Mediating role of Environmental Education for Sustainable Supply chain Performance: Empirical Evidence from Chemical Companies of Pakistan

Previous studies have been conducted in developed countries, and only a few are conducted in developing countries. Furthermore, a contribution of this is that the mediating role of environmental education is considered in the present study. This study aimed to identify the mediating role of environmental education between internal environmental management, supplier selection, and green packaging on sustainable supply chain performance in Pakistan. A total of 250 chemical companies filled out the questionnaire. The findings of this study revealed a partial mediation effect of environmental education for internal environmental management, supplier selection, and green packaging in sustainable supply chain performance in Pakistan. However, the supplier selection results are more critical compared to internal environment management and green packaging due to the higher beta value. This study proposed a pivotal variable to achieve a sustainable supply chain in developing countries such as Pakistan.JEL Classification: Q01, Q51, Q54, Q56How to Cite:Junejo, I., Qureshi, F., & Khan, M. A. (2023). Mediating role of Environmental Education for Sustainable Supply Chain Performance: Empirical Evidence from Chemical Companies of Pakistan. Etikonomi, 22(1), 131–142. https://doi.org/10.15408/etk.v22i1.27139

Mutual Funds and Market Variables: A Critical Review of Literature

The growth of mutual fund industry has shown a remarkable increase since past few years. The current study reviews the performance and role of mutual funds at both micro and macro level. The study sheds light on the mutual funds and their association with market variables and macro economy.  The study discusses the great work of literature in context of fund-return, fund-volatility, funds-variables-economy and predictive ability of mutual fund flows. The study further proposes to examine these relationship in context of developing and emerging markets using PVAR and GMM models. The findings of this study will benefit investors, policy makers and academicians.        Key words: Mutual fund flows, Market returns, Macro economy.

Pulmonary Dysfunction Augmenting Bacterial Aerosols in Leather Tanneries of Punjab, Pakistan

Peer reviewe

Evaluation of Chickpea Cultivation Approaches in Terms of Environmental Resilience and Future Protein Security

AbSTRACT The commercial growth in chickpea production for exportation purposes is not keeping pace with increasing demand for protein and protein derived products. In this concern, a pot experiment was conducted under field conditions during winter 2013-2014 at Botany department, AMU, Aligarh, India. Treatment consists of (1) F W (2) F P (3) F S (4) F PS (5) S GA (6) S GA +F P (7) S GA +F S (8) S GA +F PS (9) F GA (10) F GAP (11) F GAS (12) F GAPS (13) S GA +F GA (14) S GA +F GAP9 (15) S GA +F GAS (16) S GA +F GAPS . Before sowing, the seeds of chickpea are soaked for 8 h in 10 -6 M GA3. After 60 and 70 days of sowing, the plants were sprayed with 10 -6 MGA 3 along with 2 kg P and /or S/ha in equal splits. Performance of the crop was assessed especially in terms of nodule number per plant, nitrate reductase activity (NR), nitrogenase (N-ase) two most significant N-fixing enzymes, leghaemoglobin content (Lb), pod weight per plant, seed yield per plant, and seed protein content. Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) content in leaves were influenced almost non-significantly due to applied P and S level. Treatment (16) S GA +F GAPS proved best, it enhanced NR by 22.37% and 22.46%; Lb by 206.113 and 215.38% respectively at 90 and 100 DAS. Seed yield per plant and seed protein content enhanced by 86 and 21% by the same treatment at harvest without compromising the N-fixing activity

Emotion detection from handwriting and drawing samples using an attention-based transformer model

© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Emotion detection (ED) involves the identification and understanding of an individual’s emotional state through various cues such as facial expressions, voice tones, physiological changes, and behavioral patterns. In this context, behavioral analysis is employed to observe actions and behaviors for emotional interpretation. This work specifically employs behavioral metrics like drawing and handwriting to determine a person’s emotional state, recognizing these actions as physical functions integrating motor and cognitive processes. The study proposes an attention-based transformer model as an innovative approach to identify emotions from handwriting and drawing samples, thereby advancing the capabilities of ED into the domains of fine motor skills and artistic expression. The initial data obtained provides a set of points that correspond to the handwriting or drawing strokes. Each stroke point is subsequently delivered to the attention-based transformer model, which embeds it into a high-dimensional vector space. The model builds a prediction about the emotional state of the person who generated the sample by integrating the most important components and patterns in the input sequence using self-attentional processes. The proposed approach possesses a distinct advantage in its enhanced capacity to capture long-range correlations compared to conventional recurrent neural networks (RNN). This characteristic makes it particularly well-suited for the precise identification of emotions from samples of handwriting and drawings, signifying a notable advancement in the field of emotion detection. The proposed method produced cutting-edge outcomes of 92.64% on the benchmark dataset known as EMOTHAW (Emotion Recognition via Handwriting and Drawing).Peer reviewe

Bone marrow aspiration in haematological disorders: study at a tertiary care centre

Background: The bone marrow examination is an essential investigation for the diagnosis and management of many disorders of the blood and bone marrow. Bone marrow aspiration (BMA) alone is usually sufficient to diagnose nutritional anaemias, and most of the acute leukaemias. Aim was to study the spectrum of haematological disorders diagnosed on bone marrow aspiration.Methods: This study was conducted in the Department of Clinical Haematology in Sher e Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Kashmir for a period of 2 years from December 2015 to December 2017. Bone marrow examination of 2131 cases of suspected hematological disorders was carried out. Bone marrow was aspirated from posterior superior iliac spine under local anaesthesia. Aspirates of dry tap were excluded from the study. Aspiration smears where stained with Leishmann stain for morphological examination.Results: A total of 2131 cases were included in this study. Male to female ratio in our study was 1.9:1. The age range of cases was from 1-80 years and the mean age was 47.3 years. Anemia was the most common haematological disorder in our study accounting for 25.6% of cases followed by acute leukaemia accounting for 22.3% and multiple myeloma (13.3%). Among anemias, megaloblastic anemia was most common followed by dual deficieny anemia. Among leukaemias, acute myeloid leukaemia (13.2%) was more common than acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (9.1%).Conclusions: Bone marrow aspiration cytology is a mildly invasive technique which can diagnose many hematological and non-hematologic diseases that can be confirmed by more advanced investigations viz. serological, biochemical or molecular. It is a highly informative test procedure performed for evaluating blood and blood related diseases in our environment

Clinico-epidemiological profile and treatment outcome of lip cancer: a retrospective study from north India

Background: Aim of present study to evaluate the Clinico-epidemiological profile and treatment outcome of Lip Cancer. Methods: This was a retrospective study performed in our hospital. All necessary clinical and epidemiological details of the 11 cases diagnosed with lip cancer from January 2016 to December 2021 were analysed. Results: The total number of new malignant cases diagnosed as lip cancer between January 2016 and December 2021 were 11, which comprised 6 male (55%) and 5 (45%) female. The male-to-female ratio was (1.2:1). The most common histological type was SCC, i.e., in 9 (81.8%) of the total number of cases and BCC was in 2 patients (18.2%). Overall survival at 5 years was 89% in our study. Conclusions: In conclusion, we have reported higher levels of lip cancer among men and those above 45 years of age. The important prognostic factors for overall survival in these patients were cancer stages. Better survival is achieved with surgery alone in the early stages and with adjuvant radiotherapy in the later stages

Comparative analysis of postpartum IUDC versus interval IUCD insertion: a study conducted in a tertiary care hospital in Karachi, Pakistan

