Safety aspects of fishing vessels in Pakistan

Pakistan is a country with few rivers and lakes which naturally forced its fishermen to fish on the coast which extends some 250,000 Km. along the Arabian Sea. However, the fishing industry, which originated as a cottage industry a few centuries ago, has remained very primitive in design and technology ever since. The only development has been that, in place of poor fishermen, presently richer capitalists have become the owners of the vessels. The operators are still poor and uneducated. In spite of the fact that a national legislation governing mechanically propelled vessels has been in existence since 1917 modified in 1951, the fishing vessels have continued to remain beyond the scope of this legislation, being constructed as sailing vessels and subsequently installing engines. This foul play by uneducated fishermen in ill-equipped boats has cost thousands of lives every year and the eventual loss of property. As no constructional and other safety measures have been enforced, they have remained highly hazardous vessels, particularly in the rough weather conditions of the Arabian Sea. This calls for urgent action to be taken to frame a comprehensive legislation stipulating adequate safety requirements including training and the certification of crew. Last but not least is the restructuring of the enforcement agencies; that is the maritime safety administration and the coast guard. This is all the more important because the Law of the Sea Convention and the growth of the Pakistan population has widened the scope of the fishing industry and the need for sea food to supplement the protein needs of its hungry millions. This paper aims to stipulate a set of rules applicable to fishing vessels less than 24 m in length

JPEG2000 compatible neural network based cipher

In this paper, an efficient encryption technique is proposed, especially for JPEG2000 compatible images.The technique uses a multilayer neural network to generate a pseudo-random sequence for transforming wavelet subbands into cipher subbands.The neural network generator takes 64 bit key as a startup seed with additional 64 bit key for initial weights and biases.At each layer, output is calculated by several iterations to increase the complexity of the pseudorandom sequence generation.In order to examine effectiveness of this approach, various tests including correlation, histogram, key space etc. are conducted on test images, and the results demonstrate the robustness of the proposed approach

RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED POLITICS IN DEMOCRATIC INDIA UNDER THE BJP GOVERNMENT

The prevalence of democracy is contingent upon sustainable peace and good governance, wherein individuals are granted freedom to practice their cultural and religious beliefs. In South Asia, the politicisation of religion has been a vexing issue, with dominant religious groups, both protected and non-protected, threatening democratic ideals. This paper argues that India, which is among the world's largest secular democratic states, has witnessed the emergence of fascist and authoritarian policies and manifestations under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi, allowing extremist Hindutva groups and BJP to promote Hindu nationalism at the expense of other marginalised groups. The paper also highlights that the BJP government has employed religion to manipulate and mobilise individuals against minorities, jeopardising democratic values and undermining state institutions. It concludes that if the Indian government persists in practising fascistic tenets, it will have grave repercussions for regional stability and the democratic rights of minorities at home.   Bibliography Entry Qurban, Zara. 2023. "Religiously Motivated Politics in Democratic India Under the BJP Government." Margalla Papers 27 (1): 176-185

Embedding Authentication and DistortionConcealment in Images – A Noisy Channel Perspective

In multimedia communication, compression of data is essential to improve transmission rate, and minimize storage space. At the same time, authentication of transmitted data is equally important to justify all these activities. The drawback of compression is that the compressed data are vulnerable to channel noise. In this paper, error concealment methodologies with ability of error detection and concealment are investigated for integration with image authentication in JPEG2000.The image authentication includes digital signature extraction and its diffusion as a watermark. To tackle noise, the error concealment technologies are modified to include edge information of the original image.This edge_image is transmitted along with JPEG2000 compressed image to determine corrupted coefficients and regions. The simulation results are conducted on test images for different values of bit error rate to judge confidence in noise reduction within the received images

Approximate trigonometric expansions with applications to signal decomposition and coding

Signal representation and data coding for multi-dimensional signals have recently received considerable attention due to their importance to several modern technologies. Many useful contributions have been reported that employ wavelets and transform methods. For signal representation, it is always desired that a signal be represented using minimum number of parameters. The transform efficiency and ease of its implementation are to a large extent mutually incompatible. If a stationary process is not periodic, then the coefficients of its Fourier expansion are not uncorrelated. With the exception of periodic signals the expansion of such a process as a superposition of exponentials, particularly in the study of linear systems, needs no elaboration. In this research, stationary and non-periodic signals are represented using approximate trigonometric expansions. These expansions have a user-defined parameter which can be used for making the transformation a signal decomposition tool. It is shown that fast implementation of these expansions is possible using wavelets. These approximate trigonometric expansions are applied to multidimensional signals in a constrained environment where dominant coefficients of the expansion are retained and insignificant ones are set to zero. The signal is then reconstructed using these limited set of coefficients, thus leading to compression. Sample results for representing multidimensional signals are given to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method. It is verified that for a given number of coefficients, the proposed technique yields higher signal to noise ratio than conventional techniques employing the discrete cosine transform technique

