Investigating Reading Challenges Faced by EFL Learners at Elementary Level

It is hard to ignore the importance of reading skills for desired proficiency in foreign languages. Reading can be beneficial for learners to immerse themselves in the target language and learn it efficiently. In EFL contexts like Saudi Arabia, learners face many challenges in reading skills. The main purpose of this research was to explore reading problems of elementary level students and causes of the readings skills inabilities. Following random and convenience sampling techniques; this mixed-method research obtained quantitative data from 290 elementary level students and qualitative data from nine teachers and supervisors. The analysis of quantitative data from the reading test and checklist and qualitative data retrieved from interviews suggests that students considerably perform relatively low in reading skills, and the main reasons are poor vocabulary, incorrect pronunciation, wrong spellings, slow reading pace, and flawed grammar. These five areas account for more than 90% of the challenges faced by learners in reading skills. Based on evidence from this research, we suggest that policymakers, teachers, and students should focus on these five areas for solving the issues related to reading skills. Although other avenues are essential, these items demand special attention to develop the reading skills of EFL learners in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the world.Keywords: Reading skill, Elementary level, Reading Pace, EFL  

Is Gold Investment A Hedge against Inflation in Pakistan? A Cointegtaion and Causality Analysis in the Presence of Structural Breaks

Last few years have witnessed overwhelming investments in the gold market both directly and indirectly. These overwhelming investments in the gold market by individual and institutional investors have gained the attention of the research community. Numerous studies have examined how investment in gold can be used to hedge against high inflation. The current study investigates the gold investment as an effective hedge to deal with inflation in case of Pakistan in long run as well as in short run. In doing so, time series data on gold prices, economic growth and inflation is used for the period 1997-2011 utilizing quarterly frequency. The study applies the ARDL bounds testing technique of cointegration for long run, and innovative accounting approach (IAA) to examine the direction of causality in variables. Our findings reveal that investment in gold is the best hedge to address inflation in both long run and short run in case of Pakistan. The implications and applications of the study have been discussed in detail

Is Gold Investment A Hedge against Inflation in Pakistan? A Cointegtaion and Causality Analysis in the Presence of Structural Breaks

Last few years have witnessed overwhelming investments in the gold market both directly and indirectly. These overwhelming investments in the gold market by individual and institutional investors have gained the attention of the research community. Numerous studies have examined how investment in gold can be used to hedge against high inflation. The current study investigates the gold investment as an effective hedge to deal with inflation in case of Pakistan in long run as well as in short run. In doing so, time series data on gold prices, economic growth and inflation is used for the period 1997-2011 utilizing quarterly frequency. The study applies the ARDL bounds testing technique of cointegration for long run, and innovative accounting approach (IAA) to examine the direction of causality in variables. Our findings reveal that investment in gold is the best hedge to address inflation in both long run and short run in case of Pakistan. The implications and applications of the study have been discussed in detail

Feeding Overlap Investigations between Hypophthalmichthys Molitrix and Cyprinus Carpio from Punjab, Pakistan

Freshwater ichthyofauna is facing intensive stress as a result of urbanization and growing industries in Pakistan. The alien fish species are considered one of the major challenges due to their deleterious effects. Feeding habit analysis is a basic tool to evaluate the ecological stress on fish species residing in different habitats. The present study was designed to disclose the feeding overlap between Cyprinus carpio (Common Carp) and Hypophthalmichthys molitrix (Silver Carp) from Head Marala (river Chenab) and Mangla Dam (river Jhelum). For this purpose, 20 samples i-e 10 from each site of each fish species out of total 40 were captured from March to May 2022 and analyzed at the Department of Zoology, University of Sialkot through gut content analyses. Results indicated that there was a significant feeding overlap with Schoener index values of 0.65 and 0.89 at Head Marala and Mangla Dam respectively between two exotic fish species. It is observed that the aquatic ecosystem of Pakistan is being depleted, where highly generalist feeder invasive fishes have interspecific feeding overlap. It is recommended that the management of the freshwater ecosystem and resident ichthyofauna should be treated as a top priority; otherwise, these may embrace an inevitable and incalculable loss. This functional baseline data will help the land managers and aquaculturists to conserve the freshwater ecosystem of Pakistan

A W-Shaped Convolutional Network for Robust Crop and Weed Classification in Agriculture

Agricultural image and vision computing are significantly different from other object classification-based methods because two base classes in agriculture, crops and weeds, have many common traits. Efficient crop, weeds, and soil classification are required to perform autonomous (spraying, harvesting, etc.) activities in agricultural fields. In a three-class (crop-weed-background) agricultural classification scenario, it is usually easier to accurately classify the background class than the crop and weed classes because the background class appears significantly different feature-wise than the crop and weed classes. However, robustly distinguishing between the crop and weed classes is challenging because their appearance features generally look very similar. To address this problem, we propose a framework based on a convolutional W-shaped network with two encoder-decoder structures of different sizes. The first encoder-decoder structure differentiates between background and vegetation (crop and weed), and the second encoder-decoder structure learns discriminating features to classify crop and weed classes efficiently. The proposed W network is generalizable for different crop types. The effectiveness of the proposed network is demonstrated on two crop datasets – a tobacco dataset and a sesame dataset, both collected in this study and made available publicly online for use by the community – by evaluating and comparing the performance with existing related methods. The proposed method consistently outperforms existing related methods on both datasets

