HR PRACTICES AND PERFORMANCE AMONG TEACHERS IN PAKISTAN: Chaudhry Abdul Rehman, Afshan Hameed

oai:ojs.ijmres.pk:article/1The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the perceptions and understanding of teachers about ‘HRM practices both in public and private universities of Pakistan. Further, to explore how teachers associate the fairness of HR practices and other organizational factors, to the individual and organizational outcomes/performance. To this end, semi structured interviews were conducted to explore the perceptions of teachers about HR practices and performance. The findings of the interviews indicate that the existence of fairness of HR practices not only makes teachers work better (Teacher’s performance) but also generate a feeling of obligation to contribute towards organizational objectives (Exchange relationship). It is also evident from the interviewees’ account that among other organizational factors, organizational support is also one of the most critical factors which develops a feeling of commitment and satisfaction with the organization. However, in this context, the role of HR managers is very important not only in developing such HR systems that give employees a sense of organizational support but to implement those systems, practically giving them the signal of organizational justice. This study is unique as it is an attempt to integrate the perspective of teachers in HRM and performance literature which is a highly under-researched group in developing countries like Pakistan. This study can also help HR practitioners and educational policy makers in designing holistic and employee friendly policies if they want to be competitive and successful. The paper is concluded by discussing the limitations and implications of the study and future directions

An unusual cause of gynaecomastia in a male

Summary: Beta-human chorionic gonadotropin (βhCG) is normally produced by syncytiotrophoblasts of the placenta during pregnancy and aids embryo implantation. However, it is also secreted in varying amounts in non-pregnant conditions commonly heralding a neoplastic process. We present a case of 50-year-old man, who presented with bilateral gynaecomastia with elevated testosterone, oestradiol, suppressed gonadotropins with progressively increasing levels of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). Biochemical and radiological investigations including ultrasonography of testes, breast tissue, MRI pituitary and CT scan full body did not identify the source of hCG. FDG PET scan revealed a large mediastinal mass with lung metastasis. Immunostaining and histological analysis confirmed the diagnosis of primary choriocarcinoma of the mediastinum. It is highly aggressive and malignant tumor with poor prognosis. Early diagnosis and management are essential for the best outcome. Learning Points: High βhCG in a male patient or a non-pregnant female suggests a paraneoplastic syndrome. In the case of persistently positive serum hCG, exclude immunoassay interference by doing the urine hCG as heterophilic antibodies are not present in the urine. Non-gestational choriocarcinoma is an extremely rare trophoblastic tumor and should be considered in young men presenting with gynaecomastia and high concentration of hCG with normal gonads. A high index of suspicion and extensive investigations are required to establish an early diagnosis of extra-gonadal choriocarcinoma. Early diagnosis is crucial to formulate optimal management strategy and to minimize widespread metastasis for best clinical outcome

Selection and Characterization of a Lysine Yielding Mutant of Corynebacterium glutamicum - a Soil Isolate from Pakistan

L-lysine is the second limiting amino acid for poultry and supplemented in broiler feed for optimal performance. Lysine can be produced by inducing mutation in glutamate producing bacteria. The study was conducted to enhance lysine production from a local strain of Corynebacterium glutamicum. The bacterium was mutated by exposure to UV. Mutants resistant to s-2-aminoethyle L-cystein (AEC) and showing auxotrophy for L-homoserine were screened for lysine production qualitatively and quantitatively. A mutant showing highest production of lysine (8.2 mg/mL) was selected for optimization of physical and nutritional parameters for maximum production of lysine in shake flask. An initial pH 7.6, 30˚C temperature, 300 rpm and 60 h incubation time were the optimized values of physical requirements. Cane molasses and corn starch hydrolysate were required at 15% (w/v) in the fermentation media which provided around 9% total sugars to produce maximum lysine (17 to 18 mg/mL). When amonium sulphate was used at 3.5% (w/v) level in molasses or corn starch hydrolysate based fermentation media, production of lysine slightly increased above 18 mg/mL. It is concluded that industrial by products like cane molasses, corn steep liquor, and corn starch hydrolysate can be used as carbon and organic nitrogen sources in fermentation medium for scale up process of lysine production and this lysine enriched broth may be used in broiler feed later. However, more potent lysine producing mutant and additional in vivo trials would be required to commercialize this product

