The small and medium enterprises Act as catalyst for economic growth and development in Pakistan: Economic growth and development perspective

This paper explores the value of small and medium enterprises for the economic growth and development especially in Pakistan. Moreover, it assesses the usage of information technology in SMEs sector of Pakistan. According to the recent Census of Establishments conducted by the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) there are about 3.2 million economic establishments in Pakistan. Out of these Small & Medium sized enterprises (SMEs) (with employment base up to 99) constitute 90% of all private enterprises employing approximately 78% of non-agriculture labor force1. SMEs contributed over 30% to GDP, 25% in export earnings besides sharing 35% in manufacturing value addition2. The paper suggests that SMEs act as a catalyst to economical growth and development where IT embedded in their operations, planning and decisions like Hong Kong, Denmark and USA. Many other societies also place great value on the small and medium enterprises and encourage their activity. In fact, wealth and a high majority of jobs are created by small & medium businesses in the world. As a result, many experienced business people, political leaders, economists, and educators believe that fostering a robust small and medium business culture will maximize individual and collective economic and social success on a local, national, and global scale. It is recommended that SMEs may be offered access to inexpensive capital, tax exemptions and management advice & experiences and IT infrastructure which further leads toward the economical growth & development. The economical growth and development in a country can brings happiness and prosperity to its nation

Physiological effects of dietary complex carbohydrates and its metabolites role in certain diseases

Carbohydrate is one of the basic and an important food nutrient consumed worldwide. Like-wise Pakistani foods contain more carbohydrates than any other food nutrient consumed. Sometimes, Pakistani foods are devoid of protein and may contain only carbohydrates and fats as the major nutrients of the diet e.g. eating chapati (wheat bread) with potato curry. Certain non-communicable diseases can be avoided with adoption of proper healthier food habits and eating foods according to the needs of the body. These diseases are obesity, coronary heart disease, colonic cancer and gastrointestinal disorders (diverticular disease, constipation, hiatal hernia and hemorrhoids). Therefore complex carbohydrate should be an important constituent of our daily meal and it can be adopted for the management of certain diseases provided that it is used in proper amounts. Consumption of certain complex carbohydrates is associated with lower body weight, reduced blood cholesterol, reduced blood glucose and an increased crypt cell proliferation. Therefore, it is necessary and utmost important to know the various types of carbohydrates to enable us to decide to include carbohydrates in our daily food according to our health requirements. Not necessarily all the community need to know but at least those who are associated with nutrition and health management must know the beneficial as well as the harmful effects of carbohydrates

Attorney general: role and powers

The Attorney General is the principal legal adviser to the Government of Malaysia on matters of law and legal opinion. He is appointed by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (YDPA) on the advice of the Prime Minister from among a person who is qualified to be a judge of the Federal Court.2 Article 123 of the Federal Constitution provides that a person is qualified to be appointed as a Federal Court judge if for the ten years preceding his appointment, he has been an advocate, a member of the judicial and legal service of the Federation or of the legal service of a state, or sometimes one and sometimes another. The Attorney General shall hold office during the pleasure of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong and shall not be removed from office except on the like grounds and in the like manner as a judge of the Federal Cou

Bioactivity -guided isolation of antimicrobial agent from Coleus amboinicus Lour (Torbangun)

The leaves of Coleus amboinicus from Indonesia (CAL-I) and from Malaysia, Coleus aromaticus (CAT-M), Pogostemon cablin (PC-M), Coleus blumei–red leaves (CBR-M), Coleus amboinicus– (CAL-M) Coleus blumei –purple leaves (CBP-M) were collected from different localities, freeze dried and extracted with aqueous methanol. The biological activity in vitro, especially in relation to total phenolic & flavonoid contents, antioxidant and antimicrobial activities were studied. Total phenolic content was determined according to the Folin-Ciocalteu method whilst antioxidant activity was assessed using 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) method. The antimicrobial activity of the extract was determined by making use of macro dilution and disc diffusion methods on two gram positive bacteria, two gram negative bacteria and on fungus as well. Furthermore, the toxicity was also assessed for the extracts by performing acute toxicity test. The phenolic content among the six Lamiaceae leaves extract showed significant difference (p<0.05) in result ranging from 55.21 - 95.17 mg GAE/g of dried samples. Pogostemon cablin (PC-M) had the highest content of phenolic followed by C. blumei (CBP-M). There were significant differences (p<0.05) of IC50 value of six Lamiaceae leaves extract ranging from 10.5 – 34.1 µg/ml. Among the species studied, Coleus amboinicus (CAL-M) and Pogostemon cablin (PC-M) showed higher antioxidant activity compared to the other leaves extracts. All leaves extracts showed activity at least against one strain of bacteria and result showed significant difference (p<0.05) between activities on the microorganism studied. On the contrary, all of the leaves extracts were not effective against C. albicans. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of all leaves extracts ranged from 1.0–2.0 mg/ml in inhibiting the growth of S. aureus, E. Coli, P. aeruginosa and B.subtilis. The acute toxicity test using C. Blumei leaves extract showed that there was no mortality of animals recorded at the highest dose of 5000 mg/kg body weight. This study shows that the extracts can be used as antioxidant and antimicrobial agent without having the toxic effect

Deficient intakes of energy and macronutrients in Pakistani female students assessed by composite samples method

