Economic Impact Assessment of Brackish Groundwater in Kirana Hills Region, District Chiniot, Pakistan¤

Good quality water is the basic need of every citizen. Contaminated water not only affects our health but also damages household items such as sanitary materials. The purpose of this study is to assess the economic impact of high Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) groundwater in Kirana hills region of district Chiniot. In order to evaluate the economic impact in areas of different TDS levels of water, a survey was conducted. The survey form comprised fifteen questions related to health impact, laundry, cooking and sanitary issues. Results of data collected from the respondents of very hard water area indicated that the water causes digestive, skin and hair related diseases. According to the survey, in very hard water areas, washing clothes with groundwater makes them look rough, dull or stained. However, people living in hard water areas responded that the water is relatively better for laundry. Overall residents of very hard water area and hard water area bear costs of rupees 73,850 and 16,200 per five years respectively. By provision of good quality water and taking measures to clean the groundwater, problems can be resolved as the quality of water is positively correlated with the quality of our lives. A collective effort by government and society can minimize the loss by installing appropriate filtration techniques

Mapping Flood Risk Assessment by Remote Sensing in District Chiniot, Pakistan

A flood is a catastrophic event of natural origin which involves exposure of human population, infrastructure, and resources. Heavy rainfall in river catchments, snow melting in monsoon season, inadequate drainage networks, water overflowing from the main drainage channels, conversion of natural vegetation, agricultural land, and wetlands due to urbanization are the core reasons of floods. Whereas, climate change has made the condition worse and increases the frequency of the floods. Asia consists approximately one-fifth of the earth's land area with half of the world's population living in this continent. As natural disasters increased around the world, Asian countries also continued to experience hazard events especially from 1994 to 2004, when nearly 60,000 people were killed in floods (Arambepola, 2009)

Quality of Financial Reporting Premium and Equity Returns

Financial statements published by a company at the end of every financial year serve three purposes: they inform, they help control and they help plan. The basic aim of transparent disclosure of accounting information is to assist the resourceful allocation of capital in the economy as they improve the investment and financing decisions. Reliable financial statements provides less biased performance measures and market efficiency also improved because transparent disclosure of accounting information reduced information asymmetry at lower cost which effects market performance. This study investigates the assets pricing mechanism in Pakistani equity market by using monthly data of equity prices from 2007-2012.To explore the joint effect of size, market and new factors quality of financial reporting by using Three Factor Model of Fama and French .Results shows that FRQP is giving negative returns with less risk but size and market premium have negative returns with higher risk. All portfolios showing negative returns mean they were in loss, so market was in decline stage.For future this study converse that information asymmetries can be reduced by transparent disclosure of accounting information because business investment strategies are affected by financial disclosure.From two pass regression we  further conclude that from past beta we can’t predict future returns because all results are insignificant so it means market price the quality of financial reporting of today’s information but it doesn’t not effect on future returns. Findings of the study also shows that explaining power of our proposed model is also better as compared to conventional CAPM So investor should carefully and diligently use these factors in designing their investment, financing and valuation strategies. Keywords: Agency Theory, Arbitrage Pricing Theory, Capital Assets pricing theory, Fama and French Three Factor Model, Signaling theory, Quality of financial reporting

Relationship of Risk Premium with Expected Volatility and Unexpected Volatility in Developing and Developed Economies

After application of ARIMA model to monthly risk premium and Threshold GARCH-In-Mean (TGARCH-M) models to daily risk premium of developed economies i.e. USA, UK, Germany, France and Canada and developing economies i.e. Pakistan, India, Malaysia and China over a period from January 2000 to December 2014, this study reported that in monthly data relationship between risk premium and expected volatility is negative in Pakistan: positive in Indonesia and Canada while insignificant in all other countries. The relationship between risk premium and unexpected volatility is negative in all the countries except Pakistan and China where it is insignificant while positive in USA. By the application of asymmetric volatility model on daily data for the same span, the relationship between risk premium and expected volatility is negative and significant in UK and France while this relationship is insignificant in all other countries. The study also indicates that the arrival of bad news has a greater impact on conditional volatility than the arrival of good news in all the economies whether developing or developed

