Private Sector Investment in Agricultural Research in Pakistan

Private sector investment in agricultural research in Pakistan, although growing in importance, is limited at present and with a few exceptions, has not had a significant impact on agricultural production and productivity. The publicly funded agricultural research system has made the major contribution to increases in production and productivity growth. However the impressive gains of the past cannot be achieved with the current underfunded public research system which makes it all the more important for private sector investment in agricultural research to achieve its full potential in areas of its comparative advantage. This paper identifies the magnitude of private sector agricultural research investment in Pakistan and discusses some of the current policy constraints that hamper its scope. Information was gathered through informal and formal surveys of multinational and national firms conducting agricultural research in Pakistan in the areas of inputs and product processing. Although private sector investment in agricultural research has more than doubled in the past ten years, uncertainty persists surrounding privatisation issues, unresolved intellectual property rights regulation, and the enforcement of seed certification and truth-in-labelling rules and regulations.

ASSESSMENT AND MITIGATION OF WATER RELATED ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH IMPACTS IN THE BAGRAMI DISTRICT OF KABUL PROVINCE

My paper includes: (1) an analysis of cases of waterborne diseases in Bagrami District from 2003-2007; (2) a review and assessment of the effectiveness of three recent water supply and sanitation projects carried out by aid organizations; (3) a description of a Bagrami water sanitation project that I helped manage in 17 villages in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in spring 2008; and (4) my recommendations on how to improve the effectiveness of water supply and sanitation projects in Bagrami and other areas of Afghanistan based on insights gained from this study

Respiratory infection of lambs with Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae

Infection of feeder lambs with Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae was associated with outbreaks of respiratory disease. The disease, a coughing syndrome characterized by paroxysmal cough, mucoid nasal discharge, intolerance to exercise, and occasional development of rectal prolapses in some animals, has not been reported previously. Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae was isolated from 70% of 105 lambs examined and persistent isolation of this mycoplasma from diseased lambs was one of the evidences of its involvement in this coughing syndrome. The gross pathology associated with this mycoplasma was focal consolidation and was primarily observed in the cranial lobes of infected lungs. However, when a mixture of M. ovipneumoniae and a Gram-negative hemolytic coccobacillus isolated from a lamb lung were inoculated the lesions included severe consolidation and fibrinous adhesions. The histological lesions observed in lungs infected with M. ovipneumoniae included peribronchiolar and perivascular lymphocytic cuffing, lymphoid hyperplasia, interstitial thickening, and patchy loss of ciliated epithelium. The major infiltrating cells were lymphocytes, plasma cells, and macrophages. The histological lesions in lambs with the coughing syndrome were classical and diagnostic for M. ovipneumoniae infection in lambs. The indirect immunohistochemical staining of formalin-fixed lung tissues verified 84% of M. ovipneumoniae infected lungs. This technique proved to be a sensitive and specific method for in situ detection of M. ovipneumoniae antigens;Antigens of M. ovipneumoniae (heat killed antigen, sodium dodecyl sulfate treated antigen, and M. ovipneumoniae membrane fragments) demonstrated limited nonspecific mitogenic capability to transform ovine lymphocytes to blast cells. This may be correlated with the development of a cell mediated immune response in infected lungs as observed in the form of classical histological lesions;A challenge experiment in which a group of mycoplasma-free lambs were infected with an isolate of M. ovipneumoniae produced mild clinical disease. However, gross and histological lesions observed in the lungs of these lambs correlated with the pathological changes present in the natural disease;Restriction endonuclease DNA analysis indicated extensive heterogeneity among isolates of M. ovipneumoniae. Eight of 30 isolates possessed homologous patterns indicative of a single strain cluster. However, major to minor differences were present among the remaining isolates. Analysis of these isolates indicated 62 percent to 92 percent homology in band patterns when compared to the 8 isolates of one strain cluster. Hybridization of restriction DNA digests with a radiolabeled rRNA probe detected multiple bands of different molecular weights. Based on the homology of lower molecular bands 3 strain clusters of M. ovipneumoniae isolates were identified

On certain characterizations and integral representations of Chatterjea\u27s generalized Bessel polynomial

The present paper deals with certain recurrence relations, integral representations, characterizations and a Rodrigue\u27s type n-th derivative formula for the generalized Bessel polynomials of Chatterjea

Political determinants of budget deficit in Pakistan: An empirical investigation

This study is an attempt to check some political factors determining budget deficit in Pakistan. It examines the short and long-run relationship between the Budget deficit, democracy and cabinet size for Pakistan's economy. The bounds testing approach to co-integration and (ECM) error-correction models, developed within an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) framework is applied to annual data for the period 1976 to 2009 in order to investigate whether a long-run equilibrium relationship exists between the budget deficit and these factors. The result of the bounds test indicates that there exist long-run relationship between the budget deficit and political variables. The results provide strong evidence that large government size will significantly add to the budget deficit. The democracy can help in reducing budget deficit but shows a weaker influence in case of Pakistan for the sample period

