Energy Consumption and Economic Growth in Pakistan: A Sectoral Analysis

The study aimed at investigating the relationship between energy consumption at aggregate and disaggregate levels i.e., oil, coal, gas and electricity in different sectors (commercial, agriculture, industry, power and transport) of the economy with the economic growth in Pakistan. Annual time series data for the time period ranging from 1972 to 2014 has been used in this study. Autoregressive distributed lag bound testing approach for cointegration and to find the relationship between variables Granger causality test is applied. The results of the study showed that there exists a long run relationship between the dependent variable (economic growth) and independent variables (aggregate and disaggregate oil, coal, gas and electricity consumption in different sectors). It is also found that there exists a Neutrality Hypothesis between aggregate and disaggregate oil consumption and Conservation Hypothesis is found in aggregate and disaggregate coal, gas and electricity consumption. This study recommends that government should increase job opportunities in industrial sector where oil is used for production, shift their burden to cheap available resource from coal and transfer the units of electricity to industrial sector so that economic growth of Pakistan can be enhanced

Energy Consumption and Economic Growth in Pakistan: A Sectoral Analysis

The study aimed at investigating the relationship between energy consumption at aggregate and disaggregate levels i.e., oil, coal, gas and electricity in different sectors (commercial, agriculture, industry, power and transport) of the economy with the economic growth in Pakistan. Annual time series data for the time period ranging from 1972 to 2014 has been used in this study. Autoregressive distributed lag bound testing approach for cointegration and to find the relationship between variables Granger causality test is applied. The results of the study showed that there exists a long run relationship between the dependent variable (economic growth) and independent variables (aggregate and disaggregate oil, coal, gas and electricity consumption in different sectors). It is also found that there exists a Neutrality Hypothesis between aggregate and disaggregate oil consumption and Conservation Hypothesis is found in aggregate and disaggregate coal, gas and electricity consumption. This study recommends that government should increase job opportunities in industrial sector where oil is used for production, shift their burden to cheap available resource from coal and transfer the units of electricity to industrial sector so that economic growth of Pakistan can be enhanced

Walking the Talk? A Corporate Governance Perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility Decoupling

Information asymmetry and the pressure to conform to stakeholders’ expectations cause firms to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) decoupling – a practice that has severe socioeconomic consequences for firms. Adopting a corporate governance perspective, this paper answers a novel question: whether board gender diversity (BGD) curbs CSR decoupling. Using a battery of sophisticated analyses and robustness tests on 9276 firm-year observations for the period 2002–2017, our results confirm that BGD is negatively associated with CSR decoupling. Analysis of the composition of gender-diverse boards further reveals that this effect is stronger for balanced boards than for skewed and tilted boards. Furthermore, we note that independent female directors are more effective monitors of decoupling than executive female directors. We also document that the relationship between BGD and CSR decoupling is stronger when the overall governance is weak. This implies that gender-diverse boards could act as a substitute mechanism for corporate governance that would otherwise be weak. Our study offers important theoretical and policy implications for the field of corporate governance and CSR

Assessment of derangement in biochemical profile in primary open angle glaucoma patients presenting at a tertiary care hospital

