WEIGHT GAIN ON WHO RECOMMENDED F100 DIET IN CHILDREN UNDER 5 YEARS OF AGE HOSPITALIZED WITH SEVERE ACUTE MALNUTRITION

Background; Severe acute malnutrition (SAM) affects approximately 19 million children below five years of age in low and middle income countries, which is defined as low weight for height or mid-upper arm circumference with respect to international standards, or the presence of bipedal edema. These children have a considerably increased risk of dying and it is estimated that malnutrition is the underlying cause of 45% of global deaths in children below 5 years of age. Material and Methods; Patients of severe acute malnutrition having weight for height/length less than -3 SD (Less than 70% of expected) were admitted in hospital nutritional. In stabilization phase, life-threatening problems were identified and treated, metabolic abnormalities were reversed and feeding was begun with F75 diet according to guidelines set by World Health Organization (WHO), the duration of stabilization phase was at least seven days. Patients in rehabilitation phase on F100 formula were included in study. Duration of rehabilitation phase is usually two to six weeks. Initial weight (W1) was measured as soon as the child was admitted and final weight (W2) was measured on 7th day of rehabilitation phase about one hour after a feed after standardizing the scale. Results; Mean age of our study cases was 16.68 ± 10.37 months, 16 (36.4%) were male and 28 (63.6%) were female patients. Mean weight at the time of admission was 4.82 ± 1.70 Kg. Similarly mean height of these study cases was 64.36 ± 11.24 cm. Mean weight at the start of F-100 was 4.85 ± 1.69 kg. Mean weight at the time of discharge was 5.72 ± 1.67 kg. Mean duration of hospital stay was 12.91 ± 6.85 days. Mean weight gain in our study cases was 14.10 ± 5.23 g/kg/day. Adequate weight gain was seen in 36 (81.8%) of our study cases while inadequate gain was seen 8 (18.2%) of our study cases. Conclusion; Use of F-100 milk significantly improved weight gains among our study cases, hence we recommend its use in children with SAM. No adverse side effects were seen in our study population which emphasize towards safety of this product. Keywords; Severe acute malnutrition, Weight gain, F100

Environmental sustainability targets: the role of green investment, ICT development, and economic growth

Current research investigates the role of green investment, information, and communication technology development growth in the Chinese economy’s carbon emissions from 1985-2015. This study has applied the quantile autoregressive distributed lagged (QARDL) approach and the Granger-causality in the quantiles to examine the causal linkage between the variables of interest. The findings through QARDL estimation confirm that there is an existence of significant reversion to the long-run equilibrium association between the explanatory variables and CO2. More specifically, the outcomes under long-run estimation confirm that GIN and ICT development plays a significant role in combating the issues like higher CO2 in China. At the same time, more economic growth leads to the destruction of the natural environment with higher carbon emissions. However, the square of economic growth shows some fruitful results towards fighting environmental pollution but not in all the quantiles of the study. Besides, the Granger-causality outcomes confirm the presence of a bi-directional association between green investment, ICT development, economic growth, and its square value. Based on the study findings, some policy implications are also provided. Besides, various limitations are also linked with this study. Firstly, the current study only examines the trends in CO2 emission from the context of China, whereas other regional economies are entirely neglected. Secondly, the factors like governmental influence in controlling carbon emission, environmental regulations, and governance mechanisms are entirely neglected in this research. Thirdly, the robust checking of the empirical findings is also missing in this study. Fourthly, economic uncertainty would also contribute to environmental pollution like CO2. Therefore, it is suggested that future studies should focus on these limitations to provide some meaningful suggestions and literature contributions

Morphological and biochemical characterization of Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae isolates collected from Punjab during 2013

Background: Bacterial leaf blight (BLB) of rice occupies the most significant position among various potentially important bacterial diseases all over Pakistan. The first important step towards the management of this disease is the characterization of the pathogen.Methods: Survey was conducted and disease samples were collected from 9 different locations of Punjab. Isolation and characterization by biochemical tests was done from the diseased samples under standard conditions in the laboratory. For pathogenicity and virulence characterization, all isolates were inoculated on IR-24, Basmati super and Basmati-2000 varieties. Data was recorded after three weeks of inoculation.Results: 30 isolates of Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) were purified from the diseased plants of different geographical origin which had very similar morphological and biochemical characteristics. PXo-20 (causing 51.35% leaf damage) and PXo-16 (causing 50.05% leaf damage) were found most virulent for Basmati Super and Basmati-2000.Conclusion: The presence of highly virulent isolates in Sheikhupura is alarming and there is dire need to incorporate new resistance genes in commercial rice cultivars to cope with BLB

Optimizing provision of rights-based family planning services by community midwives (CMWs) in Tando Allah Yar

