Assessing the Socio-Economic and Environmental Impacts of 2014 Drought in District Tharparkar, Sindh-Pakistan

Thar Desert constitutes the largest desert of Pakistan. It is the only densely populated desert in the world, whose inhabitants is attached to their location and is unwilling to migrate. In recent past, Thar has been struck three times by droughts, the most recent was of 2014 while, and the most severe was in 1992-2002, following which it was declared one of the food insecure regions of the world e.g. Yemen, Syrian Arab Republic, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Burundi, Afghanistan. Understanding people perception of drought can assist to identify barriers to and drivers of adaptation that later help to develop adaptation related policies. This study seeks to assess the present condition of Thar natives and to understand from the views of people that how much negative impact of drought has on their lives. Primary data were obtained through personal interviews from local people (N=251) during field survey which was conducted in July 2015. Natives indicated that drought is a natural phenomenon; it does affect their lives, but not to a significant level. Among the affected people, the poor who live in rural areas and depend directly on agriculture have been hit especially hard. The installation of a solar reverse osmosis (SRO) plant that serves District Tharparkar has resolved most of the water shortage issues. However, water quality remains an issue for villagers, dependent on well water that is saline or polluted. Human activities such as deforestation and use of non-renewable resources for fuel are increasing environmental degradation. There is a dire need to establish best medical centers other than urban sites of the district to improve health condition of the native

A 27-Year Report from the Central Eye Bank of Iran: A complete translation from Farsi

This article is based on a study first reported in Farsi in the Bina Journal of Ophthalmology, titled گزارش عملکرد سه دهه اي بانک چشم جمهوري اسلامي ايران, Volume 24, Issue 2 (Winter 2019) 2019/05/28. Original URL: https://www.sid.ir/fa/journal/ViewPaper.aspx?ID=487896 Purpose: To report the 27-year statistical data from the Central Eye Bank of Iran (CEBI) and its activity. Methods: All CEBI records regarding procured eyes, tissue utilizations, corneal transplants per capita, and indications for keratoplasty from 1991 to 2017 were analyzed. Results: In total, 115,743 whole eyes were donated during the 27-year period. Out of the 114,169 eyes donated between 1994 and 2017, 95,314 eyes were distributed for transplantation, and 95,057 corneas were actually transplanted. The mean annual rate of corneal transplants per capita was 55.10−6 ± 27.10−6. Although penetrating keratoplasty (PKP, 70%) was the most common technique of corneal transplantation during the study period, it exhibited a decreasing trend between 2006 and 2017 (P = 0.048). It was in contrast to Descemet stripping automated endothelial keratoplasty (DSAEK) that demonstrated an increasing trend during the same period (P < 0.001). Keratoconus (KCN, 39.70%) was the most leading indication for keratoplasty over the last three decades followed by bullous keratopathy (BK, 18.5%), corneal scar and opacities (15.7%), and graft failure (GF, 7.5%), with an increasing trend for BK, GF, and KCN. A majority of scleral tissues (83.7%) were utilized for orbital implant protection. Conclusion: An increasing trend in the number of procured eyes was observed over the past 27 years in Iran. The most leading indications for corneal transplantation were KCN and BK. While PKP was the most common keratoplasty technique, DSAEK showed an increasing trend over the last 12 years

Law Politics of Authority Separation of Judicial Review by Judiciary in Indonesia

Remarkable shift occurred after the amendment of the Constitution 1945, of the supremacy of the parliament to the supremacy of the constitution. Consequently, all legislation products starting from legislation until the lowest level whose constitutionality and legality can be reviewed toward the higher constitution and law and regulation. However, the arrangement of Article 24A paragraph (1) and Article 24C paragraph (1) that separates the authority in the field of judicial review of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court is only based on the technical and practical purposes in the perspective of the politics of  law that is not ideal, so it is necessary to be amended and improved. Keywords: judicial review, legal politic, and the constitution

Comparing Outcomes of Airway Changes and Risk of Sleep Apnea after Bimaxillary Orthognathic Surgery and Mandibular Setback Surgery in Patients with Skeletal Class III Malocclusion: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objective: To compare the airway changes and risks of sleep apnea after the bimaxillary orthognathic surgery and mandibular setback surgery in the growing patients with skeletal Class III malocclusion. Material and Methods: MEDLINE, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, ISI, Google scholar have been utilized as the electronic databases for performing systematic literature between 2010 to August 2020. The quality of the included studies has been assessed using MINORS. Meta-analysis was performed using Stata 16 software. Results: In electronic searches, a total of 218 potentially relevant abstracts and topics have been found. Finally, 23 papers met the criteria defined for inclusion in this systematic review. The mean difference of upper airway total volume changes between before and after surgery was (MD = 1.86 cm3 95% CI 0.61 cm3-3.11 cm3; p= 0.00) among 14 studies. This result showed that after Mandibular Setback Surgery, there was a statistically significant decrease in the upper airway volume. Conclusion: Class III Patients who undergo bimaxillary surgery show no other significant difference in airways volume after surgery than patients in Class III who undergo mandibular setback alone