Leaves of roadside plants as bioindicator of traffic related lead pollution during different seasons in Sargodha, Pakistan

Plants are important bioindicators of heavy metal environmental pollution. For this purpose a study was conducted during winter and summer seasons in Sargodha, Pakistan. Three roadside plants that is Dalbergia sissoo Roxb., Prosopis juliflora L. and Eucalyptus spp. were collected from different locations. The study area was divided into five on the basis of traffic density and industrial pollution. These were Urban, Suburban, Industrial, Roadside and Rural. It was found that lead concentration was highest in the plants that were collected from industrial site in Dalbergia during winter and summer that is 421.43 ± 1 9.30 and 429.37 ± 14.49 ug g-1 respectively and lowest at the control site (rural site) 69.57 ± 36.80 ug g-1 in Eucalyptus during winter and 61.89 ± 35.97 ug g-1 in Prosopis during summer. All the three selected plants proved to be good indicators of lead pollution and due to their diverse distribution in different parts of the world their leaves can be used as bioindicators of lead pollution.Key words: Bioindicator, lead, roadside plants, seasonal variation

Automatic Visual Features for Writer Identification: A Deep Learning Approach

© 2013 IEEE. Identification of a person from his writing is one of the challenging problems; however, it is not new. No one can repudiate its applications in a number of domains, such as forensic analysis, historical documents, and ancient manuscripts. Deep learning-based approaches have proved as the best feature extractors from massive amounts of heterogeneous data and provide promising and surprising predictions of patterns as compared with traditional approaches. We apply a deep transfer convolutional neural network (CNN) to identify a writer using handwriting text line images in English and Arabic languages. We evaluate different freeze layers of CNN (Conv3, Conv4, Conv5, Fc6, Fc7, and fusion of Fc6 and Fc7) affecting the identification rate of the writer. In this paper, transfer learning is applied as a pioneer study using ImageNet (base data-set) and QUWI data-set (target data-set). To decrease the chance of over-fitting, data augmentation techniques are applied like contours, negatives, and sharpness using text-line images of target data-set. The sliding window approach is used to make patches as an input unit to the CNN model. The AlexNet architecture is employed to extract discriminating visual features from multiple representations of image patches generated by enhanced pre-processing techniques. The extracted features from patches are then fed to a support vector machine classifier. We realized the highest accuracy using freeze Conv5 layer up to 92.78% on English, 92.20% on Arabic, and 88.11% on the combination of Arabic and English, respectively

Impact of Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) on Pakistan (The Case of KSE 100 Index)

In this paper the estimated return on stock model i.e. Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is employed in order to get information whether it better estimates the return on stock in Pakistani capital market. For this purpose time series monthly data from secondary sources for a period of 2003 to 2007 has been taken.  CAPM were tested for the five sizes and book to market portfolios from Karachi Stock Exchange. Pakistan T-bill rate is taken as risk free rate. However basic problem with (CAPM) was predictive power and Robustness of results. For this purpose capital asset pricing model was applied. Dependent variable portfolio represented by . The excessive return shows the return above that of the risk free rate  that is required by the investor for taking additional risk. While independent variables were market risk premium. Research Findings show that CAPM better estimates the return in Pakistani capital market. In case of CAPM, it was able to show the existence of risk premium as the only factor affecting the stock return. Key Words: CAPM, Market portfolio, KSE, Risk Premiumii

Success of Aquaculture Industry with New Insights of Using Insects as Feed: A Review

