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The marketing techniques in developing countries have changed a lot since the start of this century. The concept of branding have given new imputes to these marketing techniques. The role of celebrates from different fields play significant role in changing consumer buying behavior. The present study has been designed to check how celebrity endorsement affects the consumer buying behavior. A questionnaire was developed to realize the objective of the study for the people of Lahore. The data is collected through paper pencil method from two shopping malls namely Emporium mall and Packages mall. A total of 256 respondents participated in the survey. Higher order CFA was used to measure celebrity endorsement variable with the help of four first order latent variables namely personal traits, credibility of the endorsement, brand credibility, and ad recall. SEM was applied to see the impact of celebrity endorsement on buying behavior of the consumers. The results of the study showed that four latent variables are measuring the concept of celebrity endorsement. Furthermore, the results also confirmed that celebrities appearing in Ads significantly affect the consumer buying behavior.

Bacteriophages are bacteria-targeting viruses that may prove useful as therapeutic agents against multidrug-resistant bacterial strains. Though phage therapy is a century-old concept, there is very limited progress on its therapeutic application due to the rapid expansion of antibiotics portfolios in the last few decades. However, the emergence of multidrug-resistant organisms has brought our attention back to bacteriophages. The first step towards developing effective phage therapy against multidrug-resistant bacteria is isolation, amplification, and purification of specific bacteriophages. There are many reported protocols for isolating host-specific bacteriophages from the environment. However, most of them are complex, multistep, low-yielding, resource-intensive protocols, requiring elaborate laboratory setup. We have demonstrated a simple two-step, high-yielding protocol for isolating and amplifying bacteriophages against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). We have shown that mixing various environmental samples (i.e., sample pooling) and phage amplification at two different temperatures significantly enhance the yield of MRSA phages

The present study aims to examine the short-run and long-run impact of China’s trade liberalization policies on its energy demand over the period from 1980 to 2018. The results of Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach of co-integration show that energy consumption significantly increases as a result of trade openness and increase in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The results of the granger causality test also confirm the unidirectional causality running from trade openness and real GDP to energy demand. The results of the study have an important implication because if China wants to continue its trade liberalization policies then it must increase its energy production.Keywords: Energy Consumption, Gross Domestic Product, Trade Openness, China, Time SeriesJEL Classifications: C22, F15, L98, Q43DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.11160

Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) is a kind of fatal blood cancer with a high death rate caused by abnormal cells’ rapid growth in the human body. The usual method to detect AML is the manual microscopic examination of the blood sample, which is tedious and time-consuming and requires a skilled medical operator for accurate detection. In this work, we proposed an AlexNet-based classification model to detect Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) in microscopic blood images and compared its performance with LeNet-5-based model in Precision, Recall, Accuracy, and Quadratic Loss. The experiments are conducted on a dataset of four thousand blood smear samples. The results show that AlexNet was able to identify 88.9% of images correctly with 87.4% precision and 98.58% accuracy, whereas LeNet-5 correctly identified 85.3% of images with 83.6% precision and 96.25% accuracy.

Purpose of the study: Since the process of globalization is reshaping the thoughts of individuals about the world and creating uniform consumption patterns, the present study is designed to investigate that how globalization is changing the consumption patterns of the people living in Punjab, Pakistan. Methodology: The present study has collected primary data from the three big cities of Punjab, Pakistan. A quantitative research method is applied to carry out results. Both paper-pencil and web-based methods were used to collect data. Using multistage sampling, sophisticated estimation techniques, such as Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), are applied to obtain the results. Main findings: The results of CFA confirm that the variable globalization is constructed with the help of commerce, information communication and technology (ICT), and education while the variable consumption patterns variable is measured with the help of physiological needs, communication needs, and ethnic household consumption. The results of SEM show that globalization is changing the consumption patterns of the individuals living in Punjab, Pakistan. Application of the study: The outcome of the present study shows that globalization through Multinational Corporations (MNCs), ICT, and education is changing the consumption patterns of individuals. This study draws the attention of policymakers to fix the minimum wage rate for workers working in MNCs and compel MNCs to revise their pricing policy. Novelty/ Originality of the study: The present study is a rare initiative as, to the best of the researcher’s knowledge; there is not even a single study that has considered all the dimensions of globalization and consumption patterns. This study is an important contribution as it fulfils various gaps that exist in the existing literature.

