The Nexus of Foreign Direct Investment, Economic Growth and Environment in Pakistan

This paper estimate the impact of sectoral FDI on economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions in Pakistan. To this end, it uses time series secondary data from 1972 to 2011 and applies Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) models. The results showed that FDI inflows in manufacturing, transport, storage and communication sectors and energy consumption have positive effect on the GDP growth of Pakistan. Besides, FDI inflow in manufacturing, transport, storage and communication sector and population density are responsible for the CO2 emissions in Pakistan. The results also validate Environmental Kuznet Curves in both long and short run. JEL Classification: E2, O4, Q5 Keywords: Sectoral FDI, CO2 emissions, Environmental Kuznet Curves, Gross Domestic Product Growt

Performance optimization of the electro-optic Q-Switching for high power laser using RTP crystal

In order to study the performance of proposal model crystal constructed from (Rubidium Titanly Phosphate, RTP) the birefringence, electric field application, optical, Influences of the most parametric on the electro-optical Q-switching operated for high power lasers are accomplished. The voltage requirements for productions Q-switching operation with electro-optical pockels-cells by means of this proposal as transversal configuration cellcrystal have been minimized from 1.900 kV to 1.808 kV for RTP cell these values were reduced in this work owing to the reduction of the thickness to length ratio of this crystal cell. The RTP crystal can be used with longitudinal electric field which is more suitable for high electro-optical modulation of high power lasers, but with extreme half-wave voltage, which is measured in this work and found to be 9.143 kV and 6.363 kV for x and y directionrespectively . Also, in this work, interpolated treatments on the measurements were applied using quarter-wave plate (Vλ/4) arrangement, which offered high improvement for using the linear of the transmission-voltage schemes to select the suitable requirement voltage for any levels switching

Risk factors associated with surgical site infections: A retrospective report from a developing country

Introduction Any infection occurring at the site of a surgical incision superficially or deep within the fascia, within 30 days of a surgical procedure is termed as a surgical site infection (SSI). Due to limited resources, non-adherence to infection control guidelines and substandard sterilization practices, the incidence is higher in developing countries. The aim of this study is to estimate the incidence of surgical site infections in general surgeries at a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan and identify the predisposing risk factors. Methods This was a retrospective analysis that included all surgical records from June 1, 2018, to December 31, 2018. After exclusion, 882 records were included. The incidence of SSI and predisposing risk factors were noted. Data were entered and analyzed using SPSS v. 22.0 (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY, US). Results The incidence of SSI was 8.84% (n=78). SSIs were more common in older participants (11.4% vs. 6.4%; p=0.009), in patients with more than 24 hour of preoperative hospital stay (11.2% vs. 64%; p=0.013), in procedures of longer duration (1.53 ± 0.35 vs 2.57 ± 0.17; p\u3c0.0001), and in emergency surgeries (19.2% vs. 7.5%; p=0.0001). The combined incidence of SSIs in American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) index III and above was 37 (47.4%) and that in I and II was 41 (52.6%) (p\u3c0.00001). Conclusion This study has revealed a very high incidence of surgical site infections. These infections are more common in elderly patients, patients undergoing emergency surgeries, those with longer preoperative hospital stay and longer surgical duration, and patients with a high ASA index

R13. Formulation development of loratadine immediate-release tablets using hot-melt extrusion coupled with 3d-printing technology

Corresponding author (Pharmaceutics and Drug delivery): Sundus Hussain Omari, [email protected]://egrove.olemiss.edu/pharm_annual_posters/1012/thumbnail.jp

Economic Analysis of Food Security in Peshawar, Pakistan

To investigate and explore the condition of food security in District Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 300 citizens were interviewed. The econometric tool of Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient analysis was used and applied for analysis and estimating the data collected. It was concluded from the analysis that food security shows strong and negative relationships with the rise in population growth, rise in biofuel production, rise in poverty and rise in social unrest. Food insecurity is a major issue in KP that must be solved as soon as possible. Poor people are suffering the most and are unable to buy basic food items due to high prices. Food demand is increasing day by day because of larger population, thus resulting in an inflation of food prices. Effective measures are needed to control and reduce the growing rate of population.  To eradicate food insecurity, agricultural institutions must be intensified and strengthened, infrastructure and storage facilities must be enhanced and developed, investment and latest machinery & technology are required to be inserted into an inactive agricultural sector

Relation of poverty with treatment-seeking behavior and antibiotic misuse among UTI patients in Pakistan

