Synergistic fillers in polymer concrete : new composites

The objective of this study was to examine the effects of synergistic fillers on underwater construction, burning and mechanical properties of polymer portland cement concrete(PPCC). Fine grains of hydrous calcium sulfate, Trihydrated alumina, Calcium carbonate and fibrous unhydrous calcium sulfate were examined in PPCC. It has been observed that these synergistic filler improves the mechanical property (stress) and reduce the average time of burning of PPCC. With fixed quantity of polymer, the deterioration of PPCC in water increases by replacing the sand with above stated fillers

The Effect of Public Sector Development Expenditures and Investment on Economic Growth: Evidence from Pakistan

Abstract. It is an established fact that there is strong association between investment and economic growth of a country but no such direct consensus had been developed on the type of investment. i.e. what are the different sectors in which investment has led to long term impact and did contributed to the growth. The current study in this regard will focus on investigating the relationship of Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP), Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Private Investment with the growth. The study will use data from 1980-81 to 2015-16 in this regard and employ Johansen cointegration to investigate the long run relationship. It is found that with foreign direct investment, health expenditure and transport and communication expenditure has negative relationship in the long run. Where as private investment, education expenditure and expenditure on housing has positive relationship with growth. Based on these findings recommendations were totally investment centric with primary focus on reduction in taxes and other barriers to bring in more investment in long run. Beside taxation, recommendations were made on administrative balance both in tax system and public sectors which were made part of provincial domain after 18th amendment.Keywords. Public sector development programme, Foreign direct investment, Private investment.JEL. D92, O40, H51, H52

Estimation of soil moisture using multispectral and FTIR techniques

AbstractSoil moisture is a key capricious in hydrological process, the accessibility of moisture content in soil reins the mechanism amid the land surface and atmospheric progression. Precise soil moisture determination is influential in the weather forecast, drought monitoring, hydrological modeling, agriculture management and policy making. The aims of the study were to estimate soil moisture through remotely sensed data (FTIR & optical) and establishment of the results with field measured soil moisture data. The ground measurements were carried out in 0–15cm depth. Permutation of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and land surface temperature (LST) were taken to derive temperature vegetation dryness index (TVDI) for assessment of surface soil moisture. Correlation and regression analysis was conceded to narrate the TVDI with in situ calculated soil moisture. The spatial pattern of TVDI shows that generally low moisture distribution over study area. A significant (p<0.05) negative correlation of r=0.79 was found between TVDI and in situ soil moisture. The TVDI was also found adequate in temporal variation of surface soil moisture. The triangle method (TVDI) confers consistent appraisal of moisture situation and consequently can be used to evaluate the wet conditions. Furthermore, the appraisal of soil moisture using the triangular method (TVDI) was possible at medium spatial resolutions because the relationship of soil moisture with LST and NDVI lends an eloquent number of representative pixels for developing a triangular scatter plot

Impact of Country-of-Origin on Product Purchase Decision.

The purpose of this study is to explain, explore and to analyse the possible impact of the different Country-of-Origin on consumers purchase decision on three different categories of products. This study is conducted from a consumer-based view to investigate what to what extend Country-of-Origin effect the customers purchasing decision for three different categories of products? The study also investigated the possible behaviour of different customers regarding different Country-of-Origin depending upon the different demographic variables different choices and preferences of different customers segments were explored. Different age, gender, education and different income subgroups will be examined and the relevant importance of "Made in Pakistan" cue was analysed with other countries products. Study also analyses the impact of Product Involvement on product purchase decision an relationship of Product Knowledge and product purchase decision is also study. Primary data was collected using standardized questioners from four different cities of Pakistan. Results demonstrated that the people who looks for Country-of-origin information, they have certain images of different countries in different product categories. Research also concluded that Pakistan is only preferred country in Fabric products and not in electronics and cosmetics products.  Product Involvement and Product knowledge does affect the customer choices in term of selecting the countries across different product categories. Demographic variables also influenced the Country-of-Origin effect. “Made in Pakistan” was evaluated better for Fabrics but not for Electronics or Cosmetics. Keywords: Country-of-origin, Product Involvement and Product knowledge, Demographic Variables, Pakistan

Epidemiological and clinical profile of snakebite patients: a retrospective analysis at a tertiary care teaching hospital of southern Rajasthan, India

Background: Snakebite - a global public health problem can be a traumatic experience for patients. They may develop local pain and swelling at the site with or without systemic involvement (haematological and neurological) and at times complications depending upon nature of snake. The present study was planned to determine the epidemiological and clinical profile of snakebite patients at a tertiary care teaching hospital of southern Rajasthan, India.Methods: This retrospective observational study was carried out at a tertiary care teaching hospital only after approval from institutional ethics committee. The data of patients aged between 18-80 years of either gender that had presented with a history of snakebite and admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) in past 3 years were included. Data related to epidemiological, clinical and investigational parameters was collected and analysed. Data was presented as number (percentage) or mean ± standard deviation.Results: Total 80 patients were analyzed. Male:female ratio was 1.67:1 and mean age of study population was 33.91±14.34 years. Maximum 71 (89%) patients belonged to rural region. Only 16 (20%) patients complained of local pain. Bleeding was noted in 5 (6.25%) patients whereas 36 (45%) patients had ptosis. Prolonged coagulation markers were reported in 35 (44%) patients. Only 2 (2.5%) patients had acute kidney injury. Altered liver and renal function tests were noted in 71 (89%) and 63 (79%) patients respectively. Mechanical ventilation was required in 27 (34%) patients.Conclusions: Young adult males and rural population were prone to snakebites. Local and systemic manifestations were noted in relatively lesser patients compared to the published data. Only fewer patients in I.C.U. required mechanical ventilation

