheid Sunnyvale, CA, United States) in comparison to conventional techniques used for the diagnosis of TB. Our study is one of the first ones from Pakistan investigating and assessing the performance of GeneXpert. We recruited eight hundred clinically TB suspects initially and included seven hundred and sixteen clinically TB suspects in the final analysis. Results: The results of GeneXpert were compared with Mycobacteria Growth Indicator Tube (MGIT) and Ziehl-Neelsen (ZN) staining. In comparison to MGIT and ZN staining the sensitivity of GeneXpert with 95 % confidence interval (CI) was (99.7 %, CI 0.98-0.99) and (95.1 %, CI 0.92-0.97) respectively. The positive and negative predictive values with 95 % CI were (97.1 %, CI 0.94-0.98) and (99.7 %, CI 0.98-0.99) when results of GeneXpert were compare with MGIT results. Conclusion: The results of this study confirms the performance of GeneXpert. With high sensitivity and rapid detection, GeneXpert is ready to be considered as preferred diagnostic tool for TB.

Security Markets in Pakistan are regulated by the SECP, established under the SECP Act, 1997. The SECP is subject to the Companies Act, 2017 and all other corporate laws i.e CDC Act and rules thereof etc. SECP is member is IOSCO and thereby honors most of the IOSCO principles of securities regulations. Out of 38 principles 35 are being implemented 17 are fully implemented, 14 are broadly and 4 are partly implemented. Perfection is not yet attained by Pakistani regulator. 2 principles are yet to be implemented and one important principle is not being assessed by IOSCO authorities in connection to Pakistan.

The SG is a topic attracting great interest of the researchers of banking industry of Islam. The Sharī‘ah supervision is playing an important rather essential role in the governing the Islamic banks. Supervision of the Sharī‘ah Board and consistency in rule of Sharī‘ah are to be considered as mandatory components of an effective and efficient structure of Sharī‘ah Governance. The Sharī‘ah Council (SC), which is specific to Islamic banks, is considered to be the most important part of the SG framework. Since Islamic FI is similar in many ways to conventional FI, the existence of a good corporate governance framework is imperative. But unlike conventional FI, Islamic FI is responsible to guarantee compliance of the principles of Sharī‘ah in products of the Islamic Financial Institution and other operational management. The study will also addresses the issues of accountability/Sharī‘ah Audit and role of Sharī‘ah Supervisory Board in Islamic financial institutions in Pakistan and Malaysia. The purpose of this document is to examine and evaluate the critical assessment of SG in the Islamic banking sector. This paper infers after comparing different SGF that BNM provides a better way out. We find out that IFIs in Pakistan and Malaysia are under better SG.

Background Recently, we reported high in vitro antibacterial efficacy of Althaea officinalis, Ziziphus jujuba, Cordia latifolia and Thymus vulgaris out of a total 21 plants against wide range of bacteria including MRSA. This study was therefore, designed to confirm efficacy of these four herbs against MRSA in an animal model. Methods A pilot study was conducted to establish the dose of S. aureus (KY698020) required to induce clinical infection. Afterword, in main trial, efficacy of aforementioned plant extracts on the course of sore throat was checked by evaluating general health, gross lesion score, bacterial load and hematology in mice. Results Pilot study revealed that 40 μl dose of 107 CFU/ml could induce infection which persist upto 08 days post infection. Mice treated with T. vulgaris and Z. jujuba showed reduction in gross lesion score of both heart and lungs. Treatment with only some plants could significantly decrease bacterial load of throat (T. vulgaris) heart, blood and joint (C. latifolia, and T. vulagris). Hematological indicators confirmed in vivo control of MRSA infection in all treatment groups except A. officinalis. Conclusion This is first report confirming in vivo anti-MRSA potential of C. latifolia and T. vulgaris and highlight the need to explore bioactive constituents of these plants. Moreover, previously reported in vitro antibacterial efficiency of A. officinalis could not be validated in current study.

