Trends and Determinants of Rural Poverty: A Logistic Regression Analysis of Selected Districts of Punjab

Poverty is widespread in the rural areas, where the people are in a state of human deprivation with regard to incomes, clothing, housing, health care, education, sanitary facilities and human rights. Nearly 61 percent of the country’s populations live in rural areas. In Pakistan poverty has been increased in rural areas and is higher than urban areas. Of the total rural population 65 percent are directly or indirectly linked with agriculture sector. In Pakistan more than 44.8 percent people generate their income from agriculture sector, and the higher rate of increase in poverty in the rural areas has provoked debate on growth and productivity trends in the agriculture sector. Therefore, it is the need of the hour to determine such factors which affect the poverty status of a rural household. Utilising unique IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute) panel data together with sub-sample of PRHS (Pakistan Rural Household Survey) for two districts of Punjab (Attock and Faisalabad) the present study aim at analysing and estimating the rural poverty trends and determinants of rural poverty from the late 1980s to 2002. The data was analysed by using binary logistic model and head count measure. The results show that the chance of a household tripping to poverty increased due to increase in household size, dependency ratio, while, education, value of livestock, remittances and farming decreased the likelihood of being a poor. Moreover, the socio-economic opportunities as represented by the availability of infrastructure in the residential region also play a significant role in the level of poverty faced by a household. This study makes a modest contribution by attempting to analyse the need for focusing on anti-poverty policies, which can nip the evil in the bud.Rural Poverty, Poverty Trends, Agriculture Growth, Determinants

Characteristics of Traffic Accidents in Baghdad

Road traffic accidents (RTAs) are events that suddenly, inadvertently and unexpectedly occur under unforeseen circumstances that involve at least one moving vehicle and result in one or more road users being killed or injured. Unfortunately, Iraqi governorates suffer from higher rates of traffic accident casualties compared with the rates of casualties from terrorist attacks; this situation reveals a serious and growing problem. Road traffic accidents are not easy to eradicate. However, their prevalence can be reduced to the barest minimum via periodic assessments of traffic accident characteristics and the most important aspects for road authorities to consider when designing and evaluating the performance of a road to improve traffic and road users’ safety.Therefore, the primary objective of this paper is to evaluate traffic accidents in Baghdad using a retrospective analysis of accidents that occurred from 2006–2016 taking into consideration the following parameters: the cause of the accident, the genders of the victims, the number and type of vehicles involved in the accident, the time of the accident, the severity of the accident, the type of accident and the age group of the driver(s). The data were been obtained from the Central Statistical Organization in the Ministry of Planning. The results reveal that 12,019 RTAs occurred in the city of Baghdad; on average, 1,092 RTAs occurred each year. Twenty-two percent of the RTAs resulted in death, 67% resulted in injury and 6% resulted in both deaths and injuries. Only 4% of the RTAs resulted in property damage without victims. To this end, Baghdad has the highest prevalence of RTAs of all Iraqi governorates. These results provide scientific evidence to mobilize road authorities to effectively and urgently develop adequate traffic strategies and policies to reduce the epidemic of RTAs in Baghdad as well as other Iraqi governorates

Partially pyrolyzed-non-activated olive stones: Characterization and utilization of olive stones partially-pyrolyzed at various temperatures for 2-chlorophenol removal from water

This paper reports the development of the chemical and structural properties of partially pyrolyzed olive stones (OS) (at 250, 400, 500, 600, 700 and 850 °C) intended for use as a less expensive and more environmental-friendly adsorbent within water treatment applications. The following properties were followed: mass loss, surface chemistry (acid/base titrations and IR analysis), crystalline matter and elemental analysis, SEM, BET and TGA analysis. The major mass loss (68%) occurred between 250 and 400 °C. Acidic oxides disappeared after 500 °C, while surface basicity increased with increasing pyrolysis temperature. The partially pyrolyzed-non-activated OS sorbents were used for 2-chlorohenol (2-CP) removal from water, where 2-CP uptake increased with increasing pyrolysis temperature. The maximum adsorption was recorded at pH 7 using the pyrolyzed OS at 850 °C, which was only 13% more than that of OS pyrolyzed at 600 °C (sorbent carb600). So that carb600 (adsorption capacity: 34.1 mg g−1) was recommended as a cost-effective-environmental-friendly adsorbent. The re-usability of carb600 for removing 2-chlorophenol from real water sample was evident, where ∼70% of its adsorption efficiency was reserved even in the presence of competing ions

An Empirical Examination of InterOrganizational Factors Influence on Green Marketing Adoption in Jordanian Industrial Sector

The aim of this research is to examine the factors affecting the adoption of green marketing concept among the industrial manufactures in Jordan. Data were collected from 92 industrial manufactures. Hypotheses were tested using multiple regression. The results indicated that social and environment responsibility have positive relationships with green marketing adoption. Lacks of significant relationships were found between managerial attitude, innovative management and green marketing adoption. These results provide significant managerial implications on how to build and foster the green marketing as an organizational culture and determine what factors should be considered in that regard

Proptosis of eye: an atypical presentation of prostatic malignancy.

