WTO’s Implications on Agriculture Sector in Pakistan: Threats, Opportunities and Possible Strategies

The WTO trading system is a fact of life. This is only organization which can manage the challenges of globalization. There are both opportunities and threats for the member states in relation to different sectors of economy like agriculture.  This paper examines that Pakistan has a great potential to produce and export agricultural commodities in the international markets.  In order to achieve maximum benefits from the WTO, Pakistan has to take strong and immediate steps in the light of SPS and TBT Agreement that are germane with agriculture sector.  In this connection Pakistan has achieved GSP+ status by European Union which gives a great opportunity to Pakistan to improve its agricultural standards and enhance its export in European agricultural markets.  The paper also recommends some possible solutions to improve the agriculture standards in Pakistan. In all countries farming system play a very important role for increasing crop production and strengthen the economy of the country. Government sector should also play a vital role to educate the farmers with new planting techniques and strategic plans for the production of good quality disease free crops. Based on results and conclusion development of extension program, utilization of proper management techniques, utilization of high quality seed, government support, infrastructure and market opportunities are the dire need for farmers and agriculture of Pakistan. 

Constitutional Manacles on Superior Court’s Jurisdiction and Recent Scenario on Public Interest Litigation in Pakistan

Good governance and Rule of Law are inter-connected phenomenon. Good governance is required at all levels. To uphold the good governance it is the collective duty of the state institutions to perform efficiently under the umbrella of the Supreme Law of the land. “The existence of massive corruption, institutional clashes, Constitutional crisis and lack of accountability, poor law and order conditions may harm the good governance in the country”. To strengthen the good governance is the prime responsibility of the Executive and when the Executive failed to take measures to uphold the governance, resultantly, the Rule of Law will be in danger. Ultimately the Judiciary has to come forward to take action for the promotion of “Good Governance”, “Rule of Law” and enforcement of the “Fundamental Rights” of the people like health and education, because the Judiciary is the custodian of the Constitution and the fundamental rights of the masses. A debate in country has aroused in these days, that whether the Courts are exercising their powers beyond their Constitutional domain or not? In the response of this debate, the recent case law study and Constitutional provisions depicts that in all recent suomoto cases the “Supreme Court of Pakistan” has exercised its power in Constitutional Jurisdiction as envisaged in “Article 184(3) of The Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973”, Moreover, after the analysis of the Constitutional provisions the author is of the view that, in the current regime the Honourable Chief Justice of Pakistan has not transgressed his powers beyond the Constitutional provisions which are explained in this Article as Constitutional manacles on the jurisdiction of the superior Courts of Pakistan. Most of the recent suo-moto cases on health and education issues come under the preview of the matter of public importanc

Challenges and Their Practices in Adoption of Hybrid Cloud Computing: An Analytical Hierarchy Approach

Cloud computing adoption provides various advantages for companies. In particular, hybrid cloud shares the advantages of both the public and private cloud technologies because it combines the private in-house cloud with the public on-demand cloud. In order to obtain benefits from the opportunities provided by the hybrid cloud, organizations want to adopt or develop novel capabilities. Maturity models have proved to be an exceptional and easily available method for evaluating and improving capabilities. However, there is a dire need for a robust framework that helps client organizations in the adoption and assessment of hybrid cloud. Therefore, this research paper aims to present a taxonomy of the challenging factors faced by client organizations in the adoption of hybrid cloud. Typically, such a taxonomy is presented on the basis of obtained results from the empirical analysis with the execution of analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method. From the review of literature and empirical study, in total 13 challenging factors are recognized and plotted into four groups: "Lack of Inclination,""Lack of Readiness,""Lack of Adoption,"and "Lack of Satisfaction."The AHP technique is executed to prioritize the identified factors and their groups. By this way, we found that "Lack of Adoption"and "Lack of Satisfaction"are the most significant groups from the identified challenging factors. Findings from AHP also show that "public cloud security concern"and "achieving QoS"are the upper ranking factors confronted in the adoption of hybrid cloud mechanism by client organizations because their global weight (0.201) is greater than those of all the other reported challenging factors. We also found out 46 practices to address the identified challenges. The taxonomy developed in this study offers a comprehensive structure for dealing with hybrid cloud computing issues, which is essential for the success and advancement of client and vendor organizations in hybrid cloud computing relationships.Qatar University Internal Grant No. IRCC-2021-010