Purpose of the study: This study is conducted to assess the success of the Female Stipend Program (FSP), started in the province Punjab, Pakistan under the Punjab Education Sector Reform Program in 2003. Methodology: Panel data on household-level collected from years 2016 to 2018 is used for the analysis. The impact of cash transfers (directed towards female students in selected districts of the province) on female school enrollment in public (elementary and high) schools is measured. Enrollment growth in public schools is used as a dependent variable whereas female stipend, the number of schools, student to teacher ratio, the population of the districts, and basic facilities available in public schools are taken as independent variables. The results are obtained by employing Linear Mixed Multilevel Modeling. Main findings: All the variables, except the population of districts, are having a highly significant impact on the enrollment rate in Punjab. Female school's stipend, number of schools in the district, and the accessibility to basic infrastructural facilities have an important impact on female enrollment rate while a high student to teacher ratio negatively contributes to female enrollment rate. Furthermore, districts, where a stipend program is implemented, have higher enrollments as compared to other districts in the province. Application of the study: Outcomes of the study indicate that cash transfer programs directed towards female school enrollment are very fruitful in the case of Punjab. Therefore, such programs should be started in other provinces of the country as well. Novelty/ Originality of the study: The present study contributes to the research gap by using the largest data set available for all 36 districts of the province. To further highlight major factors contributing to high female school enrollments, the study includes school infrastructure, the population of districts, student-teacher ratio, and availability of schools in the model.

Intro: Half of all patients with NSCLC develop BM during their clinical course. While modern NSCLC-directed agents yield excellent systemic response, most patients require focal BM treatment. Prior reports of BM genomics have been limited by low numbers and a lack of matched specimens. Here, we report the largest cohort to date of molecularly-profiled NSCLC BM samples with comprehensive clinical follow-up. Methods: Clinical data and outcomes for 244 patients with NSCLC and resected BM were identified. Samples were assessed using MSK-IMPACT, a custom tumor-normal next generation sequencing assay. 51 (20.9%) patients had matched primary site tissue, and 44 (18%) patients had matched tissue from another metastatic site or CSF. Genomic alterations were filtered for driver variants using OncoKB. Publicly available genomic data for NSCLC primary samples was used for comparison against the primary samples from our BM cohort. Results: The most frequently altered genes in BM tumors were TP53 (72%), CDKN2A (34%), KRAS (31%), KEAP1 (26%), and EGFR (21%). CDKN2A was more frequently altered in BM samples compared to NSCLC primary lesions (34% vs 14%, p = 0.003). Additionally, cell cycle pathway alterations were enriched in BM (56% vs 31%, p = 0.002). BM samples also had a significantly higher fraction of genome altered (FGA) relative to primary samples (p < 0.0001). We then compared primary samples from BM patients against primary samples from metastatic NSCLC patients without BM and primary samples from non-metastatic NSCLC patients. We found an enrichment of alterations in TP53 (68.6% vs 27.7%, p < 0.0001), NKX2-1 (11.4% vs 1.7%, p = 0.006), SMARCA4 (11.4% vs 2.1%, p = 0.01), RB1 (11.4% vs 1.7%, p = 0.006), and FOXA1 (11.4% vs 0.9%, p = 0.001) in the primary samples from BM patients compared to non-metastatic patients. Next, we grouped patients based on CNS progression patterns and found that EGFR alterations were enriched in patients with leptomeningeal progression when compared to patients without progression (42% vs 18%, p = 0.03). Conclusions: In our cohort of molecularly-profiled NSCLC BM, we found an enrichment of cell cycle pathway alterations and a higher FGA in BMs compared to their primary tumor controls. Additionally, several genes were enriched in the primary tissue of patients that developed BM compared to primary tissue from non-metastatic patients. EGFR alterations were enriched in patients who develop leptomeningeal disease (LMD). Our work herein characterizes the genomic profiles of NSCLC patients with BM and identifies specific genes enriched in the primary tissue of BM patients compared to primary tissue from both non-BM metastatic patients and non-metastatic patients. Finally, our finding that EGFR alterations were enriched in patients with LMD suggests specific biologic underpinnings driving patterns of CNS progression. Citation Format: Henry Walch, Anna Skakodub, Kathryn R. Tringale, Harish N. Vasudevan, Jordan Eichholz, Daniel W. Kelly, Emily Lebow, Nelson S. Moss, Kenny Kwok Hei Yu, Bob T. Li, Boris Mueller, Atif Khan, Yao Yu, Simon Powell, Jorge S. Reis-Filho, Brandon S. Imber, Pedram Razavi, Daniel R. Gomez, Nikolaus Schultz, Luke R. Pike. Genomic characterization of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) brain metastasis (BM) patients identifies novel alterations associated with tropisms and disease progression [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 6063.