Ghost and Laplacian Instabilities in the Teleparallel Horndeski Gravity

Teleparallel geometry offers a platform on which to build up theories of gravity where torsion rather than curvature mediates gravitational interaction. The teleparallel analogue of Horndeski gravity is an approach to teleparallel geometry where scalar-tensor theories are considered in this torsional framework. Being teleparallel gravity of lower order in dynamics, this turns out to be more general than metric Horndeski gravity. In other words, the class of teleparallel Horndeski gravity models is much broader than the standard metric one. In this work, we explore constraints on this wide range of models coming from ghost and Laplacian instabilities. The aim is to limit pathological branches of the theory by fundamental considerations. It is possible to conclude that a very large class of models results physically viable

Spatial Dependence of the Growth Factor in Scalar-Tensor Cosmology

Scalar-tensor theories have taken on a key role in attempts to confront the growing open questions in standard cosmology. It is important to understand entirely their dynamics at perturbative level including any possible spatial dependence in their growth of large scale structures. In this work, we investigate the spatial dependence of the growth rate of scalar-tensor theories through the M\'{e}sz\'{a}ros equation. We confirm that at subhorizon level this dependence does not play a major role for viable models. However, we establish conditions on which this criterion is met which may be important for developing new models. In our work, we consider three specific models that exhibit spatial dependence of the growth rate at subhorizon modes, which may also be important for early Universe models

Online Classroom Platforms: A Comprehensive Study in the Perspective of Bangladesh

Education is the backbone of a nation. So every nation emphasizes it with their highest value as development is mostly dependent on education. In the modern era, online classroom conditions naturalized through specialized video conferencing applications. There may be students and instructors to take the class as a traditional classroom. There is at least one current tutor present, and the lesson is completed in real- time at a fixed time, with the students being present. Here, students and teachers can genuinely engage in class. However, a class does not always need a live teacher to inspect students; they can also proceed to their desired place. Sometimes there may be no teacher at all. This type of online classroom is an unsupervised online classroom. It is distinguished by ready-made lessons that the students can receive without the help of an instructor. Examinations can also be automated in this system. So, in any situation and place, an online class can be taken. At the time of COVID-19, all over the world, people are in crisis and are locked down in their houses. The traditional educational system is facing more trouble to continue its activities. In the traditional system, some teachers used to teach various subjects in front of their students in an educational institution

Cosmic Growth in f(T)f(T) Teleparallel Gravity

Physical evolution of cosmological models can be tested by using expansion data, while growth history of these models is capable of testing dynamics of the inhomogeneous parts of energy density. The growth factor, as well as its growth index, gives a clear indication of the performance of cosmological models in the regime of structure formation of early Universe. In this work, we explore the growth index in several leading $f(T)$ cosmological models, based on a specific class of teleparallel gravity theories. These have become prominent in the literature and lead to other formulations of teleparallel gravity. Here we adopt a generalized approach by obtaining the M\'{e}sz\'{a}ros equation without immediately imposing the subhorizon limit, because this assumption could lead to over-simplification. This approach gives avenue to study at which $k$ modes the subhorizon limit starts to apply. We obtain numerical results for the growth factor and growth index for a variety of data set combinations for each $f(T)$ model

Hematological parameters are acutely effected by cement dust exposure in construction workers: Hematological changes due to cement dust

Cement dust poses an occupational hazard causing respiratory (owing to its inhalation), dermatological, ocular and hematological problems. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effect of occupational exposure of cement dust on hematological parameters in construction workers. Apparently healthy sixty five (65) adult male construction workers aged 25-50 years participated in this study. Three (3.0) ml venous blood samples were collected from each participant for hematological analysis at two different time points, one at 8 AM and second at 4 PM at the end of work shift. Differences in means and test of significance were calculated using paired Student’s t-test. The results revealed that post shift samples showed statistically significant increase (p<0.05) in mean total leukocyte count (TLC), lymphocyte %, monocyte % and eosinophil %  and statistically significant decrease (p<0.05) in mean hemoglobin, red blood cell (RBC) count, packed cell volume (PCV) and platelet count. The present study confirms that hematological parameters are significantly effected in construction workers which may be attributed to the work atmosphere predominated with cement dust