FDI and Terrorism: Co-integration & Granger Causality

Terrorist activities not only effects that particular region or country's infrastructure, but it also effects the financial well being of that country. Because such terrorist activities create instability and uncertainty in the country. This results loss of foreign investors’ confidence in that economy, thus decreasing the level of foreign investments. Similarly Pakistan is also facing this bitter reality of decreased foreign direct investment due to an increase in terrorist activities. Variables: FDI , Terroris

Fluoride in the drinking water of Pakistan and the possible risk of crippling fluorosis

To explore the possibility of fluoride toxicity, 747 water samples were collected from surface water and groundwater sources of 16 major cities of Pakistan, adopting a uniform sampling design with distribution of samples: Lahore (79), Kasur (46), Faisalabad (30), Khushab (50), Chakwal (51), Mianwali (30), Jhelum (53), Bahawalpur (60), Karachi (60), Mirpur Khas (55), Peshawar (38), Risalpur (35), Quetta (81), Ziarat (21), Loralai (21), and Mastung (37). Comparison of analytical findings with WHO Guidelines of Drinking Water for Fluoride (i.e., 1.5 ppm) has concluded that 16% of the monitored water sources have fluoride concentration beyond the permissible safe limit of 1.5 mg L^−1 falling in the concentration range of 1.6–25 mg L^−1. The highest fluoride contamination (22%) is detected in the Balochistan province followed by 19% in Punjab province. Comparatively higher fluoride levels of > 20% in the groundwater sources like hand pumps supported the possibility of increased groundwater contamination as excessive fluoride concentrations are expected to come from calcium-poor aquifers and in areas where fluoride-bearing minerals are common or where cation exchange of sodium for calcium occurs. Field observations have also indicated the prevalence of fluoride-associated health implications in the study areas with excessive fluoride in water sources. Findings of this study have provided bidirectional vision for the epidemiological investigations as well as to mitigate the issues in the affected vicinities of fluoride-rich areas

Distribution of nitrate in the water resources of Pakistan

Water quality monitoring activities have recognized the nitrate contamination in the drinking water sources as one of the major quality issue of Pakistan. Adopting a  uniform sampling design, 747 samples were collected from a wide range of irrigated or non-irrigated regions having distribution of samples in sixteen cities as Lahore (79), Kasur (46), Faisalabad (30), Khushab (50), Chakwal (51), Mianwali (30), Jhelum (53), Bahawalpur (60), Karachi (60), Mirpur Khas (55), Peshawar (38),  Risalpur (35), Quetta (81), Ziarat (21), Loralai (21), Mastung (37). The results   showed that 19% of the total samples have nitrate concentration beyond the  permissible safe limit of 10 mg/L falling in the concentration  range of 11-160 mg/L  of nitrate. The highest percentage contamination (23%) is found in water samples collected from both the Balochistan and Punjab provinces. Comparatively higher  nitrate levels of <70 % in the groundwater sources like hand pumps and wells  support the possibilities of increased contamination in the areas cultivated using heavy doses of fertilizers. Findings of the study provide support for further  epidemiological investigations and potential strategy for mitigating the issue in theaffected regions.Key words: Nitrate-N, groundwater contamination, hand pumps,   methemoglobinemia, Pollution, nutrients, fertilizer, agriculture

Flaky Test Sanitisation via On-the-Fly Assumption Inference for Tests with Network Dependencies

Flaky tests cause significant problems as they can interrupt automated build processes that rely on all tests succeeding and undermine the trustworthiness of tests. Numerous causes of test flakiness have been identified, and program analyses exist to detect such tests. Typically, these methods produce advice to developers on how to refactor tests in order to make test outcomes deterministic. We argue that one source of flakiness is the lack of assumptions that precisely describe under which circumstances a test is meaningful. We devise a sanitisation technique that can isolate f laky tests quickly by inferring such assumptions on-the-fly, allowing automated builds to proceed as flaky tests are ignored. We demonstrate this approach for Java and Groovy programs by implementing it as extensions for three popular testing frameworks (JUnit4, JUnit5 and Spock) that can transparently inject the inferred assumptions. If JUnit5 is used, those extensions can be deployed without refactoring project source code. We demonstrate and evaluate the utility of our approach using a set of six popular real-world programs, addressing known test flakiness issues in these programs caused by dependencies of tests on network availability. We find that our method effectively sanitises failures induced by network connectivity problems with high precision and recall.Comment: to appear at IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM

Socio-Cultural Determinants of Women’s Homelessness: A Study of Dar-ul-Aman, Multan

Home is an integral element of the Pakistani family system, and the idea of home is deeply embedded in Pakistani women’s consciousness. The prime objective of this study is to explore the socio-cultural factors responsible for women’s homelessness. This study highlights various determinants that lead women to leave their homes. The issue of women fleeing from their homes is a matter of disregard in Pakistan’s culture, such an action is considered as an issue of family’s self-image, respect, and honour. In the present study, Marxist and feminist lenses have been used to indicate women’s secondary status that is responsible for their homelessness. Interviews of twenty-five women were conducted in Government Dar-ul-Aman[1]Multan, Pakistan. Purposive sampling was used to select the respondents. The age range of informants was 14 to 55. All married, unmarried and single women, widows and divorcees were part of the sample. Analysis was conducted following the assortment of information from the field thematic analysis. This study uncovers the variables liable for women\u27s displacement like gender-based violence, which is an intense issue globally and has a significant role in the secondary status of women in Pakistan. Some other important factors like poor financial status, forced marriages, absence of education, parents’ discriminatory behaviour and various kinds of violence affect women physically, socially and emotionally [1] Dar-ul-Aman is an asylum that provides refuge, protection and security to homeless women

Combinatorial extensions of Popoviciu\u27s inequality via Abel-Gontscharoff polynomial with applications in information theory

We establish new refinements and improvements of Popoviciu’s inequality for n-convex functions using Abel-Gontscharoff interpolating polynomial along with the aid of new Green functions. We construct new inequalities for n-convex functions and compute new upper bounds for Ostrowski and Grüss type inequalities. As an application of our work in information theory, we give new estimations for Shannon, Relative and Zipf-Mandelbrot entropies using generalized Popoviciu’s inequality

PHYTOCHEMICAL SCREENING OF DIFFERENT ROOT EXTRACTS OF Ageratum conyzoides AND THEIR POTENTIAL BIOACTIVE PROPERTIES

The present study was conducted to determine different classes of secondary metabolites of Ageratum conyzoides root extracts and to evaluate their antioxidant, antibacterial, and antifungal potentialities using various pathogenic fungal and different gram-positive/gram-negative bacterial strains. The roots powder was subjected to ultrasonic-assisted extraction with n-hexane, acetone, ethanol, and EtOH:H2O(1:1). The screening of phytochemicals indicated the existence of terpenoids, alkaloids, coumarins, sterols, flavonoids, and glycosides in the root extract of A. conyzoides. However, the absence of saponins, tannins, anthocyanidins, anthraquinones, and phlobatannins was observed. The results indicated a reasonable antibacterial (against gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria), and antifungal potential. The antibacterial activity of the ethanolic extract was highest against all four strains of bacteria and was also comparable to the standard medicines used. However, antifungal activity was highest in EtOH:H2O (1:1) extract. Moderate antioxidant properties were also demonstrated, favoring the importance of the roots of this plant from a medicinal point of view

Evil Pickles: DoS Attacks Based on Object-Graph Engineering (Artifact)

This artefact demonstrates the effects of the serialisation vulnerabilities described in the companion paper. It is composed of three components: scripts, including source code, for Java, Ruby and C# serialisation-vulnerabilities, two case studies that demonstrate attacks based on the vulnerabilities, and a contracts-based mitigation strategy for serialisation-based attacks on Java applications. The artefact allows users to witness how the serialisation-based vulnerabilities result in behavior that can be used in security attacks. It also supports the repeatability of the case study experiments and the benchmark for the mitigation measures proposed in the paper. Instructions for running the tasks are provided along with a description of the artefact setup