The main purpose of the study was to compare the energy and macronutrients intakes by composite sample method. Duplicate food samples for seven days i.e., breakfast, lunch and dinner and whatever else ate during the week were analyzed for macronutrients consumption. Twenty female students were registered from the female hostel of the NWFP, Agricultural University Peshawar Pakistan. Age, weight, height and skin folds of the students were recorded on the day of the registration. From the anthropometry Basal Metabolic Index (BMI) was determined. The composite food samples were analyzed for protein, carbohydrates and fats. The energy values were determined by multiplying the daily eaten protein, carbohydrates and fats with 4, 4 and 9, respectively. The mean values of energy and macronutrients intakes were compared with the norms as appropriate. The energy and protein intakes were lower by -29.34% and protein intake was higher by 42.65% compared with American Dietetic Association (ADA). Similarly, compared to the WHO/FAO values the energy was lower -30.57 and protein was higher by 43.29, respectively. The energy contribution was higher from protein by 151% and lower from carbohydrates and fats by -28.35 and 23.43%, respectively. This study suggests that students are having deficient or imbalance energy intakes from macronutrients and are at the risk of malnutrition

Conceptual Metaphors in the Hazaragi Community’s Institution of Marriage in Balochistan, Pakistan

Conceptual metaphor theory explains conceptual systems through cross-domain mappings. The mapping occurs on a conceptual level in a way that one conceptual domain is understood in terms of another conceptual domain. It also shows how target domain is perceived or understood through numerous source domains. Daily life experiences of people create patterns of understanding and conceptual metaphors are used to utilise these patterns in our utterances about issues in the world. In this research paper, Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) conceptual metaphor theory and Grice’s (1975) implicature theory are used as theoretical frameworks to identify, study and interpret conceptual metaphors for marriage in the Hazaragi community in Balochistan, Pakistan. This study focusses on the institution of marriage as this institution carries rich conceptual domains and has many conceptual mappings. Data collected from the book on Hazaragi idioms and two Hazaragi dramas were used to identify and analyse five general categories which include marriage as a food, marriage as an expensive commodity, marriage as a friendship, marriage as a slavery, and marriage as a journey or time. The paper also explores implied conceptual metaphors for marriage which do not indicate the concept of marriage directly.&nbsp; In short, this study discusses how conceptual metaphors in the institution of marriage depict Hazaragi culture and tradition

Hand Gesture Classification Using Emg Signal

The art of gesture recognition involves identification and classification of gestures. A gesture is any reproducible action or a sequence of actions. There are lots of techniques and algorithms to recognize gestures. In the project, gestures are recognized using biological signals generated by the human body. There are many biological signals that can be used for gesture recognition. Some of them are Electroencephalogram (EEG), Electrocardiogram (ECG), and Electromyogram (EMG). EMG signals are generally used because they have good signal strength (in the order of mV). Thus we use emg signal as the acquisition of EMG signals is easy and less complex ascompared to the above mentioned signals. Five different gestures such as Six features such as . root mean square, mean, standard deviation, variance, maximum and minimum values are extracted from the emg signals. The classifier used under the study is SVM , giving classification accuracy of 96.8%

Time Frequency Feature Extraction Scheme based on MUAP for classification of Neuromuscular Disorders using EMG signals.

The features of motor unit action potentials(MUAPs) are extracted from electromyographic (EMG) signals which provide information for diagnosis of neuromuscular disorders. Neuromuscular Disorders are classified into two categories Myopathic and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis(ALS). ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their demise. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost hence the EMG signals of the patient of this disease are characterized by signals that have a increased value of amplitude , thereby increasing the peak to peak value of the signal. On the other hand Myopathies are a group of disorders characterized by a primary structural or functional impairment of skeletal muscle. They usually affect muscle without involving the nervous system, resulting in muscular weakness hence the EMG signals of the patients of this group of disorder are characterized by signals of shorter duration and smaller amplitude. The aim of this study, is to design a automated system which can classify the signals as ALS , Myopathic and Normal.The proposed scheme employs extracting both time and time–frequency features of a MUAP and then providing it to classifier which can classify the signals as ALS, myopathic and normal.In the proposed system, three classifiers are implemented and their results are evaluated out of which Random Forest classification technique provides the highest accuracy of 97.85%

Nutritional and other causes of hypertension in district Lakki Marwat, NWFP, Pakistan

This study was designed to identify the causes of hypertension in District Lakki Marwat, North West Frontier Province (NWFP)-Pakistan. Eight hundred individuals in the age range of 21 - 60 years (81 % male and 19 % female) from the urban & rural areas were randomly selected. A voters list was obtained from the Assistant Election Commissioner’s Office and every 7th person was randomly selected as a study case in each of the selected areas. The height, weight, blood pressure, socio- economic, demographic and nutritional information was recorded on questionnaire. The data was compiled and assessed for nutritional status, hypertension and other factors for any possible association. None of the respondents was in the category of optimal blood pressure. In the categories of optimal blood pressure, normal blood pressure, high normal blood pressure, hypertension stage 1, hypertension stage 2 and hypertension stage 3 on overall basis the percentages were 0.00, 71.75, 14.65, 4.87, 3.87 & 4.62 respectively, for the urban area the percentages were 0.00, 70.84, 12.85, 7.52, 4.07 & 4.70 respectively and for the rural area the percentages were 0.00, 72.34, 15.80, 3.11, 3.95 & 4.78 respectively. The association of the hypertension was significant with the different variables i.e. basal metabolic index (BMI), socioeconomic status (job and family responsibilities, social problems & enmity), nutritional habit (particularly excessive saturated fat & salt intake), smoking and lack of knowledge about the hypertension. This study suggests that the causes of hypertension are due to poor dietary habits, social and economic problems in the District Lakki Marwat, North West Frontier Province (NWFP)-Pakista