Private Sector Investment in Agricultural Research in Pakistan

Private sector investment in agricultural research in Pakistan, although growing in importance, is limited at present and with a few exceptions, has not had a significant impact on agricultural production and productivity. The publicly funded agricultural research system has made the major contribution to increases in production and productivity growth. However the impressive gains of the past cannot be achieved with the current underfunded public research system which makes it all the more important for private sector investment in agricultural research to achieve its full potential in areas of its comparative advantage. This paper identifies the magnitude of private sector agricultural research investment in Pakistan and discusses some of the current policy constraints that hamper its scope. Information was gathered through informal and formal surveys of multinational and national firms conducting agricultural research in Pakistan in the areas of inputs and product processing. Although private sector investment in agricultural research has more than doubled in the past ten years, uncertainty persists surrounding privatisation issues, unresolved intellectual property rights regulation, and the enforcement of seed certification and truth-in-labelling rules and regulations

Sequential decomposition of operations and compilers optimization

Code optimization is an important area of research that has remarkable contributions in addressing the challenges of information technology. It has introduced a new trend in hardware as well as in software. Efforts that have been made in this context led to introduce a new foundation, both for compilers and processors. In this report we study different techniques used for sequential decomposition of mappings without using extra variables. We focus on finding and improving these techniques of computations. Especially, we are interested in developing methods and efficient heuristic algorithms to find the decompositions and implementing these methods in particular cases. We want to implement these methods in a compiler with an aim of optimizing code in machine language. It is always possible to calculate an operation related to K registers by a sequence of assignments using only these K registers. We verified the results and introduced new methods. We described In Situ computation of linear mapping by a sequence of linear assignments over the set of integers and investigated bound for the algorithm. We introduced a method for the case of boolean bijective mappings via algebraic operations over polynomials in GF(2). We implemented these methods using Mapl

Management and Organization of Theses held in University Libraries: An Investigation from Information Professionals in Pakistan

This research aims to investigate the management and organization of theses collection held in university libraries of Punjab Province. It also examines the availability of theses in university libraries, procedures, and techniques applied to organize theses collection and provide access. The quantitative research method by using a questionnaire as a research tool has been applied to collect data from libraries. Results revealed that university libraries possess an adequate number of theses collection in hard and soft form. They are organizing a print collection of theses by using traditional methods. Users can use theses collection under the supervision of library staff and are not allowed to get a photocopy of required pages due to copyright issue. In most of the statements provided by the respondents from public and private sector university libraries, there was no significant difference in the opinion of respondents to organize and manage thesis collection in university libraries. The study recommended that university libraries should manage this important piece of collection by using digital repository development software in their libraries and ensure proper management of theses collection and its use by the research community around the globe. The study also recommended that e-theses should be submitted in the national repository so that no one can pirate this intellectual work and users may get the maximum benefit from this intellectual source of information

Perception of Doctors towards Relationship with Pharmaceutical Industry

Doctors and the pharmaceutical companies are the main component of health care system which is also essential for each other. Their interdependency on such a large scale calls for a better relationship between these two stakeholders of the health care system. But most of the time this relationship is used in a negative way which not only has a bad impact on the reputation of this prestigious medical profession but also affects the health of the patient which are the ones to bear the effects of this malafied relationship.              In order to see how this relationship works in the hospitals of Azad Kashmir, this study was conducted on the doctors of Abbas Institute of Medical Sciences, Muzaffarabad. Due to shortage of time and limited resources only one hospital was selected for the study to be carried out. This was a mixed study carried out from January through June 2017. In our study 100 doctors were selected for data collection in questionnaire method. While three different focus groups involving doctors from different specialties were made. Out of 100 doctors, 36 doctors agreed that the doctors in AIMS are aware of such guidelines, 92 doctors agreed that there is need of national guidelines to monitor the doctor and pharmaceutical company’s relationship, 67 responded that doctor’s prescription is influenced by the gifts given by pharmaceutical companies, 52 doctors agreed that pharmaceutical companies should be banned from giving gifts to physicians, 88 responded that the information provided by those representatives is only superficial and they don’t know the core information like side effects and mode of action of the drugs, 15 thought that yes it is ethical to accept the gifts from the pharmaceutical companies but only to the extent of samples of medicines and out of 100, 89 doctors responded in favor of incorporation of bioethics in the curriculum of the medical education. During focus group discussion on the topic, three themes which were finalized after detailed deliberation and these themes were, Doctor-Pharma Regulations, Accepting the gifts from Pharmaceutical Companies and influence of these Interactions on Physicians’ drug prescribing Behaviors and how the prescribing behaviors of doctors. Conclusion: It is concluded that pharmaceutical companies have hijacked our whole health system to some extent and our whole health system is polluted because of these Pharmaceutical company’s representatives and there is a need to ascertain the fact that if this phenomenon is not controlled, in near future we will have to face very severe consequences and our patients will be at the mercy of pharmaceutical companies rather than the doctor