Orbital metastasis is a rare occurrence found only in about 3 - 10% of all prostate cancers. A 72 years male presented with proptosis of the left eye associated with pain, blurred vision and frequent headaches for the past 8 months. Past medical history had symptoms of bladder outflow obstruction for 3 years. MRI brain and orbit with contrast was consistent with a large soft tissue mass in the left frontal region. The mass was surgically excised in order to achieve palliation. Histopathology revealed poorly differentiated malignant neoplasm with immunohistochemistry favoring metastatic prostate carcinoma. Postoperative radiotherapy was administered with a palliative intent. CT scan identified an enlarged prostate with a nodular lesion, abdominal lymphadenopathy and soft tissue density lesion in the apical segment of left lung. Serum PSA level was 149 µg/L. Bone scan was also consistent with metastatic disease

Heregulin induces expression, DNA binding activity and transactivating functions of basic leucine zipper activating transcription factor 4

Heregulin β1 (HRG), a combinatorial ligand for human epidermal growth factor receptor 3 and human epidermal growth factor receptor 4 receptors, is a regulatory secretory polypeptide with distinct biological effects such as growth stimulation, differentiation, invasiveness and migration in breast cancer cells. The mechanism underlying the diverse functions of HRG is not well established, but it is believed to be dependent on the induced changes in expression of specific cellular gene products, their modification, or both. The binding of basic leucine zipper transcription factors to the cAMP response element is known to activate a variety of gene products with a role or roles in growth regulation. In the studies presented here, we identified basic leucine zipper Activating Transcription Factor (ATF) 4 as one of the HRG-inducible gene product. We demonstrated that HRG stimulation of human cancer cells induces expression of ATF4 mRNA and protein, ATF4 DNA binding activity and ATF4 transactivating function. Consistent with its role as a transcriptional activator, HRG-stimulated ATF4 protein stimulated the transcription from an artificial promoter with three tandem ATF sites or from a naturally occurring promoter with ATF4 sites such as E-selectin. We also demonstrated a preferential role of the HRG-stimulated mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway, but not the phosphatidylinositol 3′-kinase pathway, in supporting the observed increase in ATF4 DNA binding activity and transcription from E-selectin promoter in HRG-stimulated cells. Because ATF4 binding sites are present in a variety of growth-regulating cellular genes, these findings suggest that the stimulation of ATF4 expression and its transactivating functions may constitute an important mechanism of HRG-mediated regulation of putative genes with diversified functions. The present study is the first demonstration of regulation of expression and transactivation ability of ATF4 by any polypeptide growth factor

Trends and Determinants of Rural Poverty: A Logistic Regression Analysis of Selected Districts of Punjab

Poverty has many dimensions, like malnourishment, no shelter, being ill and not having ability to visit a doctor, no facility to go to school, unemployment, uncertainty of tomorrow, surviving only one day at a time. Poverty is losing a kid to illness due to the infected water. Powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom is another name of poverty. Poverty is of many types varying from place to place and time to time, and, has been portrayed in various manners. Poverty is the “incapability to maintain a minimum living standard anticipated with respect to basic consumption needs or some amount of income required for satisfying them [World Bank (2006)]. The bulk of the global poor are rural and will linger on thus for numerous decades. The major portion of their expenditure is generally on staple food. They have little assets such as land and others, lack of schooling and face lots of interconnecting obstacles to develop. Approximately 1.2 billion people globally expend less than a standard; “dollara- day”; and are in “dollar poverty”; 44 percent in South Asia about 24 percent each in Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia and 32 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. Almost 75 percent of the dollar poor lived and worked in rural areas in 2001. Projection made in 2001 suggested that 60 percent would continue to be in this state in 2005 [IFAD (2001)]. Pakistan’s population is estimated at around 155 million, and is growing at 1.9 percent per annum. Nearly 61 percent of the country’s populations live in rural areas. While 65 percent of the rural population is directly or indirectly linked with agriculture sector, it constitutes only 45 percent of their income [Pakistan (2006)]. According to the official statistics, poverty in the rural areas has gone down form 39 percent in 2001-02 to 28 percent in 2005-06. [Pakistan (2006)]. However, some studies have contradicted these contentions and argue that in contrast, the rural poverty has remained unchanged or even been trending higher over this period or at least not decreased as much as shown in official statistics. [Kemal (2003); Malik (2005); World Bank (2006); Anwar (2006)]