Search

Management of an institution determines its success or failure. Educational management and administration borrow the characteristics of business model with reference to the operations of higher edu...

The indoor connected environment has witnessed significant research and development attention from industries and academia due to the growing number of smaller smart indoor devices around us. Developing an effective and efficient wireless access standard is one of the challenging tasks to enable the next generation indoor connected environment. The technical characteristics of existing wireless access standards, including IEEE 802.11a, 802.11n, and 802.11ac, are considerably limited for realizing indoor connected environments, particularly with a growing number of smaller intelligent devices. Moreover, their backward compatibility and migration strategies are significant for developing the next-generation wireless access standard for the indoor Internet of Things environment. In this context, this paper presents an indoor environmental experimental study focusing on the backward compatibility and migration-centric performance analysis of existing wireless access standards. Three wireless access standards that operate in the 5 GHz frequency spectrum are evaluated considering the metrics, including throughput, range, efficiency, and backward compatibility in an indoor environment. The experimental results are also compared with the analytical path loss model to observe the attributes for next-generation wireless access between the observed and analytical models. The evaluation can attest to the suitable migration strategy for stable next-generation wireless access development and deployment for an indoor smart Internet of Things environment.

International audience; With the increasing use of smart devices and sensors, enormous amounts of data are being generated continuously. The data is commonly stored in centralized cloud platforms and consumed by different services. The data is indeed a valuable resource for many service providers who provide advanced features and utilities to their subscribers. However, user data include personal and sensitive information which can be misused in many ways. There is no way for a subscriber to confirm that their service provider is compliant with data privacy regulations. The existing privacy enhancing techniques such as anonymization and differential privacy substantially reduce data usability while ensuring privacy. Therefore, it remains essential to provide a feasible solution that allows service providers to take advantage of user data while guaranteeing their privacy. In this paper, we present PETchain: a novel privacy enhancing technology using blockchain and smartcontract. In PETchain, data is stored securely in a distributed manner and processed in a user-selected trusted execution environment. Users deploy the smartcontract that allows them to decide whether and how their data can be exploited by service providers. The feasibility and performance of PETchain are presented by implementing PETchain over a consortium Ethereum blockchain.

Background/Objectives: The major problems in WSN are the short-range of RF signals and the short life of batteries of each node. We develop a platform that uses the MAC protocols to avoid collisions between packets and decrease the data collection time. To overcome the energy challenges, the sleep modes, idle consumption, and others solutions provided to extend the node’s life period Methods/Statistical analysis: Based on the IoT applications, we configured different hardware (HW) to collect data from temperature,relative humidity (RH), and carbon dioxide (CO2), and access to this data, and these devices remotely through the internet. For this, the nodes, transceivers, batteries, and the gateway (GW) are analyzed. Additionally, it is configured with the frequency band or the radio frequency (RF) sensitivity to improve the performance of the system developed. Findings: Sensors, repeaters, and the GW were configured to work with each other and be accessed through the internet. The energy consumed on the experiment carried out has been reduced by more than 80% choosing LP modes and enable sleep algorithms over the Node’s OS where the time was also reduced around 80% in comparison with the available options. By set MQTT and SSH services, this application is scalable to be integrated with cloud services and be accessed by remote computers. Novelty/Applications: Finally, the lifelong period of nodes augmented drastically, more range between nodes is achieved and highly reliable data collected with low power consumption. Keywords: WSN; sensors; IoT; CO 2; temperature; relative humidity (RH)

Pakistan National Security is directly related to a mix of Islamic precepts and the implications of contemporary real politics. Initially modern theories were a philosophical response to priesthood of the time hedging Christianity for their own predominance. With the advent of Islam the West applied the same antipathy to the faith of Islam and later it impacted Muslim states and Regions. The West however, circumvented religion as historical legacy representing Christianity. Pakistan being part of wider Muslim world is prone to historically prejudiced; direct and indirect threats based on Modern political theories. Modern theories are Euro-centric owing to their war prone regional history. Islamic Security concepts characterize trans-border implication. Modern political and security perspective are based on; personal experience of the people gone through wars and civil chaos whereas Islamic concept of just war is based on faith absolutes and Meta narratives1. Modern theories imply human nature as a pivot to craft response in anticipation of a predetermined threat to justify pre-emption. Modern theories have become the seed of modern state policies. Islam makes it obligatory to prepare and built power to first deter and retaliate only under tyranny, oppression and under the threat of expulsion and extermination. Pakistan military initiative are deemed inspired by Islamic concept of Jihad and have become cause of her Security Dilemma due to prejudiced Western view. Islam emphasis on mankind as one whole universal community called ‘Ummah’. The modern theories divide the world on National identifies and globalizes only trade and transactions. National Interest in modern theories is pivotal to the state policies. This marked difference is sometime purposely confused as a strategy to dub even a legitimate resistance or movement as Terrorism depending on National Interest expediency. The major cause of conflict is embedded in Islamic and modern political connotations of a just war. These polemical perspectives explain Pakistan Security Dilemma as part of the Muslim world and a need for negotiated understanding for peace and stability and interfaith harmony.