Background: To compare the effectiveness of postpartum intrauterine contraceptive device (PPIUCD) with interval IUCD in terms of effectiveness, expulsions, bleeding pain and other complications at Tertiary care Hospital.Methods: Current study was conducted among 224 women, at Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Reproductive Health Services-A (RHS-A) Centre of Jinnah Post Graduate Medical center, Karachi, for a period of Six months. Approval from Ethical committee and informed consent was taken from women and her husband before starting the study. The WHO medical eligibility criteria for contraceptive use (MEC) were followed and IUCD was inserted in 112 women in PPIUCD group and in 112 women in interval IUCD group. These cases were followed at 15 days, 6 weeks and 6 months. Results of PPIUCD group were compared with interval IUCDs group. Data was analyzed by using SPSS version 18.0. Continuous variables like age, parity, hemoglobin level were analyzed as mean±standard deviation. Frequencies and percentages were calculated for infection, expulsion, bleeding per vagina and effectiveness. Chi-square was applied to assess the difference between the categories. p value <0.05 was taken as significant.Results: The two groups were identical in mean ± SD age, parity, residence and baseline hemoglobin level. PPIUCD (Group-A) was more effective i.e., 87.5% as compared to interval IUCD (Group-B) i.e., 83.9%. Pain, PID, bleeding and expulsion of IUCD were more prevalent with interval IUCD (Group-B) than PPIUCD (Group-A) patients. Stratified analysis showed that age, parity & mean baseline hemoglobin were non-significant effect modifiers on the effectiveness among the two groups.Conclusions: Postpartum IUCD use was found to be a safe, simple, inexpensive and reversible procedure with higher chances of retention for a longer period. Additionally, there is decreased risk of complications and lower expulsion rates when compared with interval IUCD

Clinico-epidemiological profile and treatment outcome of pituitary adenomas: a retrospective study

Background: Aim of this study was to evaluate the clinico-epidemiological profile and treatment outcome of pituitary adenomas. Methods: This was a retrospective study performed in the department of Radiation Oncology, Sher-I-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Soura, Srinagar, India, in which 30 cases diagnosed with pituitary adenoma from January 2016 to December 2021 were studied.  There clinical and epidemiological features, treatment, overall survival and follow-up data was analyzed. Results: Most patients were female in gender 17 (57%), and the incidence rate was higher in female patients than male. Microadenoma was seen in just 4 (13%) patients. Macroadenoma in 12 (40%) and giant tumours in 14 (47%). At three and five years, the overall survival rate was 92% and 83%, respectively. Additionally, patients who got adjuvant radiation had a higher overall survival rate (84% versus 76%, p=.833) than those who did not. Conclusions: Radiotherapy is an effective treatment for pituitary adenomas, able to achieve excellent disease control. Patients with pituitary adenomas should be identified at an early stage so that effective treatment can be implemented. Initial therapy is generally transsphenoidal surgery with irradiation reserved for patients who do not achieve adequate reduction in tumor size after surgery

Computing the Parametric Geo-Accumulation and Ecological Risk Indices of Some Heavy Metals Along on, Charsadda-Peshawar Road, Pakistan

Charsadda to Peshawar road is characterized with diverse surrounding environment of residential settlements,industrial zones, commercial and agricultural sectors along with heavy traffic route which is contributing to heavy metalpollution. This study is focused on heavy metals: Cadmium (Cd), Chromium (Cr) and Lead (Pb) contribution to theatmospheric pollution level. The heavy metals pollution assessment is carried out by sample collection (soil dust samplesand two vegetation species Cyperus esculentus and Cynodon dactylon) from ten sites along the road which were analyzedby using atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS). Average values of pollution index (PI) as well as average value ofpollution load index (PLI) for Cr, Cd and Pb in case of Cyperus esculentus, Cynodon dactylon and dust were calculated.Geo-accumulation index of roadside dust for Cr, Cd and Pb were estimated along with ecological risk due to roadsidedust using potential ecological risk index (RI). The analyses of this study suggest that the indices for the Cd metal foundto be of more concern than Cr or Pb which correspond to middle or low level of pollution. Statistical analysis revealedthat the three metals had a weak to moderate relationship with one another indicating multiple and somewhat similarsources of pollution