During extensile lateral approach to the calcaneus, in order to see all fractured fragments and subtalar joint, all soft tissues including insertion site of superior peroneal retinaculum (SPR) on the calcaneus should be released. The aim of this study was to evaluate the probability of peroneal tendon dislocation by releasing all soft tissues attached to the calcaneus. In 10 fresh cadavers, after standard extensile lateral approach to the calcaneus in right side, all soft tissues attached to the lateral wall of the calcaneus were excised. In the left side of each cadaver, all soft tissues inserted to the superior border of calcaneal tuberosity in addition to the lateral wall of the calcaneus were cut out. Probable anterior dislocation of peroneal tendons in the retromalleolar groove was assessed by placing a clamp into the peroneal tendon sheath from distal to proximal and advancing it to the retromalleolar groove. Also by careful dissection, any instability of peroneal tendons was visualized. Not any anterior dislocation of peroneal tendons to the lateral malleolus tip was seen in any stage of the procedure. Insertions of the SPR to the fascia of the deep posterior compartment of the leg and the Achilles tendon sheath are the main soft tissue stabilizer of the peroneal tendons in the retromalleolar groove. So resection of the insertion site of the SPR to the calcaneus might not result in the peroneal tendon instabilities.

With Mars colonisation becoming a reality for the near future, it is of importance to analyse how crew and cargo can be transported between Earth and a colony on Mars. This article is a feasibility and design study of a launch vehicle whose mission is to shuttle crew and cargo from Low Mars Orbit to a colony on the Martian surface. A single-stage reusable rocket has been selected to fulfil this mission, code-named Charon. The mission profile of such a vehicle was created, leading to a Maximum Growth Allowance (MGA) Delta-V budget of 6.2 km/s. With the mission profile in mind, each subsystem underwent a preliminary design. With reliability and maintainability in mind, subsystems were designed for redundancy and modularity, and an abort system was included for an added level of safety. The iterative design process resulted in a vehicle with a MGA mass of 198.7 tons, capable of transporting 1200 kg of cargo and a crew of 6 people to a 500 km orbit and back. The preliminary design of the vehicle is deemed safe. Following a fault tree analysis, the Single Launch Loss of Mission, Vehicle and Crew (SL-LOM, SL-LOV, SL-LOC) probabilities are computed to be of 0.975%, 0.12%, and 0.079%. Finally, from the vehicle’s constraints on the base, the feasibility of the project has been reflected upon. It is deemed that such a concept is of high interest only when the base is already operational, due to the launch and maintenance infrastructure that it requires, as well as the power it requires from the Martian base.

Radial forging without a mandrel offers a cost effective method for production of tubular components. However, nonuniform deformation, thickness variation, poor surface quality and undesirable residual stress distribution are the problems which should be overcome in order to achieve an optimal process. In this paper, radial forging dies with curved-shape profiles are proposed to alleviate some of the mentioned difficulties. Finite element simulations are used to prove the advantage of the proposed dies over the conventional linear dies. A novel analytical approach based on the slab method of analysis is developed to verify the finite element modeling. The obtained results provide useful guidelines for design and optimization of the radial forging process without mandrel.

In this paper, a less studied factor in the asymmetrical rolling process of sheets, namely the rolls horizontal displacement, is investigated using an analytical approach based on the slab method analysis. The presented method is capable of computing the force and torque of the process under different asymmetrical factors such as the rolls horizontal displacement, the interface friction inequality, and the rolls speed mismatch. A formula is presented to predict the outgoing sheet curvature induced by the rolls horizontal displacement. The results can be potentially used in producing curved sheets of various shapes by the asymmetrical rolling process. The analytical model is compared with a verified finite element code and good agreement has been observed.

