Investigation of L2 Learners’ Reading Attitudes with an Impact of Extensive Reading Project at Secondary Level, Sindh, Pakistan

In Pakistan, English is most importantly taught at all levels of education and several subjects are taught through the medium of English. Students acquire much of knowledge by reading written literature. Therefore, the importance of reading is inevitable at school level where students have to develop and adopt several strategies and new skills. Reading attitude is a complicated notion, and has a crucial role in developing reading skill. Reading attitudes are based on past experiences and practices and make a learner to be positive or negative for attempting the reading activity. Several researches suggest that learners’ choice for reading material and flexibility add a vital role in shaping the reading attitudes of the learners. Therefore, this study had taken the extensive reading for the instruction to gain support for the reading attitudes in second language. This attempt was made to fill the gap by investigating the effectiveness of extensive reading on the L2 reading attitudes. The subjects were 110 secondary level learners from Sindh, Pakistan. A reading attitude likert scale questionnaire was used before and after the 12-week project of extensive reading with 20 items divided into 6 variables: self-perception, intellectual value, practical value, linguistic value, comfort and anxiety. The results were compiled with the help of SPSS analysis, that showed the descriptive analysis of both pre and post project reading attitudes for each variable and significant difference. Suggestions and implications are highlighted for future practices and research. Keywords: Extensive reading, Reading attitude, Second Language, Learners’ Choice DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/11-2-06 Publication date: January 31st 202

Herbal cure for poisons and poisonous bites from Western Uttar Pradesh, India

Objective: To conduct ethnopharmacobotanical field explorations in rural areas of five districts of Uttar Pradesh, India with regard to the folk herbal formulations associated with the management of poisons and poisonous bites. Methods: Local traditional healers known as “Vaidya” and “Hakeems” in the study area were interviewed to gather ethnopharmacobotanical information using a questionnaire attending various medical practices. Results: Information on 49 herbal formulations prepared from 39 plant species belonging to 28 plant families in the treatment of poisons and poisonous bites is presented in this scientific communication. Conclusion: Present communication revealed that study area is rich in its ethnopharmacobotanical knowledge. The plant species discussed here also encompasses new reports on C. album, S. xanthocarpum, S. melongena, S. indicum, C. procera, C. sativum, C. dactylon, B. campestris, T. aestivum, V. vinifera, S. vulgare and N. indicum. This study further concludes that their lies a lot of potential in the Indian herbal repository which should be explored systematically and later subjected to thorough study under the light of latest available scientific investigations for the drug standardization and pharmaco-toxicological studies with respect to make cheaper and safer drugs for the benefit of ailing humanity encountered with poisons and poisonous bites

Assessment of Groundwater Quality in Coastal Region a Case Study of Qayyumabad, Karachi, Pakistan

The aim of present study is to assess groundwater quality of Qayyumabad area for drinking purpose. Groundwater samples (n = 20) were collected from wellbores from variable depths (12-300 feet) occurring on both banks of the Malir River near study area. Water quality was assessed through estimation of physical parameters including, pH, Eh, TDS, EC, hardness, temperature, aesthetic character (taste, color and odor) and chemical parameters including major cations (Na, K, Ca, Mg), anions (Cl, NO₃, SO₄, HCO₃) and minor/trace elements (Fe, As). Data revealed that groundwater of study area has very high TDS content (range: 805-40340 mg/l) and positive Eh (-180 to +125 mV), suggesting the recent recharge. The pH varies in the range of 6.55-7.75 which comply with WHO limit (6.5-8.5) for drinking water. Major solutes varied in the order of Na (mean: 2587 mg/l) > Mg (433mg/l) > Ca (231mg/l) > K (91 mg/l) while anions in the order of Cl (mean: 3385 mg/l) > SO₄ (mean: 580 mg/l) > HCO₃ (mean: 343 mg/l) > NO₃ (11.43 mg/l). Both arsenic and iron contents occur within the WHO permissible limits except two samples which showed elevated Fe (4950 ppb) and As (100 ppb) respectively. These results suggest that groundwater in study area is unfit for drinking purpose. Principal component analysis (PCA) explained four factors where F1 suggests the salts leaching mechanism and F2 indicated anoxia prevalence due to organic matter decomposition. On the other hand, F3 confirmed water rock interaction and F4 supported the prevalence arsenic release associated with anoxia

