Effect of doping concentration on absorbance, structural, and magnetic properties of cobalt-doped ZnO nano-crystallites

Abstract Controlled conduction of magnetic spins is desired for data processing in modern spintronic devices. Transition metal-doped ZnO is a potential candidate for this purpose. We studied the effects of cobalt doping on structural, absorbance, and magnetic properties of ZnO nano-particles. Different compositions (Zn0.99Co0.1O, Zn0.97Co0.3O, and Zn0.95Co0.5O) of cobalt-doped ZnO were fabricated using metallic chlorides by co-precipitation method. XRD revealed standard ZnO wurtzite crystal structure without lattice distortion due to impurities but showed presence of additional phases at higher doping ratios. Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy also confirmed the standard ZnO profiles at lower doping ratios but additional phases at higher doping. Vibrating sample magnetometer showed soft ferromagnetic behavior for low impurity samples and harder ferromagnetic behavior for higher doping at room temperature. A simultaneous differential scanning calorimetry/thermo gravimetric analysis was performed to study the phase variations during crystallization.</jats:p

Ultrasound Imaging of Testes and Epididymides of Normal and Infertile Breeding Bulls

Echotexture of testes and epididymides from 10 slaughtered male buffaloes was studied. Diameter of testis and mediastinum testis was measured by ultrasound and compared with respective values taken by calipers. Testes and epididymides of another 10 fertile and 10 infertile breeding bulls were examined in vivo through manual palpation and ultrasound imaging. Semen quality of these bulls was also monitored. There were significant (P<0.01) positive correlations between ultrasound and calipers values of all parameters. The testicular parenchyma of fertile bulls was uniformly homogeneous and moderately echogenic. Epididymal tail was more heterogeneous and less echogenic, while epididymal head was homogeneous and less echogenic, than the testicular parenchyma. The epididymal body appeared as hypoechoic structure with echogenic margin. Among 10 infertile bulls, nine had poor semen quality, while one bull failed to give any ejaculate. On ultrasonography, six bulls showed abnormalities in their scrotal echotexture. Among these, one had an abundance of hyperechoic areas scattered in the testicular parenchyma, some of these showed acoustic shadowing, showing testicular degenerations with mineralization. The second bull showed many anechoic areas in the testes and epididymal head, demarcated from the rest of the organ by well defined margins. In the third bull, three-fourth of the right testis showed hyperechoic areas, suspected of testicular degeneration with mineralization. The fourth bull had two anechoic areas in one testis assumed to represent dilated blood vessel. The fifth bull showed small hyperechoic areas within the testicular parenchyma. The sixth bull showed an anechoic area with distinct hyperechogenic margin below the testicular tunics. The remaining four bulls had normal echogenicity of testes and epididymides in spite of poor semen quality. In conclusion, diagnostic ultrasound may be included in breeding soundness examination of breeding bulls

Characterization of a cytochrome P450 monooxygenase gene involved in the biosynthesis of geosmin in Penicillium expansum

Geosmin is a terpenoid, an earthy-smelling substance associated with off-flavors in water and wine. The biosynthesis of geosmin is well characterized in bacteria, but little is known about its production in eukaryotes, especially in filamentous fungi. The origin of geosmin in grapevine is largely attributable to the presence of Penicillium expansum on grapes. Herein, we describe the characterization of “gpe1”, a gene encoding a cytochrome P450 monooxygenase probably involved in the biosynthesis of geosmin in this species. A gpe1knockout mutant of P. expansum M2230 lost the capacity to produce geosmin, while the genetically complemented mutant restored it. The deduced gpe1 protein sequence shows identities with other cytochrome P450 monooxygenases involved in diterpene biosynthesis. These enzymes catalyze the addition of hydroxyl groups to the diterpene compounds. gpe1protein could work in the same way, with sesquiterpenes as substrates. This gene seems to be only present in geosmin-producing Penicillium species. To our knowledge, this is the first characterization of a fungal gene encoding an enzyme involved in geosmin biosynthesis

Job Satisfaction and Professional Ethics Practices in Public Sector Universities of Pakistan

Professional ethics are the guiding principles practiced in any organization. These standards regulate an individual behavior or group working in that institution, which demands a particular set of related values and expects them to act normatively. This research aimed to study and understand the link between job satisfaction and the level of professional ethics practiced in public sector universities of Pakistan. Three public sector universities of Punjab were selected, including PMAS-Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, Barani Institute of Information and Technology, and the University of Okara. The study was designed quantitatively, using the survey questionnaire to be filled out by 150 respondents from these universities. The respondents were the faculty members from these three universities who participated in this research. It was intended to balance the male-female ratio between the respondents. The results indicated that a higher level of professional, ethical practices at the workplace is associated with more job satisfaction. Like other professions, academia needs to formulate some guiding principles for better and transparent functioning of the universities and ensure work-related satisfaction for better faculty performance

Enhancing Millimeter Wave Link Capacity in Adverse Weather Using Hybrid UAV Relays