Guaranteed renewability (GR) is a prominent feature in many health and life insurance markets. We develop a model that includes unpredictable (and unobservable) fluctuations in demand for life insurance as well as changes in risk type (observable) over individuals' lifetimes. The presence of demand type heterogeneity leads to the possibility that optimal GR contracts may have a renewal price that is either above or below the actuarially fair price of the lowest risk type in the population. Individuals whose type turns out to be high risk but low demand renew more of their GR insurance than is efficient due to the attractive renewal price. This results in imperfect insurance against reclassification risk. Although a first‐best efficient contract is not possible in the presence of demand type heterogeneity, the presence of GR contracts nonetheless improves welfare relative to an environment with only spot markets.

Standard of care is an ordinary, reasonable formal treatment and diagnostic process that a physician should follow for his/her patient with specific disease. Standard of care followed in one country may not suit to other country; the reason may involve economic conditions, certain norms, beliefs, tradition and culture of that society. It may be considered ethical if it does not exploit human rights and poor vulnerable population, once it exploits the human rights it creates ethical dilemmas that need to be sort out to protect vulnerable population and to make the research more ethical. Patients attending medicine department of Bolan Medical Complex (BMC) Quetta, Balochistan, Pakistan were selected randomly interviewed and requested to fill the questionnaire. The ethical issues in clinical research conducted on human population have been perplexing and remains to be the same in clinical research settings. Exploitive use of research participants in resource poor developing countries has intensified the debate on the ethics of international research and led to increasing attention to exploitation of vulnerable study subjects. The issues of conducting research in developing countries will remain and need to be focused and debated where and whenever require. One has to try sincerely to sort out the ethical problems while conducting a research study, he might fail to solve all the issues but the situation may improve by the time if tried sincerely.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bioethics.v5i2.19617 Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2014 Vol.5(2):68-72

A new design for a valveless micropumping device has been proposed that integrates two existing pumping technologies, namely, the wall induced traveling wave and the obstacle-type valveless micropump. The liquid in the microchannel is transported by generating a traveling wave on the channel, while the placing of two asymmetric trapezoid obstacles, along the centerline of the channel inlet and outlet, leads to a significant (up to seven times) increase of the net flow rate of the device. The effectiveness of this innovative design has been proved through a verified three-dimensional finite element model. Fluid–Structure Interaction (FSI) analysis is performed in the framework of an Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) method.

Thin films of semiconductors are being used in microelectronic devices. These structures experience very high transient thermal loads during operation. Phonons are the main heat carriers in these ultrafine layers. The interfaces in these structures also affect their thermophysical properties through reflection and transmission of heat carriers. This work focuses on the transient heat transport in the direction perpendicular to the plane of a double layer thinfilm structure. The analysis is based on the equation of phonon radiative transport (EPRT). This integrodifferential equation is numerically solved for the double layer. The results for the transient temperature distribution as well as the heat flow across the layers are presented.

Heating and melting of a semi-infinite body due to volumetric absorption of a moving laser radiation were studied. The problem is essentially a transient three-dimensional conduction problem with a moving heat source and a moving phase boundary. An explicit finite difference technique was used to solve for the temperature distribution and the melt pool size. In order to save computing time the solution domain was divided into inner and outer regions. The inner region was sized to contain the maximum pool size. A fine grid pattern was used for the inner region, where the temperature gradient is large and where the accurate location of the solid-liquid interface is desired. In order to validate the numerical results, comparisons were made with experimental data. The results show that the heat-affected zone and the melt pool size decrease as the translational speed of the beam increases.

This paper investigates the industry dynamics and capital structure of firms that hold illiquid assets and face potential fire-sales. Firms enter the industry by paying a fixed cost financed by equity and debt. Once in operation, shareholders have the option to adjust their asset holdings at a cost but also retain the option to exit the industry by defaulting on their debt. While costly, asset sales allow the shareholders to boost dividends or to service debt payments rather than defaulting. However, as shareholders make their decisions once debt is in place, the resulting conflict with bondholders entails over-investment and early liquidation due to debt-overhang. A substantial number of firms also exit following an exogenous financial shock. In the stationary industry equilibrium, firms selling assets but are not defaulting find it more costly to reduce capacity due to the price effects of fire-sale liquidations. This price feedback effect results in lower industry leverage but a higher default rate. Capital regulation reduces leverage ex-ante but at the cost of inducing more default. Restricting asset sales mitigates fire-sales and also reduce leverage ex-ante.