Fortification of AES with Dynamic Mix-Column Transformation

MDS Matrix has an important role in the design of Rijndael Cipher and is the most expensive component of the cipher. It is also used as a perfect diffusion primitive in some other block ciphers. In this paper, we propose a replacement of Mix Column Transformation in AES by equivalent Dynamic Mix Column Transformation. A Dynamic Mix Column Transformation comprises dynamic MDS Matrices which are based on default MDS Matrix of AES and m-bit additional key. Here m is a variable length that does not exceed the product of 31.97 and one less the number of encryption rounds. This mechanism increases a brute force attack complexity by m-bit to the original key and enforces the attackers to design new frameworks for different modern cryptanalytic techniques applicable to the cipher. We also present efficient implementation of this technique in Texas Instrument’s DSP C64x+ with no extra cost to default AES and in Xilinx Spartan3 FPGA with no change in AES throughput. We also briefly analyze the security achieved over it

Highly Compact GCPW-Fed Multi-Branch Structure Multi-Band Antenna for Wireless Applications

In this work, we present a highly compact multi-branch structure multi-band antenna with a grounded coplanar waveguide (GCPW)-fed structure printed on 26 ×13 ×1.6 mm3 sized FR-4 substrate having dielectric constant r of 4.3 and loss tangent of 0.02. In the proposed antenna, ve branches are extended from the main radiator to provide multi-band behavior. Two branches are introduced at the upper end of the main radiator, e ectively covering the lower bands, while the other three branches are introduced near the center of the main radiator to extend operation to higher bands. e designed antenna covers ve di erent bands: 2.4 GHz, 4.5 GHz, 5.5 GHz, 6.5 GHz, and 7.8 GHz, with respective gain values of 1.34, 1.60, 1.83, 1.80, and 3.50 dBi and respective radiation e ciency values of 90, 88, 84, 75, and 89%. e antenna shows a good impedance bandwidth, ranging from 170MHz to 3070 MHz. e proposed antenna is simulated in CST Microwave Studio, while its performance is experimentally validated by the fabrication and testing process. e antenna has potential applications for IoT, sub-6 GHz 5G and WLAN (both enablers for IoT), C-band, and X-band services.Dr. Mohammad Alibakhshikenari acknowledges support from the CONEX-Plus programme funded by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 801538

Investigating Novice Developers’ Code Commenting Trends Using Machine Learning Techniques

Code comments are considered an efficient way to document the functionality of a particular block of code. Code commenting is a common practice among developers to explain the purpose of the code in order to improve code comprehension and readability. Researchers investigated the effect of code comments on software development tasks and demonstrated the use of comments in several ways, including maintenance, reusability, bug detection, etc. Given the importance of code comments, it becomes vital for novice developers to brush up on their code commenting skills. In this study, we initially investigated what types of comments novice students document in their source code and further categorized those comments using a machine learning approach. The work involves the initial manual classification of code comments and then building a machine learning model to classify student code comments automatically. The findings of our study revealed that novice developers/students’ comments are mainly related to Literal (26.66%) and Insufficient (26.66%). Further, we proposed and extended the taxonomy of such source code comments by adding a few more categories, i.e., License (5.18%), Profile (4.80%), Irrelevant (4.80%), Commented Code (4.44%), Autogenerated (1.48%), and Improper (1.10%). Moreover, we assessed our approach with three different machine-learning classifiers. Our implementation of machine learning models found that Decision Tree resulted in the overall highest accuracy, i.e., 85%. This study helps in predicting the type of code comments for a novice developer using a machine learning approach that can be implemented to generate automated feedback for students, thus saving teachers time for manual one-on-one feedback, which is a time-consuming activity

Antiglycation, antiplatelets aggregation, cytotoxic and phytotoxic activities of Nepeta suavis

Nepeta suavis Stapf. (Lamiaceae), one of the ignored species for testing biological activities, was studied. In present research, the Nepeta suavis fractions: chloroform (FC), ethyl acetate (FE) and aqueous (FW) were evaluated for platelet aggregation, antiglycation, cytoxicity, and phytotoxicity. FE showed 65.60% antiglycation activity against the protein glycation while the other fractions showed less than 50% inhibitory potential. The FW inhibited arachidonic acid (AA) and platelet activating factor (acetyl-glyceryl-ether-phosphorylcholine, PAF) induced platelet aggregation. FE showed significant cytotoxicity against brine shrimp larvae with LD50 of 41.3 μg/ml. Phytotoxic studies of FC, FE and FW against Lemna minor showed 77.5-100% inhibitory effects at 1000 μg/ml. However, at lower concentration (10 μg/ml) enhancing effects were observed in FC and FE, as compared to control. FW remained in a uniform pattern of inhibitory effects in all three concentrations (10,100 and 1000 μg/ml). FE showed highest inhibitory activities against formation of glycation, while FW showed significant inhibitory effects against platelet aggregation and Lemna minor. Both of these fractions are recommended for further study to identify and isolate active chemical compounds.Colegio de Farmacéuticos de la Provincia de Buenos Aire