Assessing Water Charges under Changing Institutional Irrigation Management in Pakistan: A Methodological Framework

The Government of Pakistan has opted for institutional reforms for canal irrigation system of the country with a view to undertaking efficient operation and maintenance of the system and improving cost recovery. In the new reforms, the Farmers’ Organisations will manage distributaries and minors and pay the cost of upstream water in full. The complex hierarchy of the system poses serious challenges for working out the cost of water delivery for various channels. The paper presents a methodological framework for assessing the recoverable O&M costs from the farmers benefiting from an irrigation network. Hakra 4-R Distributary in the Eastern Sadiqia Canal serves as an illustration. The methodology shows how the beneficiary farmers can share the costs of the system. Simple methods are provided for working out water rates on the basis of volume of water received, commanded area, and duration of the irrigation turn. Out of the three methods, the area-based and time-based water rates have comparative advantage over the volumetric water rates owing to the resource endowments of the farmers.

Pass-Through of SBP Policy Rate to Market Interest Rates: An Empirical Investigation

Market based implementation of monetary policy embeds a swift and complete pass-through of changes in policy rate to market interest rates. This impacts the lending and deposit rates (retail rates) of the banking system. Incomplete and slow pass-through impairs the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission mechanism. This study estimates the degree and the speed of interest rate pass-through in case of Pakistan. Monthly data on State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) policy rate, money market rates and banks’ retail lending/deposit rates from July 2001 to August 2011 is used to estimate an unrestricted autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The standard ARDL model allows for the estimation of an error correction model, which helps in differentiating short run impact of changes in policy rate from its long run impact on the banks’ lending rates. The results indicate that while there is a swift pass-through from the policy rate (T-bill rates and overnight rate) to money market rate, the impact of changes in money market rates on the bank deposit rates is not only sluggish, but also incomplete. However, banks’ lending rates on fresh loans are more responsive to changes in money market rates as the banks have the luxury to take into account the changes in opportunity cost of funding

Multiple uses of irrigation water in the Hakra 6-R, Distributary Command Area, Punjab, Pakistan

Irrigation canals / Distributary canals / Water allocation / Water use / Households / Livestock / Water quality / Water pollution / Waterborne diseases / Health / Water rates / Women / Gender / Fish farming / Pakistan / Punjab / Haroonabad / Tehsil / Hakra 6-R Distributary

6-(1-Adamant­yl)-3-(2-chloro­phen­yl)-1,2,4-triazolo[3,4-b][1,3,4]thia­diazole

In the title compound, C19H19ClN4S, the 2-chloro­phenyl and [1,2,4]triazolo[3,4-b] [1,3,4]thia­diazole fragments (r.m.s. deviations of 0.015 and 0.017 Å, respectively) are oriented at a dihedral angle of 55.76 (6)°. The adamantane group exhibits extensive rotational disorder about the single C—C bond to the thia­diazole ring, which was modelled as occupying four orientations each with 0.25 occupancy. In the crystal, the chloro­phenyl rings exhibit π–π stacking inter­actions with centroid–centroid distances of 3.9526 (18) Å

A small-size macroeconometric model for Pakistan economy

This paper is part of efforts to develop macroeconometric model for Pakistan (MMP). This paper is an initial attempt to develop a small size macroeconometric model to foresee the effects of monetary policy through forecasting and simulations. We present the basic structure of macroeconometric model for Pakistan. This is a small-size model comprising 17 equations, out of which 11 are behavioral equations while the rest are either identities or definitional equations. OLS method is used to estimate the behavioral equations by using annual data from FY73-FY06. We provide the estimation results and results of policy simulations to quantify the impact of shocks to various exogenous variables

A small-size macroeconometric model for Pakistan economy

This paper is part of efforts to develop macroeconometric model for Pakistan (MMP). This paper is an initial attempt to develop a small size macroeconometric model to foresee the effects of monetary policy through forecasting and simulations. We present the basic structure of macroeconometric model for Pakistan. This is a small-size model comprising 17 equations, out of which 11 are behavioral equations while the rest are either identities or definitional equations. OLS method is used to estimate the behavioral equations by using annual data from FY73-FY06. We provide the estimation results and results of policy simulations to quantify the impact of shocks to various exogenous variables

Comments on a class of orthogonality relations relevant to fluid-structure interaction

Copyright @ 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V

Dimethyl fumarate in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial

Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) inhibits inflammasome-mediated inflammation and has been proposed as a treatment for patients hospitalised with COVID-19. This randomised, controlled, open-label platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy [RECOVERY]), is assessing multiple treatments in patients hospitalised for COVID-19 (NCT04381936, ISRCTN50189673). In this assessment of DMF performed at 27 UK hospitals, adults were randomly allocated (1:1) to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus DMF. The primary outcome was clinical status on day 5 measured on a seven-point ordinal scale. Secondary outcomes were time to sustained improvement in clinical status, time to discharge, day 5 peripheral blood oxygenation, day 5 C-reactive protein, and improvement in day 10 clinical status. Between 2 March 2021 and 18 November 2021, 713 patients were enroled in the DMF evaluation, of whom 356 were randomly allocated to receive usual care plus DMF, and 357 to usual care alone. 95% of patients received corticosteroids as part of routine care. There was no evidence of a beneficial effect of DMF on clinical status at day 5 (common odds ratio of unfavourable outcome 1.12; 95% CI 0.86-1.47; p = 0.40). There was no significant effect of DMF on any secondary outcome

Dimethyl fumarate in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial

Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) inhibits inflammasome-mediated inflammation and has been proposed as a treatment for patients hospitalised with COVID-19. This randomised, controlled, open-label platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy [RECOVERY]), is assessing multiple treatments in patients hospitalised for COVID-19 (NCT04381936, ISRCTN50189673). In this assessment of DMF performed at 27 UK hospitals, adults were randomly allocated (1:1) to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus DMF. The primary outcome was clinical status on day 5 measured on a seven-point ordinal scale. Secondary outcomes were time to sustained improvement in clinical status, time to discharge, day 5 peripheral blood oxygenation, day 5 C-reactive protein, and improvement in day 10 clinical status. Between 2 March 2021 and 18 November 2021, 713 patients were enroled in the DMF evaluation, of whom 356 were randomly allocated to receive usual care plus DMF, and 357 to usual care alone. 95% of patients received corticosteroids as part of routine care. There was no evidence of a beneficial effect of DMF on clinical status at day 5 (common odds ratio of unfavourable outcome 1.12; 95% CI 0.86-1.47; p = 0.40). There was no significant effect of DMF on any secondary outcome

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries