Microemulsion Route for the Synthesis of Nano-Structured Catalytic Materials

Owing to their unique properties, use of microemulsion‐based synthetic techniques for the generation of shape‐controlled nanocatalyst is an area of great current interest. Nanocatalysts of any specific shape, morphology, surface area, size, geometry, homogeneity and composition are widely being prepared using the soft techniques of microemulsion. Easy handling, inexpensive equipment and mild reaction conditions make microemulsion an attractive reaction medium. Herein, a nanosized precursor reactant can be incorporated, leading to the formulation of a highly monodispersed metal nanoagglomerate with controlled size, shape and composition. Several factors such as presence of electrolyte, molar ratio of water to surfactant, nature and concentration of surfactant and solvent, size of water droplets and concentration of reducing agents influence the size of the nanoparticles. The reverse micelle method can be used for the fabrication of several nanosized catalysts with a diverse variety of suitable materials including silica, alumina, metals (e.g. Au, Pd, Rh, Pt), metal oxides, etc. The morphology, size distribution and shape of the nanocatalysts make them useable for a wide range of applications, for example, fuel cells, electrocatalysis, photocatalysis, environmental protection, etc. The recovery of nanoparticles from the reaction mixture is a challenge for the researchers. This chapter discusses the preparation of nanoparticles using microemulsion techniques, widely being used for the synthesis of nanocatalysts from a wide range of materials

Stereotypical Identities Discourse Analysis of Media Images of Women in Pakistan

Stereotypical portrayal of women through images and text in the media has been discussed and debated widely across the globe. The area remains relatively under published in the context of the third world especially Pakistan. To fill this gap this paper is an attempt to examine the role of the media in creating gender identities. Data for this study comes from selected English language newspaper namely “THE NEWS”. Discourse analysis of text and images - the most common way of producing and transmitting social meaning attached to social realities was employed to interpret of the data. The data reveals that the images and text produced through the media are biased, patriarchal and they reinforce male hegemony and control over women’s bodies and their minds. By doing this the media is strengthening the existing power structure of the Pakistani society. The images of women produced are those of victims of violence both domestic and public, sex objects, passive, dependent, weak and engaged in domestic roles. Consequently, standard images of feminity are idealized and normalized in the real world. Such practices act as barrier for women to escape traditional gender roles and expectations. The study argues that such images reinforce stereotypical roles and hence promote gender inequality instead of emancipation

Empirical Investigation of Key Factors for SaaS Architecture Dimension

IEEE Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has received significant attention from software providers and users as a software delivery model. Most of the existing companies are transferring their business into a SaaS model. This intensely competitive environment has imposed many challenges for SaaS developers and vendors. SaaS development is a very complex process and SaaS success depends on its architecture design and development. This paper provides a better understanding of SaaS applications architecture phase during the SaaS development process. It focuses mainly on an empirical investigation of key factors of SaaS Architecture phase identified from the systematic literature review. A quantitative survey was developed and conducted to identify key architecture factors for an improved and successful SaaS application. A developed survey was used to test the proposed hypothesis presented in this study. Empirical investigation\u27s results provide evidence that vendors and developers must consider key architecture factors for SaaS development process to stand in the current competitive environment. These key factors include customization, scalability, MTA (Multi-Tenancy Architecture), security, integration, and fault tolerance and recovery management. The main contribution of this paper is to investigate empirically the influence of identified key factors of the architecture on SaaS applications success

Caught between Two Cultures: Pragmatic Transfer in English-using Pakistanis Apology Responses

In Pragmatics, scholars have given special attention to study the influence of leaners culture and social rules in understanding and using target language pragmatics. For this purpose, speech acts have been studied quite widely. This study investigates the speech act of responding to apology in Pakistani English, British English and Pakistani Urdu, and tries to highlight whether respondents transfer their cultural and social rules in the target language or not. The present study followed quantitative approach for data collection and analysis. A discourse completion test (DCT), consists of 12 apology response scenarios is used for data collection. The findings illustrate that English-using Pakistanis pragmatic choices are clearly influenced by their perceptions of various sociocultural and contextual variables. The English-using Pakistanis and Pakistani Urdu speakers are found using two main strategies (Acceptance, and Acknowledgment). In contrast, British English speakers tend to use Acceptance and Evasion strategies more often. Further, the findings have indicated that English-using Pakistanis and Pakistani Urdu speakers have used more Rejection strategies than their British English counterparts, though such communicative features are not salient in their ARs, and Pakistanis are surprisingly found quite clear and direct. The findings of the study may be helpful to English teachers who should be made aware that L2 learners’ pragmatic transfer is influenced by learners’ culture and social rules, and, as a result, should not be treated simply as a pragmatic ‘error’ or ‘failure’ to be corrected and criticized

From pragmatic competence to intercultural competence: Pakistani ESL teachers perspectives of teaching interculturality in ESL classroom