Sustainability Analysis of Marble Sector in Buner

Marble is an ornamental stone, extremely popular for use as architectural and sculptural purposes. Nonrenewable marble resources in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Pakistan are mostly mined by conventional mining methods(producing irregular shaped blocks) instead of using mechanized mining producing regular shaped blocks.Conventional mining methods are more economical but are less environment friendly due to more quantity of wasteproduced. While, mechanized marble mining has a better recovery, reduces mining cost (processing and transportation)and is less environmentally hazardous. In this study a situation and sustainability analysis of marble mining operationsat Buner, the most productive marble mining cluster in KP, Pakistan, is carried out. Buner has about 1.4 billion tons ofmarble resources and contributes around 51 percent of total country’s marble production. Analytical Hierarchy Process(AHP) is used on the basis of key sustainability factors (economic, technical, social, environmental and safety) forselection of most sustainable mining methods. The analysis revealed that conventional mining is least sustainable andproduces maximum waste, cracks, irregular shaped blocks, high working faces, back break, rock falls and accidents. Itwas concluded and recommended that these conventional mining methods should be replaced with the more sustainablemining methods i.e. semi-mechanized (controlled blasting / expansion material) at sunny grey and get black marbledeposits and mechanized mining (rope cutting) at Bampokha No.1 and Chagharzai white marble deposits

Authority Integration of Judicial Review Conducted By Judiciary in Indonesia

The separation of authority of judicial review between Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court which exists in Article 24A point (1) and Article 24C point (1) of the 1945 constitution is not ideal because it can cause legal problems which are complicated, both in terms of the philosophical, theoretical, and juridicial. Therefore, the authority integration of judicial review by a judicial review becomes an urgent constitutional need in terms of providing a guarantee of legal and justice certainty and as a consequence of the applied hierarchical theory of legal norms in the Indonesian legal system. Keywords: judicial review, the integration of authority, hierarchy of legal norms

Permissioned Blockchain-Based Security for SDN in IoT Cloud Networks

The advancement in cloud networks has enabled connectivity of both traditional networked elements and new devices from all walks of life, thereby forming the Internet of Things (IoT). In an IoT setting, improving and scaling network components as well as reducing cost is essential to sustain exponential growth. In this domain, software-defined networking (SDN) is revolutionizing the network infrastructure with a new paradigm. SDN splits the control/routing logic from the data transfer/forwarding. This splitting causes many issues in SDN, such as vulnerabilities of DDoS attacks. Many solutions (including blockchain based) have been proposed to overcome these problems. In this work, we offer a blockchain-based solution that is provided in redundant SDN (load-balanced) to service millions of IoT devices. Blockchain is considered as tamper-proof and impossible to corrupt due to the replication of the ledger and consensus for verification and addition to the ledger. Therefore, it is a perfect fit for SDN in IoT Networks. Blockchain technology provides everyone with a working proof of decentralized trust. The experimental results show gain and efficiency with respect to the accuracy, update process, and bandwidth utilization.Comment: Accepted to International Conference on Advances in the Emerging Computing Technologies (AECT) 202

Influence of Glass Fibers on Mechanical Properties of Concrete with Recycled Coarse Aggregates

Despite plain cement concrete presenting inferior performance in tension and adverse environmental impacts, it is the most widely used construction material in the world. Consumption of fibers and recycled coarse aggregates (RCA) can add ductility and sustainability to concrete. In this research, two mix series (100%NCA, and 100%RCA) were prepared using four different dosages of GF (0%GF, 0.25%GF, 0.5%GF, and 0.75%GF by volume fraction).  Mechanical properties namely compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, and flexural strength of each concrete mixture was evaluated at the age of 28 days. The results of testing indicated that the addition of GF was very useful in enhancing the split tensile and flexural strength of both RCA and NCA concrete. Compressive strength was not highly sensitive to the addition of GF. The loss in strength that occurred due to the incorporation of RCA was reduced to a large extent upon the inclusion of GF. GF caused significant improvements in the split tensile and flexural strength of RCA concrete. Optimum dosage of GF was determined to be 0.25% for NCA, and 0.5% for RCA concrete respectively, based on the results of combined mechanical performance (MP)

Media Processing in Video Conferences for Cooperating Over the Top and Operator Based Networks

Telecom operators have dominated the communication industry for a long time by providing services with guaranteed quality of service. Such services are provided by the operator at the cost of maintaining a high grade network. With the introduction of broadband and internet, many over the top (OTT) services have emerged. These services use the underlying operator networks as a mere bit pipe while all service intelligence resides in the application running on the client device. Introduction of OTT services has seen a good response from general users who are no longer bound to services provided by the network operator. This in turn has caused operators and telecom companies to loose the ownership of their customers. This thesis takes media processing in video conferencing as a case study to compare the two competing domains of operator networks and OTT networks. Both domains offer video conferencing to end users, but they follow different architectures. The study shows that OTT services can perform much better if they utilize support of the underlying network. This will also bring the user base back to the network operator. The proposal is to turn the competition into cooperation between both parties. Assessments are done from both technical as well as business perspectives to assert that such cooperative agreements are possible and should be experimented in real life