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The toxic dye pigments, even in small quantities, can damage ecosystems. Removing organic, inorganic, and microbiological contaminants from wastewater via heterogeneous photocatalysis is a promising method. Herein, we report the band structure tuning of ZnO/CuO nanocomposites to enhance photocatalytic activity. The nanocomposites were synthesized by a chemical approach using step-wise implantation of p-type semiconductor CuO to n-type semiconductor ZnO. Various characterization techniques such as X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) and UV spectroscopy were used to investigate the crystal structure, surface morphology, elemental composition and optical properties of the synthesized samples. As the CuO content increased from 10% to 50% in ZnO/CuO nanocomposites, the optical bandgap decreased from 3.36 to 2.14 eV. The photocatalytic activity of the samples was evaluated against the degradation of methylene blue (MB) under visible irradiation. Our study demonstrates a novel p–n junction oxide photocatalyst based on wt. 10% CuO/ZnO with superior photocatalytic activity. Effectively 66.6% increase in degradation rate was achieved for wt. 10% CuO/ZnO nanocomposite compared to pure ZnO nanoparticles.

Abstract Background Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are now proven as essential regulatory elements, playing diverse roles in many biological processes including mammary gland development. However, little is known about their roles in the bovine lactation process. Results To identify and characterize the roles of lncRNAs in bovine lactation, high throughput RNA sequencing data from Jersey (high milk yield producer), and Kashmiri cattle (low milk yield producer) were utilized. Transcriptome data from three Kashmiri and three Jersey cattle throughout their lactation stages were utilized for differential expression analysis. At each stage (early, mid and late) three samples were taken from each breed. A total of 45 differentially expressed lncRNAs were identified between the three stages of lactation. The differentially expressed lncRNAs were found co-expressed with genes involved in the milk synthesis processes such as GPAM, LPL, and ABCG2 indicating their potential regulatory effects on milk quality genes. KEGG pathways analysis of potential cis and trans target genes of differentially expressed lncRNAs indicated that 27 and 48 pathways were significantly enriched between the three stages of lactation in Kashmiri and Jersey respectively, including mTOR signaling, PI3K-Akt signaling, and RAP1 signaling pathways. These pathways are known to play key roles in lactation biology and mammary gland development. Conclusions Expression profiles of lncRNAs across different lactation stages in Jersey and Kashmiri cattle provide a valuable resource for the study of the regulatory mechanisms involved in the lactation process as well as facilitate understanding of the role of lncRNAs in bovine lactation biology.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has created havoc worldwide. Due to the non-availability of any vaccine or drugs against COVID-19, immunotherapies involving convalescent plasma, immunoglobulins, antibodies (monoclonal or polyclonal), and the use of immunomodulatory agents to enhance immunity are valuable alternative options. Cell-based therapies including natural killer cells, T cells, stem cells along with cytokines and toll-like receptors (TLRs) based therapies are also being exploited potentially against COVID-19. Future research need to strengthen the field of developing effective immunotherapeutics and immunomodulators with a thrust of providing appropriate, affordable, convenient, and cost-effective prophylactic and treatment regimens to combat global COVID-19 crisis that has led to a state of medical emergency enforcing entire countries of the world to devote their research infrastructure and manpower in tackling this pandemic.

Noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer now outnumber all other health ailments in humans globally due to abrupt changes in lifestyle following the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution has also intensified livestock farming, resulting in an increased demand for productivity and stressed animals. The livestock industry faces significant challenges from a projected sharp increase in global food and high animal protein demand. Nutrition genomics holds great promise for the future as its advances have opened up a whole new world of disease understanding and prevention. Nutrigenomics is the study of the interactions between genes and diet. It investigates molecular relationships between nutrients and genes to identify how even minor modifications could potentially alter animal and human health/performance by using techniques like proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics. Dietary modifications mostly studied in livestock focus mainly on health and production traits through protein, fat, mineral, and vitamin supplementation changes. Nutrigenomics meticulously selects nutrients for fine-tuning the expression of genes that match animal/human genotypes for better health, productivity, and the environment. As a step forward, nutrigenomics integrates nutrition, molecular biology, genomics, bioinformatics, molecular medicine, and epidemiology to better understand the role of food as an epigenetic factor in the occurrence of these diseases. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the fundamental concepts, latest advances, and studies in the field of nutrigenomics, emphasizing the interaction of diet with gene expression, and how it relates to human and animal health along with its human-animal interphase.