Quality of education furnishes learners to develop intellectual capabilities, knowledge, skills and to contribute information of respectful, enlightened and peaceful democratic societies in order to uplift the sustainable well-being of individuals. The aim of secondary education is to build individual intellectual capabilities. There have been no serious and integrated efforts to develop an effective system of quality assurance for secondary education though, certain efforts have been made to improve certain aspects of school education. The aim of the article is to collect the opinion of Executive District Officers (EDOs) about quality assurance in education in the area of teachers and learners at secondary level. The research instrument was developed, validated through experts in the field of education, and reliability (internal consistency) was found through SPSS. Results of this study showed that teachers had mastery over the subject but did not have competency in pedagogical skills

Trichlorfon, an organophosphorus insecticide, is commonly used in different food crops, public health management, and in veterinary practice to control pests and parasites. Scanty informati...

The paper examines the mediation impact of employee loyalty in the relationship of employee ownership and financial performance of state-owned entities of Pakistan. Employee ownership is measured as percentage holding in state-owned entities, and financial performance is assessed trough profitability ratios; net profit margin and return on assets. Employee loyalty is determined through questionnaire circulated among the employees covered under the scheme. Meanwhile, secondary data is collected from already published sources. The study reveals that employee loyalty partially mediates the impact of employee ownership on the financial performance, which will support the policy makers to design corporate policies.

The demand for low resource devices has increased rapidly due to the advancements in Internet-of-things applications. These devices operate in environments that have limited resources. To ensure security, stream ciphers are implemented on hardware due to their speed and simplicity. Amongst different stream ciphers, the eSTREAM ciphers stand due to their frugal implementations. This work probes the effect of unrolling on the efficiency of eSTREAM ciphers, including Trivium, Grain (Grain 80 and Grain 128) and MICKEY (MICKEY 2.0 and MICKEY-128 2.0). It addresses the question of optimal unrolling for designing high-performance stream ciphers. The increase in the area consumption is also bench-marked. The analysis is conducted to identify efficient design principles for ciphers. We experimentally show that the resulting performance after unrolling may disagree with the theoretical prediction when the effects of technology library are considered. We report pre-layout synthesis results on 65 and 130 nm ASIC technology as well as synthesis results for Xilinx FPGA platform in support of our claim. Based on our findings, cipher design and implementation suggestions are proposed to aid hardware designers. Furthermore, we explore why and where area-efficiency for these ciphers saturate. Published version

Plants face a variety of biotic and abiotic stresses throughout their life cycle that adversely affect their growth and production. These stresses decrease the annual crop yield up to 70% globally and had created a problem of food shortage as well as the malnutrition for ever-increasing world population. Different strategies are being practiced to overcome these problems and found successful up to some extent. Exogenous use of plant growth promoters through different modes is one such among them that found helpful to improve the plant growth and production under stressful conditions and is being employed at commercial level to obtain better production. However, most of them are the inorganic chemicals and are found toxic for organism and are not environmental friendly. Trend is increasing toward the use of organic and environmental-friendly biostimulants with the ability to improve production and stress tolerance induction. Studies have revealed that exogenous use of these biochemicals through different modes (seed soaking, foliar spray, or as soil application) is found helpful in improving the plant growth and production under stressful conditions. These biostimulants include the chelation of macro- or micro-nutrients with different organic compounds, plant growth regulators of microbial origin, and plant-based biostimulants that are found helpful in improving the plant growth and production under stressful conditions. These include humic acids (humic and fulvic acid), chitosan, phosphites, bio-char, and plant-based extracts, including algal extracts and of different plant parts. These biostimulants along with the improvement of plant growth and production also found helpful to improve the yield and yield nutritional quality when applied exogenously through different modes. Improvements in the attribute due to the exogenous use of biostimulants under stressful condition are associated with their role in different physio-biochemical attributes, including plant antioxidative defense mechanism, plant photosynthetic efficiency, and plant water relation through the accumulation of different osmotica (osmolytes and osmoprotectants) that help to maintain cellular osmotic potential and better nutrient uptake and mobility. Plant-based biostimulants improve the plant growth due to the presence of different phytohormones and other secondary metabolites, vitamins, antioxidants, and the inorganic nutrients in the extract that directly affect the plant growth and production through improving the plant tolerance against abiotic stresses. Exogenous use of biostimulants through different modes also improves the plant growth, yield as well as the yield nutritional quality under stressful conditions. However, studies revealed that the effective dose for the induction of stress tolerance of these biostimulants is plant species, growth stage, and stress type specific. Moreover, the use of biostimulants for the effective improvement is also dependent on the mode of application. Although large work has been done to study the role of biostimulants in improving plant growth and production, still more is required for final recommendations. More attention is required in this regard and in future due to their non-toxic and environmental-friendly nature.

