Conservation of Sulaiman Markhor and Afghan Urial by Local Tribesmen in Torghar, Pakistan

Chapter 1 of the book Lessons Learned: Case Studies in Sustainable Use. This chapter describes the events that led to the creation of STEP (Society for Torghar Environmental Protection), its achievements, and outlines its future plans. The paper demonstrates that by involving local communities in conservation projects, both wildlife and communities benefit. Torghar lies in the district of Killa Saifullah within the province of Balochistan, Pakistan. The Pathan tribe, the largest of the Kakar group, have been living in this area for several generations. Several sub-tribes exist for whom hunting is a tradition. Before the Afghanistan War began in 1979, primitive weapons and the scarcity of ammunition limited the number of animals killed. As the pace of the war increased, automatic weapons and ammunition became readily available. Seasonal migrants and local residents began hunting indiscriminately and population numbers of wild animals dwindled rapidly. Populations of Sulaiman Markhor (Capra falconeri jerdoni) and Afghan Urial (Ovis orientalis cycleros) -- keystone species in the area -- became critically low. In 1984, representatives of the North America-United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) arrived in Balochistan to explore opportunities for wildlife conservation. Tribesmen from Torghar expressed an interest in wildlife conservation and a self-supporting conservation programme was established: The Torghar Conservation Programme (TCP), later the Society for Torghar Environmental Protection (STEP), whose design was based on the principles of sustainable use, local tribe involvement, and conservation biology. Today the numbers of Sulaiman Markhor and Afghan Urial have increased significantly. The capacities of local tribes have also increased and the economic and social infrastructure of the area has developed positively

Stock price reaction to earnings announcement: the case of an emerging market

In an efficient stock market stock prices instantaneously and accurately adjust to new information. This paper conducts an event study analysis on an emerging market namely the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) by investigating the stock price reaction to public announcement of quarterly after tax profit by listed firms. By employing 5 year data on stock prices from January 2004 to August 2008 for 114 non financial firms we found that there is no abnormal return post earnings announcement. Moreover the study provides evidence that there is a bigger element of surprise in bad news than in good news as the market reaction to bad news is stronger.Event Study, Earnings Announcement, Emerging Markets

The Response of Karachi Stock Exchange to Nuclear Detonation

Stock markets are highly reactive to internal and external developments. News of major events take no time to impact, the Stock Exchange that quite often serves as a barometer of the good and bad for the market. The importance of particular events and their effect on the stock market has been a subject of study in financial literature. Such studies attempt to assess the extent to which stock markets’ performance stray’s from the normal around the time of the occurrence of subject events. The stock market crash in the USA of October 1987 and related crash in the Far East later in January 1998 led to several studies of the event. On October 14, 1987, the US stock market began the steepest decline of its history, culminating in the crash of October 19, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 508 points (22.6 percent). Certain aspects of the event of Black Monday as it is called emphasised the need for research to explore what fundamental economic factors triggered the large decline and the institutional and structural factors that were inherent in the trading strategies of investors. Michell and Netter (1989) have presented evidence that a tax bill containing anti takeover provision proposed by the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee of Oct. 13, 1987 was the economic event that triggered the October 19 crash. Other events and economic conditions during October 14–16 have been cited in the literature including higher than expected trade deficits, rising interest rate and increased worries about the government deficit and fear of inflation by many studies. Certain trading strategies such as index arbitrage and portfolio insurance has been cited by the Report of Presidential Task Force (1988). Roll (1988) has argued the crash did not begin in US since many other world markets experienced a severe decline on October 19 before US markets opened.

Intelligent intrusion detection in low power IoTs

Security and privacy of data are one of the prime concerns in today’s Internet of Things (IoT). Conventional security techniques like signature-based detection of malware and regular updates of a signature database are not feasible solutions as they cannot secure such systems effectively, having limited resources. Programming languages permitting immediate memory accesses through pointers often result in applications having memory-related errors, which may lead to unpredictable failures and security vulnerabilities. Furthermore, energy efficient IoT devices running on batteries cannot afford the implementation of cryptography algorithms as such techniques have significant impact on the system power consumption. Therefore, in order to operate IoT in a secure manner, the system must be able to detect and prevent any kind of intrusions before the network (i.e., sensor nodes and base station) is destabilised by the attackers. In this article, we have presented an intrusion detection and prevention mechanism by implementing an intelligent security architecture using random neural networks (RNNs). The application’s source code is also instrumented at compile time in order to detect out-of-bound memory accesses. It is based on creating tags, to be coupled with each memory allocation and then placing additional tag checking instructions for each access made to the memory. To validate the feasibility of the proposed security solution, it is implemented for an existing IoT system and its functionality is practically demonstrated by successfully detecting the presence of any suspicious sensor node within the system operating range and anomalous activity in the base station with an accuracy of 97.23%. Overall, the proposed security solution has presented a minimal performance overhead.</jats:p

