Aviation Demand and Economic Growth in the Czech Republic: Cointegration Estimation and Causality Analysis

The main purpose of the paper is to empirically examine the aviation-led growth hypothesis for the Czech Republic by testing causality between aviation and economic growth. We resort to econometric tests such as unit root tests and test of cointegration purposed by Johansen (1988). Fully Modified OLS, Dynamic OLS and Conical Cointegration Regression are used to estimate the cointegration equation for time span of 42 years from 1970 to 2012. Empirical results reveal the existence of cointegration between aviation demand and economic growth. Graphic methods such as Cholesky impulse response function (both accumulated and non-accumulated) and variance decomposition have also been applied to render the analysis rigorous. The positive contribution of aviation demand to economic growth is similar in all three estimation techniques of cointegration equation. Finally, Granger causality test is also applied to find the direction of causal relationship. Findings help in lime-lighting the importance of aviation industry in economic growth for a developing country like the Czech Republic

Asymptotic features of Hessian Matrix in Receding Horizon Model Predictive Control with Medium Sized Prediction Frames

In this paper, Receding Horizon Model Predictive Control (RH-MPC) having a quadratic objective function is studied through the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and Singular Vectors of its Hessian Matrix. Contrary to the previous work, non-equal and medium sized control and prediction horizons are considered and it is shown that the Singular Values converge to the open loop magnitude response of the system and singular vectors contain the phase information. Earlier results focused on classical formulation of Generalized Predictive Control (GPC), whereas, current work proves the applicability to modern formulation. Although, method can easily be extended to MIMO systems, only SISO system examples are presented

Sentiment classification of Roman-Urdu opinions using Naïve Bayesian, Decision Tree and KNN classification techniques

AbstractSentiment mining is a field of text mining to determine the attitude of people about a particular product, topic, politician in newsgroup posts, review sites, comments on facebook posts twitter, etc. There are many issues involved in opinion mining. One important issue is that opinions could be in different languages (English, Urdu, Arabic, etc.). To tackle each language according to its orientation is a challenging task. Most of the research work in sentiment mining has been done in English language. Currently, limited research is being carried out on sentiment classification of other languages like Arabic, Italian, Urdu and Hindi. In this paper, three classification models are used for text classification using Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis (WEKA). Opinions written in Roman-Urdu and English are extracted from a blog. These extracted opinions are documented in text files to prepare a training dataset containing 150 positive and 150 negative opinions, as labeled examples. Testing data set is supplied to three different models and the results in each case are analyzed. The results show that Naïve Bayesian outperformed Decision Tree and KNN in terms of more accuracy, precision, recall and F-measure

Efficient free radical scavenging activity of Ginkgo biloba, Stevia rebaudiana and Parthenium hysterophorous leaves through DPPH (2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl)

Free radical scavenging activity of three important plants Ginkgo biloba, Stevia rebaudiana and Parthenium hysterophorous was carried out to evaluate and explore new potential sources of natural antioxidants. For this purpose the leaves of the three plants were processed. In these experiments the order of the antioxidant activity was, maximum activity shown by methanolic extract of Ginkgo biloba followed by Parthenium hysterophorous and Stevia rebaudiana. Furthermore the ethanolic extract of Ginkgo biloba also showed maximum antioxidant activity seconded by Stevia rebaudiana and Parthenium hysterophorous.Keywords: Ginkgo biloba, Stevia rebaudiana and Parthenium hysterophorous, DPPH, radical scavenging activit

Phylogenetic and chronological analysis of proteins causing Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases

It is evident that Neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's) have many similarities at cellular and molecular level as they carry parallel mechanisms including protein aggregation and inclusion body formation caused by protein mis-folding. The main objective of this study was to have detailed insight on variation and resemblance among these proteins. One hundred and four protein sequences, both directly and indirectly involved in disease mechanism to perform phylogenetic analysis revealing insight on evolutionary relationship among these proteins, were selected. The percentage of replicate trees, in which the associated taxa clustered together in the bootstrap test, was 1000 replicates. Various statistical tests were performed for the confirmation of results e.g., Tajma's Neutrality Test showed D gt 6, nucleotide diversity π gt 0.6 and ps value as greater than 1. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the protein sequences of neurodegenerative diseases had high sequence similarity and identity to each other as depicted by the evolutionary tree. It showed the similar mechanism of evolving from each other and had similar mechanism of generating mis-folding leading towards symptoms of disease

Business Intelligence at Telenor Pakistan

Telenor Pakistan won two “best practices” awards from The Data Warehousing Institute for its business intelligence (BI) infrastructure in 2009 and 2010. In 2011, its Director of BI was promoted to Vice President of BI for the Telenor Group that had stakes in cellular network operations across thirteen countries. The new Director of BI, Rizwan Fazal, had been recruited from a major competitor. With past credentials, existing challenges and future ambitions in mind, his task was now to design a “roadmap” for BI that would satisfy all stakeholders that the unit would indeed progress ahead. The challenge – as he saw it – was, “How do you take what is already a de facto ‘centre-of-excellence’ even further?