In recent years, the areas of intercultural pragmatics and transcultural pragmatics under the phenomenon of “interculturality” have been investigated by linguists and language scholars because interculturality has a deep-rooted connection with the language and second language teaching and learning. This data-oriented study follows a quantitative research design. The data is collected through a survey questionnaire from 75 English teachers who are teaching at the university level in five different public and private sector universities in Pakistan. The overall results encourage embedding the knowledge of interculturality in ESL/EFL classes. There is a need to organize training sessions for teachers because many teachers reported that they do not utilize such skills in their ESL/EFL classrooms. In addition, the majority of teachers also believed in employing new approaches for teaching transcultural pragmatics to their students. This study further highlights that teacher/educators could also benefit from working together to develop the teaching of interculturality and transcultural competence, and to make this development happen in relation to teacher professional development

Design guidelines for SaaS development process

© 2018 IEEE. A novel and widespread business model in cloud computing is to provide on-demand software as a service (SaaS) over the Internet. The software runs on a server and the user access it through an Internet connection. A single application instance can be shared by multiple users which provide a cost-effective solution to SaaS providers. Varying requirements from multiple users increase complexity in SaaS application design. The success of SaaS depends on its design. SaaS is different than traditional web-based application, so traditional application design model cannot full fill many SaaS specific design requirements. This paper provides a better understanding of key design factors in SaaS development process which results in a successful SaaS product following an improved design process. This study identifies key design factors through literature review and provides guidelines for key design factors on the SaaS application development. Ultimately, it will be beneficial for SaaS developers to improve the SaaS application development process and have a positive impact on the final product

Need Analysis of Prospective Science Teachers about Pedagogical Content Knowledge through Learning Activities

Pedagogical  Content  Knowledge  (PCK)  is  a  blend  of  content  knowledge  and pedagogy  knowledge,  which  can  illustrate  the  ability  of  teachers  to  design  and to  teach  a  content  by  accessing  what  they  knows  about  the  material,  students, curriculum  and  how  best  to  teach  the  content.  PCK  develop  in  learners  through  different  learning  activities  so  that  when  they  come  in  passion  they deal  more  effectively  with  students. The   objectives of   study were ;to  find  out the  need  of  Pedagogical  Content  Knowledge  in  Prospective  Science  Teachers,  to  explore  the  Pedagogical  Content  Knowledge  in  prospective  Science  Teachers,  to  evaluate  the  performance  of  Prospective Science Teachers  through  Pedagogical  Content  Knowledge  and  to  compare  the  Pedagogical  Content  Knowledge  of  Prospective  Science  Teachers  at  IIUI  and  NUML.  This  study focused  on  “Need  Analysis of  Prospective  Science  Teachers  about  Pedagogical  Content  Knowledge  through learning  activities”. The random   sampling   technique was used to conduct the study. The study was   delimited to the public universities of Islamabad. To achieve objectives of the study mixed method research approach was selected. Keeping in view the research method, survey was conducted through self-developed questionnaire. Furthermore, semi-structure interview were also drawn. Descriptive and Inferential Statics was  used  to  analyze  data.

Architecture guidelines for SaaS development process

© 2017 Association for Computing Machinery. Software-As-A-service (SaaS) has received significant attention from software providers and users as software delivery model. Most of the existing companies are transferring their business into SaaS model. This intensely competitive environment has imposed many challenges for SaaS developers for the development process. SaaS development is a very complex process and SaaS success depends on its architecture design and development. This paper identifies important key factors from literature and provides guidelines for SaaS developers to support these factors in SaaS architecture development process. Ultimately, it will be beneficial for SaaS developers to improve the development process of SaaS application.

US Print Media Framing of Nuclear Ambiguity: Israel vs. Iran

This research work aims at studying the “Nuclear Ambiguity” by evaluating the coverage of Israeli and Iranian nuclear issue in the US print media. The main objective of the study was to examine the news stories and editorial treatment of the above mentioned issue with reference to the foreign policies of the related countries. Content analysis was employed to study the two newspapers; The New York Times and The Washington Post. The data was collected by usingcensus approach and the whole population was considered as sample from the time period of January, 2014 to December, 2015. The theoretical framework of the study comprised of Agenda setting and Framing theory that explain how media can “play up” or “play down” any issue. To determine the significance of the research hypothesis, statistical test chi square was applied and results approved all the hypotheses. The study concluded that US print media followed their national policies and played up the issue of nuclear ambiguity in case of Iran’s nuclear program, while played down the Israel’s nuclear program because Israel is a vital ally of American

The Effect of Leverage on Financial Health of the Firms: A Study from Cement Industry of Pakistan

This research paper has tried to measure the relationship between leverage and profitability of firms in the cement industry of Pakistan. Debt to equity is used to measure the leverage of the companies in the cement industry in Pakistan. Short term debt to equity (STD/E) and long term debt to equity (LTD/E) are considered as leverage variables .Return on equity (ROE) and return on assets (ROA) are used to measure the financial performance of the companies. For this research paper 10 cement companies are considered, listed in the Karachi Stock Exchange during the time period 2008-2012. To measure the relationship between leverage and profitability of firms in the cement industry of Pakistan regression model and descriptive statistics have been used. Our results found negative and significant relationship between leverage and profitability of the firm. Keywords: Leverage, Profitability, Cement industry, Capital Structur