Leakage analysis of gasketed flange joints under combined internap pressure and thermal loading

Leakage in Gasketed Flanged Joints (GFJs) have always been a great problem for the process industry. The sealing performance of a GFJ depends on its installation and applied loading conditions. This paper aims to finding the leak rate through ANSI class#150 flange joints using a compressed asbestos sheet (CAS) gasket under combined structural and thermal transient loading conditions using two different leak rate models and two different bolt-up levels. The first model is a Gasket Compressive Strain model in which strains are determined using finite element analysis. The other model is based on Porous Media Theory in which gasket is considered as porous media. Leakage rates are determined using both leak rate models and are compared against appropriate tightness classes and the effectiveness of each approach is presented

The Response of Karachi Stock Exchange to Nuclear Detonation

Stock markets are highly reactive to internal and external developments. News of major events take no time to impact, the Stock Exchange that quite often serves as a barometer of the good and bad for the market. The importance of particular events and their effect on the stock market has been a subject of study in financial literature. Such studies attempt to assess the extent to which stock markets’ performance stray’s from the normal around the time of the occurrence of subject events. The stock market crash in the USA of October 1987 and related crash in the Far East later in January 1998 led to several studies of the event

The Effect of Public Sector Development Expenditures and Investment on Economic Growth: Evidence from Pakistan

Abstract. It is an established fact that there is strong association between investment and economic growth of a country but no such direct consensus had been developed on the type of investment. i.e. what are the different sectors in which investment has led to long term impact and did contributed to the growth. The current study in this regard will focus on investigating the relationship of Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Private Investment with the growth. The study will use data from 1980-81 to 2015-16 in this regard and employ Johansen cointegration to investigate the long run relationship. It is found that with foreign direct investment, health expenditure and transport and communication expenditure has negative relationship in the long run. Where as private investment, education expenditure and expenditure on housing has positive relationship with growth. Based on these findings recommendations were totally investment centric with primary focus on reduction in taxes and other barriers to bring in more investment in long run. Beside taxation, recommendations were made on administrative balance both in tax system and public sectors which were made part of provincial domain after 18th amendment.Keywords. Public sector development programme, Foreign direct investment, Private investment.JEL. D92, O40, H51, H52

X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure of FePt nanoclusters

X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure [XANES] of FePt nanoclusters has been studied using a full multiple scattering, self-consistent field [SCF], real-space Green`s function approach realized via the powerful ab initio FEFF8 code. One purpose of our study is to determine the sensitivity of Pt L3 edge with respect to the size and shape of the FePt nanoclusters. We also give the results of the calculations with respect to the Fe L3 edge. Calculations are made with and without core-hole for two main reasons, to check and cross-check the FEFF code and also since in some cases it is known such as Pt clusters that better results are obtained without the core-hole. This is mainly because the screening electron will occupy empty d or f states and correspondingly reduce the white line intensity.Comment: TeX version 3.14159, LaTex2e, 6 pages with 6 figure

Investigation on factors causing construction delay and their effects on the development of Oman’s construction industry

Construction delay in projects is a common manifestation in the construction industry. Delay in construction will lead to a bad relationship between the parties involved and will also lead to an increase in the allocated completion time. Delay in the ongoing project might result in the loss of the money, time and other facilities by the client and cause a lot of financial damage to the contractor due to its investment in the purchase of equipment, construction materials and the hire of skilled workers. Delay in construction is a common problem that occurs mostly due to the unforeseen problems during the design &amp; construction stages which often lead to delays in the completion of the project. Oman’s construction industry is one of the most important industries for the country’s economic development and growth. In this study, analysis of some available literature was conducted, and a questionnaire survey was floated among contractors, consultants, clients, project managers, and engineers involved in construction projects. All the collected responses were evaluated by using SPSS. The results of the study identified a total of 60&nbsp;causes of delay out of which three factors have a “High” significance level for construction delays. These factors of “High” significance were associated with “Client related issues only” in which the initial design was altered by the client, delaying in deciding by the client and, scope change by the client. Majority of the delay (84&nbsp;%) was observed to be lying in the range of 1‑2&nbsp;years. This study also recognized the effect and minimization of regular delay and delay resulted due to Covid-19. Minimizing construction delay criteria can be managed by having a proper control system in the project time and fund