Finding water management practices to reduce selenium and nitrate concentrations in the irrigated stream-aquifer system along the lower reach of Colorado's Arkansas River Valley

2018 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.Agricultural productivity in the Lower Arkansas River Valley (LARV) in southeastern Colorado has been high over the last 100 years due to extensive irrigation practices. In the face of this high productivity, however, the LARV currently face many issues as a result of the long period of irrigation, including waterlogging and soil salinization, leading to a decline in crops yields and high concentrations of nutrients and trace elements. In particular, irrigation practices have led to high concentrations of selenium (Se) and nitrate (NO3) in groundwater, surface water, and soils, similar to other semi-arid irrigated watersheds worldwide. Environmental concerns due to these high concentrations include human health, health of fish and waterfowl, and eutrophication of surface water bodies. The objective of this thesis is to identify water management strategies that can lead to a decrease in the concentrations of Se and NO3 in groundwater and surface water in the LARV by evaluating the three-water management BMPs which is reduced irrigation (RI), lease fallowing of irrigated land (LF), and canal sealing (CS). This is accomplished by constructing and testing a computational model that simulates the fate and transport of Se and NO3 in a coupled irrigated stream-aquifer system, and then applying the model to evaluate selected best management practices (BMPs) to decrease the concentration of Se and NO3 to comply with Colorado water quality regulations. The modeling system consists of MODFLOW, which simulates groundwater and stream flow, and RT3D-OTIS, which simulates the reactive transport of the principal Se and nitrogen (N) species in groundwater and a connected stream network. RT3D-OTIS uses simulated flows from MODFLOW to exchange Se and N species' mass between streams and the aquifer on a daily time step. The coupled flow and reactive transport model is applied to an approximately 552 km² study region in the LARV between Lamar, Colorado and the Colorado-Kansas border. The model is tested against Se and NO3 concentrations measured in a network of groundwater monitoring wells and stream sampling site, and against return flows and mass loads to the river estimated from the mass balance. Model calibration was performed manually and by using PEST software tool, and the effects BMPs on Se and NO3 concentrations in groundwater, streams, and groundwater mass loadings to the Arkansas River within the stream-aquifer system are quantified. Three BMPs are considered RI, LF, and CS, which are simulated for a 40-year period and then compared to a baseline ("do nothing") scenario. The results indicate that implementation of the CS scenario might lead to lower groundwater concentrations of Se and NO3 by 40% and 38%, respectively, a reduction in groundwater mass loading to the Arkansas River by 100% and 60% for Se and NO3, and a reduction in stream concentrations of Se and NO3 by 30% and 40%, respectively. In contrast, the RI and LF scenario, while lowering the water table and in consequence the rate of groundwater return flow to the Arkansas River, leads to elevated groundwater concentrations of both Se and NO3 in the riparian areas, resulting in an overall increase in groundwater mass loading to the river. This may be due to changes in the rate of groundwater flow due to lower hydraulic gradients leading to longer residence times of NO3 in the aquifer, increasing the potential for the release of Se from the bedrock shale through oxidation processes. Also, lowering the water table due to reduced recharge from irrigation reduces the size of the saturated zone, perhaps contributing to a higher concentration of Se and NO3. Moreover, changes in water and mass flux between the saturated and unsaturated zone occur under RI and LF scenarios. As a consequence of these altered processes, the RI and LF scenarios do not decrease the in-stream concentrations of Se and NO3 in the Arkansas River, with values for Se and NO3 increasing by 15% and 8%, respectively under the RI scenario, and by 10% and 10.5% for the LF scenario. Further, the results are compared with results obtained from a modeling study in the Upstream Study Region of the Lower Arkansas River Valley, to determine the similarity and differences of BMP implementation in the two regions. Further assessment of localized BMPs should be performed to determine key regions where they should be implemented for the largest impact on Se and NO3. Combined water management BMPs and land management BMPs, like reduced fertilizer application and enhanced riparian buffers, should also be evaluated

Impact of Power Looms Noise on Cognitive Development of School Going Children under Age 10 Years in Faisalabad City

