Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study of Carbon Dioxide - Hydrocarbon Mixtures Under Confinement

Reducing carbon dioxide emissions in an attempt to control global warming is a critical issue being addressed at global level today. One method of regulating the amount of COv2 in the atmosphere is by re-injecting COv2 into reservoirs, thus in turn also improving the overall recovery of oil and gas. This is an enhanced oil/gas recovery technique which has received a lot of attention in industry. In this work, a study of the phenomena that allows for improved hydrocarbon recovery using COv2 injection into reservoir pores is presented. Additionally, an attempt to understand the effect of mixture density, concentration, temperature, moisture and the pore material on such systems will be discussed. Furthermore, the ways in which diffusivity of fluid behaves at the center of the pore as well as towards the pore walls is explored in detail in this work. All systems that have been simulated represent a canonical ensemble. Hence, at any given time, the number of molecules, the volume of the pore, and the temperature remain the same as specified at the beginning of a simulation. The work utilizes a methodology developed by Franco et al. to calculate the perpendicular self-diffusion co-efficient by obtaining the residence time from the integration of the survival probability. The methodology further allows for the calculation of the local self-diffusion coefficient in areas of interest as opposed to the global self-diffusion coefficient obtained from the commonly used Einstein relation. Results indicate that all studied characteristics of a system have a significant effect on the mobility and the configuration of the fluid within pore. Furthermore, these characteristics have a greater pronounced effect of the diffusivity at the center of the pore and a lesser effect in the region towards the wall. Further calculating the parallel self-diffusion coefficient of the fluid in the same systems analyzed in this work will provide even greater insight on the behavior of hydrocarbons within nanopores, in the presence of COv2

Impact of Credit Risk Management on Banks Performance: A Case Study in Pakistan Banks

This study captured the impact of credit risk management on performance of commercial banks in Pakistan. A fundamental research proposal was accepted in this study, and this was facilitated by the use of secondary data which was obtained from the SBP publications on banking sector survey, official websites and KSE. The pooled regression has been adopted to determine the impact of credit risk management on two performance methods. The findings revealed the fact that credit risk management is inversely associated with bank performance. For return on asset (ROA) analysis revealed that capital adequacy ratio (CAR), Loan loss provision ratio (LLPR), liquidity ratio (LR) and Non-performing loan ratio (NPLR) variables have significant impact on return on assets (ROA). The Loan loss provision ratio (LLPR), liquidity ratio (LR) and Non-performing loan ratio (NPLR) have negative while the capital adequacy ratio (CAR), loan and advances (LAR), and SIZE have positive impact on the return on assets.In relation to return on equity , the CAR, LAR and LLPR variables have significant impact on ROE. In this model the LLPR, NPLR and LR variables have negative and CAR, LAR and SIZE variables have positive impact on the dependent variable. Keywords: credit risk management, financial performance, commercial banks

FREQUENCY OF HYPOTHYROIDISM IN CHILDREN WITH CELIAC DISEASE AT A TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL

Background; The prevalence of thyroid disease is likely increased among children with celiac disease (CD). In addition, exposure to gluten-free treatment may be associated with a risk of thyroid disease, but this association remains controversial. This study was conducted to determine frequency of hypothyroidism in these children as there is no such study done in our local population of Southern Punjab. Objective; The objective of this study is to determine the frequency of hypothyroidism in children with celiac disease at a tertiary care hospital.  Material and methods; A total of 115 children with celiac disease were registered in this cross - sectional study which was conducted at department of pediatric medicine, Nishtar Hospital Multan from June 2015 to December 2016. These children were screened for their thyroid hormone levels to diagnose hypothyroidism. Results; Of these 115 study cases, 49 (42.6%) were male patients and 66 (57.4%) were female patients.  Mean age of our study cases was 6.31 ± 2.05 years. Of these 115 study cases, 59 (51.3%) belonged to rural areas while 56 (48.7%) from urban areas, 45 (39.1%) were from poor families while 70 (60.9%) were from middle income families. Of these 115 study cases, 31 (27 %) were from urdu speaking families, 38.3 % Punjabi, 30 (26.1%) Saraikis and 10 (8.7%) were Baloch.  Of these 115 study cases, mothers were illiterate in 75 (65.2%) and literate in 40 (34.8%). Mean disease duration was 5.27 ± 2.11 months and 69 (60%) had disease duration up to 6 months and 46 (40%) had more than 6 months. Mean T3 level was 86.43 ± 26.25 ng/dl, mean T4 level was 5.02 ± 1.69 µg/dl and mean TSH level was 3.80 ± 1.21 IU/ml and hypothyroidism was present in 44 (38.3%). Conclusion; High Frequency of hypothyroidism was noted in children with celiac disease in our study. Hypothyroidism was significantly associated with age, ethnicity and prolonged disease duration. Clinicians treating children having celiac disease should monitor thyroid hormone levels so as to decrease disease morbidity which will save them future hardships and improve quality of life of such patients. Keywords; Celiac disease, hypothyroidism, thyroid dysfunction

