Availability of Support and Services for Aural Rehabilitation of Children with Hearing Impairment in Punjab – A Survey of Parental Perception

Involvement of parents in rehabilitation process is of vital importance. Parental perception and satisfaction from the available support and services are the indicators of their (un)met specific needs. The objectives of the study were to assess the parental perception about the level of available support from different personnel involved in the process of aural rehabilitation and to highlight the parental needs and recommendations for aural rehabilitation of children with hearing impairment (HIC). A survey was conducted from October 2014 to January 2015 to collect demographic data, information about level of support of different personnel as received by the parents, their opinion and recommendation about further required support. The sample comprised of 30 government special education institutes from which 308 questionnaires, filled by the parents of the HIC studying in these institutions were received back. The results highlighted the poor educational and income level of the parents, increasing incidence of hearing impairment in the families of HIC, lack of available support from personnel involved in aural rehabilitation and documented parental demands and recommendations. It was concluded that future planning of provisions for aural rehabilitation may be more effective, if aligned with the requirements and preferences expressed by parents of HIC

Stability of nanobeams and nanoplates with defects

The sensitivity of critical buckling load and critical stress concerning different geometrical and physical parameters of Euler-Bernoulli nanobeams with defects is studied. Eringen’s nonlocal theory of elasticity is used for the determination of critical buckling load for stepped nanobeams subjected to axial loads for different support conditions. An analytical approach to study the impact of discontinuities and boundary conditions on the critical buckling load and critical stress of nanobeams has been developed. Critical buckling loads of stepped nanobeams are defined under the condition that the nanoelements are weakened with stable crack-like defects. Simply supported, clamped and cantilever nanobeams with steps and cracks are investigated in this article. The presented results are compared with the other available results and are found to be in a close agreement

Development and Validation of Phonetically Balanced Speech Perception Test in Urdu Language

Purpose: The tool of speech or language assessment is required to be linguistically and culturally appropriate for the individual being tested. Testing in native language is essential if an audiologist or speech and language therapist wants to test the speech perception capacities of an individual and to use the data for further planning and monitoring of the therapeutic efforts. Numerous speech perception tests are available in different international and regional languages. But in Urdu language, no such tool is available to the clinicians to check the speech perception abilities of hearing impaired individuals. Therefore, this study was designed to: (1) estimating the frequency of occurrence of Urdu consonants; (2) developing a speech perception test in Urdu Language for children with hearing impairment; and (3) establishing the reliability and validity of the test. Methods: This study was carried out in three stages. In stage I, structural attributes of the test were planned. During stage II, firstly mean phonetic occurrence of each consonant in Urdu language was calculated. Secondly, a pool of most common image-able Urdu words was generated from which a 25 word-list for identification task was created. Finally, the speech perception test was finalized after establishing its content validity. In stage III, reliability and validity of the test was established through a pilot study conducted via randomly selected 100 normally hearing and 30 hearing impaired subjects. Results: The Urdu speech perception test is a non-verbal, norm referenced test. Content, predictive and construct validity was established. Split half reliability of the test was 0.798 and test-retest reliability was 0.881 which was found to be significant at α = 0.05 and α = 0.01 level of significance respectively. Inter-scorer reliability was 0.598 which was significant at α = 0.10 level. Conclusions: The Urdu speech perception test is a reliable, validated and linguistically appropriate non verbal tool to check the speech perception abilities of children with hearing impairment

Effect of Heads Managerial Styles on Teachers Professional Commitments at Secondary Level

Management is a process to run or administrate an organization. A leader should be fearless, courageous and bold to run an institution in an effective way. A leader can change the priorities of the staff members through his or her managerial styles, head of the school can use different managerial style to change the commitments of teachers in desired way. Basically, aim of this research was to check the effect of managerial style of heads on the professional commitments at secondary level. In the light of objective district mandi Baha Uddin (three tehsils) was taken as population. 3 schools from one tehsile Malikwaal was taken as pilot testing, and 12 schools from two tehsils phalia and mandi Baha Uddin was taken as final testing. Questionnaire and interviews were used as research instruments. Questionnaire and interviews was used as research instrument. Mix method design was used, this study was descriptive in nature, simple random sampling was used to collect data, researcher personally visited to collect the data, gathered data was analysed through SPSS, using descriptive static analysis was included mean, standard deviation, and chi square. Democratic and transformational style had positive and significant effect on the teacher’s commitments, and majority of the heads using This study will also help the heads and teachers to adopt effective and different managerial styles according to the needs and demands of institutional effectiveness, Keywords: managerial style, professional commitment