In the course of recent decades, the relationship between capital structure, ownership structure and performance has been a significant and steady point in the corporate finance literature. The central tenant of this investigation is to examine the relationship between capital structure, ownership structure, and firm performance with respect to emerging economies like, Pakistani non-financial firms. Secondary data was used for this study, which was taken from state Bank of Pakistan, PSX and annual reports of the companies. The population of the study consist of Pakistani non-financial firms listed in PSX. The outcomes indicate that the overall capital structure proxies (i.e. DER & LTDR) are significant but negatively affected on firm’s performance (ROA & ROE).The outcomes of current study also suggested that there is a significant and positive relationship between ownership structure (i.e. Institutional & concentration ownership) and performance of the firms. This research is helpful for every company management to keep the optimal capital structure and make appropriate decision regarding ownership structure. In future research, researchers should use different proxies of ownership structure like, institutional ownership and family ownership to check the impact on firm performance.

Web search engines usually keep users’ profiles for multiple purposes, such as result ranking and relevancy, market research, and targeted advertisements. However, user web search history may contain sensitive and private information about the user, such as health condition, personal interests, and affiliations that may infringe users’ privacy since a user’s identity may be exposed and misused by third parties. Numerous techniques are available to address privacy infringement, including Private Information Retrieval (PIR) protocols that use peer nodes to preserve privacy. Previously, we have proved that PIR protocols are vulnerable to the QuPiD Attack. In this research, we proposed NN-QuPiD Attack, an improved version of QuPiD Attack that uses an Artificial Neural Network (RNN) based model to associate queries with their original users. The results show that the NN-QuPiD Attack gave 0.512 Recall with the Precision of 0.923, whereas simple QuPiD Attack gave 0.49 Recall with the Precision of 0.934 with the same data.

This study investigates the impact of globalization, financial development, and energy utilization on environmental sustainability in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. GCC countries are currently experiencing higher demand and utilization of energy resources, high global integration, and improvements in the financial sector that poses serious environmental sustainability challenges. We have employed a relatively comprehensive proxy, i.e., ecological footprint for environmental sustainability and more advanced and robust econometric strategies (second-generation) to examine the impact of globalization, financial development, and energy utilization on environmental sustainability in the GCC countries, which have a significant departure from the extant literature. The results of this study show that globalization, financial development, and energy utilization are significantly deteriorating the environmental quality in the GCC countries. Additionally, in order to account for the national heterogeneity, we have performed country-specific analysis and interestingly, results reveal that globalization, financial development, and energy utilization negatively influence the environmental sustainability in each sample country that is consistent with the findings of overall panel. Furthermore, the findings are robust to various robustness checks that we have performed for checking the reliability of our main findings. This study also offers some useful policy implications to the stakeholder in general and specifically concerning the GCC countries for promoting their environmental sustainability.

The concept of poverty is usually explained in terms of financial resources; however, it may also include deprivation in non-economic dimensions, such as education, health, and standard of living. These three dimensions of poverty or well-being have lacked attention from researchers in the past. At the start of the twentieth century, researchers explored whether non-economic poverty also drives people towards a lower quality of life and decreased well-being. In this regard, one of the popular instruments that can help to alleviate non-economic poverty is the minimum wage policy. It helps workers to maintain a stable standard of living required to avoid poverty. The prime objective of this research is to assess the importance of minimum wages in reducing social poverty in 11 selected Asian countries (Bangladesh, China, India, Iran, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand). This study used data ranging from 2000 to 2017. Using the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation method, the results suggest that the minimum wage policy alone is not helpful unless supplementary policies are implemented to reduce non-economic poverty.