This paper investigates regulations for a bank that is covered by deposit insurance in a dynamic setting where bankruptcy entails social costs. Regulatory policy operates through rules governing the bank’s capital structure and asset allocation that may be adjusted each period. Throughout, the regulator must take into account that the bank is better informed about the inherent risks of its assets (adverse selection) and may forgo unobservable and costly actions to improve asset quality (moral hazard). I solve the resulting dynamic contracting problem by extending the approach of Athey, Atkeson, and Kehoe (2005). The model implies a stationary optimal regulatory policy under which banks face risk-adjusted capital requirements but also hard-caps on size (by assets) as well as leverage. In addition, the optimal policy counteracts procyclical bank behaviour through the use of capital buers. Overall, the optimal policy broadly supports major elements of the proposed Basel III regulatory framework.

Radial forging is an open die forging process used for reducing the diameters of shafts, tubes, stepped shafts and axels, and for creating internal profiles in tubes. In this study, the effect of the workpiece rotation (the circumferential feed) on the strain and residual stress distribution in the inner surface of the tube in the cold radial forging process is investigated using nonlinear three dimensional finite element modeling. To verify the model, the predicted radial forging load is compared with the published experimental data which shows a good agreement. It is shown that for achieving a more favorable residual stress distribution in the workpiece inner surface, the rotation angle associated with each stroke should be reduced. Furthermore, a total rotation angle of 90° seems to be sufficient for finalizing the strain and residual stress distribution in the workpiece inner surface and using additional rotation is just a waste of time and energy in this respect.

Radial forging is an open die forging process used for reducing the diameters of shafts, tubes, stepped shafts and axels, and for creating internal profiles in tubes. Among parameters affecting process variables, the die geometry is of fundamental importance and greatly influences variables such as forging load, stress distribution on the dies, metal flow during deformation, and surface finish of the forged product. In this paper a generalized slab method analysis of radial forging process is presented which can handle this process with curved shape dies. Results for dies with various curves are presented and it is shown that the analysis reduces to that of Lahoti and Altan [2] when the die has a linear profile.Copyright © 2006 by ASME

This study proposes a stochastic dynamic multi-objective model for integration of distributed generations in distribution networks. The proposed model optimises three objectives, namely technical constraint dissatisfaction, costs and environmental emissions and simultaneously determines the optimal location, size and timing of investment for both distributed generation (DG) units and network components. The uncertainties of electric load, electricity price and wind power generations are taken into account using scenario modelling. A scenario reduction technique is used to reduce the computational burden of the model. The Pareto optimal solutions of the problem are found using a binary particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm and finally a fuzzy satisfying method is applied to select the optimal solution considering the desires of the planner. The effectiveness of the proposed model is demonstrated by applying it to a realistic 201-node distribution network.

Patients with a diagnosis of severe intrapartum fetal distress by fetal heart rate and capillary blood pH monitoring received beta 2-sympathomimetics to inhibit uterine contractions (tocolysis) while the obstetric team was preparing to deliver the fetus. Fetal heart rate and acidosis significantly improved after tocolysis; these fetuses were subsequently delivered in very good metabolic and clinical condition. The favorable effect of tocolysis on fetal homeostasis is attributed to the suppression of the ischemic effect of contractions on the placental circulation. The few fetuses having an extremely compromised placental function showed no improvement in heart rate or acidosis with tocolysis and were immediately delivered. Considering the mild side effects observed, the lack of maternal complications, and the remarkable perinatal outcome obtained, we recommend using tocolysis before delivering distressed fetuses.

Excerpt To the Editor:In the article by Simon and Hyman (1), the map of the geography and political boundaries of Afghanistan is incorrect. On the map, the area of Jammu and Kashmir, which is a dis...