Global adverse changes in environment spiked up the abiotic (salinity, water scarcity, accumulation of heavy metals, extreme temperatures, etc.) and biotic stresses (increase in phytopathogens, etc.). This adverse environment is considered responsible for reduction in production of agriculture, hindering the bioremediation application, and even alteration in forest ecosystems. This alarming scenario forcing the scientists to look and call our natural allies, i.e., plant growth-promoting microbes (PGPM), for their assistance to develop new strategies and technologies which are sustainable eco-friendly alternatives to the formal agricultural practices like massive use of pesticides and fertilizers, etc. The results from the previous research on PGPM including rhizobia, plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB), arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizal (VAM) fungi, and ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi have demonstrated a huge unrevealed potential to cope with major environmental threats to agriculture production. In this regard, a collective piece of information is not still available which represents the missing or revealing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of PGPM assistance to alleviate adverse environment footprints on agriculture production. The focus of this chapter is to explore the prospective of plant-microbe interactions to cope up with the adverse environment-related challenges of agriculture production through reviewing the progress in knowledge of mechanism underlying these interactions for sustainable development in agriculture.

As cost-effective and relatively accurate models for behavior classification, automatic facial expression analysis has the potential to be applied to multiple disciplines. The current research deals with real-time classification of evoked emotions in children. Reason behind analyzing children behavior is that they possess immature cognitive abilities compared to adults, they are more likely to be influenced by external stimuli and they are less likely to pose and hide expression. This research work uses a three-phase classification model to analyze real time captured emotion varying children facial expressions. Two classifiers K-Nearest Neighbor and SVM were used for classification. The classification model was tested using our own real time recorded children Facial Expression (CFE).

Benefiting from the controlled hydrothermal synthesis of tungsten trioxide (WO3) nanosheets (NSs), a unique thin-film back contact was designed for the CdTe solar cells. The hydrothermally prepared WO3 NSs was spin-coated as the thin-film buffer layer on the back contact of CdTe thin-film solar cells to replace traditional Cu contact. The morphology, phase crystallization, chemical compositions, and the intimate junction contact were confirmed by SEM, TEM, XRD, Raman, and XPS characterizations. The interpretation of the quantitative band alignment carried out on an X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) showed that the WO3/CdTe energy barrier at the interface was substantially lower. The offset of the valence band (∆EVBO) and conduction band (∆ECBO) at WO3/CdTe heterojunction were found 0.69 and 1.86 eV respectively. Moreover, by combining WO3 as a high work-function buffer layer with various metals contacts such as Au, WO3/Au, Cu/WO3/Au, and the conventional Cu/Au metal layer, low resistive ohmic back contacts for CdTe thin-film solar cells were developed and analyzed. Interestingly, the CdTe thin-film solar cells fabricated with WO3 NSs as a buffer layer between CdTe/Cu (3 nm) and metallic Au electrodes demonstrated the best performance with the conversion efficiency of 13.0%. To the best of our knowledge, so far this is the first report on WO3 NSs that opened a new paradigm to use WO3 nanostructures as a buffer layer in the thin-film CdTe solar cell to get improved thermal stability and device efficiency in the harsh environment.

Introduction Despite technological advancement in the modern medical system, our world is experiencing an unexpected rise in different chronic diseases, health disorders, allopathic treatment side effects and lifestyle problems. The tourism industry has encapsulated medical and health tourism segments into its scope when countries across the globe now witness an aging population. Little is yet known about changing preferences, motivation to travel, and demands of modern medical tourists recently. The present study aims to explore shifts in medical tourism and the demands for Traditional and Complementary Medicine (T&CM) methods of treatment. Methods A scoping review of academic articles, published reports, and media literature was undertaken to define the emerging demands of medical tourists and available medicine and health systems in the medical tourism industry. Out of 264 identified sources that were reviewed, 112 met the inclusion criteria for the review. Results This review demonstrates that natural treatments are being considered by medical tourists as well as allopathic treatments (a conventional western approach based on surgeries and drugs) and tourism attractions. However, the existence of an allopathic system of treatment still contributes to emerging medical system where no T&CM treatment alternatives are available. Conclusion A robust medical tourism system, if established by integrating natural treatments, T&CM, allopathic treatments, and tourism can achieve the best of all available health treatment systems and contribute to public health. These results provide a useful contribution to the understanding of the trends in medical tourism.