The Web Search Engine (WSE) is a software system used to retrieve data from the web successfully. WSE uses the user’s search queries to build the user’s profile and provide personalized results. Users’ search queries hold identifiable information that could compromise the privacy of the respective user. This work proposes a multi-group distributed privacy-preserving protocol (MG-OSLo) and tries to investigate the state-of-the-art distributed privacy-preserving protocols for computing web search privacy. The MG-OSLo comprises multiple groups in which each group has a fixed number of users. The MG-OSLo measures the impact of the multi-group on the user’s privacy. The primary objective of this work is to assess local privacy and profile privacy. It aims at evaluating the impact of group size and group count on a user’s privacy. Two grouping approaches are used to group the users in MG-OSLo, i.e. a non-overlapping group design and overlapping group design. The local privacy results reveal that the probability of linking a query to the user depends on the group size and group count. The higher the group size or group count, the lower the likelihood of relating the query to the user. The profile privacy computes the profile obfuscation level using a privacy metric Profile Exposure Level (PEL). Different experiments have been performed to compute the profile privacy of the subset of an AOL query log for two situations: i) self-query submissions allowed and ii) self-query submissions not allowed. The privacy achieved by MG-OSLo is compared with the modern privacy-preserving protocol UUP(e), OSLo, and Co-utile protocols. The results show that the MG-OSLo provided better results as compared to OSLo, UUP, and Co-utile. Similarly, the multi-group has a positive impact on local privacy and user profile privacy.

The present study investigates the impact of fiscal decentralization (FD) on the efficiency of public service delivery (PSD) in the education sector of Punjab, Pakistan, from the year1982 to 2017. Firstly, the efficiency coefficients for secondary school enrolment are estimated using Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA). Secondly, the impact of FD on PSD in the education sector of Punjab, Pakistan, is analyzed using the Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method of estimation. The findings suggest that revenue decentralization positively enhances PSD efficiency in the education sector. In contrast, the effect of expenditure decentralization is negative on the efficiency of the education sector.

Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) determine the strength of the ocean’s biological carbon (C) pump, and variation in the N:P ratio is key to phytoplankton growth. A fixed C:N:P ratio (106:16:1) in organic matter and deep-water nutrients was observed by Alfred C. Redfield. However, recent studies have challenged the concept of the Redfield Ratio, and its veracity remains to be examined in oceanic basins like the Bay of Bengal. For this purpose, we sampled the water in the Bay of Bengal for C, N, and P content in the organic and inorganic pools from the surface to 2000 m. Overall, the C:N:P ratio deviated greatly from the Redfield Ratio. The C:N:P ratio in particulate organic matter varied from 232:25:1 in the top layer (surface to the depth of the chlorophyll maximum) to 966:72:1 in the deep water (300-2000 m). In dissolved organic matter, the ratio varied from 357:30:1 in the top layer to 245:66:1 in the deep water. The N:P ratio in nutrients varied from 3 in the top layer to 12 in the deep water. The nutrient-depleted top layer (average NO3- + NO2- ~ 0.7 µmol l-1) with a low N:P ratio coupled with reported low primary production rates in the Bay suggested that the production was N limited. Concurrent N2 fixation rates were not sufficient to alter the observed C:N:P ratio. Eddies showed a mixed effect on the C:N:P ratio. Our C:N:P ratios in particulate organic matter are comparable to other tropical basins and supports the nutrient supply hypothesis for low latitude ecosystems.

