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Agricultural products are a fundamental necessity for every country. When plants are afflicted with diseases, it influences the country's agricultural productivity, as well as its economic resources. Diseases are an important problem for potato plants, causing potatoes to be rejected and resulting in financial losses. Viruses and diseases in potatoes and field plants can be missed with the naked eye, particularly in the early stages of cultivation. The use of modern instruments and technology at an early stage of disease diagnosis dramatically reduces costs. This study used deep learning techniques to categorize and detect plant leaf diseases in photos taken from the Plant Village dataset. The dataset consists of 20,636 photos of plants and their diseases. This study focused on potato plants because it is the most common type of plant in the world, particularly in Pakistan. Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) methods were used to categorize plant leaf diseases into 15 classes, including three classes for healthy leaves and classes for several plant diseases such as fungal and bacterial infections, among others. The proposed models were trained and tested, achieving 98.29 and 98.029% accuracy, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was designed to analyze the external morphometric characteristics of Labeoboga from Head Panjnad, Alipur, Punjab, Pakistan. About 48 specimens were collected and examined to address the growth patterns of the species under study for the first time, together with their morphometric characteristics for the analysis of morphological characters. The analysis of the present results for the length-weight relationship revealed that the value of regression coefficient „b? was <3.0 according to the cube law, showing a negative allometric growth pattern (b = 2.710). Additionally, a highly significant positive correlation (r > 0.931; P < 0.05) was recorded for the correlation value „r? among weight and length. A linear correlation was observed among 11 morphometric characters vs total length (TL), which revealed a highly significant correlation between total length vs standard length, body weight, fork length, dorsal fin length, body girth, body depth, anal fin length, and pectoral fin length, respectively. While, a moderate correlation was recorded between total length vs head length, eye diameter, and caudal peduncle length. Furthermore, the same trend was observed in the correlation significance between total body weight and other morphometric characters. The current study would be helpful for ichthyologists and zoologists in comparing different morphometric characteristics of Labeoboga. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study intends to examine economic growth in terms of national savings in the context Pakistan. It applies yearly data from 1972 to 2021. By means of Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method the impact of national savings, foreign direct investment as well as employed labor force on economic growth of Pakistan is observed. The findings direct to conclude that there is significant long run relationship exist between national saving, foreign direct investment, employed labor force and economic growth in Pakistan. It suggests that employed labor force encourages foreign direct investment over long run period and savings increases real activity equally before and after the break, whereas economic growth causes saving. Thus, the current study also recommends that productivity-based and incentive-based measures are useful in producing more savings and supporting acceleration of income as well as growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigates the socio-religious factors in the propagation of genetically inherited disease of Beta thalassemia. The disorder which reportedly has a significant protraction through repeated cousin marriages results in the social maladjustment of the parents of the sick children due to constant depression, anxiety, and weak social interaction and may lead to social isolation as well. This research aims to find out the significant effect of socio-religious trends on psychosocial burden of beta thalassemia major among cousin and non-cousin couples in the province of Punjab in Pakistan. It takes a sample of 932 parents of sick children, among whom 735 were married with cousins and 197 with non-cousins, for data collection. The findings reveal that inadequate knowledge of the disease, insufficient or misdirected social support, stigmatization, and marriage breakups caused by the disease, superstitions, and misinterpretations of religion and the subsequent practices accordingly as significant predictors of psychosocial burden of beta thalassemia major among non-cousins and cousin couples. Additionally, it also finds patriarchy as only significant predictors of outcome variable among cousin couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal determinants of health are of recognized importance for understanding the causal association of society and health of an individual. Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is a challenging public health problem across the globe instigating from a broader sociocultural background. It is more prevalent among pregnant women, children under the age of five years, and adolescent girls. Adolescent girls are vulnerable to develop IDA because of additional nutritional demand of the body needed for growth spurt, blood loss due to onset of menarche, malnourishment, and poor dietary iron intake. In this study, we explore the societal determinants of anemia among adolescent girls in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Pakistan. A cross-sectional study was conducted in the Muzaffarabad division of AJK on randomly selected 626 adolescent girls. The data were collected using a pretested self-administered interview schedule comprising mainly closed-ended questions with a few open-ended questions. Descriptive statistics was computed for describing the data, and bivariate regression and logistic regression were used to determine the association of anemia with its societal determinants. Multiple linear regression is used to determine the relationship of different determinants (independent variables) with the hemoglobin level (dependent variable) of the respondents. The prevalence of anemia among adolescent girls is 47.9%, of which 47.7% have mild anemia, 51.7% have moderate anemia, and 5.7% have severe anemia, which reveals that anemia is a severe public health problem among adolescent girls in the study area. The findings aver that anemia occurrence was significantly associated with the respondent's and her parental education, economic well-being, prevalence of communicable diseases, menstrual disorder, exercise habits, meals regularity, and type of sewerage system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was conducted to evaluate the prevalence of bovine gammaherpesvirus 4 (BoHV-4) among healthy cattle and buffaloes as well as those associated with different diseases (respiratory tract infection, mastitis and reproductive tract infection) in District Chakwal, Pakistan. Blood, swab and milk samples of cattle and buffaloes were randomly collected from different areas of Chakwal. DNA was isolated from the samples and subjected to nested PCR using thymidine kinase gene primers. Out of 300 samples (200 blood, 50 swab and 50 milk samples) from both species (cattle and buffalo), an overall prevalence of BoHV-4 of 3.33% was obtained. Samples from cattle showed a higher species-specific prevalence (4.16%) than samples from buffalo (2.78%). One sample out of 50 swab samples and 1 out of 50 milk samples were also positive for BoHV-4. DNA sequencing of a positive PCR product from cattle confirmed that the sequence was from the thymidine kinase gene of BoHV-4. Phylogenetic analysis also revealed close similarities with other BOHV-4 thymidine kinase sequences. To detect BoHV-4 antibodies, an indirect ELISA was also performed. Two hundred blood samples were also collected from the same animals in nonanticoagulant-containing tubes for the isolation of serum and were subjected to indirect ELISA. Sixteen samples (8%) were positive for BoHV-4 antibodies. This study will be useful in further diagnoses of BoHV-4 in Pakistan and in devising measures to control the spread of BoHV-4., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.)

Gastric cancer is the 2nd most common cause of death among all cancers and is the 4th most common cancer in the world. The number of deaths due to gastric cancer is about 800,000 annually. Gastric cancer is more common in men as compared to women and is 3rd most common cancer after colorectal and breast cancers in women. A progressive rise in the incidence rate has been observed in females over the last 5 years. The highest incidence of stomach cancer is in China, South America and Eastern Europe. The incidence of gastric cancer has 20 fold variation worldwide. Global variation is linked by two factors which play important role in developing gastric cancer. One is infection with Helicobacter pylori and the 2nd is diet. South Asia is a region with low risk, despite a high prevalence of H.pylori. Gastric carcinoma is common in southern region of India. Gastric cancer is more readily treated if diagnosed early. This study aims to provide awareness about gastric cancer as well as an updated knowledge about risk factors and epidemiology of gastric cancer in Pakistan.