Biological and Chemical Strategies for the Treatment of Sugar Industry Effluents

The waste effluents from sugar industries create lot of pollution problems in the adjacent areas. Sugarindustries discharge huge quantities of residual water causing damage to the biotic as well as abiotic environment dueto its pungent smell, higher BOD and COD values and the exceeded concentration of chlorides, sulphates, heavymetals, carbohydrates, nutrients, oil and grease. Current studies were performed to evaluate the available strategies usedto minimize the pollution load created by sugar industries. Attempts have been made to overview various availableprocedures such as construction of microbial fuel cell, hydrolytic pre-treatment, valorization of sugar industry waste,synthesis of silver nanoparticles, symbiotic process, chemical and electrical oxidation processes, which are used for thetreatment of sugar industry effluents

Leadership Effectiveness, Turnover Intention and the Mediating Role of Employee Commitment: A Case of Academic Institutions of Pakistan

According to its scope of practice and research, Leadership is one of the most important areas these days. Many scholars have theorized different definitions and dimensions of this very construct leadership that gives a clear indication about its importance both in society and also in the context of people management in organizations in different countries. In today’s world where complexity driven by different factors has changed the face of organizations, different procedures have been devised to retain the employees in the organization. But apart from all the system level changes, there is one important factor that directly links with the employee turnover intention and that is leadership effectiveness. There has been much focus on leadership effectiveness and many researches have been done to study it. This study is trying to address the issue at hand that is about studying the effectiveness of leadership. For this purpose this study is investigating the relationship of leadership effectiveness and turnover intention along with a third variable participation that is employee commitment in the academic sector of Pakistan. This study is focusing on the relationship of leadership effectiveness and employee turnover intention specifically in the academic institutions and implying the facts that how these institutions are constructing this relationship according to the specific culture and norms posed by the Pakistani context. In this study the predictor is leadership effectiveness and outcome is turnover intention. Besides, this study is also focusing on the third variable involvement that is employee commitment. So this study is testing and reflecting upon whether such relationship exists in this context or not. This study uses the sample size of 345. The population is faculty members of different academic institutions. The software used is SPSS along with process plugin to run the regression (mediation) analysis. This study has presented some important findings related to the nature of the relationship of leadership effectiveness, employee commitment and turnover intention that will be an important knowledge addition in the literature and will be helpful for the management to make important decisions regarding the management and turnover of employees in the academic institutions of Pakistan

Leadership Effectiveness, Turnover Intention and the Mediating Role of Employee Commitment: A Case of Academic Institutions of Pakistan

According to its scope of practice and research, Leadership is one of the most important areas these days. Many scholars have theorized different definitions and dimensions of this very construct leadership that gives a clear indication about its importance both in society and also in the context of people management in organizations in different countries. In today’s world where complexity driven by different factors has changed the face of organizations, different procedures have been devised to retain the employees in the organization. But apart from all the system level changes, there is one important factor that directly links with the employee turnover intention and that is leadership effectiveness. There has been much focus on leadership effectiveness and many researches have been done to study it. This study is trying to address the issue at hand that is about studying the effectiveness of leadership. For this purpose this study is investigating the relationship of leadership effectiveness and turnover intention along with a third variable participation that is employee commitment in the academic sector of Pakistan. This study is focusing on the relationship of leadership effectiveness and employee turnover intention specifically in the academic institutions and implying the facts that how these institutions are constructing this relationship according to the specific culture and norms posed by the Pakistani context. In this study the predictor is leadership effectiveness and outcome is turnover intention. Besides, this study is also focusing on the third variable involvement that is employee commitment. So this study is testing and reflecting upon whether such relationship exists in this context or not. This study uses the sample size of 345. The population is faculty members of different academic institutions. The software used is SPSS along with process plugin to run the regression (mediation) analysis. This study has presented some important findings related to the nature of the relationship of leadership effectiveness, employee commitment and turnover intention that will be an important knowledge addition in the literature and will be helpful for the management to make important decisions regarding the management and turnover of employees in the academic institutions of Pakistan

Depression, Anxiety and Stress in Female Doctors: A Cross Sectional Study from Rawalpindi

