Worldview-2 and Landsat 8 Satellite Data for Seaweed Mapping along Karachi Coast

Seaweed is a marine plant or algae which has economic value in many parts of the world. The purpose of this study is to evaluate different satellite sensors such as high-resolution WorldView-2 (WV2) satellite data and Landsat 8 30-meter resolution satellite data for mapping seaweed resources along the coastalwaters of Karachi. The continuous monitoring and mapping of this precious marine plant and their breeding sites may not be very efficient and cost effective using traditional survey techniques. Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) can provide economical and more efficient solutions for mapping and monitoring coastal resources quantitatively as well as qualitatively at both temporal and spatial scales. Normalized Difference Vegetation Indices (NDVI) along with the image enhancement techniques were used to delineate seaweed patches in the study area. The coverage area of seaweed estimated with WV-2 and Landsat 8 are presented as GIS maps. A more precise area estimation wasachieved with WV-2 data that shows 15.5Ha (0.155 Km2)of seaweed cover along Karachi coast that is more representative of the field observed data. A much larger area wasestimated with Landsat 8 image (71.28Ha or 0.7128 Km2) that was mainly due to the mixing of seaweed pixels with water pixels. The WV-2 data, due to its better spatial resolution than Landsat 8, have proven to be more useful than Landsat8 in mapping seaweed patche

Omnichannel Development within the Pakistani Fashion Retail

We examined the omnichannel Development within the Pakistani Fashion Retail and observed both Retailer and Consumer perspective in our study to see the development and Potential of Omnichannel. We selected 25 retailers (of which 22 are using multi-channels) and 224 shoppers who used more than one channel for purchasing fashion products, (due to some model fitness error we reduced our final sample size to 205 respondents). We used UTAUT2 model with 2 more predictors (perceived security and Personal innovativeness) which we found effected in purchase intention of consumer from some previous literature.  As per Retailer Perspective we found that we are at an extremely early stage of omnichannel. Organizations are slowly transforming but some retailers are still under threat because of associated risks with changing their business models. Omnichannel loyalty service was found to be the weakest in current development due to profitability factors for organization which seem more important, and retailers also need to focus on data and analytics & IT structure to improve omnichannel journey. As per consumer perspective, the survey results show that the security is the main concern for the shoppers in Pakistan, it restricts shopper to provide their personal information to retailers also factors of social influence and hedonic motivation not found positively influenced in our model but habit and personal innovativeness found the key factors for omnichannel development also performance and effort expectancy founds positively influenced in the development of omnichannel. By summarizing both perspective we finally conclude (Fig. 26) that retailers should integrated their all channels in a way which gives consumer totally unified and seamless shopping experience and hit their purchase intention in a positive way which support omnichannel development in Pakistan Fashion Retail Industry. Keywords: Omnichannel, Integration, Purchase intention, transforming, loyalty services, data and analytics, Security, Effort Expectancy, Habit, Personal Innovativeness DOI: 10.7176/JMCR/54-06 Publication date:March 31st 201

Satellite Derived Sea surface temperature fronts in relation with Tuna catch In EEZ of Pakistan

Sea surface temperature (SST) is an important parameter in marine ecosystem studies as its relations of Fishery and other marine resources. In this study SST fronts have also been studied with relate to tuna fish catch data of April and August 2014 was acquired. Satellite derived MODIS daily products have been used to derive thermal fronts in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of Pakistan. Research results indicated that the Sea surface temperature gradually changed from 22C to 24C where Tuna catch is high and By Catch is low in frontal region. The further Relationship between these two data are discussed in this study and also made recommendations for in what way these two datasets should be handled. Remote sensing data and GIS tools are efficient and less time consuming for mapping and classifying sea surface temperature in a broader way. Survey of fishing resources is really time consumed and costly, Satellite Remote sensing data shows a promising tool to monitor fishery resources in a cost effective manner. Satellite data play an important role to identify fish aggregation zones and these techniques could also be used to forecast potential fishing zones by measuring oceanic parameters which influence on fish distribution on a broader scale and these techniques can help to local fisherman and fishery organizations to observe fishery resources

Empirical analysis of impact of macroeconomic indicators on Profitability of Islamic Banking Industry in Pakistan

