Role of Dietary Carotenoids in Different Etiologies of Chronic Liver Diseases

Carotenoids are tetraterpenoid organic pigments synthesized by a variety of plants and microorganisms. Dietary carotenoids, taken by animals through food, play an essential role in cell differentiation, morphogenesis, vision, prevention of cancer, atherosclerosis, and age-related macular degeneration in humans due to their potential to suppress oxidative stress. As reactive oxygen species and oxidative damage to biomolecules have been found to be involved in the causation and progression of chronic liver diseases (CLDs), including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Therefore, dietary antioxidants, which inactivate reactive oxygen species and obstruct oxidative damage, are considered as vital prophylactic strategic molecules. Data from various epidemiological studies and clinical trials strongly validate the observation that adequate carotenoid supplementation may significantly reduce the risk of several liver disorders. This chapter, thus, provides a comprehensive account of dietary carotenoids and includes the recent information with respect to their role in prevention of liver diseases

Bayesian Approximation Techniques for Scale Parameter of Laplace Distribution

The Bayesian estimation of the scale parameter of a Laplace Distribution is obtained using two approximation techniques, like Normal approximation and Tierney and Kadane (T-K) approximation, under different informative priors

A Comparative Study of the Attitude of the Male and Female Elementary School Teachers towards Teaching Profession

The process of education is shaped and made by the teachers who play a pivotal role in web of educational system. Teaching characteristically is a moral enterprise and its function is aimed at guiding and working desirable growth in others. The need to know more about teacher and teaching stems not only from the commonness of the phenomenon, but also from the realization that our notion of teacher and teaching guides our future endeavors. There is a dearth of empirical evidence about the attitude of teachers towards their profession. Quantitative research methodology was deployed using descriptive design. The study included 160 pre and in-service elementary school teachers for which equal representative was given to pre and inservice teachers and both genders. The participants included 80 male and 80 female teachers. A three point validated and reliable attitude scale was used to gather the data which  comprised 30 statements. The results of the present study revealed thatthe majority of teachers working in the elementary school and also the prospective one’s had less or not favorable attitude towards the teaching profession. The reasons for such attitude seemed to be justifiable, because of the working conditions and academic environment in schools as mentioned by the teachers were sufficient enough to be the great source of influence, development and reinforcement of a particular type of attitude. The study recommends the induction of teachers with the positive and more favorable attitude towards teaching profession.  Keywords: comparative, attitude, elementary school, teachers, teaching profession

Hand Detection using HSV Model

Natural Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is the demand of today’s technology oriented world. Detecting and tracking of face and hands are important for gesture recognition. Skin detection is a very popular and useful technique for detecting and tracking human-body parts. It has been much attention mainly because of its vast range of applications such as, face detection and tracking, naked people detection, hand detection and tracking, people retrieval in databases and Internet, etc. Many models and algorithms are being used for detection of face, hand and its gesture. Hand detection using model or classification is to build a decision rule that will discriminate between skin and non-skin pixels. Identifying skin color pixels involves finding the range of values for which most skin pixels would fall in a given color space. All external factors will be eliminated to detect the hand and its color in the image in complex background. Keywords: image segmentation, hand detection, hci, computer vision, RGB, HS

DETERMINANTS OF PUPILS' EXAM PERFORMANCE IN THE UK AND PAKISTAN

This thesis consists of three chapters exploring the determinants of pupil performance in high-stakes exams in UK and Pakistan. The first empirical chapter looks at the effect of parents’ education on their children’s education adopting Instrumental Variable (IV) methodology. I exploit the 1972 UK RoSLA (raising of school leaving age) as a source of exogenous variation using the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) dataset linked to the National Pupil Database (NPD). The results show that parental education has a significant and positive impact on their children’s educational outcomes, as measured by performance in GCSE examinations taken at age 16. The subsequent chapter explores key issues relating to teacher quality. Firstly, it investigates the impact of being taught by high quality or low quality teachers on students’ performance in exams, and secondly, which teacher characteristics are associated with student performance. It uses the survey data of 611 pupils from one region of Pakistan studying in Year 9 which is also linked to the administrative data on the students’ exam scores. The unique feature of the data tracks students’ scores across multiple subjects at a single point in time. Teacher fixed effects and pupil fixed effects methods are used. First stage results show that there are significant variations in teacher fixed effects within the schools, suggesting important unobservable differences among teachers. A good teacher, defined as being at the 75th percentile of the teacher fixed effects distribution, is related to an increase in score by 0.15 standard deviations relative to the omitted teacher, while a bad teacher decreases the score by 0.77 standard deviations. Therefore, a pupil having been taught by a good teacher scores 0.92 standard deviations more than the pupil who is taught by a bad teacher (25th percentile teacher) leaving a significant effect on pupil performance. Second stage results suggest that teacher observed characteristics do not explain the variation in teacher quality. The final chapter studies the effect of distance on participation in post-compulsory education in the Pakistan context, and whether socioeconomic characteristics have an effect on achievement in a value-added model taking selection into secondary education into account using a survey dataset on pupils studying in the post-compulsory grade (Year 12) in 2011-2012 from one district of the Punjab province of Pakistan. In this chapter I used two variables as instruments: one is the log of distance to nearest post-compulsory education institution, as a measure of proximity to an educational institution and the second is urban location. The results show that participation and performance in post-compulsory education are two different processes, with participation being driven by availability of post-compulsory institutions within travel distance, while performance once in post-compulsory education is determined by ability

Implementation of Parallel Synchronization Method of Generators for Power & Cost Saving in University of Gujrat

In the current economic and political scenario of Pakistan where new projects of Electrical generation seems impossible, one should adopt such means so as to minimize the power consumption via load management. In this paper a relatively better Electrical power system is proposed for University of Gujrat (UOG) power system. UOG runs its all generators whether it is full load or merely a load of 20 percent as a standby power. It is suggested that if generators system is synchronized and connected in parallel, it can not only minimize the cost, number of personnel required but also increase the reliability of the system. ETAP software is used for simulation and results show that by adopting this method generation cost can be reduced up to 30 percent which is indeed a huge figure. Losses and cable parameters were calculated using this software and found this proposal quite feasible