Ethnobotany of Palas Valley, Pakistan

This study represents first comprehensive ethnobotanical survey in Palas valley, Pakistan and is also an attempt to sum up the preexisting ethnobotanical information. A total of 139 ethnobotanically important plant species are being reported from the study area belonging to a total of 72 plant families. The most important families in this regard were Rosaceae (20 species), Asteraceae (9 species), Lamiaceae and Polygonaceae (5 species each). Herbs (59 species) were found to be the most used life forms followed by trees (40 species), shrubs (36 species) and Climbers (4 species) in descending order. Most frequently utilized portions of plants include Fruit (43 species), Wood (30 species), Root (24 species), Leaves (21 species), Whole Plant (16 species), Branch (15 species), Bark (8), Seed (8 species) and Flower (5 species). Most of the plants are utilized as medicine for humans (68 species). Only 3 species could be recorded for their use as veterinary medicine (although there may be many more). There were more than 68 plant species, which are utilized as food. The cultivated crop plants were, however, not included in the list. Fruit species included 38 plants and there were 29 plants that were important as food other than fruits. Most of these were found to be utilized as potherbs. A limited storage of the food plants was also noticed. There were 29 fuel species, 2 torchwood species, 28 fodder species and 10 timber species. Agricultural tools and handles were found to be made from 13 different species. Those employed for hedges, fencing and thatching included 7 species. Five species were used as spices, three for tea and 28 species were recorded for miscellaneous i.e., other than those mentioned above. Currently there are 10 major species that are brought to market for sale these include Bunium persicum, Diospyros lotus, Juglans regia, Morchella esculenta, Podophyllum emodi, Saussurea costus, Valeriana sp., Viola sp. Vernonia anthelmentica, and Ziziphus oxyphylla. Market plants especially Valeriana jatamansi, Saussurea costus, Paeonia emodi and Podophyllum emodi are under severe pressure due to ethnobotanical collections. High summer pastures are the focus area for collection of most of the plant species and additionally intense grazing has posed a serious threat to these areas. Awareness program in the area about the importance of the indigenous flora, sustainable plants collection and conservation of important medicinal plants would be desirable. The local community should be actively involved in conservation practices. Rotational grazing and reducing the number of livestock will help reduce pressure on pastures. Cultivation of medicinal plants and other plants of economic importance will create new openings for the uplift of poor locals and will also reduce pressures on wild population. A long-term ethnobotanical programme that may address the issues will be a great demand in future

Analysis and Modeling Experiment Performance Parameters of Routing Protocols in MANETs and VANETs

In this paper, a framework for experimental parameters in which Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), effect of link duration over End-to-End Delay (E2ED) and Normalized Routing Overhead (NRO) in terms of control packets is analyzed and modeled for Mobile Ad-Hoc NETworks (MANETs) and Vehicular Ad-Hoc NETworks (VANETs) with the assumption that nodes (vehicles) are sparsely moving in two different road. Moreover, this paper contributes the performance comparison of one Proactive Routing Protocol; Destination Sequenced Distance vector (DSDV) and two reactive protocols; DYnamic Source Routing (DSR) and DYnamic MANET On-Demand (DYMO). A novel contribution of this work is enhancements in default versions of selected routing protocols. Three performance parameters; PDR, E2ED and NRO with varying scalabilities are measured to analyze the performance of selected routing protocols with their original and enhanced versions. From extensive simulations, it is observed that DSR outperforms among all three protocols at the cost of delay. NS-2 simulator is used for simulation with TwoRayGround propagation model to evaluate analytical results

Performance Analysis of Hierarchical Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

This work focusses on analyzing the optimization strategies of routing protocols with respect to energy utilization of sensor nodes in Wireless Sensor Network (WSNs). Different routing mechanisms have been proposed to address energy optimization problem in sensor nodes. Clustering mechanism is one of the popular WSNs routing mechanisms. In this paper, we first address energy limitation constraints with respect to maximizing network life time using linear programming formulation technique. To check the efficiency of different clustering scheme against modeled constraints, we select four cluster based routing protocols; Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH), Threshold Sensitive Energy Efficient sensor Network (TEEN), Stable Election Protocol (SEP), and Distributed Energy Efficient Clustering (DEEC). To validate our mathematical framework, we perform analytical simulations in MATLAB by choosing number of alive nodes, number of dead nodes, number of packets and number of CHs, as performance metrics.Comment: NGWMN with 7th IEEE International Conference on Broadband and Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications (BWCCA 2012), Victoria, Canada, 201