Most of world's fish and seafood are produced by aquaculture, which is one of the biggest contributors to the world's food security. The substantial increase in prices of conventional feed ingredients and the over-exploitation of natural resources are some of the biggest constraints to aquaculture production. To overcome this stress, different approaches and techniques are used, among which the use of non-conventional feed ingredients in the aquaculture sector is the most recent approach. Different non-conventional feed ingredients such as plant-based products, algae (both micro and macroalgae), single-cell protein (bacteria and yeast), and insect meal are currently used in aquaculture for sustainable food production. Amongst all these novel ingredients, insects have greater potential to replace fishmeal. The existence of about 1.3 billion tons of food and agriculture waste from the food chain supply poses a serious environmental threat. Insects are tiny creatures that can thrive on organic waste and thus can convert the waste to wealth by the bioconversion and nutritional upcycling of organic waste. Insects have the potential to recover nutrients from waste aquaculture products, and many fish species feed on insects naturally. Therefore, employing insects in the aquaculture sector to replace fishmeal is an eco-friendly approach. The present review briefly highlights emerging non-conventional feed ingredients, with special attention given to insects. The current review also focuses on the nutritional value of insects, factors affecting the nutritional value of insects, potential insects that can be employed in the aquaculture sector, the physiological response of fish when fed with insect meal, techno-functional properties of insect meal, and emerging approaches for addressing possible downsides of employing insect meal in fish diets. Finally, it suggests avenues for further research into these inventive fishmeal replacements

Security, usability, and biometric authentication scheme for electronic voting using multiple keys

We propose electronic voting authentication scheme, which is a key management mechanism for electronic voting system intended to limit the number of attacks on a polling station and strengthen the security control. The motivation is to diversify security requirements of messages exchanged between polling stations. There are different types of messages exchanged between polling stations and each type of message has different security needs. A security mechanism developed on the basis of a single key is not enough to ensure the diverse security needs of voting network. In electronic voting authentication scheme, every polling station is responsible to support three different types of keys. These are global key, pairwise key, and individual key. The global keys are public keys shared with all polling stations in the voting network. The pairwise key can be used for communication with polling stations. Individual keys will be used for communication with the server. To ensure authentication of local broadcast, electronic voting authentication scheme uses one-way key chains in a well-organized way. The support of source authentication is a visible advantage of this scheme. We examine the authentication of electronic voting authentication scheme on numerous attack models. The measurement demonstrates that electronic voting authentication scheme is very operative in protecting against numerous elegant attacks such as wormhole attack, Sybil attack, and HELLO Flood attack. The proposed system is evaluated and the results demonstrate that the proposed system is practical and secure as compared to the direct recording electronic and manual systems

A study protocol for an mHealth, multi-centre randomized control trial to promote use of postpartum contraception amongst rural women in Punjab, Pakistan

Background: Provision of family planning services during the immediate post-partum phase is considered effective and cost-efficient for promoting healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies. This research aims to test the effectiveness of mobile phone-based interventions in promoting use of postpartum contraception. Moreover, it will also test the non-inferiority of text and voice messages compared to interactive phone-based counselling.Methods: A three-arm, 10-month, multicentre, randomized controlled trial will be conducted at 15 social franchise (SF) health facilities in Punjab province of Pakistan. Pregnant women aged 15-44 years who are in their first or second trimester and have a mobile phone for their own use will be eligible to participate in this study. The participants will be randomly allocated to one of three study arms: a) voice and text messages; b) interactive telephone-based counselling; or c) control arm (no additional phone-based support). The intervention counselling module will be developed based on the Integrated Behaviour Model which was recently adapted, and tested for the family planning context in Pakistan. It will broadly cover birth-preparedness, importance of birth spacing, and postnatal care. The phone-based intervention aims to improve women\u27s ability to use contraception by providing them with information about a range of methods, access to family planning methods through outlets such as Suraj SF providers, connecting them with MSS field health educators to help them reach the centres, motivation by re-enforcing the benefits of contraceptive use on women\u27s quality of life, and dispelling myths and misconceptions about modern contraceptive methods. Risk differences will be used as the measure of effect of the intervention on the outcomes.Discussion: The study findings will highlight effectiveness of mobile phone in raising awareness of maternal health and contraception, which in turn, is expected to be translated into increased proportion of: at least four antenatal visits, skilled birth or institutional delivery, postpartum contraceptive use, postnatal check-up, child immunization, and breastfeeding. Moreover, if the text and voice messages approach is proven to be non-inferior to interactive calls, it will provide evidence to making promotion of healthcare less resource intensive, and thereby contribute in improving the efficiency of the healthcare system.Trial registration: This trial was prospectively registered with the Clinical Trials registry ( NCT03612518 ) on August 2nd, 2018