Experimental Study of Physio-Mechanical and Engineering Properties of Clayey Soil Incorporating Hydraulic Lime and Nano-Silica

Soil is one of the most abundant and frequently used materials in geotechnical engineering and construction. Soil is heterogenous material with different minerals some of which are classified as problematic minerals. The soil is classified as unacceptable for construction purpose if some of these minerals are present in the soil. Soil improvement utilizing nano materials is a novel technique to upgrade engineering and shear strength parameters of problematic soils. The effects of varying amounts of nano-silica and lime in clayey soil are investigated in this study. For this purpose, soil samples were moulded by incorporating 0, 3, 6, 9% nano silica and 0, 5, and 10% lime. The samples were tested for Atterberg limits, Plasticity index, optimum moisture content OMC, maximum dry density MDD, swelling, and unconfined compressive strength (UCS) at 7 and 28 days. The results revealed that addition of nano-silica in lime treated high plastic clay improved the plasticity index as well as UCS and swelling behaviour by a significant margin. Results highlighted that incorporation of nano silica reduced the plasticity index. UCS values of the soil increased by adding nano silica 28 days UCS increased by 10 times as compared to 7 days strength. The swelling in soil samples with 10% lime and 9% nano silica is reduced by almost 32% as compared to controlled samples. OMC is also increased by 17% meanwhile MDD is reduced by 9% when nano silica was added. The findings of this study can be used in any project that requires improved engineering and geotechnical properties of high plastic clayey soil for shallow foundation

In vitro anticoccidial activity of Trachyspermum ammi (Ajwain) extract on oocysts of Eimeria species of Chicken

Background: Due to development of synthetic anticoccidial drug resistance there is improvement of anticoccidial medicines due to which exploration of diverse therapeutic agents is attractive now a days. Amongst original agents’ miscellaneous botanicals have shown encouraging properties against coccidiosis. Present study is also a part of probing innovative therapeutic drugs against coccidiosis which can provide replacement solution to treat coccidiosis.Methods: In current experiment in vitro anticoccidial effect of Trachyspermum ammi (seeds) extract was evaluated. For this purpose, an in vitro sporulation inhibition assay was used. Collected oocysts of four Eimeria species were exposed to six different concentrations (w/v) of T. ammi in 10% Dimethyl sulphoxide solution (DMSO), while Dimethyl sulphoxide and Potassium dichromate solution (K2Cr2O7) served as control groups.Results: Results of study revealed that T. ammi extract showed in vitro anticoccidial effect by affecting on sporulation (%) and damaging (%) Eimeria oocysts in dose dependent manner. T. ammi extract also damaged the morphology of oocysts in terms of shape, size and number of sporocysts.Conclusion: The results strongly support the botanicals applications of T. ammi extract and also demonstrate its potential for use in Poultry coccidiosis control strategies.Keywords: Trachyspermum ammi extract; In vitro; Eimeria; Oocyst

FIPA-based reference architecture for efficient discovery and selection of appropriate cloud service using cloud ontology

[EN] Cloud computing is considered the latest emerging computing paradigm and has brought revolutionary changes in computing technology. With the advancement in this field, the number of cloud users and service providers is increasing continuously with more diversified services. Consequently, the selection of appropriate cloud service has become a difficult task for a new cloud customer. In case of inappropriate selection of a cloud services, a cloud customer may face the vendor locked-in issue and data portability and interoperability problems. These are the major obstacles in the adoption of cloud services. To avoid these complexities, a cloud customer needs to select an appropriate cloud service at the initial stage of the migration to the cloud. Many researches have been proposed to overcome the issues, but problems still exist in intercommunication standards among clouds and vendor locked-in issues. This research proposed an IEEE multiagent Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agent (FIPA) compliance multiagent reference architecture for cloud discovery and selection using cloud ontology. The proposed approach will mitigate the prevailing vendor locked-in issue and also alleviate the portability and interoperability problems in cloud computing. To evaluate the proposed reference architecture and compare it with the state-of-the-art approaches, several experiments have been performed by utilizing the commonly used performance measures. Analysis indicates that the proposed approach enables significant improvements in cloud service discovery and selection in terms of search efficiency, execution, and response timeAbbas, G.; Mehmood, A.; Lloret, J.; Raza, MS.; Ibrahim, M. (2020). FIPA-based reference architecture for efficient discovery and selection of appropriate cloud service using cloud ontology. International Journal of Communication Systems. 33(14):1-14. https://doi.org/10.1002/dac.4504114331

Assessment of Students’ Academic Performance in Government Schools of Pakistan

The main purpose of this study was to reduce the gaps in the evaluation of academic performance in Pakistan government schools. This study analyzed the students’ academic performance with respect to social media usage, physical activity, and motivation. A sample of 204 students was selected for studying in different government schools located in Lahore (Pakistan). Both stratified random sampling and simple random sampling techniques were used to draw the sample. This study focused on 9th class and 10th class students who were the respondents of primary data collection. Both correlation and regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The results showed that all the predicted variables were significant and positively correlated with academic performance

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN METROLOGICAL PARAMETERS AND VECTOR BORNE DENGUE DISEASE USING ONCOLOGICAL FRACTAL TREATMENT

Dengue is the most vital arboviral disease in humans, which is occurring in tropical and subtropical areas around the world. Dengue fever is itemized as an urban human disease as it spreads easily to urban environmental/ morphological contexts because of the uneven increase of urban population and infectious diseases as a result of climate change. Dengue epidemic cases related to climatic parameters are helpful to monitor and prevent the transmission of dengue fever. Many studies have focused on describing the clinical aspects of dengue outbreak. We bring out the epidemiological study to investigate the dengue fever development and prediction in the Karachi city. This study described the oncological treatment by statistical analysis and fractal rescaled range (R/S) method of the dengue epidemics from January 2001 to December 2020, based on the urban morphological patterns, and climatic variables including temperature and ENSO respectively. The R/S method in oncologists has been carried in two ways, basic oncological/statistical analysis and Fractal dimension adapt to the study the nature of the subtleties of dengue epidemic data, another showing the dynamics of oncological process. Climate parameters are shown that the fractal dimension value revealed a persistency behavior i.e. time series is an increasing, Fractal analysis also confirmed the anti-persistent behavior of dengue for months of September to November and the normality tests specified the robust indication of the intricacy of data. This study will be useful for future researchers working on epidemiology and urban environmental oncological fields to improve and rectify the urban infectious diseases

Delay and energy based message delivery in delay tolerant networks

© 2019 IEEE. Routing in delay tolerant network (DTN) is one of the most challenging problems in addressing the application specific requirements. This paper presents a routing algorithm in DTN that achieves the delivery ratio within the given deadline requirements by evaluating the capability of a node to deliver a message to its destination on the basis of destination-dependent and destination-independent attributes of the encountered node. The protocol dynamically adjusts the number of message copies based on our previous works [13] and chooses the most suitable relay node by taking the delivery probability to the destination and the remaining energy level of nodes into account. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm achieves better performance compared to the counterpart and is adaptive to varying network conditions

Impact of Supervision, Working condition and University policy on Work-Life balance of University Employees

In Pakistan, university employees often find it difficult to keep a balance between their jobs in the workplace and their home tasks. Nowadays, Pakistani universities are equally in accordance with different nations to bring work life balance among employees by presenting flexible timings, child care, part time work, and children’s education facilities, like different nations. This research on work-life balance in Universities was done to study the level of work-life balance of employees. This study used a quantitative technique. A survey method was used to gather data from participants. The sample of 150 employees (87 males and 63 females) contained of academic and non-academic employees. This study examined the relationship between independent variables that comprised of supervision, working conditions, and university policy on the dependent variable which is work life balance. The outcomes of this study indicate the current situation of work life balance and the factors that impacting work life balance on employees of public sector universities in Pakistan

Acaricidal and insecticidal effects of essential oils against ectoparasites of veterinary importance

Ectoparasitism in animals has become an issue of great concern that needs to be resolved to prevent huge economic losses occurring to livestock industry all over the world. Synthetic adrugs have been playing a major role in controlling ectoparasites, but their frequent and irrational use has resulted in drug resistance to routinely used chemicals and their residual effects on food and environment. Therefore, this approach of using chemical acaricides and insecticides is losing its popularity and effectiveness in controlling ectoparasites. So, the development of alternative approaches in ectoparasite management is currently required. Among alternative protocols, plants and their essential oils have played remarkable role in controlling different ectoparasites (ticks, flies, mites, lice) of veterinary importance. Essential oils have been proved to be cheaper, more effective and safer therapeautic agents against different ectoparasites of livestock importance

Flexural behavior of reinforced concrete beams by using rice husk ash as partial replacement of fine aggregates in cement concrete

Rice Husk has been utilized as a mineral admixture, cement replacement option, and filler in cement concrete as it provides several advantages such as improved strength values and environmental benefits related to the disposal of waste materials and to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from production of cement worldwide. In this study, flexural behavior of reinforced concrete beams using rice husk ash as a partial replacement of fine aggregates is investigated. For this purpose, four types of concrete mixtures were produced using rice husk ash as a partial replacement of fine aggregates at replacement levels of 0%, 10%, 15% and 20%. The produced reinforced rice husk ash concrete prism specimens were cured in water and tested to determine the ultimate load and ultimate deflection at 28 days of curing. The test results depicted that, the maximum ultimate load carried by reinforced rice husk ash concrete beam is 39.4 KN with 10% rice husk ash at 28 days and minimum ultimate load is 19.02 KN with 20% rice husk ash used as a partial substitute of fine aggregates at 28 days. The minimum ultimate deflection of 0.97mm occurred with 10% rice husk ash as a partial replacement of fine aggregate at 28 days of curing. Hence, this study concludes that 10% RHA can be utilized as a partial replacement of fine aggregates to provide strength in concrete and to reduce the environmental burden of rice husk waste. The results of this study will also provide a way forward to address the recent issues in construction sector, such as depletion of raw materials and increasing cost of construction