Introduction: Studies have shown that toiling in the medical field, especially in comparison to other professions is stressful. There is evidence that depression leads to reduced productivity in the workplace. Poor clinical judgement, increased chances of error in patient care and absenteeism all lead to reduced quality of work. Female doctors, in particular, are vulnerable to mental health issues owing to elements such as bullying, workplace sexual harassment, long working hours, frantic shifts, and domestic commitments. Materials and Methods: Over a six-month period (June 2020 to November 2020), we conducted a cross-sectional survey in three tertiary care hospitals in Rawalpindi, two of which were public sector and one private sector. We collected 328 samples by means of non-probability consecutive sampling. We used the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS), a 42-item questionnaire via Lovibond and Lovibond with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.89. Mean and SD of DASS total and subscale scores were compared for subjects stratified by age, marital status, designation, hospital status, and monthly household income via Student t-test and ANOVA. Results: The total mean DASS score reported by our participants was 31±26.92. Total mean DASS scores were significantly greater in House Officers and decreased as the designation rank increased (p=0.007). Mean DASS subscale scores showed that the junior female doctors were significantly more anxious (p=0.004) and depressed (p=0.041) compared to the senior doctors. However, there was no significant difference in stress scores, indicating that all the female doctors that participated were experiencing stress regardless of their designation. There was also no significant difference in DASS scores between private and public sector hospitals. Conclusion: Female doctors working in tertiary care hospitals of Rawalpindi reported depression, anxiety, and stress. Steps need to be taken to reduce risk factors for these mental health issues in order to boost workplace satisfaction and productivity

Osteoporosis Classification Using Texture Features

Assessment of osteoporotic disease from the radiograph image is a significant challenge. Texture characteristics when observed from the naked eye for the bone microarchitecture of the osteoporotic and healthy cases are visually very similar making it a challenging classification problem. To extract the discriminative patterns in all the orientations and scales simultaneously in this study we have proposed an approach that is based on a combination of multi resolution Gabor filters and 1D local binary pattern (1DLBP) features. Gabor filter are used due to their advantages in yielding a scale and orientation sensitive analysis whereas LBPs are useful for quantifying microstructural changes in the images. Our experiment show that the proposed method shows good classification results with an overall accuracy of about 72.71% and outperforms the other methods that have been considered in this paper

Effects of Microwave and Light Emitting Diode as Disinfection Methods on the Dimensional Stability of Polymethyl Methacrylate and Polyamide Denture Base Resin

Objective: To compare the effects of microwave and light emitting diode disinfection on the dimensional stability of two denture base materials; polymethyl methacrylate and polyamide. Study Design: In-vitro study Place and Duration of Study: Peshawar Dental College and Material Research Laboratories, University of Peshawar from 10 June 2021 to 8 December 2021. Materials and Methods: Fifteen specimens each for polymethylmethacrylate and polyamide were divided into three groups, control, microwave & light emitting diode. The specimens for microwave group were irradiated at 1000W for 3 minutes, thrice a week. The specimens for light emitting diode group were disinfected in a device for 30 minutes, thrice a week. The control group specimens were placed in distilled water for 4 weeks. Dimensions were measured before disinfection, and four weeks after the assigned disinfection. The mean and the standard deviation of the differences between three groups were statistically analyzed using one-way ANOVA and after obtaining significant values, through post hoc Tukey HSD. Results: For polymethylmethacrylate highest dimensional difference (-9.02mm) was noted for microwave disinfected group while the control group showed the lowest value (-6.99mm). For polyamide, the highest dimensional changes were recorded for light emitting diode group (8.66mm) and the lowest (-7mm) for the control group. Statistical analysis showed that the differences were significant for both polymethylmethacrylate and polyamide when compared with the control (p0.05) Conclusion: No significant difference in dimensional stability of both the denture base resins was observed after disinfection with microwave and light emitting diode

PHYSIO-CHEMICAL EVALUATION AND BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITY OF AJUGA BRACTEOSA WALL. AND VIOLA ODOROTO LINN