ObjectiveThe current study aimed to assess the relation between multi-dimension poverty, treatment-seeking behavior, and antibiotic misuse among urinary tract infection (UTI) patients.MethodA cross-sectional approach was utilized to recruit patients who had a history of UTI in the previous month from two provinces of Pakistan. The treatment-seeking behavior and antibiotic misuse data were collected on a self-developed questionnaire, whereas the poverty data were collected on a modified multi-dimension poverty index (MPI). Descriptive statistics were applied to summarize the data. The logistic regression analysis was carried out to assess the association of multi-dimension poverty with patient treatment-seeking behavior and antibiotic misuse.ResultsA total of 461 participants who had UTI symptoms in the previous month were recruited. Most of the participants in the severely deprived stage treated the UTI (p < 0.001); however, there was a high proportion of the participants who consulted with friends and family for UTI treatment (p < 0.001). The patients with deprivation status (deprived and severely deprived) were less associated with formal consultation. The poorer subgroups were less likely to practice antibiotic course completion.ConclusionThe current study highlighted that poverty plays an important role in antibiotic misuse. Poorer subgroups were associated with informal consultations and the incompletion of the antibiotic course. Further studies are needed to explore the potential role of poverty in treatment-seeking behavior and antibiotic misuse

A comparative study of randomized response techniques using separate and combined metrics of efficiency and privacy.

In social surveys, the randomized response technique can be considered a popular method for collecting reliable information on sensitive variables. Over the past few decades, it has been a common practice that survey researchers develop new randomized response techniques and show their improvement over previous models. In majority of the available research studies, the authors tend to report only those findings which are favorable to their proposed models. They often tend to hide the situations where their proposed randomized response models perform worse than the already available models. This approach results in biased comparisons between models which may influence the decision of practitioners about the choice of a randomized response technique for real-life problems. We conduct a neutral comparative study of four available quantitative randomized response techniques using separate and combined metrics of respondents' privacy level and model's efficiency. Our findings show that, depending on the particular situation at hand, some models may be better than the other models for a particular choice of values of parameters and constants. However, they become less efficient when a different set of parameter values are considered. The mathematical conditions for efficiency of different models have also been obtained

Development of Indirect Spectrophotometric Method for Quantification of Cephalexin in Pure Form and Commercial Formulation Using Complexation Reaction

A simple, accurate and indirect spectrophotometric method was developed for the quantification of cephalexin in pure form and pharmaceutical products using complexation reaction. The developed method is based on the oxidation of the cephalexin with Fe3+ in acidic medium. Then 1, 10-phenanthroline reacts with Fe2+ and a red colored complex was formed. The absorbance of the complex was measured at 510 nm by spectrophotometer. Different experimental parameters affecting the complexation reactions were studied and optimized. Beer’s law was obeyed in the concentration range 0.4 -10 µgmL-1 with a good correlation of 0.992. The limit of detection and limit of quantification were found to be 0.065 µgmL-1 and 0.218 µgmL-1, respectively. The method have good reproducibility with a relative standard deviation of 6.26 % (n = 6). The method was successfully applied for the determination of cephalexin in bulk powder and commercial formulation. Percent recoveries were found to range from 95.47 to 103.87 % for the pure form and 98.62 to 103.35 % for commercial formulations

On the Influence of Collector Size on the Solar Chimneys Performance

Performance of solar chimney power plant system is highly influenced by the design geometries. The collector size is logically enhances the solar chimney performance, but the trend of enhancement is not yet investigated. In the present work, experimental and numerical investigations have been carried out to ascertain, in terms of qualitative and quantitative evaluation, the effect of the collector diameter. Daily thermal efficiency has been determined at four different collector diameter. Two different collector diameters, 3.0 and 6.0 m, have been investigated experimentally, and then scaled up, to 9.0 and 12.0 m, by numerical simulation using ANSYS-FLUENT®15 software. Results demonstrated that collector diameter has effectively influenced the system performance. Larger collector diameter imposed increase in the velocity, temperature and the daily average thermal efficiency of the system. From the experimental results, increasing the collector diameter from 3.0 to 6.0 m has increased the daily average thermal efficiency of the collector from 9.81 to 12.8. Simulation results at 800 W/m2 irradiation revealed that the velocity in the chimney have increased from 1.66 m/s at 3.0 m collector diameter to 2.34, 2.47 and 2.63 m/s for 6.0, 9.0 and 12.0 m collector diameters, respectively