Understanding Cost Dynamics of Serverless Computing: An Empirical Study

The advent of serverless computing has revolutionized the landscape of cloud computing, offering a new paradigm that enables developers to focus solely on their applications rather than managing and provisioning the underlying infrastructure. These applications involve integrating individual functions into a cohesive workflow for complex tasks. The pay-per-use model and nontransparent reporting by cloud providers make it difficult to estimate serverless costs, imped-ing informed business decisions. Existing research studies on serverless compu-ting focus on performance optimization and state management, both from empir-ical and technical perspectives. However, the state-of-the-art shows a lack of em-pirical investigations on the understanding of the cost dynamics of serverless computing over traditional cloud computing. Therefore, this study delves into how organizations anticipate the costs of adopting serverless. It also aims to com-prehend workload suitability and identify best practices for cost optimization of serverless applications. To this end, we conducted a qualitative (interviews) study with 15 experts from 8 companies involved in the migration and development of serverless systems. The findings revealed that, while serverless computing is highly suitable for unpredictable workloads, it may not be cost-effective for cer-tain high-scale applications. The study also introduces a taxonomy for comparing the cost of adopting serverless versus traditional cloud

The Journey to Serverless Migration: An Empirical Analysis of Intentions, Strategies, and Challenges

Serverless is an emerging cloud computing paradigm that facilitates developers to focus solely on the application logic rather than provisioning and managing the underlying infrastructure. The inherent characteristics such as scalability, flexibility, and cost efficiency of serverless computing, attracted many companies to migrate their legacy applications toward this paradigm. However, the stateless nature of serverless requires careful migration planning, consideration of its subsequent implications, and potential challenges. To this end, this study investigates the intentions, strategies, and technical and organizational challenges while migrating to a serverless architecture. We investigated the migration processes of 11 systems across diverse domains by conducting 15 in-depth interviews with professionals from 11 organizations. we also presented a detailed discussion of each migration case. Our findings reveal that large enterprises primarily migrate to enhance scalability and operational efficiency, while smaller organizations intend to reduce the cost. Furthermore, organizations use a domain-driven design approach to identify the use case and gradually migrate to serverless using a strangler pattern. However, migration encounters technical challenges i.e., testing event-driven architecture, integrating with the legacy system, lack of standardization, and organizational challenges i.e., mindset change and hiring skilled serverless developers as a prominent. The findings of this study provide a comprehensive understanding that can guide future implementations and advancements in the context of serverless migration

IDENTIFICATION OF CAUSATIVE ORGANISMS OF SPONTANEOUS BACTERIAL PERITONITIS IN PATIENTS WITH LIVER CIRRHOSIS AND THEIR SENSITIVITY PATTERNS

Background; Spontaneous bacterial peritonitis is a common bacterial infection in patients with cirrhosis and ascities with in-hospital mortality rates ranging from 20 to 30%. Early diagnosis and a prompt antibiotic therapy have considerably decreased the mortality rate and this study was done to determine drug resistance pattern among causative organisms of SBP. Results; Of these 183 study cases, 103 (56.3%) were male patients while 80 (43.7%) were female patients. Mean age of our study cases was 51.73 ± 9.28 years. Previous history of use of antibiotics before 72 hours was noted in 103 (56.3%), anti – HCV was positive in 103 (56.3%) while HBs Ag was positive in 13.7% of our study cases. Among these study cases, E.coli was noted in 135 (73.8%), Staph. Aureus in 17.5% and Klebsiella was noted in 8.7%. Chloramphenicol was resistant in 24 (13.1%), ampicillin was resistant in 143 (78.1%), co – trimoxazole in 61.2%, ciprofloxacin in 55.7%, Ofloxacin in 56.3%, Cefotaxime was resistant in 78.1% and amoxicillin was resistant in 74.9%. Conclusion; Our study results have indicated that E.coli was major causative organisms among patients with spontaneous bacterial peritonitis having cirrhosis of liver followed by staphylococcus aureus and klebsiella. High degree of drug resistance was observed among  these strains in our study which points towards well directed efforts of our health policy makers to adopt certain guidelines regarding use of these drugs in our population. Keywords; Cirrhosis, spontaneous bacterial peritonitis, E. coli

Divide & Quantum

When the operating system was introduced to the world, many functions of it were also introduced that included process management, file management, memory management, networking. As the operating system tends to interact with different operations at the runtime so keeping that in mind we can say that the process management is most essential in an operating system because it allows the operating system to interact with different operations more efficiently and it also improves the timing of the operating systems to interact between the processes. In order to manage between processes many algorithms were introduced by different people and different minds and today we find this as an opportunity develop something new by keeping the previous algorithms in mind and compare them and find a best possible result

Efficient Market Hypothesis in Emerging Market - a Conceptual Analysis

The aim of this paper is to explain the importance and implications of the use of Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) in emerging market with a view to see how portfolio assets are priced and the rationale behind it. The EMH describes a rational market where all relevant available information is reflected very quickly on prices. In an efficient market prices should react only to new unanticipated information, and since this is unpredictable, by definition, price changes must be unpredictable also. The EMH describes the case of an ideal stock market where actual prices fully reflect all relevant information. Consequently, the price and corresponding return fluctuations are not predictable and it's impossible for investors to make gains systematically. For many years, the EMH seemed to describe adequately the price behaviour in the world stock markets. Nevertheless, recent finding indicates otherwise. The research design of the paper is qualitative and content analysis is going to be use. The paper concludes that despite its shortcoming the EMH remains an open issue and it has help in deepening stock markets worldwide because of it acceptability. Therefore the paper recommends that more researchers should be encouraged to be conducted in emerging market of Africa especially that of Nigeria