The Islamic banking has been found showing a great performance around the globe, which make it an important to understand the factors affecting the Islamic banking. This paper is aimed at studying the role of Interest Rate as economic indicator, Total assets and credit risk as bank specifics, on maintaining sustainable profitability measures, ROE and ROA of all full fledge Islamic banks in Pakistan during the period of 2006-2018. The data collection includes all full fledge Islamic banks of Pakistan i.e., Al Baraka Bank (Pakistan) Ltd, Bank Islami Pakistan Ltd (BIPL), Dubai Islamic Bank Pakistan Limited (DIB) and Meezan Bank Limited. Furthermore, there are two measures of profitability i.e. Return on equity (ROE) & Return on assets (ROA). The regression analysis in the results show that there is a significant role of bank specific variables (total assets, and credit risk) and macroeconomic indicator (interest rate) on ROE, moreover, the role of Credit Risk and Interest Rate is also found significant in influencing the ROA. Keywords: Profitability, Interest Rate, Credit Risk, ROE and ROA DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/11-33-14 Publication date: November 30th 201

A projected finite element update method for inverse identification of material constitutive parameters in transversely isotropic laminates

In this paper, a novel application of Finite Element Update Method (FEUM) is proposed for the inverse identification of material constitutive parameters in transversely isotropic laminates. Two-dimensional Digital Image Correlation (2D–DIC) is used for full-field measurements which is required for the identification process. Instead of measuring the in-plane displacements, which is a well-known application of 2D–DIC, we seek to measure the pseudo-displacements resulting from out-of-plane (towards camera) deflection of plate under a point load. These pseudo-displacements are basically the perspective projection of the three dimensional displacement fields on the image-plane of the image acquisition system. The cost function in this method is defined in terms of these projections instead of the true displacements – and hence the name Projected Finite Element Update Method (PFEUM). In this article, identification of in-plane elastic moduli of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) plate has been performed using plate bending experiments which show pre-dominantly out-of-plane deflection with little contribution from the in-plane displacements. Identification results are validated by direct experimental measurements of the unknown elastic constants as well as theoretical estimates based on volume ratio of constituents. The results show good conformance between estimated and target values for at least three material parameters namely E1, E2 and G12. Effects of experimental noise on parameter estimates has also been evaluated to explain the observed deviation in estimated parameters with current test configuration

Evaluation of radiology request forms in a tertiary care hospital: An audit with a focus on the impact of technological intervention

Radiology request forms are the basis of communication between referring physicians and radiologists. These are the sole documents on the basis of which a justification to carry out a radiological procedure is carried out. However, across the globe, there is a problem of inadequately filled radiology request forms. Several interventions like standardization and the use of technology have been proposed worldwide to overcome the shortcomings of inadequately filled radiology request forms. We carried out a two-phase audit assessing the impact of a technological intervention on the quality of radiology requests with the results showing marked improvement in key parameters. A subset analysis was also done to highlight the importance of radiology request forms by following the patients\u27 treatment course. The remaining shortcomings highlight the importance of training sessions and refresher courses for junior doctors in order to familiarize them with the importance of adequately filled radiology request forms

Latent activity of curcumin against leishmaniasis in vitro

In this study the anti-proliferative effect of curcumin (curcuma longa) that is the active ingredient of ground dried rhizome has been studied against three local and three reference leishmanial strains, Leishmania major, Leishmania tropica and Leishmania infantum (Pakistani isolate). Curcumin has shown an average IC50 of 5.3mM against promastigotes of various leishmanial strains which is much lower as compared with pentamidine that is one of the basic treatments against leishmaniasis. The main draw back attributed to these assays performed on promastigotes is the heterogeneity of results compared with those obtained with intracellular amastigotes or with in vivo effect. We also tested activity of curcumin against axenic amastigote like cells (AALC) of L. major strain (MHOM/PK/88/DESTO). Curcumin proves to be far more potent then pentamidine against AALC which further strengthens the fact about its leishmaniacidal activity

MATLAB suite for removing the capacitive leakage effect from EBI Spectroscopic data

Electrical Bioimpedance (EBI) is the opposition offered by the biological material to theflow of electric current. Nowadays EBI technology is widely used for total body compositionand body fluid distribution.In this project a software suite is developed by using the GUI tool of Matlab, thissoftware is meant to help to remove artefacts from the EBI measurement and to visualize theEBIS measurements and the processing performed on them.Hook effect is one of the major artefacts found in EBI measurements, which createsproblems in any analysis. To eliminate the Hook effect some methods are followed. The data’sare processed using these methods and they are visualized. For the better understanding, bothraw data and the corrected data are plotted in impedance and admittance plots. The correcteddata is stored for further use and analysis