Introduction: Health care workers are found to be at three times greater risk of getting infected as compared to the general public. Scientists and doctors all over the world have agreed upon the use of PPE including gloves, masks, head covers, face shields, goggles, and jumpsuits in protection against COVID-19. Materials and Methods: This observational prospective study was conducted in the surgical emergency of Holy Family Hospital, Rawalpindi over a period of 2 months and 21 days. Patients included all those who presented to surgical emergency with suspicion of being positive for COVID-19 and time taken by first-line health care workers in attending them. 157 patients were observed for this purpose and 23 first-line surgeons including general, orthopedic, and neurosurgeons were interviewed regarding their fears and concerns about contracting COVID-19 and infecting their families. Results: It was observed that a surgeon took on an average of 10 minutes (+/-3 minutes) in wearing all the personal protective equipment and a total of 14minutes (+/- 5 minutes) in reaching a patient in the trauma room with symptoms suggestive of COVID-19. This was in contrast to a patient presenting to a trauma room who had no respiratory symptoms or fever, in which case, the patient was seen within 3 minutes (+/- 2 minutes) of presentation to a surgical emergency. Out of 23 surgeons, 15 had reasonably aware of the disease while 7 were knowledgeable up to the mark. 17 surgeons were extremely fearful about contracting the disease and infecting their friends and families. 7 surgeons confessed to avoiding COVID-19 patients and 9 surgeons confessed that they commanded their junior surgeons to see suspected COVID-19 patients in the emergency room. Conclusion: We concluded that delay in attending trauma patients suspected of being positive for COVID-19 was a worrisome problem that needed to be addressed. Numerous local and regional circumstances served as a factor for this delay, most important of which came out to be an inadequate provision of PPE, time consumed in collecting and wearing PPE, fear of the disease, and anxiety provoked due to this fear among surgeons.

In recent decades, remittances inflow has become a major source of capital which has multidimensional consequences on various economic indicators and potentially associated with CO2 emissions. This study investigates the impact of remittances, energy use, and globalization on CO2 emissions using a global sample of 97 countries during 1990-2016. Our findings based on robust system GMM indicate that remittances and energy use increases CO2 emissions, however, globalization reduces CO2 emissions. To capture the national difference, this study divides the global sample into two sub-samples: first comprised of developed countries and second developing and emerging countries. Interestingly our findings are similar in both sub-samples. Further, our results are robust to various robustness checks, which ensures the reliability of our findings. Based on our results, we suggest governments, regulators and other stakeholders to mitigate the adverse impact of remittances and energy use on environmental quality by strict market regulations and monitoring, allocating substantial financial resource to research and development for innovating environmental friendly production technologies and renewable energy sources and by giving incentives i.e tax rebates and subsidies on imports of environment-friendly production technology from the advanced countries. Lastly, considering the negative impact of globalization on CO2 emissions, governments can use globalization as a tool to reduce CO2 emissions and promote environmental quality.

Information is exploding on the web at exponential pace, and online movie review over the web is a substantial source of information for online users. However, users write millions of movie reviews on regular basis, and it is not possible for users to condense the reviews. Classification and summarization of reviews is a difficult task in computational linguistics. Hence, an automatic method is demanded to summarize the vast amount of movie reviews, and this method will permit the users to speedily distinguish between positive and negative features of a movie. This work has proposed a classification and summarization method for movie reviews. For movie review classification, bag-of-words feature extraction technique is used to extract unigrams, bigrams, and trigrams as a feature set from given review documents and represent the review documents as a vector. Next, the Na¨ıve Bayes algorithm is employed to categorize the movie reviews (signified as a feature vector) into negative and positive reviews. For the task of movie review summarization, word2vec model is used to extract features from classified movie review sentences, and then semantic clustering technique is used to cluster semantically related review sentences. Different text features are employed to compute the salience score of all review sentences in clusters. Finally, the best-ranked review sentences are picked based on top salience scores to form a summary of movie reviews. Empirical results indicate that the suggested machine learning approach performed better than benchmark summarization approaches.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the physiotherapists’ approach regarding spasticity measurement scales in patients with upper motor neuron syndrome. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted in different hospitals of Karachi from January 2018 to June 2018. One hundred physiotherapists with an interest in the neurological rehabilitation were enrolled by using convenience-sampling technique. After taking written informed consent, a questionnaire comprising of close-ended questions was distributed among the participants. Extraction sheet was used to extract the recorded response; later was analyzed using SPSS v 21.0. RESULTS: Out of 100 physiotherapists, 90 responded (response rate of 90%), where 60 (66.6%) participants were males and 30 (33.3%) were female. Fifty-five (61.11%) participants responded that they use assessment scale of tone for shoulder complex, seven (7.78%) used biomechanical approaches, five (5.56%) used neurophysiological, three (3.33%) use both biomechanical as well as neurophysiological approach for the assessment of tone in shoulder complex and twenty (22.22%) did not use any measurement scale. Out of 55 participants using any assessment scale, twenty (36.4%) used Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS), while rest of thirty-five (63.6%) used three grade muscle tone scale with different combination: mild/moderate/severe] by twenty (36.4%); flaccid/normal/spastic by five (9.1%), and +/++/+++ by ten (18.1%) participants. CONCLUSION: Majority of participants in this study use unreliable assessment tools for the assessment of tone in upper motor neuron syndrome. They need to be encouraged to use valid and reliable tools for assessment.

