Third-Party Logistics

Third-party logistics was propelled first in US; later on, European nations put it on to successfully deal with an organization’s coordination exercises, re-appropriating the capacity and purchasing the administrations. 3PL suppliers without their very own advantages are called lead coordination suppliers that have preferred the standpoint that they have particular industry ability combined with low overhead expenses, yet they bring down arranging power. Lead coordination suppliers may likewise be less bureaucratic with shorter basic leadership cycles because of the littler size of the organization, and the most critical contrast between a second gathering coordination supplier and an outsider coordination supplier is the way that a 3PL supplier is constantly incorporated in the client’s framework. The 2PL is not coordinated as compared to the 3PL as it is just a redistributed coordination supplier with no framework mix. A 2PL regularly just gives institutionalized administrations, while 3PLs frequently give benefits that are redone and particular to the necessities of their client. Coordination is evaluated as a significant use for organizations. Thus, in the present aggressive condition, there is a squeezing need to control coordination expenses, and execution estimation has turned out to be an effective apparatus in accomplishing business targets

CLOSE CIRCUIT CAMERAS’ (CCTV) SURVEILLANCE IN NEXUS WITH DATA PROTECTION LAWS, AND RIGHT OF PRIVACY IN PAKISTAN

The instant study is unique of its nature providing a comprehensive analysis on right of privacy and data protection laws in Pakistan with special reference to CCTV surveillance; its scope in the light of judgments of Apex or Higher Courts in Pakistan. It finds that right of privacy is interconnected with other fundamental right of life or right of dignity. CCTV surveillance in Pakistan is ever increasing and posing a threat to right of privacy; it deliberates the arguments about such surveillance in public or private domains and its legality. Further, it tries to intricate the existing legal framework in Pakistan either working as a mean of safeguard for privacy or a source of infringement for or against CCTV surveillance. Meanwhile, the study also presents critical analysis of the Proposed Data Protection Bill (PDPB), 2020 in the light of General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), 2018

An Efficient Adaptive Noise Cancellation Scheme Using ALE and NLMS Filters

The basic theme of our paper is to implement a new idea of noise reduction in the real time applications using the concepts of adaptive filters.  Our model which is presented as one of the solutions is based on two stages of operation with the first stage based on the ALE (Adaptive Line Enhancer) filters and the second stage on NLMS (Normalized Least Mean Square) filter. The first stage reduces the sinusoidal noise from the input signal and the second stage reduces the wideband noise. Two input sources of voice are used; one for the normal speech and the other for the noise input, using separate microphones for both signals. The first signal is of the corrupted speech signal and the second signal is of only the noise containing both wideband and narrowband noise. In the first stage the narrowband noise is reduced by using the ALE technique. The second stage gets a signal with ideally only the wideband noise which is reduced using the NLMS technique.  In both the stages the concerned algorithms are used to update the filter coefficients in such a way that the noise is cancelled out from the signal and a clean speech signal is heard at the output.DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v2i3.24

Effect of exogenous application of nicotinic acid on morpho-physiological characteristics of Hordeum vulgare L. under water stress

Abiotic stresses, such as high temperature and drought conditions, greatly influence the development of plants and the quality and quantity of products. Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) crop production is largely impacted by drought, affecting growth, yield, and ultimately the productivity of the crop in hot arid/semi-arid conditions. The current pot experiment was directed to observe the outcome of nicotinic acid (NA) treatments on barley’s physiological, biochemical, and production attributes at two capacity levels, i.e., 100% normal range and withholding water stress. Randomized complete block design (RCBD) was used during the experimentation with the two-factor factorial arrangement. NA was applied exogenously by two different methods, i.e., foliar and soil application (fertigation). NA solution contained various application levels, such as T1 = control, foliar applications (T2 = 0.7368 gL−1, T3 = 1.477 gL−1, T4 = 2.2159 gL−1), and soil applications (T5 = 0.4924 gL−1, T6 = 0.9848 gL−1, and T7 = 1.4773 gL−1). Results depicted that, overall, foliar treatments showed better effects than control and soil treatments. Plant growth was preeminent under T4 treatment, such as plant height (71.07 cm), relative water content (84.0%), leaf water potential (39.73-MPa), leaf area index (36.53 cm2), biological yield (15.10 kgha−1), grain yield (14.40 kgha−1), harvest index (57.70%), catalase (1.54 mmolg−1FW−1), peroxidase (1.90 g−1FWmin−1), and superoxide dismutase (52.60 µgFW−1) were superior under T4 treatment. Soil plant analysis development (54.13 µgcm−2) value was also higher under T4 treatment and lowest under T7 treatment. In conclusion, NA-treated plants were more successful in maintaining growth attributes than non-treated plants; therefore, the NA foliar treatment at the rate of 2.2159 gL−1 is suggested to find economical crop yield under drought conditions. The present study would contribute significantly to improving the drought tolerance potential of barley through exogenous NA supply in water deficit areas

Perception and Facts Regarding Electroconvulsive Therapy at Benazir Bhutto Hospital, Rawalpindi