Background: Ajuga bracteosa and Viola odorata are frequently used by the native people of Swat-Pakistan for the curing of fever, malaria, cough, urinary and stomach disorders with slightly different practice of usage like raw powdered, extracts, decoction etc. Methods and Materials: Disc Diffusion Method was used for determination of antimicrobial activities of both plants. Nutrient Agar Media was used for the culturing and growth of all microbial strains. Vitamin C and minerals contents were determined by standard method of AOAC. Na and K were analyzed by using flame photometric technique. Micro minerals i.e. “Ni, Cr, Fe, Cu, Zn, Mn, Ca, Pb, and Mg” were determined by Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer (AAS). Total Soluble Solid (TSS) was determined by using abbe refractometer and pH was determined by using pH meter. Results: The present study demonstrates that both plants exhibited antibacterial activities against P. aeruginos, E. coli, S. typhi, B. subtilis and S. aureus. The examined plants showed zone of inhibition for aqueous fraction (50.90, 45.90 %) against P. aeruginosa; for EtOAc fraction (41.37, 57.62%) against C. Albicans and for hexane fraction (25.86, 40.57%) against K. pneumoniae, respectively. Total of 14 different minerals (Na, K, P, Ca, Mg, Fe, Zn, Mn, Co, Cr, Ni, Cu, Pb, Cd) were determined and it was also observed that both the examined plants contained significant level of these analyzed minerals. The subject plants contained highest level of magnesium (295.75, 145.85 mg 100-1g) and calcium (212.49, 44.00 mg 100-1g) and potassium (152.6, 437.45 mg 100-1g) while moderate level P, Zn, Na and lower amount of Cd, Ni, Mn and Cu using Atomic Absorption, Flame Photometry and spectrophotometric techniques. V. odorata was found to contain a higher amount of vitamin C (64.05±12.37mg 100-1g) as compared to A. bracteosa (45.45 ± 7.29 mg 100-1 g). Conclusion: Findings of this study can persuade researchers for future comprehensive phytochemical study of these plants using state of art techniques and instruments, which include not only isolation of secondary metabolites from these plants but biological evaluation of isolated compounds both in vivo and in vitr

Effects of coagulation on the two-phase peristaltic pumping of magnetized Prandtl biofluid through an endoscopic annular geometry containing a porous medium

In this article, motivated by more accurate simulation of electromagnetic blood flow in annular vessel geometries in intravascular thrombosis, a mathematical model is developed for elucidating the effects of coagulation (i.e. a blood clot) on peristaltically induced motion of an electrically-conducting (magnetized) Prandtl fluid physiological suspension through a non-uniform annulus containing a homogenous porous medium. Magnetohydrodynamics is included owing to the presence of iron in the hemoglobin molecule and also the presence of ions in real blood. Hall current which generates a secondary (cross) flow at stronger magnetic field is also considered in the present study. A small annular tube (endoscopic) with sinusoidal peristaltic waves traveling along the inner and outer walls at constant velocity with a clot present is analyzed. The governing conservation equations which comprise the continuity and momentum equations for the fluid phase and particle phase are simplified under lubrication approximations (long wavelength and creeping flow conditions). The moving boundary value problem is normalized and solved analytically (with appropriate wall conditions) for the fluid phase and particle phase using the homotopy perturbation method (HPM) with MATHEMATICA software. Validation is conducted with MAPLE numerical quadrature. A parametric study of the influence of clot height (δ), particle volume fraction (C), Prandtl fluid material parameters (α, β), Hartmann number (M), Hall parameter (m), permeability parameter (k), peristaltic wave amplitude (φ) and wave number (δ̅ ) on pressure difference and wall shear (friction forces) is included. Pressure rise is elevated with clot height, medium permeability and Prandtl rheological material parameters whereas it is reduced with increasing particle volume fraction and magnetic Hartmann number. Friction forces on the outer and inner tubes of the endoscope annulus are enhanced with clot height and particle volume fraction whereas they are decreased with Prandtl rheological material parameters, Hall parameter and permeability parameter. The simulations provide a good benchmark for more general computational fluid dynamics studies of magnetic endoscopic multi-phase peristaltic pumping