The use of wastewater for rearing domestic animals is a common phenomenon in most of the developing countries like Pakistan that face a serious shortage of freshwater resources. However, most of the literature has only focused on the indirect effects of wastewater use on animal health or productivity, and literature on the direct effects of wastewater use is rare. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the direct and indirect effects of wastewater usage on the prevalence of animal diseases and animal health in Pakistan. The study is based on a household-level survey of 360 domestic water buffalo herds collected from 12 districts of Punjab Province, Pakistan. We tested the prevalence of the animal's diseases, animal's health, and wastewater-use preference with various econometric tools, such as the Poisson, negative binomial, and logistic regressions. The findings of the study show that the majority of the farmers use wastewater for buffalo bathing due to the shortage of freshwater resources. Results explore the prevalence of diseases such as clinical mastitis, tick infestation, and foot and mouth disease at the farm level significantly associated with buffalo bathing in the wastewater. Moreover, bathing in wastewater pre- and post-milking also plays a role in the occurrence of diseases. Particularly, if the buffalo's access to wastewater for bathing is within 60 min after milking, the probability of the animals being exposed to mastitis is higher. Furthermore, on investigation, a number of factors are found, such as the distance to the water source, power shortage, groundwater availability, and the education of farmers that influence farmers' behavior of letting their animals take a bath in wastewater. Moreover, the use of different preventive measures improves the animal's health.

International audience; Web conversational services are exposed to several threats in which the social context between communicating participants is manipulated. Cybercrimes based on identity misrepresentation to obtain sensitive information are on the rise. Various scams and frauds are conducted by distributing malicious content, viruses, and spam over established communication sessions. In order to maintain overall security and enhance privacy, methods of estimating trustworthiness and reputation should be built into Web calling services. In this paper, we propose "TrustCall" a reputation-based trust model for real-time Web conversational services. In our approach, the reputation of a caller is evaluated using Authenticity Trust and Behavioral Trust. Authenticity Trust describes the legitimacy of a caller by collecting recommendations from other members of the network, whereas Behavioral Trust determines a caller's popularity based on its communication behavior. Other contributions include a threat taxonomy for Web calling services, including social threats, that directly target users. A set of experiments are conducted in order to prove the feasibility and effectiveness of our model

Application of natural colorants to textile fabrics has gained worldwide public acceptance due to the hazardous nature of synthetic dyes. Present study investigated the microwave's mediated extraction of natural colorants from leaves of milkweed (Calotropis procera L.) as well as their application to cotton fabrics assisted with biochemical mordants. Dye extraction from C. procera leaves was carried out in various mediums (alkali and aqueous), and the extracted dye as well as cotton fabrics was irradiated with microwaves for 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10 min. Effect of various temperature regimes and sodium chloride (NaCl) concentrations was also evaluated on the color strength of dyed cotton fabrics. The results revealed that extraction of natural colorants was enhanced when microwave radiations were applied for 4 min by using alkali as an extraction medium as compared to aqueous one. Optimum dyeing of cotton fabrics was achieved by using NaCl at a temperature of 55 °C. Among the chemical mordants, iron was effective for better color strength when used as pre- and post-mordant. Among the studied bio-mordants, extract of Acacia nilotica bark significantly improved the color strength and fastness properties as pre-mordant and Curcuma longa tuber as post-mordant. It was concluded that extract of C. procera leaves was a potential source of natural colorants and a high level of dye was obtained upon irradiation of alkali-solubilized extract for 4 min. Application of NaCl at concentration of 3 g/100 mL and temperature treatment of 55 °C significantly improved the color strength of dyed cotton fabrics.

Tuberculosis (TB) caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) is a chronic bacterial infection affecting many organs of the body particularly the lungs. Another organ seriously affected by TB is the hematopoietic system. TB patients co-infected with other disorders are more prone to death than TB alone. This study was aimed to investigate the variations in hematological profile of pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) patients co-infected with chronic infectious and metabolic disorders. The study population (n = 366) include PTB patients (positive control) and PTB patients co-infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, diabetes, and myocardial infarction (MI). Healthy individuals (n = 95) were also included as normal control. All the study subjects were screened for PTB, diabetes, HCV infection, MI, and HIV infection. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was performed to confirm MTB infection at molecular level. Among 366 Ziehl–Neelsen positive cases, 258 (70.5%) were confirmed PTB positive by PCR. Among them, 36.8% were infected with PTB only, while 24% were co-morbid with diabetes, 17.8% co-infected with HCV, 11.2% with diabetes and HCV, 4.2% with HIV, 2.3% with both HCV and HIV, and 3.4% co-morbid with MI. Significant ( P