Community Midwives (CMWs) are a key cadre of community-level reproductive health service providers in Pakistan. CMWs provide a range of maternal and child health (MCH) services including family planning (FP), but due to a lack of supplies and training and other reasons they are currently not providing FP services. This pilot study examined the effects of providing training in client-centered FP service provision, a regular supply of free contraceptives, and necessary equipment on the uptake, outreach, and quality of CMWs’ FP services. The study was conducted in Tando Allah Yar, a district of Sindh with average provincial demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. The aim was to identify expeditious and cost-effective ways of utilizing existing health resources to improve women’s rights-based access to FP services in Sindh, particularly its rural areas. The longer-term goal was recommending the involvement of CMWs in strategies to enhance availability of quality FP services to Pakistani women and men elsewhere. The study used a quasi-experimental mixed-methods design, and data were used to assess changes in the quality, uptake, and outreach of FP services provided by CMWs

A Nexus between Working Capital Management and Profitability: A Case Study of Pharmaceutical Sector in Pakistan

Amongst all the issues of financial management, the issue of routine capital management is critical one. The reason is; it always elucidates a direction to help out a firm to acquire energy in short run. In broader sense, working capital is the sum of those items exposed on firm's balance sheet as short term assets i.e. cash, marketable securities, account receivables and inventories. The central point of this research study is to critically discuss the impact of working capital management on financial outcomes of Pharmaceutical Sector in Pakistan. To attain this land mark researcher also observed the affiliation between independent variables utilized to gauge working capital and profitability measured by return on investment and return on equity of the firm. The present study used secondary data for the analysis. The data utilized in this study is extracted from the annual reports of Pharmaceutical companies quoted in Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE). The current research used different statistical tests to examine the impact of working capital management on profitability. According to the results of regression analysis, the null hypothesis of the study is rejected because all the variables related to working capital negatively affect the profitability of Pharmaceutical firms measured in terms of ROI and ROE. Results of correlation analysis indicate that there is negative relationship between working capital and profitability which is significant at 1% level. Findings of present work suggest that mangers can increase the profitability of the firm by keeping the cash conversion cycle to an optimum level. Keywords: Working Capital Management, Profitability, Pharmaceutical Sector in Pakistan JEL Classification: G

Determination of genotype differences through restriction endonuclease in Camels (Camelus dromedarius)

Tyrosinase gene or C locus has long been implicated in the coat colour determination. This gene a copper-containing enzyme located on chromosome 11q14.3 is expressed in melanocytes and controls the major steps in pigment production. In camel, C locus a restriction site provoked by the T variant of the mutation was used in a special restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis (PCR-RFLP) for genotyping of camels from six different Pakistani camel breeds (Marecha, Dhatti, Larri, Kohi, Campbelpuri and Sakrai). Significant differences in the genotype frequency between the breeds were estimated. The Sakrai breed showed in comparison to other studied breeds a distinctly higher frequency of the homozygous with restriction genotype. The objective of the present study was to screen the camel breeds using modern genetic technique that have been so far classified on the basis of performance and tribal ownership.Keywords: Camel, genotype, restriction endonucleas

Management tactics for handling Parthenium hysterophorus in non-native environment through phytotoxic compounds of local species

Parthenium hysterophorus L. is an invasive, ubiquitous and infamous herbaceous weed causing suppression of natural vegetation and crop plants. The identification of phytotoxins in local weed species (Datura stramonium, Achyranthes aspera, Chenopodium album, Calotropis procera, C. murale and Melilotus indica) was done through high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to check their herbicidal potential against P. hysterophorus. Additionally, filter paper petri plate based and soil filled pot experiments were conducted in laboratory and wire house to evaluate the pre- and post-emergence herbicidal potential of plant water extract of D. stramonium alone and in combination with A. aspera, C. album C. procera, C. murale and M. indica at 2.5, 5 and 10% (w/v) concentrations against germination and seedling growth of P. hysterophorus. The phytotoxins detected in extracts of these plant species were quercetin, gallic, chlorogenic, p-coumaric, m-coumaric, sinapinic, caffeic, benzoic and syringic acids with variable concentrations. Total highest concentration of phytotoxins (61.37 mg L-1) was found in A. aspera while the lowest concentration (7.69 mg L-1) was found in C. album aqueous extract. Significant reduction in germination and seedling growth of P. hysterophorus was shown by all extract combinations that increased in direct proportion to their concentrations. The 10% water extract of D. stramonium in combination with C. procera and A. aspera proved to be the best as they resulted maximum reductions in germination percentage (100 and 95%), shoot length (67 and 62%), and shoot dry weight (67 and 78%) of P. hysterophorus, respectively. (C) 2019 Friends Science Publisher