This research article considers the exact solutions and theoretical aspects of the channel flow of a fractional viscous fluid which is electrically conducting and flowing through a porous medium. Joint Laplace and Fourier transform techniques are used to solve the momentum equation. The Caputo-Fabrizio time fractional derivative is used in the constitutive equations. Exact solutions for an arbitrary velocity are obtained, and then in the limiting cases over a bottom plate three types of flow are considered: that is, the impulsive, accelerating and oscillating motion of the fluid. The case where the flow of the fractional fluid is unaffected by the side walls, is correspondingly taken into account. For oscillating flow the solutions are separated into steady and transient parts for both sine and cosine oscillations. Moreover these solutions are captured graphically, and the effect of the Reynolds number “Re”, fractional parameter “α”, effective permeability “Keff” and the time “t”, on the fluid's motion are observed.

Nowadays, data are flooding into online web forums, and it is highly desirable to turn gigantic amount of data into actionable knowledge. Online web forums have become an integral part of the web and are main sources of knowledge. People use this platform to post their questions and get answers from other forum members. Usually, an initial post (question) gets more than one reply posts (answers) that make it difficult for a user to scan all of them for most relevant and quality answer. Thus, how to automatically extract the most relevant answer for a question within a thread is an important issue. In this research, we treat the task of answer extraction as classification problem. A reply post can be classified as relevant, partially relevant, or irrelevant to the initial post. To find the relevancy/similarity of a reply to the question, both lexical and nonlexical features are used. We proposed to use LinearSVC, a variant of support vector machine (SVM), for answer classification. Two selection techniques such as chi-square and univariate are employed to reduce the feature space size. The experimental results showed that LinearSVC classifier outperformed the other state-of-the-art classifiers in the context of classification accuracy for both Ubuntu and TripAdvisor (NYC) discussion forum datasets.

Shrubby seablite or lani (Suaeda fruticosa Forssk) is a perennial euhalophyte with succulent leaves, which could be planted on arid-saline lands for restoration and cultivated as a non-conventional edible or cash crop. Knowledge about the impacts of maternal saline environment on seed attributes of this important euhalophyte is lacking. This study investigated the effects of maternal salinity on yield, size and stress tolerance of S. fruticosa seeds. Seedlings of S. fruticosa were grown in a green net house under increasing maternal salinity levels (0, 300, 600 and 900 mM NaCl) until seed production. Total yield, size, stress tolerance and germination of the descended seeds under different maternal saline conditions were examined. Plants grown under saline conditions (300, 600 and 900 mM NaCl) produce a substantially higher quantity of seeds than plants grown under non-saline condition (0 mM NaCl). Low maternal salinity (300 mM NaCl) improves seed size. Seeds produced under all maternal salinity levels display a higher tolerance to low temperature (night/day thermoperiod of 10°C/20°C), whereas seeds produced under 300 mM NaCl maternal saline condition show a better tolerance to high temperature (night/day thermoperiod of 25°C/35°C) during germination. Seeds from all maternal saline conditions germinate better in the 12 h photoperiod (12 h light/12 h dark) than in the dark (24 h dark); however, seeds produced from low and moderate maternal saline conditions (300 and 600 mM NaCl) show a higher germination in the dark than those from control and high maternal saline conditions (0 and 900 mM NaCl). In general, maternal salinity is found to improve yield, size and stress tolerance of S. fruticosa seeds.