Mind is main part of the body. Our body is totally consisting on mind’s working. The pinpoint of this study cognitive development is also related to mind. A healthy mind grows in a healthy environment. Any disturbance in environment can delay the mental development. Noise is the main factor in environment which plays an adverse role in delaying Cognitive development and cause many problems related to mind. This research “Impact of power looms Noise on cognitive development of school going children under age (10 years) in Faisalabad city” related to human development which deals with social sciences. This study is totally based on urban areas of Faisalabad city.  Purposive sampling is chosen because those residential areas are required where power looms are existed and schools where power looms’ noise is listened.  Quantitative data is collected with the help of Interview Schedule. The data is analyzed by using computer software - Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). A large proportion of the respondents 100 percent reported that they were well aware about the term of power loom noise and the type and source of noise in class. Some variables showed strong associations i.e. 53.3 percent respondents did not paid complete attention on the lesson, in chi-square test the  significant level was 0.583 and 50.0 percent respondents did not understand the lesson teaching by teacher in class due to power loom noise, in chi-square test the significant level was 0.348. In classroom 78.3 Percent respondents did not actively responded during the lesson of teacher, in chi-square test the significant level was 0.855. In school 51.7 percent respondents were attending the school irregularly; the chi-square the significant level was 0.828. Analysis indicated that in chi-square test there was a difference in chi-square value and significant level which showed the less cognitive abilities of respondents. Often 78.3 percent respondents narrated the daily lesson to teacher.50.0 percent respondents felt angry in class room. 51.7 percent respondents quarreled with friends and they did not share the things with friends. 56.7percent respondents did not felt satisfied at school. Only 36.7 percent respondents thought that school discipline was a useful tool to acquire academic knowledge. Rate of giving answer to question of teacher after few seconds 63.3 percent , punishment in class 81.7 percent answering some time, type of problem due to high level of noise 75.0 percent answering headache, 76.7 percent answering that they remain worried to go back home hurry in school time, result depicted strong significant with majority of the selected variables. 63.3 percent respondents gave suggestions to control the noise that replace the power looms from the locality. Secondary data which was collected from the examination grades of school also showed that noise effects on the cognitive development of children, they had low grade C and D and below 50% marks

Development of video based virtual studio

The objective of this research is multi-fold: to explore the approach for video production in virtual studio with a degree of freedom; to combine various existing technologies targeting each specific feature into one with almost all of the features needed for virtual studio; and above all to create high quality video production using graphics and video. The approach requires breaking down multiple videos up to frame level, so that multiple components/objects can be handled like graphics for further object level processing within three dimensions (3-D). We also provide a framework for describing different features of the stored media object. Initially a workbench is developed; where a user is allowed to open any type of standard graphic format (jpg, gif, bmp, avi or mpg) and can provide annotations. If the object is time based, then a time line is also provided. Real images are considered as a single frame, however the user can select the part of image to construct another media object. Finally, all required objects are mixed together to construct a final video. We compare this approach with existing ones in terms of the degree of freedom, platform independence and show that it can be used effectively in the domain of entertainment and education

Development of a lean principles framework for ERP implementation process

The aim of this research is to develop a novel framework based on lean principles and tools to be exploited in managing ERP implementation processes in order to enhance the overall success rate of the implementation project, which in turn minimises cost and time overruns. The framework consists of three stages built in a logical sequence taking into consideration the requirements of ERP projects implementations and the lean transformation principles. The first stage starts with an assessment model to measure the organisational readiness for implementing ERP system using leanness assessment approach. The second stage of the framework introduces the use of the Obeya lean tool along with a change management model to help visualize and streamlining the process of ERP implementation. In the final stage, a value stream mapping technique is used to identify potential waste occurrence and eliminate non-value adding activities from the process. As a result, a new eight stages ERP implementation process is developed and presented with descriptions on the activities encompassed in each stage. A research methodology consisting of four major phases was employed to attain the targeted objectives of the research; beginning with project initiation and contextual definition followed by data collection and field study. The data acquired from the previous two phases were used to conduct a thorough analysis from which key findings were drawn and used in the creative development of the readiness assessment model and the framework. Finally, elementary aspects of the framework were put to scrutiny through live case studies and professional expert judgement. The author made use of both qualitative and quantitative research measures. A validation for the ERP readiness assessment model is conducted initially on three case studies, and then the whole framework is validated through two other case studies and experts’ judgments. The results and overall feedback reflected a high level of acceptance of the framework structure and approach. The novel framework has the capability to improve the ERP implementation process providing it is utilised fully. It helps organisation to successfully deliver ERP systems on time, on budget, and with the required functionalities with high-level of acceptance from all stakeholders