It is argued by policymakers and practitioners that instability in South Asia has exacerbated since Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) coming into power in India. Its policymaking is impacted by the influence of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). BJP is known as the political brand-name of RSS. There is a perceptible increase in RSS expansion and dominance of Hindutva ideology in domestic, foreign, and security policies of India. RSS is following the grand policy of greater India with the establishment of Hindu hegemony in India and Hindustan’s (India’s) hegemony in South Asia. Empirical evidence suggests that a well-choreographed use of communal violence and Pakistan bashing have been employed by BJP for the attainment of its objectives. BJP’s revoking of Articles 370 and 35-A to forcibly absorb Indian Occupied Kashmir and enactment of Citizen Amendment Act are the most recent manifestation of RSS long-term design. Following the mixed research method, this paper will be developed around the central argument that the rise of RSS influence on Indian policymaking has impacted its domestic and external policies which bear implications for South Asia. Bibliography Entry Islam, Muhammad Javed, and Zulfqar Khan. 2020. "Trajectories of RSS Ideological Domination in the Indian Policy Making: Implications for South Asia." Margalla Papers 24 (1): 1-15.

Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red, lucidly translated by Erdag Goknar, is a dastan being told by an artful dastango, surrounded by a group of people, weaving a yarn in a winter’s night illuminated by the yellowish glow of a warming fire. Set in Istanbul where two civilisations and two continents meet and part, the novel probes paradoxes emanating from the constant tensions between appearance and reality, seeing and ‘blindness’, ‘sin’ and ‘virtue’, asserting identity and surrendering individuality, the incapacitating power of fear and liberation through freedom from fear. These issues are threaded together in a debate about Islamic tradition of miniature painting and European concepts of art.

This article endeavours to analyse the existing effectiveness of multilateral export control regimes (MECRs). The states like India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea are not party to these regimes but had managed to attain their nuclear weapons capabilities by exploiting the weak links of MECRs. Conceptually, this sets the stage for an interesting debate to overcome some of the loopholes in MECRs, and to demonstrate that effective and realistic cooperation can go a long way in yielding constructive outcomes. To fill the cracks in the MECRs, it is essential to consider the non-NPT nuclear weapon states' issue with a view to construct reliable and effective MECRs. The MTCR membership criteria, Indo-US nuclear deal and India-specific waiver by the NSG states have raised some pertinent and challenging questions concerning the credibility and effectiveness of NPT and other MECRs. The paper argues that India and Pakistan both should be accorded an equal chance to join the MECRs - as both are declared de jure NWS. Their independent status is distinct from the NPT's January 1, 1967, cut-off date principle to qualify for a de jure NWS position, ipso facto is not applicable on them.

The primary purpose of this study is to map the temporal impact of a transformational leadership development intervention on leaders' awareness in the two public universities. Deans and heads from the two universities were involved in a six-week-long intervention. To study the short-term impact, an evaluation was conducted three months after the initial intervention with leaders of University A, and one year later, the next evaluation was conducted with leaders from University B to study the long-term impact. Semi-structured interviews and a case study method were adopted for data collection, and content analysis was carried out to identify indicators of awareness levels in leadership behaviours. Compared to the immediate post-intervention evaluation results, awareness levels decreased, but the results were still sufficiently robust compared to the baseline awareness levels measured in a control group. Implications and recommendations for future research will be discussed.

The strategic matrix of Asia-Pacific is nowadays revolving around the US pivot and rebalancing policy vis-à-vis China. The landscape is reflecting a complex state of interdependence between the US, China, and their allies. China prima facie is strengthening its economic base before robustly embarking upon modernization of its armed forces to counter-balance the US. The security environment is poised to sustain the status quo in order to avoid the detrimental effects upon their intertwined economic interests. It is argued that states are inclined to maximize their power. Chinese rise is no exception and, the rise of peer-competitor is not expected to be peaceful, testifies the past historical record. This would eventually swing the future contours of world politics toward the second phase of China-centric Cold War. Therefore, in spite of interdependence, traditionally the nation-states would tend to search for enemies thereby pushing them to accordingly recalibrate and redefine their national interests on diverse and fluid geostrategic trajectories.

Maintaining a high input resolution is crucial for more complex tasks like detection or segmentation to ensure that models can adequately identify and reflect fine details in the output. This study aims to reduce the computation costs associated with high-resolution input by using a variant of transformer, known as the Adaptive Clustering Transformer (ACT). The proposed model is named ACT-FRCNN. Which integrates ACT with a Faster Region-Based Convolution Neural Network (FRCNN) for a detection task head. In this paper, we proposed a method to improve the detection framework, resulting in better performance for out-of-domain images, improved object identification, and reduced dependence on non-maximum suppression. The ACT-FRCNN represents a significant step in the application of transformer models to challenging visual tasks like object detection, laying the foundation for future work using transformer models. The performance of ACT-FRCNN was evaluated on a variety of well-known datasets including BSDS500, NYUDv2, and COCO. The results indicate that ACT-FRCNN reduces over-detection errors and improves the detection of large objects. The findings from this research have practical implications for object detection and other computer vision tasks.