International audience; Internet telephony permit callers to manage self-asserted profiles without any subscription contract nor identification proof. These cost-free services have attracted many telemarketers and spammers who generate unsolicited nuisance calls. Upon detection, they simply rejoin the network with a new identity to continue their malicious activities. Nuisance calls are highly disruptive when compared to email and social spam. They not only include annoying telemarketing calls but also contain scam and voice phishing which involves security risk for subscribers. Therefore, it remains a major challenge for Internet telephony providers to detect and avoid nuisance calls efficiently. In this paper, we present a new approach that uses caller reputation to detect different kinds of nuisance calls generated in the network. The reputation is computed in a hybrid manner by extracting information from call data records and using recommendations from reliable communicating participants. The behavior of the caller is assessed by extracting call features such as call-rate, call duration, and call density. Long term and short term reputations are computed to quickly detect the changing behavior of callers. Furthermore, our approach involves an efficient mechanism to combat whitewashing attacks performed by malicious callers to continue generating nuisance calls in the network. We conduct simulations to compute the performance of our proposed model. The experiments conclude that the proposed reputation model is an effective method to detect different types of nuisance calls while avoiding false detection of legitimate calls.

The study was carried out to determine, by PCR-RFLP, the magnitude of drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The study was carried out on 221 random sputum samples collected from patients and 120 suspected cases of drug resistance. Genetic variation in drug-resistant strains was evaluated through PCR-RFLP for isoniazid, ethambutol, streptomycin, and ofloxacin. Out of 341 patients, 91.5% were confirmed as M. tuberculosis complex infected on the basis of PCR. The random samples revealed resistance in 8.2% cases, while 73.3% of those with suspected drug resistance were found resistant. Among drug-resistant isolates, 56.1% were resistant to a single drug, 33.3% to two drugs, and 10.6% to more than two drugs. Ofloxacin resistance was observed along with isoniazid, ethambutol, and streptomycin in 6.5% cases. Resistance to isoniazid was observed in 61% cases, to ethambutol in 50.4%, and to streptomycin in 43.1% cases. It was concluded that PCR-RFLP is a useful molecular technique for the rapid detection of mutations in drug-resistant tuberculosis patients and may be used to diagnose drug resistance at the earliest.

Motivated by the remarkable usages of prescribed heat sources in the areas of solar energy and thermal engineering, we frame a mathematical model for unsteady flow of magnetized Eyring-Powell nanomaterial driven by a bi-directionally moveable surface with the nonlinearity of solar radiation. Basically, this newly stated approach is more genuine, where prescribed heat sources (PST and PHF) are used to maintain the surface temperature and quantities of thermal engineering interest are inspected in a more effective way. A proper combination of variables is adopted to convert the PDEs into ODEs and then numerically solved by utilizing Keller-Box approach. The foremost outcomes for the rate of heat and the rate of mass transferences are anticipated through various tables and graphs. It is observed through present investigation that escalating values of temperature controlled indices, solar radiation constraint and temperature ratio constraint enhance the rate of heat transference, whereas rising amount of thermophoresis constraint reduces the rate of mass transference. Finally, a comparison with the restricted case is also established to validate the whole parametric study.

The present study discovers the numerical simulations of MHD non-isothermal flow of a micropolar fluid in a porous trapezoidal container under the impact of a constantly heated bottom wall. The top wall of the container is insulated while inclined boundaries have low temperature as compared to the lower boundary. The eminent numerical scheme (FEM) is employed to simulate the nonlinear field equations of the present study. The results are presented in term of streamlines, temperature contours, local and average Nusselt number for diverse values of involved physical parameters. The numerical algorithm is verified against the previously published numerical results. It is observed that the average Nusselt number diminishes with increasing the strength of the applied magnetic field. In contrast, the average Nusselt number increases slightly with enhancing the micro-gyration parameter. The analysis of the present study can be useful in solar engineering for the construction of trapezoidal solar collectors, porous heat exchangers, construction of thermal insulation structures, and geophysical fluid mechanics. The strength of stream function decreases and heat transfer phenomenon inside the cavity becomes conduction dominated with increasing the micropolar parameter.