In the context of sixth generation (6G) and beyond, millimeter wave (MMW) is a vital technology for high data-rate applications in the realm of radio frequency (RF) communications due to its high bandwidth and low interference. However, adverse weather conditions, particularly rain, can significantly impact the MMW link capacity. In this study, we propose to exploit unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as hybrid relays to improve the availability of MMW links in adverse weather conditions. The UAV relays exploit an intermediate free-space optical (FSO) relay link without impacting the RF source and destination nodes. We maximize the end-to-end channel capacity by optimizing the UAVs' locations based on the negatively correlated MMW and FSO link coverage lengths. We compare the proposed model's performance with benchmark systems, including a single MMW link, a static location relay-aided MMW system, and static hybrid FSO-RF systems. The numerical results clearly demonstrate the proposed scheme's superiority, including better performance when tested on realistic rainy channel conditions based on measured weather information in the United Kingdom

Leveraging Social Media Streams for Disaster Prediction: A Machine and Deep Learning Approach

Natural disasters have an impact on the lives of people and animals worldwide. Twitter, which is a social networking tool that enables individuals to share news, opinions, and even their experiences, has emerged as a valuable source of real-time information. Since real-time data is easily accessed, many service providers make an effort to analyze it on a daily basis for purposes of detecting emergencies and lowering risk factors. As for people, a person cannot sit and analyze thousands of records and, at the same time, recognize threats in real time. To address this challenge, machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) techniques have become essential tools for automating disaster detection and classification. The article examines the disaster prediction capabilities of Twitter text data and evaluates the power of diverse supervised machine learning models (logistic regression, naive Bayes, support vector machines (SVM), k-nearest neighbors (KNN) and XGBoost). Also, a deep learning model based on Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) is tested to see how it performs on sequential data in tweets. The main goal of the work is investigating the impact of the usage of different data modes, including text, visual data (including pictures and satellite data), audio data (including sounds of emergency calls or acoustic patterns), and blog or news posts, on effective disaster prediction and classification. Although the nature of Twitter text data (real-time, short, and publicly available) has been prioritized in this research, the property of multimodal data sources to improve situational awareness is also recognized as their increasing role. Through the analysis of these varied streams of information with both a traditional machine learning approach and an advanced deep learning approach, the comprehensive study will attempt to create a more holistic and responsive disaster detection framework that could serve as an aid to decision-makers and emergency responders in their attempt to mitigate losses and improve the response strategy

LUCRATIVENESS OF ISLAMIC VS CONVENTIONAL MUTUAL FUNDS IN PAKISTAN

The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative riskadjusted performance, selectivity skills and market timing abilitiesanalysis of Islamic and Conventional mutual funds in Pakistan. Thestudy utilizes various risk-adjusted performance measures to evaluaterisk and return characteristics. The study also used techniqueproposed by (Treynor and Mazuy 1966) and (Henriksson and Merton1981) to appraise selectivity skills and timing abilities on the dataset ranging 2009-2013 of Islamic and Conventional mutual funds. Inthis study, four categories Aggressive Fixed Income, Asset Allocation,Equity and Balanced open end mutual funds are analysed. On thebasis of evidences found, only few mutual fund managers from Islamicand Conventional mutual funds hold better stock picking skills. Themutual fund managers of both Islamic and conventional mutual fundsare found to be a poor market timer in Pakistan. Islamic mutualfunds have earned better returns than conventional mutual funds.Therefore, risk adjusted performance of Islamic mutual funds is betterthan conventional mutual funds

Women Health in Rural Pakistan in Millennium Development Goals Perspectives

This aim of this research was to study the situation of different Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) indicators at the gross root level in Mardan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. For this primary data were collected with the help of pre-designed questionnaires through face to face interview from 60 randomly households head. The data was analysed by using descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests. Main finding revealed that majority and statistically significant respondents not using any contraceptive methods. Majority of the respondents have no deliveries in their homes ended in last 3 years and there was no significant difference in the percent distribution of the respondents in the selected villages regarding this. Maternal health care, births attendant status and immunization of children against EPI are not up to the mark. Knowledge about HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, DM is at maximum. The study recommends for social campaign/awareness, births control at the household’s level, training of more skillful persons having specialty in the maternal health care, immunization of children of less than 2 years about the different contagious diseases. Keywords: Maternal health, HIV/AIDS preventions, MDG

Cadmium resistance microbes and TiO2 nanoparticles alleviate cadmium toxicity in wheat.

Cadmium toxicity in the soil is an alarming issue, and among innumerable approaches, microbe-facilitated nanoparticle application for alleviation of Cd stress is a well-accepted technique. The present study explored the efficiency of combined TiO2-NPs and Staphylococcus aureus M1 strains for Cd mitigation in wheat plants. Results depicted that Cd stress attenuates the growth attributes while the collective application of NPs and microbes significantly upsurges the growth attributes as contrasted to Cd treatment. Combined TiO2-NPs and microbes application increased the total chlorophyll (12), a (10), b (11), and carotenoids (13%) under Cd (50&nbsp;mg kg- 1) compared to microbial treatment. MDA (4), H2O2 (3), and EL (5%) were significantly down-regulated with combined TiO2-NPs and microbes application under Cd (50&nbsp;mg kg- 1) compared to microbial treatment. CAT (17), SOD (7), POD (8), and APX (29%) were increased with combined TiO2-NPs and microbes application under Cd (50&nbsp;mg kg- 1) comparison to microbial treatment. Cd accumulation in roots (34), shoots (23), and grains (27%) were significantly reduced under Cd (50&nbsp;mg kg- 1) with combined TiO2-NPs and microbes application, contrary to microbial treatment. Subsequently, combined TiO2-NPs and microbial strains Staphylococcus aureus M1 application is a sustainable solution to boost crop production under Cd stress