Objective: To assess the changes in high sensitivity C Reactive protein (hs-CRP), serum cholesterol, uric acid, creatinine, bilirubin and ALT in patients of primary open angle glaucoma. Material and methods: Comparative cross-sectional study conducted between April 2021 and October 2021 at departments of Ophthalmology and Pathology, --removed for blind review----44 POAG patients and 54 healthy controls volunteered to participate in the study. POAG was diagnosed as per criteria. Venous blood was drawn for analysis of serum cholesterol, uric acid, creatinine, bilirubin, ALT and hs-CRP.  hs-CRP was performed on ELISA plate reader Platos R496 while spectrophotometric analysis of serum uric acid, creatinine, and cholesterol was carried on Beckman Coulter AU-700. Results: Mean hemoglobin (Hb), Total leukocyte count (TLC), serum urea, creatinine, uric acid, ALT, bilirubin, cholesterol and HbA1c were 12.80 ±1.50g, 8.88±1.92 mm3, 5.95±5.47 µmol/l, 92.19±21.81 µmol/l, 305.85±79.92 mmol/l, 34.31±18.26 IU/L, 9.26±3.11 µmol/l, 5.18±0.96 mmol/l,6.70±1.28 %respectively whereas the Mean IOP in POAG patients was 28mmHg, mean CCT was 516.6 µm, and mean vertical CDR was 0.6. High frequency of hs-CRP positivity (50 percent) was reported in our patients. Significantly lower uric acid levels were observed in primary open angle glaucoma patients versus controls ie 305.85±79.92 mmol/l vs 344.36±37.24 mmol/l (P value < 0.05). Serum creatinine was significantly different between mild and severe groups i.e. 88±14.7 vs 113.1±32.4. (p value <0.001*) Conclusion: High frequency of hs-CRP positivity and low uric acid levels suggest the presence of para inflammation in patients of POAG. Key words: Primary open angle glaucoma (POAG), intraocular pressure (IOP), high sensitivity CRP (hs-CRP), uric acid (UA

Reforms for competitive markets in Pakistan

While Pakistan has taken several steps to promote competition in its markets, further reforms are required in improving domestic commerce, agricultural markets and industries. With increasing risks and cost of doing business due to deteriorating law and order situation as well as massive energy shortages, Pakistan needs to compensate its entrepreneurs and investors by enhancing its investment and business climate. By adopting certain administrative and legal reforms, Pakistan can considerably lessen the burden on its businessmen and help lower the costs of exogenous factors. The main reforms needed to promote competitive and vibrant markets need to be initiated at the domestic commerce level. For promoting domestic commerce, city zoning laws and building regulations should be reformed to allow land to respond to market demand. The legal framework must also be strengthened to support the complex needs of diverse markets. Moreover, there is a need to push for openness and competition to bring international quality goods to the market and promote innovation. For agricultural markets, the Agricultural Produce Markets Act 1939 must be reformed to introduce competition such that private sector involvement is encouraged. Government involvement in storage and transport facilities, especially for agricultural produce, needs to be reconsidered so space can open up for private sector involvement. For reforms in the industries, consistency in policy is required along with reduction in government involvement in certain areas. It is only through minimising the heavy government footprint from markets that the private sector can be allowed to function competitively and efficiently, emphasising the role of markets as a major driving force behind economic growth

Reforms for competitive markets in Pakistan

While Pakistan has taken several steps to promote competition in its markets, further reforms are required in improving domestic commerce, agricultural markets and industries. With increasing risks and cost of doing business due to deteriorating law and order situation as well as massive energy shortages, Pakistan needs to compensate its entrepreneurs and investors by enhancing its investment and business climate. By adopting certain administrative and legal reforms, Pakistan can considerably lessen the burden on its businessmen and help lower the costs of exogenous factors. The main reforms needed to promote competitive and vibrant markets need to be initiated at the domestic commerce level. For promoting domestic commerce, city zoning laws and building regulations should be reformed to allow land to respond to market demand. The legal framework must also be strengthened to support the complex needs of diverse markets. Moreover, there is a need to push for openness and competition to bring international quality goods to the market and promote innovation. For agricultural markets, the Agricultural Produce Markets Act 1939 must be reformed to introduce competition such that private sector involvement is encouraged. Government involvement in storage and transport facilities, especially for agricultural produce, needs to be reconsidered so space can open up for private sector involvement. For reforms in the industries, consistency in policy is required along with reduction in government involvement in certain areas. It is only through minimising the heavy government footprint from markets that the private sector can be allowed to function competitively and efficiently, emphasising the role of markets as a major driving force behind economic growth

A blockchain-based deep-learning-driven architecture for quality routing in wireless sensor networks