International audience; Nuisance calls are not only irritating and annoying but also pose several security threats. Nuisance calls can be classified into live, recorded, scam and silent spam calls. Unlike traditional communication networks, users identities over the web cannot be asserted as they are created without any subscription contract or identification proof. To address this issue, we present N-Combat framework that effectively combats automated and manually generated nuisance calls over web communication services. In N-Combat the caller's reputation is computed using total call duration, out-degree, feedback received and the reliability of communicating participants. To address the dynamic behavior of callers, the concept of a dual time window is introduced. Furthermore, the framework uses a watchdog mechanism to combat whitewashing attacks that allows spammers to shed their bad reputation and reenter the network with a new identity

Background: Cypermethrin is a pyrethroid insecticide widely used in agriculture and medicines. Its toxicity effects on spleen and blood in male and female rabbits is studied in this research. Methods: Age- and weight-matched does/females (n=24) and bucks/males (n=24) of Japanese White rabbits were subjected to intraperitoneal cypermethrin administration @50, 100 and 150 mg.kg-1 b.wt. in groups B, C and D, respectively. The experimental rabbit does and bucks were tested for hematology alterations after each of 5 CY-treatments, at days 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29. One rabbit doe and one rabbit buck were sacrificed fortnightly (days 15, 29, 43, 57 and 71) to obtain spleen for histological studies. Results: CY-treated rabbit bucks developed anemia, leukopenia, neutropenia, monocytosis, eosinophilia and basocytopenia mostly in dose and time dependent manner. In contrast, rabbit does show transient but significant leukocytosis, neutropenia, lymphopenia, monocytosis, eosinophilia and basophilia only in high dose group. Moreover, spleen histology revealed congestion, depletion of white pulp with increased red pulp and hemosiderin deposition in CY treated rabbit bucks, but not rabbit does. Conclusions: This study concludes that immuno-toxicity by cypermethrin insecticide is not similar in male and female subjects.

Sentiment classification of social media has recently become popular among scientists due to the emergence of product reviews, blogs and social networking sites. A large number of reviews are difficult to evaluate personally. Moreover due to variable nature of reviews it becomes difficult, to compile overall result of reviews, to know which product is better than other. Researchers have already implemented machine learning techniques to analyze sentiment present in the given document. But execution time for these techniques increases due to the increase in feature set of data. Also irrelevant features participate in determining the sentiment of the given document, thereby varying the accuracy of the algorithm. In order to get much better classification, we propose a Biogeography based optimization algorithm to select optimal features set from given data. Then by using Naive Bayes and Support Vector Machine techniques, we perform sentiment classification of product reviews. The proposed technique can be applied to other classification problems where feature set is large.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a dreadful viral disease, responsible for 170 million cases worldwide, of which most are from Asia and Africa and approximately 10 million people are from Pakistan. Currently, the pegylated interferon alpha (PEG-INF-α) has been approved as the standard of care in combination with ribavirin and Boceprevir/Telaprevir. Many studies regarding gene expression analysis of liver biopsy samples of patients with chronic HCV infection have been carried out previously. However, there are very few reports of expression analysis carried out using blood samples of HCV patients. Therefore, in this study, gene expression of human immune responsive genes (MMP-9, OAS1) and fibrogenic responsive gene (KRT19) was done in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of chronic HCV infected patients having differences in viral titers. Blood samples were collected from different hospitals in Pakistan. RNA was extracted and cDNA was synthesized according to the protocol prescribed by the Enzynomics™ M-MLV Reverse Transcriptase(®) Kit. The synthesized cDNA was amplified through polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using specific primers of immune responsive genes. The results were further evaluated using real-time PCR. There was a significant increase in the expression of the immune responsive genes (MMP-9, OAS1, CXCL6, CXCR3, ApoA1, and MYC) of HCV genotype 3a patients compared to controls. Similarly, the expression of the fibrosis genes was upregulated in HCV genotype 3a patients compared to controls. The information gained through this study is helpful to identify a noninvasive marker to determine liver fibrosis, and may also give useful information to understand HCV pathogenesis and develop better therapeutic regimens.

First-principle calculations were carried out to calculate formation energy, charge density and electronic properties of doped ZrO2 with and without single oxygen vacancy (Vo) using density functional theory (DFT). Increasing concentration of Al dopant without Vo decreased the conductivity of the system (ZrO2) and vice versa in case of Cu dopant. Isosurface charge density plots confirmed that conducting channels were created in both cases in addition to that Al dopant with Vo improved the conductivity and enhanced conducting channel. The ZrO2 doped with Cu formed conducting channel (metal ions) and enhanced the conductivity, while Cu with Vo was less conductive with shortened conducting channels. These results showed impacts of dopants (metal ions) with and without oxygen vacancy to increase the efficiency of non-volatile RRAM devices. Electronic properties confirmed that ZrO2 with substitutional doping of Al having Vo was comparatively better electrode material for RRAM technology while Cu without Vo. These studies showed that ZrO2 based RRAM devices have an excessive potential for future memory applications.