Rural Non-agriculture Employment and Poverty in Pakistan

There is ample evidence that poverty, which declined rapidly in Pakistan in the 1980s, has returned in the 1990s [Amjad and Kemal (1997); Ali and Tahir (1999); Jafri (1999); Qureshi and Arif (2001)]. Consequently large number of Pakistanis, more than one-third of the total population, live currently far below what can reasonably be regarded as a decent standard of living. Poverty has generally been higher in rural areas than in urban areas. This gap could not be bridged overtime; still the greatest degree of poverty is found in the countryside. To address rural poverty, policy-makers have long been looking to the growth potential of the farm sector of the rural economy. Non-agricultural activities in rural areas have received little attention. This neglect, however, may be socially costly. It has been shown in several recent empirical studies that nonfarm activities occupy an important place in rural economies throughout the developing world [Hazell and Haggblade (1993); Adams and He (1995); Bakht (1996); Sen (1996); Lanjouw (1999)]. They expand quite rapidly in response to agriculture development, and therefore merit special attention in the design of strategies concerning poverty alleviation in rural areas

A Three Tiered Evaluation Framework for Effective Writing Instruction in English for Academic Purposes Course

Academic writing is becoming a matter of concern for the developing countries where English serves as a second or foreign language because of the significant role it plays in the academic as well as professional life of an individual. Excellence in academic writing and communication is among the top ranked expectations from graduates of all disciplines, Pakistani Higher education Commission has listed Technical and Academic communication as second significant competence (2017). Therefore, there is a dire need of a writing instruction framework that could inculcate communicative competence among Pakistani graduates. A framework that will suppress all challenges and ensure success. The consciously chosen methodology meant to determine the effectiveness of 3-Tiered Evaluation Framework in enhancing students’ engagement in writing classes; ensuring their academic success. The study established that the 3-tiered evaluation framework assisted teachers and language learners alike in dealing with language related problems including; large class size, writing in second/foreign language, absence of corrective feedback, students’ passivity and high dependence on easily available notes. The 3-TEF ensured active involvement of students in writing tasks facilitated through collaboration and systematic critical reflection, which ultimately improved students’ writing engagement and achievements. Besides, interpersonal skills, negotiation, critical thinking, autonomous learning, team work, collaboration, and confidence development, surfaced as by-products of the 3-TEF

Association of Hepcidin with Hepatitis C induced Diabetes Mellitus

To compare serum hepcidin levels ofpatients with hepatitis C induced diabetes mellituswith healthy controlsMethods: Sixty individuals were included in thestudy. Thirty were diagnosed cases of chronichepatitis C who developed diabetes mellitus duringthe course of HCV infection. Thirty age and gendermatched healthy controls were included. Individualswith acute hepatitis C, familial diabetes mellitus,iron deficiency anemia, recent history of bloodtransfusion, iron or erythropoietin supplementationand inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis,renal, cardiac, pulmonary diseases and on interferontherapy were excluded from the study. Bloodsamples were collected from all the individuals andserum hepcidin levels were measured by ELISA.Results: Significant decrease in serum hepcidinlevels was found in patients with the chronichepatitis C and diabetes mellitus having mean valueof 2.7±1.03ng/ml as compared with controls havingmean value of 28.5±5.3ng/ml. The difference amongthe two groups was significant at p-value of <0.001.Conclusion: Serum hepcidin levels in patientswith chronic hepatitis C with diabetes mellitus aresignificantly less as compared to healthy controls

The effects of using variable lengths for degraded signal acquisition in GPS receivers

The signal acquisition in GPS receivers is the first and very crucial process that may affect the overall performance of a navigation receiver. Acquisition program initiates a searching operation on received navigation signals to detect and identify the visible satellites. However, signal acquisition becomes a very challenging task in a degraded environment (i.e, dense urban) and the receiver may not be able to detect the satellites present in radio-vicinity, thus cannot estimate an accurate position solution. In such environments, satellite signals are attenuated and fluctuated due to fading introduced by Multipath and NLOS reception. To perform signal acquisition in such degraded environments, larger data accumulation can be effective in enhancing SNR, which tradeoff huge computational load, prolonged acquisition time and high cost of receiver. This paper highlights the effects of fading on satellite signal acquisition in GPS receiver through variable data lengths and SNR comparison, and then develops a statistical relationship between satellite visibility and SNR. Furthermore it also analyzes/investigates the tradeoff between computation load and signal data length