Comparison of Crop Water Productivity of Traditional and Hybrid Maize Varieties

A field study was conducted on clay loam soil at the research farm of The University of Agriculture Peshawar during Kharif 2012. Objective of the study was to compare the crop water productivity of maize using two traditional (V1=Azam and V2=Jalal) and two hybrid (V3=3025W and V4=30K08) varieties having four replicates. Soil moisture was determined by gravimetric method taking into account soil moisture, rainfall, and irrigation water applied. Crop water productivity (CWP) was calculated by dividing grain yield and total seasonal water applied to each variety. Results showed that CWP of maize variety V1 ranged from 0.75-0.8 kg m-3 with a mean of 0.8 kg m-3, CWP of V2 ranged from 0.82-0.91 kg m-3 with a mean of 0.85 kg m-3, CWP of V3 ranged from 1.16-1.23 kg m-3 with a mean of 1.19 kg m-3 and CWP of V4 ranged from 1.19-1.31 kg m-3 with a mean value of 1.24 kg m-3. Crop water productivity in case of V1 was low compared to FAO reported values. CWP was found statistically significant (P ? 0.05) for the selected maize varieties. Results showed that among all the varieties V4 performed better therefore, it is recommended for irrigated areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Key Words: crop water productivity, hybrid maize, traditional varieties

A Comprehensive Review of Vehicle Detection Techniques Under Varying Moving Cast Shadow Conditions Using Computer Vision and Deep Learning

Design of a vision-based traffic analytic system for urban traffic video scenes has a great potential in context of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). It offers useful traffic-related insights at much lower costs compared to their conventional sensor based counterparts. However, it remains a challenging problem till today due to the complexity factors such as camera hardware constraints, camera movement, object occlusion, object speed, object resolution, traffic flow density, and lighting conditions etc. ITS has many applications including and not just limited to queue estimation, speed detection and different anomalies detection etc. All of these applications are primarily dependent on sensing vehicle presence to form some basis for analysis. Moving cast shadows of vehicles is one of the major problems that affects the vehicle detection as it can cause detection and tracking inaccuracies. Therefore, it is exceedingly important to distinguish dynamic objects from their moving cast shadows for accurate vehicle detection and recognition. This paper provides an in-depth comparative analysis of different traffic paradigm-focused conventional and state-of-the-art shadow detection and removal algorithms. Till date, there has been only one survey which highlights the shadow removal methodologies particularly for traffic paradigm. In this paper, a total of 70 research papers containing results of urban traffic scenes have been shortlisted from the last three decades to give a comprehensive overview of the work done in this area. The study reveals that the preferable way to make a comparative evaluation is to use the existing Highway I, II, and III datasets which are frequently used for qualitative or quantitative analysis of shadow detection or removal algorithms. Furthermore, the paper not only provides cues to solve moving cast shadow problems, but also suggests that even after the advent of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN)-based vehicle detection methods, the problems caused by moving cast shadows persists. Therefore, this paper proposes a hybrid approach which uses a combination of conventional and state-of-the-art techniques as a pre-processing step for shadow detection and removal before using CNN for vehicles detection. The results indicate a significant improvement in vehicle detection accuracies after using the proposed approach

Breast Milk from Tanzanian Women has Divergent Effects on Cell-Free and Cell-Associated HIV-1 Infection in Vitro.

Transmission of HIV-1 during breastfeeding is a significant source of new pediatric infections in sub-Saharan Africa. Breast milk from HIV-positive mothers contains both cell-free and cell-associated virus; however, the impact of breast milk on HIV-1 infectivity remains poorly understood. In the present study, breast milk was collected from HIV-positive and HIV-negative Tanzanian women attending antenatal clinics in Dar es Salaam. Milk was analyzed for activity in vitro against both cell-free and cell-associated HIV-1. Potent inhibition of cell-free R5 and X4 HIV-1 occurred in the presence of milk from all donors regardless of HIV-1 serostatus. Inhibition of cell-free HIV-1 infection positively correlated with milk levels of sialyl-Lewis(X) from HIV-positive donors. In contrast, milk from 8 of 16 subjects enhanced infection with cell-associated HIV-1 regardless of donor serostatus. Milk from two of these subjects contained high levels of multiple pro-inflammatory cytokines including TNFα, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, MIP-1α, MIP-1β, MCP-1 and IP-10, and enhanced cell-associated HIV-1 infection at dilutions as high as 1∶500. These findings indicate that breast milk contains innate factors with divergent activity against cell-free and cell-associated HIV-1 in vitro. Enhancement of cell-associated HIV-1 infection by breast milk may be associated with inflammatory conditions in the mother and may contribute to infant infection during breastfeeding

An Examination of Challenges and Prospects of Microfinance Sector of Pakistan

Abstract The aim of this study refers to highlighting the key challenges and prospects for the microfinance sector of Pakistan. This study has been carried out using the following four steps: present scenario of microfinance in Pakistan, identification of internal and external challenges, prospects in microfinance, and policy recommendations to boost microfinance sector in Pakistan. In this research, microfinance framework has been used to better understand the process of building a sustainable microfinance institution. The findings have been obtained through Primary data, which has been collected through questionnaires. The participants are banks and other financial institutions. This research contributes in three ways: First, microfinance institutions will be facilitated in highlighting the challenges and prospects that are being neglected in the process of analyzing the problems and 147 European Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Sciences -Issue 31 (2011) opportunities faced by this sector. Second, other financial institutions and banks, realizing the significance of this business, will get encouragement to enter this sector with more innovative products and better standard practices. Thirdly, it will help the country in coming up with new strategies for micro financing. Moreover, microfinance sector may start conducting more training sessions to enhance the skills of the clients, which will affect positively this sector