Over the past few years, great importance has been given to wireless sensor networks (WSNs) as they play a significant role in facilitating the world with daily life services like healthcare, military, social products, etc. However, heterogeneous nature of WSNs makes them prone to various attacks, which results in low throughput, and high network delay and high energy consumption. In the WSNs, routing is performed using different routing protocols like low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH), heterogeneous gateway-based energy-aware multi-hop routing (HMGEAR), etc. In such protocols, some nodes in the network may perform malicious activities. Therefore, four deep learning (DL) techniques and a real-time message content validation (RMCV) scheme based on blockchain are used in the proposed network for the detection of malicious nodes (MNs). Moreover, to analyse the routing data in the WSN, DL models are trained on a state-of-the-art dataset generated from LEACH, known as WSN-DS 2016. The WSN contains three types of nodes: sensor nodes, cluster heads (CHs) and the base station (BS). The CHs after aggregating the data received from the sensor nodes, send it towards the BS. Furthermore, to overcome the single point of failure issue, a decentralized blockchain is deployed on CHs and BS. Additionally, MNs are removed from the network using RMCV and DL techniques. Moreover, legitimate nodes (LNs) are registered in the blockchain network using proof-of-authority consensus protocol. The protocol outperforms proof-of-work in terms of computational cost. Later, routing is performed between the LNs using different routing protocols and the results are compared with original LEACH and HMGEAR protocols. The results show that the accuracy of GRU is 97%, LSTM is 96%, CNN is 92% and ANN is 90%. Throughput, delay and the death of the first node are computed for LEACH, LEACH with DL, LEACH with RMCV, HMGEAR, HMGEAR with DL and HMGEAR with RMCV. Moreover, Oyente is used to perform the formal security analysis of the designed smart contract. The analysis shows that blockchain network is resilient against vulnerabilities. © 2013 IEEE

Impact of PUBG Game Addiction on Social Isolation and Narcissistic Tendencies among Gamers

The current research aimed to explore the relationship of PUBG game addiction with narcissistic tendencies and social isolation in gamers. For this correlation survey based research the data was conveniently collected from PUBG gamers (N= 101) age ranging from 13-30 years through online response method. The instruments included Online Game Addiction Scale (Kim, Namkoong, Ku, & Kim, 2008) Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Raskin & Hall, 1981) and Measures of Social Isolation (Zavaleta, Samuel, & Mills, 2017) for testing the hypothesis. According to the yielded results, an excellent reliability of these measures was established. The results also indicated that online game addiction, social isolation and narcissistic tendencies among PUBG game players are negatively correlated (<.05). It was concluded that online games do carry positive aspects of enhancing social skills and interactions among the players, while helping them exhibit behaviors and emotions that are not coherent with narcissistic tendencies. This paper also carries implications for families, friends, teachers and therapists of online gamers, who may use the findings to understand some of the positive aspects of playing online games

Temporal Analysis of Antimicrobial Susceptibility in Salmonella: A Three-Year Surveillance Study

AbstractObjective: The study aimed to assess the antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of Salmonella sp. strainsover a three-year period in a tertiary care hospital.Methodology: It was a retrospective observational study. Electronic medical records were utilized fordata retrieval from 2017 to 2019. The study parameters included individuals of all age groups, andgenders diagnosed with typhoid based on positive blood cultures. Identification, speciation, andantimicrobial susceptibility testing adhered to standardized protocols, with statistical analysis conductedusing SPSS 25.0.Results: Among 769 Salmonella isolates, 709 cases were reported in 2019, making it the highestincidence over the study period. Extensively drug-resistant (XDR) strains peaked in 2019, comprisingapproximately 50% of cases, while multiple drug-resistant strains accounted for 25%. Notably, resistanceto ampicillin, ciprofloxacin, co-trimoxazole, and ceftriaxone exhibited a consistent upward trend over thethree-year span. Ciprofloxacin demonstrated the highest resistance, with only 4% sensitivity amongSalmonella isolates.Conclusion: The findings have highlighted a concerning escalation in antimicrobial resistance amongSalmonella Typhi strains in Punjab, Pakistan, particularly evident in the prevalence of extensively drugresistantstrains. Multi-drug and extensively drug-resistant strains of Salmonella are difficult to treat andmay give rise to even more drug resistance if not treated appropriately, leading to a vicious cycle of resistance.Keywords: Typhoid fever, antimicrobial resistance, Drug-resistant strains, public health, Pakista