Banks and financial institutions of Bangladesh invest a large amount of money for training purposes in building and enhancing capacity of their human resources. But whether this investment is effective or not is a question often asked by the policymakers of these institutions. These institutions usually train their employees by using off-the-job training methods like seminars, workshops, lectures, etc. along with on-the-job training methods to improve the performance of the employees. A lion’s share of training budget is usually used for off-the-job training purposes that add value for the development of knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) of the employees’. But the effectiveness of these training methods is often questioned due to traditional lecture-based training sessions. To make the employees more attractive to training programs, interactive and value adding training methods can increase the effectiveness of the training. Hence, this paper aims at identifying the factors that can improve the effectiveness of the off-the-job training methods in commercial banks of Bangladesh. This study used both qualitative and quantitative research methods. A survey was conducted among the bank officers who received off-the-job training with structured questionnaire. A total of 300 bank officers at different levels of the banks were interviewed. Eight leading private and public commercial banks were included in the survey. Factor Analysis was used to identify the factors related to the effectiveness of off-the-job training methods while Multiple Regression was used to identify the relationships between the overall effectiveness of the training and the effectiveness factors related to off-the-job training. Results show that the effectiveness of the off-the-job training methods depends on four significant factors such as, acquiring knowledge and skills, logistics support, invitation of comments by the trainers and participation of the trainees, and participation of the trainees in Training Needs Assessment (TNA). This study suggests that off-the-job training methods can be made more effective by ensuring effective delivery of knowledge, providing proper logistics supports, engaging trainees in training sessions, and ensuring participation of the trainees in training need assessment processes of the banks.

A Feature Model is a tree like structure that represents the commonality and variability in Software Product Lines. During analysis required information is extracted from a feature model. In the literature a number of techniques have been presented for the analysis of feature models.Quality of a Feature Model is of prime significance because it is used for the development of families of software. The quality of feature models is affected by the presence of errors. There is a need for a mechanism that could enhance the quality of a feature model by removing all inconsistency, anomaly and redundancy based errors. I am proposing a mathematical technique for the analysis of Feature Models that will lead towards their quality enhancement.

We are presenting a case of renal failure with anti-GBM and p-ANCA antibodies positive. Patients with dual antibodies are considered to be a vasculitis-variant of anti-GBM antibody nephritis. These patients may have atypical presentation and it may delay diagnosis and treatment. Recurrence rate is higher in these patients. We reviewed the literature of cases and studies on cresenteric glomerulonephritis with anti-GBM and p-ANCA positive patients. We recommend that patients suspected with pulmonary-renal syndrome should be checked for anti-GBM and p-ANCA antibodies, should undergo renal biopsy and should should have close long term follow up to watch for recurrence.

Mycobacterium caprae is a pathogen that can infect animals and humans. To better understand the epidemiology of M. caprae, we spoligotyped 791 animal isolates. Results suggest infection is widespread in Spain, affecting 6 domestic and wild animal species. The epidemiology is driven by infections in caprids, although the organism has emerged in cattle.

The study was carried out in cattle kept at 11 livestock experiment stations of Punjab by using single comparative cervical intradermal tuberculin (SCCIT) test. Sahiwal was the main breed kept at these farms. Sixty three percent of animals were between four and 10 years of age. Seventy-six percent of animals weighed between 300 and 400 kg and 66% produced 5-10l of milk/day. Animals other than cattle were present at about 64% of these farms. The positive SCCIT test was recorded in 7.6% of animals at the 11 farms. However, the prevalence of tuberculosis varied from 2.0% to 19.3% at these farms. Bivariate frequency analysis showed that the chances of a positive SCCIT test were higher in older animals, in cattle with higher number of calving and those produced up to 1800l of milk. However, the chances of positive SCCIT test decreases with further increase in milk production. Results of bivariate and/or multivariate logistic regression analysis after controlling for the farm showed a significant association of age of cattle, numbers of calving, total milk produced, per day milk, lactation length, presence of sheep at the farm and total numbers of animals at the farm with a positive SCCIT test. It can be concluded from the study that herd prevalence of tuberculosis was 100%, while animal prevalence was about 8% at these farms. The stronger risk factors identified by logistic analysis were the age of cattle, numbers of calving, total milk produced and lactation length, while the presence of sheep at the farm has protective effect.