مقارنة الفعل بين اللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية - دراسة نحوية تقابلية-

Arabic and English are two international languages being spoken and understood in every corner of the world. However, speaker of one of the two languages faces difficulty in the other as both are deep-rooted having complex structure of sentences. That’s why it is direly needed to have a research in the comparative study of the two languages. This article deals with “The Syntactical Comparative Study of Verb in Arabic and English” comprising of many small chapters including sentence structure, status of verb in sentence, tenses, active and passive voice, gerund and infinitive, transitive and intransitive verbs and model verbs

Comparison of Paricalcitol (I.V) and Alfacalcidol (I.V) in Treatment of Secondary Hyperparathyroidism (SHPT) in Hemodialysis Patients

Objective: To compare the efficacy of Alfacalcidol (I.V) and Paricalcitol (I.V) for the treatment of secondary hyperparathyroidism (SHPT) in hemodialysis patients. Material and Methods: An open-label randomized clinical trial was carried out to compare the efficacy of intravenous paricalcitol and alfacalcidol. We recruited 80 patients with end-stage renal disease receiving maintenance hemodialysis in a tertiary care hospital dialysis unit. The participants were randomly divided into two groups. A wash-out period of one week was decided for each patient in whom he/she did not receive any medication for the treatment of hypocalcemia, hyperphosphatemia, or secondary hyperparathyroidism. Afterward, patients received an expanding dosage of alfacalcidol or paricalcitol for a time of about four months,and then after a further washout period of one week, each group received opposite treatment (paricalcitol or alfacalcidol) for a further four months (16 weeks). Results: The analyzed data for the same end-points revealed no difference between the two groups. No significant statistical difference in terms of calcium levels in both groups was noted. The study also found no big difference in the ability of both drugs to treat secondary hyperparathyroidism, while keeping serum phosphate and calcium levels inside the desired range. The study also found no distinction in the frequency of hypercalcemia and hyperphosphatemia as a side effect of Vitamin D analogue’s treatment. Conclusion: The study concludes that alfacalcidol and paricalcitol are equally effective in the treatment of secondary hyperparathyroidism in the dialysis population. Since Paricalcitol is expensive as compared to alfacalcidol, in an economically challenged country like Pakistan, Alfacalcidol can be a better choice when treating SHPT as we did not find any gross difference in the ability of two drugs to restrict SHPT. Keywords: Alfacalcidol, Paricalcitol, Secondary hyperparathyroidism, Hemodialysi

Synthesis and Characterization of Hydroxyethyl Cellulose Grafted with Copolymer of Polyaniline and Polypyrrole Biocomposite for Adsorption of Dyes

The emerging concepts of sustainable textiles and controlled production strategy demands ideally zero emissions of contaminants into the aquatic environment. However, the currently in-practiced conventional processes in textiles dispose of a number of contaminants especially super toxic synthetic dyes as effluents. In recent years, nanomaterials have become attractive choice for eco-friendly removal of organic dyestuff. Accordingly, this article reports synthesis and characterization of biocomposite wherein copolymer of polyaniline (PANI) and Polypyrrole (PPY) was grafted onto hydroxyethyl cellulose (HEC). Further, adsorption properties of as-prepared composite were evaluated using textile dyes Rhodamine B (RhB) and methyl Orange (MO)- as model adsorbate. The characterization of novel biocomposite (HEC/PANI-PPy) was carried out using Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller analyzer (BET), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), and powder X-ray diffraction (XRD). The operational parameters such as dye initial concentration, adsorbent amount, pH and contact time were also studied to evaluate the efficiency level of the prepared biocomposite. Interestingly, the composite-mediated adsorption of RhB and MO followed pseudo-second order and the Langmuir isotherm. It is found that the adsorption capacity HEC/PANI-PPy is 30.06 and 29.3 for RhB and MO respectively. Thus, HEC/PANI-PPy is an inexpensive and highly efficient adsorbent that could be employed for could be employed for the separation and removal of toxic organic dyes from polluted textile effluents

Current developments in chemistry, coordination, structure and biological aspects of 1-(acyl/aroyl)-3- (substituted)thioureas: advances Continue…

1-(acyl/aroyl)-3-(substituted)thioureas are exciting structures in the fields of organic synthesis, material sciences, and biomedical research. Of particular significance is the fact that acyl thiourea derivatives have been demonstrated to be highly exceptional ligands and their coordination compounds have extensively been investigated in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals and agrochemical ingredients. Moreover, these structural motifs are enjoying the prestigious status as versatile synthons in heterocyclic syntheses. Therefore, the progress to introduce functionalization on the backbone of 1-(acyl/aroyl)-3-(substituted)thioureas is highly desirable. This account summarizes our efforts to capture recent documented achievements by various research groups.Fil: Saeed, Aamer. Quaid-i-azam University; PakistánFil: Mustafa, Muhammad Naeem. Quaid-i-azam University; PakistánFil: Zain-ul-Abideen, Muhammad. Quaid-i-azam University; PakistánFil: Shabir, Ghulam. Quaid-i-azam University; PakistánFil: Erben, Mauricio Federico. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Centro de Química Inorgánica "Dr. Pedro J. Aymonino". Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Centro de Química Inorgánica "Dr. Pedro J. Aymonino"; ArgentinaFil: Flörke, Ulrich. Universität Paderborn; Alemani