From Volcano to Toyshop: Adaptive Discriminative Region Discovery for Scene Recognition

As deep learning approaches to scene recognition emerge, they have continued to leverage discriminative regions at multiple scales, building on practices established by conventional image classification research. However, approaches remain largely generic, and do not carefully consider the special properties of scenes. In this paper, inspired by the intuitive differences between scenes and objects, we propose Adi-Red, an adaptive approach to discriminative region discovery for scene recognition. Adi-Red uses a CNN classifier, which was pre-trained using only image-level scene labels, to discover discriminative image regions directly. These regions are then used as a source of features to perform scene recognition. The use of the CNN classifier makes it possible to adapt the number of discriminative regions per image using a simple, yet elegant, threshold, at relatively low computational cost. Experimental results on the scene recognition benchmark dataset SUN397 demonstrate the ability of Adi-Red to outperform the state of the art. Additional experimental analysis on the Places dataset reveals the advantages of Adi-Red, and highlight how they are specific to scenes. We attribute the effectiveness of Adi-Red to the ability of adaptive region discovery to avoid introducing noise, while also not missing out on important information.Comment: To appear at the ACM International Conference on Multimedia (ACM MM 2018). Code available at https://github.com/ZhengyuZhao/Adi-Red-Scen

The Reform Scheme and the All-India Muslim League: An Evaluation of Its Performance (1907-1909)

In many ways, the advent of twentieth century was much significant for the Muslims of South Asia as a number of epoch-making events took place during this period that not only changed the Muslim political culture but also the whole political scenario of the subcontinent. This century was marked by a political awakening of the Muslims to the real or perceived idea that the British policies in the subcontinent were hostile towards their interests. Therefore, even those stalwarts of Aligarh who had been preaching their coreligionists to keep aloof from politics, now turned to advise the students of Aligarh College (in March 1903) to participate in politics. This change took place because of a host of issues such as the attack on Urdu (1900), the partition of Bengal (1905) and the Hindu reaction to that, the victory of the pro-Hindu Labour Party in the U.K., an end of Curzon era and start of Minto&rsquo;s viceroyalty attempting to win over the lost confidence of the Indian public opinion which had emboldened the Indian National Congress (hereafter Congress) and multiplied the Muslim sufferings. The crux of the Muslim collective response to the situation was the formation of the Reform Scheme of Government, the formation of the Muslim Deputation and finally the founding of the All-India Muslim League (hereafter AIML). With these developments began the struggle of Muslims in bracing the abovementioned challenges. This voyage started from Dacca in 1906 and culminated in 1909 at Amritsa

A gender based comparative analysis of laboratory investigations in scrub typhus patients at tertiary care teaching hospital of Southern Rajasthan, India

Background: Scrub typhus is an acute febrile infectious disease which is common in both male and female patients. This study was done to compare the laboratory tests of the scrub typhus patients with reference to sex.Methods: This retrospectively study was carried out in diagnosed scrub typhus patients who were admitted to intensive care unit of a tertiary care teaching hospital of Southern Rajasthan. Diagnosis was done by testing for specific IgM antibodies against Orientia tsutsugamushi using a commercial ELISA kit.Results: Out of total 72 undiagnosed acute febrile illness patients, 26 (36.11%) were diagnosed as scrub typhus. Mean age of the patients was 39.5±12.1. There were 12 (46.15%) males and 14 (53.5%) females. Out of all 26 patients, 3 (11.54%) patients died. All laboratory tests were having non-significant difference between male and female values except haemoglobin, platelets count, serum Na and alkaline phosphatase. Raised creatinine, SGOT, SGPT and decreased albumin was found in all patients. Thrombocytopenia was found in all 12 males (100%) and 11 females (78.57%). Raised bilirubin level was found more in males (10, 83.33%) as compared to females (5, 35.71%) which were statistically significant. Raised alkaline phosphatase level was found more in female (12, 85.71%) as compared to male (5, 50%) which was also significant.Conclusions: Scrub typhus should be considered in differential diagnosis for both male and female acute febrile illness patients due to its non-significant difference in their laboratory values.

Instantaneous Angular Speed Measurement for Low Speed Machines

Abstract For early fault detection and health monitoring of low speed machines the instantaneous angular speed (IAS) measurement is required at high accuracy and resolution. It has already been established that IAS measurement is much more superior to the conventional methods i.e. analyzing acoustic waveforms, current signatures, temperature variations, and vibrations etc. However, an accurate IAS measurement becomes very difficult due to slow and noisy response of the rotary transducers of low speed rotating machines. In the proposed technique, an adjustable frequency ac drive system and a three-phase induction motor is used to mechanically simulate the different IAS values, corresponding to fault conditions. A fast rotating magnetic field (RMF) is used to measure the IAS for low-speed machines. An independent ac source is used to generate a balanced three-phase ac voltage, which is applied to the stator windings of a synchro whose rotor is coupled with the rotating member or rotor of a synchro. The RMF in the air gap generates emf in the rotor of synchro whose frequency depends upon the slip speed. Since the RMF revolves at a speed, several times the speed of the rotating member or the rotor of synchro, hence the IAS measurement becomes very fast and accurate. The proposed scheme is tested successfully for instantaneous change of speed within a range of 0-10 rpm and the overall performance is recorded at dynamic conditions.   Keywords: Speed measurements, IAS measurement, tachometers, rotating machines, low angular speed, transducer