SIGNIFICANCE OF CONSTRUCTED WETLANDS IN COMBATING POLLUTANTS FROM WASTEWATER: A SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE

Water contamination is the greatest hazard to public health. Addressing water scarcity and protecting accessible water sources necessitates the effective treatment of wastewater. This makes the use of sustainable solutions such as constructed wetlands (CWs) essential. CWs leverage natural processes involving wetland vegetation, soils, and microbial communities. This study evaluates the efficiency of a horizontal sub-surface flow CW, established with local plants at Hudiara drain, in removing pollutants such as Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Turbidity, Nitrates, Phosphates, and pH, across different months. The study reveals that while temperature and precipitation rates influence the CW's efficacy, the linear regression model indicates a strong correlation between phosphorus and BOD levels with precipitation. However, nitrates are sensitive to temperature, and turbidity is influenced by both temperature and precipitation within certain limits. Additional factors impacting CW performance include wastewater characteristics, design flow, and wetland location. When compared with Pakistan Environmental Quality Standards (PEQS), it is concluded that CWs are effective in wastewater treatment. By constructing CWs along the banks of wastewater drains, treated water from the outlet chamber can be collected and redirected, offering a viable solution to water scarcity challenges

Serum lipid profile as a marker of liver impairment in hepatitis B Cirrhosis patients

Representative GC chromatogram of serum total and free fatty acids of HBV patients and controls along with standards of fatty acid methyl esters.(DOCX 761 kb

Genotypic response of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) for resistance against gram pod borer (Helicoverpa armigera)

Background: Chickpea is an important pulse crop of Pakistan. The pod borer, Helicoverpa armigera (Hubner), is the major pest in most of the chickpea growing areas of the country. A field trial was carried out at Entomological Research Area, Ayub Agriculture Research Institute (AARI), Faisalabad, during growing season of 2012-13 to evaluate the resistance of chickpea genotypes against gram pod borer (Helicoverpa armigera).Methods: Experiments were conducted in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with four replications having plot size of 3 ft × 20 ft. Morphological characters of chickpea like pod trichome, pod wall thickness, pod length, pod breadth, pod area and number of pods per plant were measured. The pod borer larval population/pod infestation was recorded from fifteen randomly selected plants per plot after ten days interval.Results: It was found that the genotypes which had higher trichomes length and density and pod wall thickness were more resistant against Helicoverpa infestation. Significant genetic variation for resistance against Helicoverpa armigera attack was found in chickpea and variety K-70005 showed resistant behavior followed by K-08004 and K-60062.Conclusions: It was concluded from prescribed study that the most susceptible genotypes were K-70005, K-08004 and K-70008 for the attack of Helicoverpa armigera to reduce grain yield

Image Analysis Using Human Body Geometry and Size Proportion Science for Action Classification

Gestures are one of the basic modes of human communication and are usually used to represent different actions. Automatic recognition of these actions forms the basis for solving more complex problems like human behavior analysis, video surveillance, event detection, and sign language recognition, etc. Action recognition from images is a challenging task as the key information like temporal data, object trajectory, and optical flow are not available in still images. While measuring the size of different regions of the human body i.e., step size, arms span, length of the arm, forearm, and hand, etc., provides valuable clues for identification of the human actions. In this article, a framework for classification of the human actions is presented where humans are detected and localized through faster region-convolutional neural networks followed by morphological image processing techniques. Furthermore, geometric features from human blob are extracted and incorporated into the classification rules for the six human actions i.e., standing, walking, single-hand side wave, single-hand top wave, both hands side wave, and both hands top wave. The performance of the proposed technique has been evaluated using precision, recall, omission error, and commission error. The proposed technique has been comparatively analyzed in terms of overall accuracy with existing approaches showing that it performs well in contrast to its counterparts

Removal of Congo Red from Aqueous Solution by Anion Exchange Membrane (EBTAC): Adsorption Kinetics and Themodynamics

The adsorption behavior of anionic dye congo red (CR) from aqueous solutions using an anion exchange membrane (EBTAC) has been investigated at room temperature. The effect of several factors including contact time, membrane dosage, ionic strength and temperature were studied. Kinetic models, namely pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order, liquid film diffusion and Elovich models as well as Bangham and modified freundlich Equations, were employed to evaluate the experimental results. Parameters such as adsorption capacities, rate constant and related correlation coefficients for every model were calculated and discussed. The adsorption of CR on anion exchange membranes followed pseudo-second-order Kinetics. Thermodynamic parameters, namely changes in Gibbs free energy (ΔG°), enthalpy (ΔH°) and entropy (ΔS°) were calculated for the adsorption of congo red, indicating an exothermic proces