The study explored teachers' perceptions and practices at school level with special reference to dyslexia. Being deprived of proper learning environment learning difficulties are multiplied for dyslexic students. Poor reading skills are the reason of low vocabulary. The study was quantitative in nature. It was conducted in the secondary schools of Lahore city. The sample was selected conveniently. T-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were applied to analyze the data. It was concluded from the study that majority of the teachers were aware of the term dyslexia. Students suffering from Dyslexia took more time than their peers to understand as well as to complete the task. Teachers faced difficulties while teaching dyslexic students along with other students as they cannot complete their task in one setting. They help the students to boost their confidence as well as self-esteem.

The purpose of this study was to explore how AIOU is adapting technological innovations in their distance education programs and to what extent instructional design has been aligned with the technologybased online learning. A qualitative research design was adopted to collect data from key IT experts working behind the provision of online learning and the tutors who are using the online learning platform. A semi-structured interview protocol was designed to interview the participants. An interpretive data analysis approach was adopted to reach at the conclusions. The majority of the respondents acknowledged the need of the adaptation of technology in distance education and discussed different opportunities offered through LMS and other online resources. All is set to align the instructional design with online learning environment, but a lot can only be wished in all three areas of instruction design i.e. instructional objectives, instructional activities and assessment. This alignment can only be possible with the change in the mindset of the tutors and availability of easily accessible online resources throughout the country.

Leadership development is not considered as a core component in higher education policies specifically when we examine the higher education polices of developing countries. To fill this gap, an intervention is designed to evaluate the impact of a leadership development program in academic leaders. The prime objective of this intervention was to promote awareness among university deans and heads by adopting transformational leadership in their leadership practices. An experimental research design was adopted to map the effects of a 6-week intervention and to evaluate the variations in related six transformational leadership behaviors. Up to 37 academic deans and heads from public universities were involved in this research. Content analysis was carried out to analyze the collected data. Bloom's taxonomy was adopted as a framework for the analysis. Three lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy were used to identify the awareness indicators. An extensive increase in awareness levels was identified in relation to all six transformational leadership behaviors, and more specifically, a prominent progress was observed at the application level. In addition to implications and limitations, directions for future research were also discussed.

There is a persistent need to propose efficient and durable electrocatalysts established on non-precious, earth-abundant elements to enhance the efficiency of electrochemical water splitting. In this work, perovskite oxide-MgFeO3 (MFO) nano-cubes were incorporated onto the surface of MXene-Ti3C2 sheets and 2D VS2 through a hydrothermal reaction to form an MgFeO3/MXene/VS2 hybrid with a hierarchical porous architecture. By controlling the synergetic properties of the multiple mechanisms of the hybrid, including the high conductivity of MXene/metallic sulfide, a porous-like architecture featuring rich channels for efficient mass and charge transference, and hybridization with electronic construction regulation, the MFO/MXene/VS2 hybrid exhibited outstanding performance. In particular, MFO/MXene/VS2 demonstrated exceptional efficiency for the hydrogen evolution reaction, achieving an overpotential of 35 mV at 10 mA cm−2 and a Tafel slope of 42 mV dec−1. Similarly, it achieved an overpotential of 214 mV at 10 mA cm−2 for the oxygen evolution reaction, with a corresponding Tafel slope of 54 mV dec−1 in a 1.0 M KOH solution. When employed in an overall water-splitting electrolyzer with an MFO/MXene/VS2‖MFO/MXene/VS2 configuration, it achieved a low voltage of 1.47 V to maintain a current density of 10 mA cm−2 with commendable stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maintaining a high input resolution is crucial for more complex tasks like detection or segmentation to ensure that models can adequately identify and reflect fine details in the output. This study aims to reduce the computation costs associated with high-resolution input by using a variant of transformer, known as the Adaptive Clustering Transformer (ACT). The proposed model is named ACT-FRCNN. Which integrates ACT with a Faster Region-Based Convolution Neural Network (FRCNN) for a detection task head. In this paper, we proposed a method to improve the detection framework, resulting in better performance for out-of-domain images, improved object identification, and reduced dependence on non-maximum suppression. The ACT-FRCNN represents a significant step in the application of transformer models to challenging visual tasks like object detection, laying the foundation for future work using transformer models. The performance of ACT-FRCNN was evaluated on a variety of well-known datasets including BSDS500, NYUDv2, and COCO. The results indicate that ACT-FRCNN reduces over-detection errors and improves the detection of large objects. The findings from this research have practical implications for object detection and other computer vision tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]