The Impact of Religiosity and Spirituality on Academic Dishonesty of Students in Pakistan

Business ethics has become a very popular topic in recent decades and having news on media on a daily basis which is now increased in a number of high profile business scandals that shook the business world. That is the cause of academy dishonesty of students in many universities and colleges where student training of ethics are very low for such kind of business scandals emerged. There are two factors which are under research in this topic in academy dishonest and cheating behavior which are religiosity and spirituality. This study shed lights on the religious beliefs and unethical behaviors by focusing the students of Pakistan which are studying at Universities level having academic dishonesty and cheating behavior. The individual attitudes, views, decisions making and the behaviors according to the situation are influenced by religiosity and spirituality which are posited in this study. The objective of this research is to find out the relationship between religiosity and spirituality on cheating behavior with the help of cheating attitude as mediator. A cross-sectional study conducted on the postgraduate student in Pakistan and collected from four post-graduate institutes in Lahore, which are COMSATS, NCBA&E, UMT and Punjab University. So the result of this research shows that religiosity but not spirituality is a predictor of attitudes of the student toward cheating and cheating behavior

The Impact of Religiosity and Spirituality on Academic Dishonesty of Students in Pakistan

Business ethics has become a very popular topic in recent decades and having news on media on a daily basis which is now increased in a number of high profile business scandals that shook the business world. That is the cause of academy dishonesty of students in many universities and colleges where student training of ethics are very low for such kind of business scandals emerged. There are two factors which are under research in this topic in academy dishonest and cheating behavior which are religiosity and spirituality. This study shed lights on the religious beliefs and unethical behaviors by focusing the students of Pakistan which are studying at Universities level having academic dishonesty and cheating behavior. The individual attitudes, views, decisions making and the behaviors according to the situation are influenced by religiosity and spirituality which are posited in this study. The objective of this research is to find out the relationship between religiosity and spirituality on cheating behavior with the help of cheating attitude as mediator. A cross-sectional study conducted on the postgraduate student in Pakistan and collected from four post-graduate institutes in Lahore, which are COMSATS, NCBA&E, UMT and Punjab University. So the result of this research shows that religiosity but not spirituality is a predictor of attitudes of the student toward cheating and cheating behavior

Right to Information as an Instrumental Force of Good Governance in South Asia

In South Asia the Right to Information (RTI) is recognized as a basic human right of every human being, and is incorporated in the form of fundamental right in the Constitutions of these countries. Free and fair access to relevant information, and participation of public in Governmental decisions making, acts as a catalyst in the transformation of the governance into the ideal governance.Therefore, Right to Information is an instrumental force to control the abuse of powers on the part of the public functionaries and make their actions accountable. In this contextual perspective the Right to Information (RTI) is perceived as a linchpin of the machinery of Good Governance, responsibility, transparency and accountability.This research paper, interalia, highlights that Right to Information has a closest nexus with Good Governance in a country and minimize the nepotism and corruption in the society.Hence, in South Asian Countries Right to Information regime empowers the general public viz-a-viz Government actions and policies&nbsp

An efficient energy management in office using bio-inspired energy optimization algorithms

Energy is one of the valuable resources in this biosphere. However, with the rapid increase of the population and increasing dependency on the daily use of energy due to smart technologies and the Internet of Things (IoT), the existing resources are becoming scarce. Therefore, to have an optimum usage of the existing energy resources on the consumer side, new techniques and algorithms are being discovered and used in the energy optimization process in the smart grid (SG). In SG, because of the possibility of bi-directional power flow and communication between the utility and consumers, an active and optimized energy scheduling technique is essential, which minimizes the end-user electricity bill, reduces the peak-to-average power ratio (PAR) and reduces the frequency of interruptions. Because of the varying nature of the power consumption patterns of consumers, optimized scheduling of energy consumption is a challenging task. For the maximum benefit of both the utility and consumers, to decide whether to store, buy or sale extra energy, such active environmental features must also be taken into consideration. This paper presents two bio-inspired energy optimization techniques; the grasshopper optimization algorithm (GOA) and bacterial foraging algorithm (BFA), for power scheduling in a single office. It is clear from the simulation results that the consumer electricity bill can be reduced by more than 34.69% and 37.47%, while PAR has a reduction of 56.20% and 20.87% with GOA and BFA scheduling, respectively, as compared to unscheduled energy consumption with the day-ahead pricing (DAP) scheme

