Study the Level of Awareness Among Housewives About Environmental Education

The purpose of this paper was to study the level of awareness among housewives about environmental education. For this task review of existing literature was carried out. Being descriptive study, survey method was adopted for data collection. A group of 50 housewives from Bahawalnagar District of Division Bahawalpur was recognized as sample to accomplish the study. Closed ended questionnaire for housewives were developed on Likert scale and data was collected. Data collected through questionnaire was tabulated, analysis and discussed. The analysis was arranged on the basis of respondents and the housewives’ opinions were analyzed. The result from the findings of this study showed that active learning of the housewives has appeared with the expansion of their actions in the Green Future. With the presence at the Eco conductors Training course as an opening, they come to join in the Eco conducting Activity and developed Green Future into an essential association connected to the eco-environment in the society. Their Eco-conducting movement was based on the outcome of knowledge from the teaching courses, in which the accessible expert in Eco conducting skilled them. At the end some recommendations were made to improve housewives’ skills and awareness about environmental education

Religion and Intercultural Communication Competence

The rush of international students has been increasing day by day in Malaysia. Religion is not a personal affair there and the foreigners are treated based on their religion. Several studies suggest to address religion in this regard. The aim of this study is to examine whether religion is having association with the intercultural communication competence (ICC) in Malaysian context. Literature has explored that religiosity has not been given attention by the researchers in the previous studies regarding the contributors of ICC. Although, religion is one of the crucial element behind every intercultural communication. Scholarships regarding the religiosity in terms of ICC would be fruitful for documenting the current situation of international students in Malaysia. Keywords: Religion, Religiosity, ICC

Shifters of Participation in Micro Credit and Credit in General in Pakistan

This study explores the determinants of participation in the credit market using Binary Logit Model on a total sample of 185 small scale traders including 85 borrowers and 100  non-borrowers in the third largest city of Pakistan “Faisalabad”. Two different models were estimated including one for the micro entrepreneurs and the other for both micro and small scale traders. Results indicate that higher Average Propensity to Consume is a major factor of entrance in the credit market. Family size and the level of education were also positively related with participation in credit market. However number of earners is negatively related with the probability of entrance in the credit market. H-L Statistics shows that model is good fit. Key Words: Credit Participation, Micro Credit, Logit Model

The Impact of Parents' Education on Child Health from the perspective of Demographic and Health Survey

The prevalence of underweight at 31 % and stunting at 44 % among under 5 children indicates poor child health situation in Pakistan. Although many significant covariates of malnutrition have been outlined in past studies, most of them do not signify parents’ education as a composite factor to affect child malnutrition. Hence, this research will investigate the impact of parents’ education on malnutrition, controlling for other socio-demographic and behavioral confounders. This study will construct logistical regression modeling using an analytical framework for empirical analysis using a data set of 3199 selected mothers produced birth cards at the survey time, retrieved from the latest Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2012-13. Among empirical outcomes, parents’ education, household economic rank and environmental settings have significant influence on underweight and stunted infants. The interesting point is that likelihood of stunting growth is relatively less reduced than that of underweight growth when one parent with secondary and second with primary level of education, but, underweight hazard is decreased little less as only one parent is with primary level of education comparing with stunting risk. Highly educated parents have similar likelihood of acute and chronic malnutrition. Rich households appeared little more effective to cause stunted kids than underweight ones. Furthermore, moderate environment setting significantly generates a higher risk of underweight relative to stunting hazard for the kids. These outcomes suggest that parents’ education should be targeted in the public health policies to scale up child nutrition in both time span

Extensively Drug-Resistant Salmonella typhi XDR Infection at Rawalpindi Medical University and Allied Hospitals

Objective: To evaluate the prevalence of extensively drug-resistant Salmonella typhi (XDR) in RMU Allied Hospitals. Study Design: A descriptive cross-sectional study. Material and Methods: It is a cross-sectional, prospective study conducted at RMU Allied Hospitals from January 2019–December 2019. Blood culture samples were received in the pathology lab, they were collected by simple random sampling and processed by conventional incubation. Antibiotic susceptibility of the isolates was done on Muller Hinton agar using modified Kirby Bauer disk diffusion method and antibiotic zone diameters were measured according to CLSI guidelines. Results: Out of the total 8045 cultures, 911 (11%) showed growth, among which 179 (20%) were Salmonella typhi and 135 (15%) XDR Salmonella. Meropenem revealed the highest sensitivity, Chloramphenicol, and Augmentin revealed the highest resistance. Conclusion: Blood culture results revealed Salmonella typhi 20% with a significant number of XDR Salmonella 15%. Antibiotics susceptibility pattern exhibits Meropenem and Azithromycin as the only antibiotics for XDR Salmonella. Salmonella typhi infection has a significantly high prevalence among children as compared to adults. (p=0.0017) Injudicious use of antibiotics is one of the important aspects of the occurrence of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella

Malicious node detection using machine learning and distributed data storage using blockchain in WSNs

In the proposed work, blockchain is implemented on the Base Stations (BSs) and Cluster Heads (CHs) to register the nodes using their credentials and also to tackle various security issues. Moreover, a Machine Learning (ML) classifier, termed as Histogram Gradient Boost (HGB), is employed on the BSs to classify the nodes as malicious or legitimate. In case, the node is found to be malicious, its registration is revoked from the network. Whereas, if a node is found to be legitimate, then its data is stored in an Interplanetary File System (IPFS). IPFS stores the data in the form of chunks and generates hash for the data, which is then stored in blockchain. In addition, Verifiable Byzantine Fault Tolerance (VBFT) is used instead of Proof of Work (PoW) to perform consensus and validate transactions. Also, extensive simulations are performed using the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) dataset, referred as WSN-DS. The proposed model is evaluated both on the original dataset and the balanced dataset. Furthermore, HGB is compared with other existing classifiers, Adaptive Boost (AdaBoost), Gradient Boost (GB), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Extreme Gradient Boost (XGB) and ridge, using different performance metrics like accuracy, precision, recall, micro-F1 score and macro-F1 score. The performance evaluation of HGB shows that it outperforms GB, AdaBoost, LDA, XGB and Ridge by 2-4%, 8-10%, 12-14%, 3-5% and 14-16%, respectively. Moreover, the results with balanced dataset are better than those with original dataset. Also, VBFT performs 20-30% better than PoW. Overall, the proposed model performs efficiently in terms of malicious node detection and secure data storage. © 2013 IEEE

An overview of dominant research approaches to measure Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC)

The aim of this paper is to discuss the several dominant research approaches incorporated by the intercultural researchers of the past. These approaches are elaborated into two different manners. Firstly, an overview of the six prominent theoretical approaches is discussed briefly along with the lacking and culture-specific elements in the approaches are witnessed. Secondly, culture general approaches are considered with their importance in the research practice regarding their culture general nature. Following with the remarkable contributions towards the current body of knowledge by Lily A. Arasaratnam in intercultural communication competence (ICC). In addition, it is also pointed out that how she developed such culture general models of ICC with a thorough discussion on the series of her culture general models. It is noticed from the literature on intercultural competence that previous approaches and culture general model are mostly addressed in the Western context. Even though context does matter a lot in the intercultural research. Therefore, it is suggested to explore these approaches and culture general models of multiple cultural perspectives, especially in Non-Western contexts to validate their culture-general nature

Historical Development and Models of Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC)

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the literature regarding the intercultural communication competence (ICC) into two distinctive aspects: historical development of ICC from 1960 till now and the differences in nature of ICC models. The first portion discusses briefly about the remarkable contributions by the intercultural researchers in different eras in the literature of ICC. On the other side, the second portion comprehends that how the existing models of intercultural competence are different from each other. The second portion is further categorized into five exclusive types of the models of ICC; Compositional, Co-orientational, Developmental, Adaptational and Causal Process Models. These causal process models are claimed to be culture general models of ICC and can translate well among multiple cultural perspectives. Due to the dominance of Western context in these models, it is an upsurge need to relook at the recent model of ICC from the Non-western context

Influence of International Students’ Empathy on their Attitude towards Other Cultures

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of international students’ empathy on their attitude towards other cultures (ATOC) during inter-cultural communication. Previously, this relationship was addressed by western researchers in the culture-general models of intercultural communication competence (ICC). Until now, it is very hard to find such evidences that can establish the presence of relationship among empathy and ATOC from the non-western context. Therefore, this study investigated the impact of empathy on ATOC from the non-western context of Malaysia. The data was collected through simple random sampling by incorporating survey technique through quantitative research approach. Participants were the international students from University Utara Malaysia. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was incorporated to analyze the data in Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS). The findings of the study revealed that there is a positive significant effect of empathy on ATOC of the international students of Malaysia. In addition, the findings are evident that empathy of the international student has a strong impact on their positive ATOC. Lastly, this study supported the findings of earlier studies that witnessed that empathy is the predictor of ATOC