The present study was undertaken to find out the association of certain risk factors with the positive SCCIT (single comparative cervical intradermal tuberculin) test in water buffaloes at Faisalabad and Okara, Pakistan. Seventy-six herds (697 buffaloes) at Faisalabad and 56 (395 buffaloes) at Okara were included in the study. The buffaloes were screened through SCCIT Test. Positive reaction to SCCIT test was recorded in 14% of herds and in 3% of buffaloes. The herds positive for this test were 18% when herds with less than 10 animals were excluded from the analysis and these were 19% when herds with less than 10 buffaloes were excluded. The results of logistic analysis (crude and adjusted) revealed the association of lactating status of buffaloes (OR = 1.8) and the presence of cattle at the farm (OR = 2–4) with positive SCCIT test. After controlling for the farm, the risk of a positive skin test was 1.5 times higher if we change the location of the animal. Similarly, the controlled analysis (for the farm, breed and other variables) revealed an increased risk (OR = 1.1) of a positive skin test with the increase in cattle at the farm. The breed controlled stratified analysis showed the association of a number of cattle at the farm with a positive skin test. It can be concluded from the study that the prevalence of tuberculosis on the basis of a positive skin test is higher at herd level and lower at animal level. Further the risk of a positive skin test is higher when cattle are present at the farm.

To investigate the percentage reactor animals to SCCIT in sheep and goat the present study was carried out by using bovine and avian PPDs at 7 Livestock Experiment Stations of Punjab and villages around two cities. The overall percentage of reactor animals to SCCIT at farms in sheep and goat was 0.9% and 2.4%, while it was 0.4% and 0.0% around two cities, respectively. Hundred percent of goat and 86% of sheep farms under study had positive reactor animals. The reactor animals to SCCIT around two cities were 0% in goat and 0.4% in sheep. Goats (P0.05) and sheep (P0.001) kept with large ruminants at farms had higher percentage of reactor animals. Age showed significant (P0.01) association with tuberculosis in sheep and goat. In goats of more than 6 years of age, the reactor animals to SCCIT were 5, 8 and 11 times higher than goats of 4.1-6, 3-4 and3 years of age. The reactor animals were significantly (P0.05) higher in goats of30kg (3.5%) and40kg (3.5%) body weights, while these were less in goats weighing between 30 and 40kg (1.5%). Sheep and goat breeds showed significant (P0.001; P0.05) difference in percentage of reactor animals to SCCIT. Beetal (3.9%) and Teddy breeds (2.9%) had 3.3 and 2.4 times higher percentages of reactor animals to SCCIT as compared to Pak-Angora (1.2%) breed. However, no animal of Nachhi and Dera Din Pinah breeds showed positive reaction to PPDs.

The subject of the paper is arranged as follows. Firstly, the basic description of sukuk, its attributes and benefits, followed by the prevailing dominant types of sukuk, the pros and cons and issues at hand in certain cases. Alternatives and close parallels to sukuk are also drawn where considered necessary.

Computer assisted detection of lung nodules offers a more accurate method of nodule detection which leads to reliable diagnosis of lung cancer. Lung segmentation is a first step in the process of automatic detection of nodules. In this paper, we propose a wavelet packet frames based approach for effective lung segmentation. The proposed algorithm selects the optimal wavelet representation that is a collection of wavelet packet frames. The frames are subsequently used for clustering of coefficients using k-means clustering, which leads to the segmented lung region. The algorithm is tested on the one publicly available dataset containing 350 images and CT scan dataset of 5 local patients containing a total of 71 images. Accurate segmentation of lung is acquired with average difference in pixels from the ground truth being as low as 1.34±0.451. Furthermore, the proposed technique is fully automated and is capable of segmenting lung in multiple slices with no manual intervention or change in parameters.

An attempt was made to analyze the impact of capital structure on firm performance of 63 companies listed on Karachi Stock Exchange. Data comprised of 5 years, 2007 to 2011. Balance Sheet Analysis issued by State Bank of Pakistan was used for data collection. Fixed Effects Model was used as pooled regression model to find the relationship between firm performance (ROA, ROE, ROS) and capital expenditure (DTA, EQA, LDA). Results showed that there does exist a relationship but direction of the relationship was mixed. Capital structure showed positive impact on firm performance when retrun on assets (ROA) was used as dependent variable. When return on equity (ROE) was used as dependent variable then debt over assets ratio (DTA) showed positive impact but equity over assets ratio (EQA) and long term debts over assets ratio (LDA) revealed negative impact over dependent variable and when retrun on sales (ROS) was used as dependent variable then DTA and EQA showed negative link to ROS but LDA revealed positive impact over ROS. It was proved that capital structure has impact over firm performance so managers should adopt necessary carefulness while taking decisions regarding capital structure.