Staff Development Needs In Pakistan Higher Education

Staff development is very significant for the achievement of overall goals of higher education in Pakistan. The success of innovations depends largely upon the skills of instructors; but in Pakistan, the people with a simple masters degree (without any pedagogical training) are  inducted as teaching staff at the university level, so it is time to explore whether or not the inducted teachers feel the need for training. Further to be explored are areas in which they are interested in being trained. Therefore, the objectives of study were 1) to explore the training needs for university teaching staff, 2) to identify the areas in which development is needed by the teaching staff of the universities in Pakistan, and 3) formulation of recommendations for staff development in Pakistan to improve education at the higher level.  The sample comprised of 20% randomly-selected teaching staff of ten selected universities, degree-awarding institutions from the public sector, and 40% teaching staff of ten selected universities from the private sector. A self-developed questionnaire, consisting of 41 items to be responded to on a five-point Likert scale and two open-ended questions, was used to collect data.  The principal researcher approached all the respondents personally by repeated visits and got the completed questionnaires, so this questionnaire also served the purpose of an interview. The analysis of data revealed that the university teachers need training in the following areas: philosophy of education, Islamic philosophy of education, educational psychology, research techniques, professional trends, professional competencies, professional attitude, professional ethics ,global innovations in teaching strategies, classroom management, counselling and guidance, student discipline, communication skills, learning theories, and supervision. Therefore, it is recommended that they may be included in the training curriculum of university teachers

2-(Phenyl­sulfan­yl)pyridine-3-carboxylic acid

The title compound, C12H9NO2S, belongs to the nitro­gen-containing group of heterocyclic organic compounds and crystallized with two mol­ecules per asymmetric unit. In the crystal, both molecules form inversion dimers linked by pairs of O—H—O hydrogen bonds. Weak symmetry-related C—H—O inter­actions link the carboxyl dimers along b axis. The dihedral angle between the two aromatic rings in the two mol­ecules are 55.75 (14) and 58.33 (13)°

Climate Change and Salinity Effects on Crops and Chemical Communication Between Plants and Plant Growth-Promoting Microorganisms Under Stress

During the last two decades the world has experienced an abrupt change in climate. Both natural and artificial factors are climate change drivers, although the effect of natural factors are lesser than the anthropogenic drivers. These factors have changed the pattern of precipitation resulting in a rise in sea levels, changes in evapotranspiration, occurrence of flood overwintering of pathogens, increased resistance of pests and parasites, and reduced productivity of plants. Although excess CO2 promotes growth of C3 plants, high temperatures reduce the yield of important agricultural crops due to high evapotranspiration. These two factors have an impact on soil salinization and agriculture production, leading to the issue of water and food security. Farmers have adopted different strategies to cope with agriculture production in saline and saline sodic soil. Recently the inoculation of halotolerant plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) in saline fields is an environmentally friendly and sustainable approach to overcome salinity and promote crop growth and yield in saline and saline sodic soil. These halotolerant bacteria synthesize certain metabolites which help crops in adopting a saline condition and promote their growth without any negative effects. There is a complex interkingdom signaling between host and microbes for mutual interaction, which is also influenced by environmental factors. For mutual survival, nature induces a strong positive relationship between host and microbes in the rhizosphere. Commercialization of such PGPR in the form of biofertilizers, biostimulants, and biopower are needed to build climate resilience in agriculture. The production of phytohormones, particularly auxins, have been demonstrated by PGPR, even the pathogenic bacteria and fungi which also modulate the endogenous level of auxins in plants, subsequently enhancing plant resistance to various stresses. The present review focuses on plant-microbe communication and elaborates on their role in plant tolerance under changing climatic conditions