The ameliorative effect of saline or / sodic water on maize (Zea mays L.)production

A pot experiment was conducted in green house to evaluate the performance of two maize genotypes using saline or / sodic water with and with out amendments. There were eight treatments T1 (control with EC 1.07 dS m-1, SAR 1.63, and RSC 0 me L-1), T2 (EC 2.4 dS m-1, SAR 16 (mmol L-1)1/2, and RSC 2.25 meL-1 ), T3 (EC 3.6 dS m-1, SAR 24 (mmol L-1)1/2, and RSC 4.5 meL-1), T4 (T2+ Gypsum on irrigation water basis), T5 (T3+ Gypsum on irrigation water basis),T6 (T1+ FYM @ 20 Mg ha-1),T7 (T2+FYM @ 20 Mg ha-1),T8 (T3+ FYM @ 20 Mg ha-1) . Saline or/ sodic water were prepared with the help of quadratic equation and recommended doses of NPK fertilizers were used. Chlorophyll content was recorded after 40 days of sowing and fully expanded younger leaf were collected and stored in separate polypropylene tubes for sap extraction. The experimental results showed that chlorophyll content, Leaf area plant-1, plant height, fresh weight of plant, dry weight of plant of all genotypes decreased significantly with increasing levels of saline or /sodic water but this decrease was minimum when gypsum and FYM was applied. Na+ concentration of all genotypes increased significantly and decreased with gypsum and FYM application. Potassium and K+: Na+ ratio of all genotypes decreased significantly with increasing levels of saline or / sodic water but increased when gypsum and FYM was applied. ECe, SAR and pHs in soils after harvesting of crop increased also significantly. The application of FYM and gypsum proved to much helpful in improving soil quality and crop productivity

Urolithiasis and psoas abscess in a 2-year-old boy with type 1 glycogen storage disease

We report on a pyogenic psoas abscess secondary to an impacted calcium oxalate ureteric stone in a 2-year-old boy with glycogen storage disease type 1 (GSD-1). The patient had a drainage of the abscess through a flank incision followed by percutaneous nephrostomy and open ureterolithotomy. Metabolic acidosis, hyperuricemia, hypocitraturia, and hypercalciuria appear to be significant in the pathogenesis of urolithiasis in patients with GSD-1. Regular ultrasonography of the abdomen along with optimal metabolic control may delay or prevent urolithiasis and its complications in GSD-1 patients

Effects of ramped wall temperature and concentration on viscoelastic Jeffrey’s fluid flows from a vertical permeable cone

In thermo-fluid dynamics, free convection flows external to different geometries such as cylinders, ellipses, spheres, curved walls, wavy plates, cones etc. play major role in various industrial and process engineering systems. The thermal buoyancy force associated with natural convection flows can exert a critical role in determining skin friction and heat transfer rates at the boundary. In thermal engineering, natural convection flows from cones has gained exceptional interest. A theoretical analysis is developed to investigate the nonlinear, steady-state, laminar, non-isothermal convection boundary layer flows of viscoelastic fluid from a vertical permeable cone with a power-law variation in both temperature and concentration. The Jeffery’s viscoelastic model simulates the non-Newtonian characteristics of polymers, which constitutes the novelty of the present work. The transformed conservation equations for linear momentum, energy and concentration are solved numerically under physically viable boundary conditions using the finite-differences Keller-Box scheme. The impact of Deborah number (De), ratio of relaxation to retardation time (λ), surface suction/injection parameter (fw), power-law exponent (n), buoyancy ratio parameter (N) and dimensionless tangential coordinate (Ѯ) on velocity, surface temperature, concentration, local skin friction, heat transfer rate and mass transfer rate in the boundary layer regime are presented graphically. It is observed that increasing values of De reduces velocity whereas the temperature and concentration are increased slightly. Increasing λ enhance velocity however reduces temperature and concentration slightly. The heat and mass transfer rate are found to decrease with increasing De and increase with increasing values of λ. The skin friction is found to decrease with a rise in De whereas it is elevated with increasing values of λ. Increasing values of fw and n, decelerates the flow and also cools the boundary layer i.e. reduces temperature and also concentration. The study is relevant to chemical engineering systems, solvent and polymeric processes