Do Non-farm Enterprises Offer Pathways for Upward Mobility in Rural Pakistan? Evidence from Panel Dataset

This study has analysed the dynamics of rural non-farm enterprises and their role in employment provision, equity enhancement and poverty alleviation in Pakistan. Multiple data sources have been used including cross-sectional and panel datasets. The results show that majority of the rural non-farm enterprises in Pakistan are micro-enterprises with only a limited share in manufacturing. They are informal and have poor forward and backward linkages and high closure rate. Despite the poor asset base, they are providing jobs to more than half of the rural population, contributing to reduction in poverty and equity enhancement among the rural masses. Rich households own enterprises and poor households gain employment from non-farm enterprises. Non-farm economy has a significant impact in reducing multiple deprivations and also has a significant positive impact in pulling households out of poverty with the passage of time. Pakistan, being a country where most of the population is still residing in rural areas and where rural land is not equitably distributed; such non-farm activities are highly important not only to tackle the ongoing food security challenges but also for resource diversification of households. JEL Classification: I32, J21, J43, O14, Q10, R11 Keywords: Rural Development, Non-farm Sector, Employment, Poverty, Multidimensional Povert

CAPITAL STRUCTURE, LIQUIDITY AND FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF THE FIRMS IN CEMENT AND SUGAR INDUSTRIES OF PAKISTAN

This research examines the impact of firm capital structure and liquidity on the financial performance of sugar and cement sector firms in Pakistan. The study used the secondary data of 30 firms randomly selected for the period 2005 to 2017. The data was analyzed through statistical tools like correlation and regression. The results revealed that the capital structure proxies have a negative correlation with financial performance proxies of these sector firms.The results indicated that debts to equity ratio and the fund capital ratio has a negative insignificant impact however the debts ratio and Funded debts ratio were found having a negative significant impact on the financial proxies of these selected firms. The results indicated a positive correlation of the liquidity with the financial performance of these firms. The results demonstrating positive effect of current and quick ratios on the financial performance proxies of these firms. The study has some meaningful insights for the financial managers and decision makers of these firms

Fillers and methods to improve the effective (out-plane) thermal conductivity of polymeric thermal interface materials – A review

[Abstract]: The internet of things and growing demand for smaller and more advanced devices has created the problem of high heat production in electronic equipment, which greatly reduces the work performance and life of the electronic instruments. Thermal interface material (TIM) is placed in between heat generating micro-chip and the heat dissipater to conduct all the produced heat to the heat sink. The development of suitable TIM with excellent thermal conductivity (TC) in both in-plane and through-plane directions is a very important need at present. For efficient thermal management, polymer composites are potential candidates. But in general, their thermal conductivity is low compared to that of metals. The filler integration into the polymer matrix is one of the two approaches used to increase the thermal conductivity of polymer composites and is also easy to scale up for industrial production. Another way to achieve this is to change the structure of polymer chains, which fall out of the scope of this work. In this review, considering the first approach, the authors have summarized recent developments in many types of fillers with different scenarios by providing multiple cases with successful strategies to improve throughplane thermal conductivity (TPTC) (k⊥). For a better understanding of TC, a comprehensive background is presented. Several methods to improve the effective (out-plane) thermal conductivity of polymer composites and different theoretical models for the calculation of TC are also discussed. In the end, it is given a detailed conclusion that provides drawbacks of some fillers, multiple significant routes recommended by other researchers to build thermally conductive polymer composites, future aspects along with direction so that the researchers can get a guideline to design an effective polymer-based thermal interface material.This research was funded by Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China, “Light Shipbuilding Fire- Resistant Sandwich Panels with Improved Balance of Acoustic Insulation, Mechanical and Environmentally-Friendly Properties”, grant number 2019YFE0124000.China. Ministry of Science and Technolog

A rural community-based investigation to assess mHealth for family planning advice in district Multan

Background: Globally, Pakistan is the 5th populous country. To increase the use of family planning services by public private business model, Punjab Population Innovation Fund selected “Connect4fp” project implemented by International Rescue Committee organization. The purpose of this research was to determine the impact of mobile health(mHealth) advice on family planning in project area. This project was implemented in 9 Union councils of district Multan, Pakistan. The innovative idea of this project was the use of mobile phones to spread family planning knowledge among community in the form of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) as well as Short Message Service (SMS) (i.e., text messages). Methods: A cross-sectional study targeted 197 men as well as women (mostly married women of reproductive age) receiving mobile messages or recorded robocalls from the project area. The purpose was to assess their family planning knowledge and awareness by using structured Likert scale questionnaire. Secondly the viewpoint about mHealth and its effect on family planning was determined from 40 private providers and 27 Family planning Champions (who were part of the project) by telephonic interviews. Their response was quantified by using Likert scale. Descriptive statistics were calculated of the study’s main variables. The association of family planning knowledge of community members was determined to their contraceptive use by using Chi square. Results:  The results specified that 60% community members included in this study told that their family planning knowledge is increased due to this mHealth program. 36% Private providers while 75% FP Champions were agreed that family planning patients are increased due to this mHealth program. Conclusion: Mobile messages and robocalls about family planning sent in local language positively contributed to increase FP knowledge and awareness in community. This may trigger communication about family planning within couples, as a result increase use of family planning services.