Wrf-chem simulation for modeling seasonal variations and distributions of aerosol pollutants over the middle east

Atmospheric aerosols and dust have become a challenge for urban air quality. The pre-sented study quantified seasonal spatio-temporal variations of aerosols, tropospheric ozone, and dust over the Middle East (ME) for the year 2012 by using the HTAP emission inventory in the WRF-Chem model. Simulated gaseous pollutants, aerosols and dust were evaluated against satellite measurements and reanalysis datasets. Meteorological parameters, temperature, and wind vector were evaluated against MERRA2. The model showed high spatio-temporal variability in meteorological parameters during summer and low variability in winter. The correlation coefficients for all the parameters are estimated to be 0.92, 0.93, 0.98, and 0.89 for January, April, July, and October respectively, indicating that the WRF-Chem model reproduced results very well. Simulated monthly mean AOD values were maximum in July (1.0–1.5) and minimum in January (0.1–0.4) while April and October were in the range of 0.6–1.0 and 0.3–0.7 respectively. Simulated dust concentrations were high in April and July. The monthly average aerosol concentration was highest over Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates and Jeddah, Makkah. The contributions to urban air pollution were highest over Makkah city with more than 25% from anthropogenic sources

Lípidos totales y perfil de ácidos grasos de hígado de pescado Catla catla salvajes y criados

This experimental work was aimed to study the moisture content, total lipids and fatty acid profile in the liver of wild and farmed freshwater major carp Catla catla of three different weight categories designated as W1 (601-900g), W2 (901- 1200)g and W3 (1201-1500g). Seven fish specimens of each of the three weight categories of wild and farmed Catla catla were obtained from Trimu Head, Jhang and Fish Hatchery, Satiana Road and Faisalabad, respectively. The fish were dissected to remove the liver and after weighing, liver samples were prepared and subjected to chemical analysis. Wild Catla catla liver had a significantly (p < 0.05) higher moisture content as compared to the farmed species. Farmed Catla catla deposited significantly (p < 0.05) higher lipid contents in liver. Proportions of saturated fatty acids varied irregularly in the lipids of the liver from both wild and farmed Catla catla. Saturated fatty acids C12:0, C14:0, C16:0, C18:0, C20:0 and C22:0 were identified with considerable percentages in the liver of Catla catla from both habitats and monounsaturated fatty acid C18:1 was found in considerable amounts in the liver of both major carp. Polyunsaturated fatty acids such as C18:3 (n-6) and C20: 2 (n-6) were detected in the liver of the wild fish of W2 and W3 and was similar in the W3 weight category of the farmed species.Este trabajo experimental tiene como objetivo estudiar el contenido de humedad, lípidos totales y perfil de ácidos grasos de hígado de carpa de agua dulce Catla catla de tres categorías con peso diferentes designadas como W1 (601- 900g), W2 (901-1200)g and W3 (1201-1500g). Siete muestras de pescados por cada una de las tres categorías de peso para Catla catla salvajes y criados fueron obtenidos de Trimu Head, Jhang and Fish Hatchery, Satiana Road y Faisalabad, respectivamente. Los pescados fueron diseccionados para obtener el hígado y las muestras de hígado fueron preparadas y sujetas a análisis químico. Catla catla salvaje tuvo un contenido de humedad significativamente mayor (p < 0.05) en comparación con las especies criadas. En Catla catla criadas se depositaron mayores contenidos de lípidos en el hígado. La proporción de ácidos grasos saturados vario irregularmente en los lípidos del hígado de Catla catla salvajes y criados. Los ácidos grasos saturados C12:0, C14:0, C16:0, C18:0, C20:0 y C22:0 fueron identificados en un alto porcentaje en hígados de Catla catla procedentes de ambos hábitat y el ácido graso monoinsaturado C18:1 fue encontrado en una cantidad considerable en el hígado de ambas carpas. Los ácidos grasos poliinsaturados tales como C18:3 (n-6) y C20: 2 (n-6) fueron detectados en el hígado de pescados salvajes W2 y W3, así como en la misma categoría de peso W3 de especies criadas

Urinary Amylase as the First Line Diagnostic Tool for Acute Pancreatitis

Background: Diagnosis of acute pancreatitis is based on raised serum lipase and serum amylase in the blood. However, the levels of urinary amylase can be sought for being less invasive. The study aimed to find out the diagnostic accuracy of urinary amylase compared to serum amylase and serum lipase and their association with the degree of severity of acute pancreatitis. Methods: A randomized clinical control study was conducted on n=180 acute pancreatitis patients (18-50 year) in the Ziauddin and PNS Shifa Hospital, Karachi from September 2019- August 2020. Serum amylase, serum lipase and urinary amylase levels were checked at the time of admission followed by 24 hours and at discharge. ANOVA with post-hoc Tuckey’s test was used to determine the association of amylases with the severity of acute pancreatitis and p˂0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: The patients with acute pancreatitis had a mean age of 51.76 ±10.8. Urinary amylase had a strong significant association (p˂0.05) with acute pancreatitis compared to serum amylase and lipase (p=0.024). There was an insignificant association of urinary amylase with acute pancreatitis after 24 hours. Similarly, urinary amylase reported good diagnostic discrimination of acute pancreatitis as the accuracy index, the area under the ROC curve was one, showing higher sensitivity and specificity by covering the maximum population under the ROC curve. Conclusion: The significance of Urinary amylase (p˂0.05) was higher than serum amylase, serum lipase because of sensitivity and specificity for diagnosing acute pancreatitis representing a positive association with the degree of severity of the disease. Keywords: Acute Pancreatitis; Amylase; Lipase; Amylase