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) is a treatment method based on the induction of a generalized convulsion in patients after stimulation of the brain tissue with an electric current. ECT is widely used in United States as endorsed by American Psychiatric Association (APA, 2009) and has been demonstrated to be an effective treatment for certain psychiatric disorders (APA, 2001). ECT is demonstrated to have a property of mood stabilization that is considered superior to pharmacotherapy in the management of several psychiatric disorders such as depressive episode, manic episode as well as mixed episode in bipolar affective disorder (Medda, Tony & Perugi, 2014). Administration of ECT provides a quick therapeutic response as compared to psychotropic medications. Neuroplastic changes are visible even after a single electroconvulsive stimulation (Sadock & Ruiz, 2009). About each neurotransmitter system is influenced by ECT comprising serotonergic, muscarinic, adrenergic, dopaminergic and cholinergic systems (Anttila et al., 2008).   Administration of ECT Appropriate equipment to monitor vital signs of the patient and to provide initial medical emergency cover are available at the areas of ECT treatment and recovery. Any optimal site of treatment has separate facilities of waiting area to have ECT done, treatment area where ECT is conducted and recovery area where post-treatment monitoring is done (APA, 2001). Some important equipment includes stethoscope, sphygmomanometer, pulse oximetry, electrocardiographic device and system of oxygen delivery in the vicinity of treatment area where ECT is delivered (McCall, Andrade & Sienaert, 2014). None of the patients is treated with ECT without his or her written informed consent that includes the understanding of patient about the process and effectiveness of ECT as well as his or her commitment on compliance (Mankad, 2015). Besides the informed consent, vital stability and fundoscopy of the patient are some of the prerequisites to be ensured before the administration of ECT.   Previous research indicates that a combination of ECT and the maintenance medication is highly effective as compared to medication alone (McCall, 2018). For the treatment of residual symptoms of the patient, to help him or her cope with stress effectively and to encourage the patient to return to his or her normal life, psychotherapy is quite helpful including individual therapy, family therapy or group therapy (Sackeim, 2001).     Mechanism of ECT The treatment of certain psychiatric disorders by using Electroconvulsive Therapy was introduced in 1938 for the first time (UKECTRG, 2003). Since then, it has been considered as an effective treatment for certain psychiatric disorders (Pagnin et al, 2004) as evidenced by extensive research (Kho et al, 2003). Ladislas Meduna is recognized as the inventor of ECT (Meduna, 1935). During the course of ECT, certain changes in chemical composition of the brain takes place that helps in treatment of certain psychiatric disorders (Meduna, 1936). Many theories regarding the mechanism of ECT has been devised over 75 years of research on ECT (Rasmussen, 2009). In a study of 1979, these theories about mechanism of action in ECT were categorized into structural, psychological, electrophysiological and biochemical domains (Fink, 1979). Recent concept about mechanism of ECT include advanced technologies to investigate morphological changes at cellular level termed as ‘neuroplasticity’ for animal studies and ‘neural connectivity’ for human studies (Bouckaert, 2014).   &nbsp

Energy-aware AI-driven Framework for Edge Computing-based IoT Applications

The significant growth in the number of Internetof- things (IoT) devices has given impetus to the idea of edge computing for several applications. In addition, energy harvestable or wireless-powered wearable devices are envisioned to empower the edge intelligence in IoT applications. However, the intermittent energy supply and network connectivity of such devices in scenarios including remote areas and hard-to-reach regions such as in-body applications can limit the performance of edge computing-based IoT applications. Hence, deploying stateof-the-art convolutional neural networks (CNNs) on such energy constrained devices is not feasible due to their computational cost. Existing model compression methods such as network pruning and quantization can reduce complexity, but these methods only work for fixed computational or energy requirements, which is not the case for edge devices with an intermittent energy source. In this work, we propose a pruning scheme based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL), which can compress the CNN model adaptively according to the energy dictated by the energy management policy and accuracy requirements for IoT applications. The proposed energy policy uses predictions of energy to be harvested and dictates the amount of energy that can be used by the edge device for deep learning inference. We compare the performance of our proposed approach with existing state-of-the-art CNNs and datasets using different filter-ranking criteria and pruning ratios.We observe that by using DRL driven pruning, the convolutional layers that consume relatively higher energy are pruned more as compared to their counterparts. Thereby, our approach outperforms existing approaches by reducing energy consumption and maintaining accuracy

Towards On-Device AI and Blockchain for 6G enabled Agricultural Supply-chain Management

6G envisions artificial intelligence (AI) powered solutions for enhancing the quality-of-service (QoS) in the network and to ensure optimal utilization of resources. In this work, we propose an architecture based on the combination of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), AI and blockchain for agricultural supply-chain management with the purpose of ensuring traceability, transparency, tracking inventories and contracts. We propose a solution to facilitate on-device AI by generating a roadmap of models with various resource-accuracy trade-offs. A fully convolutional neural network (FCN) model is used for biomass estimation through images captured by the UAV. Instead of a single compressed FCN model for deployment on UAV, we motivate the idea of iterative pruning to provide multiple task-specific models with various complexities and accuracy. To alleviate the impact of flight failure in a 6G enabled dynamic UAV network, the proposed model selection strategy will assist UAVs to update the model based on the runtime resource requirements.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Accepted to IEEE Internet of Things Magazin