PHYSICAL THERAPISTS AND NURSES’ KNOWLEDGE OF GLASGOW COMA SCALE WORKING IN HOSPITAL AND CLINICAL SETTINGS

Introduction: The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is a reproducible tool used to measure the depth and duration of the consciousness level of comatose patients, especially in emergency departments by healthcare professionals for neurological assessment. It is important for members of rehabilitation teams, specifically physical therapists (PTs) and nurses, to have knowledge of the GCS and the necessary skills to apply the scale and interpret the results. The present study is aimed to investigate and compare physiotherapist and nurses’ knowledge in using the GCS in hospital and clinical settings. Material & Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in which a convenience sample of 1,300 participants was chosen, considering nurses from government and private hospitals and PTs from hospitals and clinics in Faisalabad. SPSS Version 20 was used to enter and analyse the data. Pearson chi-square was used to find out association and Independent Samples t-test was used to compare the knowledge of PT and Nurses. Results: The findings of study revealed that majority of the PTs (84.1%) had good knowledge of the GCS, yet only 2.9% of nurses had good knowledge. Most participants with good basic knowledge of the GCS lacked knowledge in the application and interpretation of GCS. Age, gender, educational level, and type of health facility were strongly associated with level of knowledge with significant p value<.001. The mean knowledge of nurses and physiotherapists was 59.84±14.65 and 89.81±8.45 respectively. Conclusion: The physical therapists' knowledge of the GCS was good compared to the knowledge of the nurse

Induction of Male Sterility by Targeted Mutation of a Restorer-of-Fertility Gene with CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated Genome Editing in Brassica napus L.

Brassica napus L. (canola, oil seed rape) is one of the world&rsquo;s most important oil seed crops. In the last four decades, the discovery of cytoplasmic male-sterility (CMS) systems and the restoration of fertility (Rf) genes in B. napus has improved the crop traits by heterosis. The homologs of Rf genes, known as the restoration of fertility-like (RFL) genes, have also gained importance because of their similarities with Rf genes. Such as a high non-synonymous/synonymous codon replacement ratio (dN/dS), autonomous gene duplications, and a possible engrossment in fertility restoration. B. napus contains 53 RFL genes on chromosomes A9 and C8. Our research aims to study the function of BnaRFL11 in fertility restoration using the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technique. A total of 88/108 (81.48%) T0 lines, and for T1, 110/145 (75%) lines carried T-DNA insertions. Stable mutations were detected in the T0 and T1 generations, with an average allelic mutation transmission rate of 81%. We used CRISPR-P software to detect off-target 50 plants sequenced from the T0 generation that showed no off-target mutation, signifying that if the designed sgRNA is specific for the target, the off-target effects are negligible. We also concluded that the mutagenic competence of the designed sgRNAs mediated by U6-26 and U6-29 ranged widely from 31% to 96%. The phenotypic analysis of bnarfl11 revealed defects in the floral structure, leaf size, branch number, and seed production. We discovered a significant difference between the sterile line and fertile line flower development after using a stereomicroscope and scanning electron microscope. The pollen visibility test showed that the pollen grain had utterly degenerated. The cytological observations of homozygous mutant plants showed an anther abortion stage similar to nap-CMS, with a Orf222, Orf139, Ap3, and nad5c gene upregulation. The bnarfl11 shows vegetative defects, including fewer branches and a reduced leaf size, suggesting that PPR-encoding genes are essential for the plants&rsquo; vegetative and reproductive growth. Our results demonstrated that BnaRFL11 has a possible role in fertility restoration. The current study&rsquo;s findings suggest that CRISPR/Cas9 mutations may divulge the functions of genes in polyploid species and provide agronomically desirable traits through a targeted mutation

A survey of the Vision Transformers and its CNN-Transformer based Variants

Vision transformers have recently become popular as a possible alternative to convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for a variety of computer vision applications. These vision transformers due to their ability to focus on global relationships in images have large capacity, but may result in poor generalization as compared to CNNs. Very recently, the hybridization of convolution and self-attention mechanisms in vision transformers is gaining popularity due to their ability of exploiting both local and global image representations. These CNN-Transformer architectures also known as hybrid vision transformers have shown remarkable results for vision applications. Recently, due to the rapidly growing number of these hybrid vision transformers, there is a need for a taxonomy and explanation of these architectures. This survey presents a taxonomy of the recent vision transformer architectures, and more specifically that of the hybrid vision transformers. Additionally, the key features of each architecture such as the attention mechanisms, positional embeddings, multi-scale processing, and convolution are also discussed. This survey highlights the potential of hybrid vision transformers to achieve outstanding performance on a variety of computer vision tasks. Moreover, it also points towards the future directions of this rapidly evolving field.Comment: Pages: 58, Figures: 1

Fillers and methods to improve the effective (out-plane) thermal conductivity of polymeric thermal interface materials – A review

The internet of things and growing demand for smaller and more advanced devices has created the problem of high heat production in electronic equipment, which greatly reduces the work performance and life of the electronic instruments. Thermal interface material (TIM) is placed in between heat generating micro-chip and the heat dissipater to conduct all the produced heat to the heat sink. The development of suitable TIM with excellent thermal conductivity (TC) in both in-plane and through-plane directions is a very important need at present. For efficient thermal management, polymer composites are potential candidates. But in general, their thermal conductivity is low compared to that of metals. The filler integration into the polymer matrix is one of the two approaches used to increase the thermal conductivity of polymer composites and is also easy to scale up for industrial production. Another way to achieve this is to change the structure of polymer chains, which fall out of the scope of this work. In this review, considering the first approach, the authors have summarized recent developments in many types of fillers with different scenarios by providing multiple cases with successful strategies to improve through-plane thermal conductivity (TPTC) (k⊥). For a better understanding of TC, a comprehensive background is presented. Several methods to improve the effective (out-plane) thermal conductivity of polymer composites and different theoretical models for the calculation of TC are also discussed. In the end, it is given a detailed conclusion that provides drawbacks of some fillers, multiple significant routes recommended by other researchers to build thermally conductive polymer composites, future aspects along with direction so that the researchers can get a guideline to design an effective polymer-based thermal interface material