EVALUATION OF ANTIFUNGAL ACTIVITY OF ANAEROBIC DIGESTATE AND ITS EFFECT ON GROWTH AND YIELD OF MAIZE

Pakistan is an agricultural country. The increased population leads to increasing demand for food. Unfortunately, crops are infected by different microbes and nutrient deficiency of soil adversely affects the yield of the crop. Furthermore, the use of chemical fertilizers like Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium (NPK), Urea, Diammonium phosphate (DAP) and pesticides have environmental consequences. Therefore, so there is need to find alternative renewable and sustainable biofertilizers

using management information system to evaluate quality of care at tertiary care hospital’s stroke centre

To find out the average length of stay, the rate of I/V catheter cellulites, the rate of bed sores among patients in stroke centre and determine the mortality rates. Methodology: This is a descriptive study, carried out at a tertiary care hospital over the period of six months. Data was analyzed by SPSS version 15.0. Result: Total numbers of patients were 36 from January 1 to June 30, 2007 at Stroke Center Liaquat National Hospital. The mean length of stay was 8.17 ±5.81 days. Patients had cellulitis (intravenous) 97.2%, only 2.8% of patients did not develop. The rate of bed sore was 41.7%. Conclusion: By effective implementation of the Management Information System (MIS) in health care delivery system we can find patients clinical issues and can reduce their length of stay

A Reusable Component for Communication and Data Synchronization in Mobile Distributed Interactive Applications

In Distributed Interactive Applications (DIA) such as multiplayer games, where many participants are involved in a same game session and communicate through a network, they may have an inconsistent view of the virtual world because of the communication delays across the network. This issue becomes even more challenging when communicating through a cellular network while executing the DIA client on a mobile terminal. Consistency maintenance algorithms may be used to obtain a uniform view of the virtual world. These algorithms are very complex and hard to program and therefore, the implementation and the future evolution of the application logic code become difficult. To solve this problem, we propose an approach where the consistency concerns are handled separately by a distributed component called a Synchronization Medium, which is responsible for the communication management as well as the consistency maintenance. We present the detailed architecture of the Synchronization Medium and the generic interfaces it offers to DIAs. We evaluate our approach both qualitatively and quantitatively. We first demonstrate that the Synchronization Medium is a reusable component through the development of two game applications, a car racing game and a space war game. A performance evaluation then shows that the overhead introduced by the Synchronization Medium remains acceptable.Comment: In Proceedings WCSI 2010, arXiv:1010.233

Anti-acanthamoebic properties of natural and marketed honey in Pakistan

To determine anti-Acanthamoebic activity of natural and marketed honey samples. Natural honey samples were collected directly from the bee hive and marketed honey samples were purchased from the local market in Karachi, Pakistan. Both honey samples were tested for their flavonoid content (quercetin equivalent per g of the extract) and phenolic content (gallic acid equivalent per g). Furthermore, their antioxidant activity was determined by measuring 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl. Using amoebistatic and amoebicidal assays, the effects of honey samples were tested against growth and viability of Acanthamoeba parasites. Natural honey exhibited potent amoebistatic and amoebicidal effects, in a concentration-dependent manner. Honey-treated A. castellanii showed loss of acanthopodia, following which amoebae detached, rounded up, reduced in size, decreased in cytoplasmic mass and they were observed floating in the culture medium. Importantly, honey-treated amoebae did not revive when inoculated in fresh growth medium, however glycerol-treated amoebae exhibited viable trophozoite and active growth. In contrast, marketed honey samples varied in their efficacy against A. castellanii. The proportion of flavonoid, as determined by quercetin measurements and the proportion of phenolic, as determined by gallic acid measurements was higher in natural honey compared with marketed honey. Similarly, the antioxidant activity, as determined by 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl scavenging activity was higher in natural honey versus marketed honey. This study shows that natural honey has anti-Acanthamoebic properties and possesses higher flavonoid, phenolic and antioxidant properties compared with the marketed honey. These findings are of concern to the public, health officials, and to the manufacturers regarding production of honey for medical applications

Real time monitoring system for upper arms rehabilitation exercise

Arm rehabilitation activities necessary to be continuously monitored in order to provide information of rehabilitation results to be examined by physical therapist. The determination of monitoring is to enhancing rehabilitation process. Moreover, a portable and simple home-based rehabilitation device can help patients to improve daily rehabilitation process activity. Some earlier studies regarding home-based rehabilitation process have shown improvement in promoting human movement recovery. This paper focuses on the development of a measurement by using arms guard and Smart Glove or Rehabilitation Glove, to assist stroke patient because of some complications such as accident and disease. This paper concourses on the method and application of mechanical equipment, sensors equipped Rehabilitation Glove measurement gripping activities. The devices will move based on a human operator's finger and arms movement using the Rehabilitation Glove. The system development involves a Microcontroller and HyperTerminal as a core processing for the instrumentation, communication and controlling applications. A series of bend or known as flex force sensors are fitted in a Rehabilitation Glove to get reading from the movement of human fingers. The quality of the force feedback is strongly affected by the maximum torque measurable by the Rehabilitation Glove and the performance of the force controller. Finally, the intelligence, learning and experience aspects of the human can be combined with the strength, endurance and speed of the human arms and Rehabilitation sensor in order to generate proper output of this paper. © 2015 IEEE

Marketing Practices of Textile Business and Firm's Performance: A Case of Pakistan

Marketing is necessity of every business. In the context of local textile industry of Pakistan, Ghouri et al. (2011) study has been replicated to find the effects of marketing practices on the firm performances of textiles industry in the boundaries of Pakistan. 156 questionnaires analyze from the cities of Faisalabad, Islamabad/Pindi, Karachi, Lahore and Multan. Finding suggested that vague marketing practices are carrying out and textile firms wasting their time and money on marketing practices and forgone the potential benefits

Corporate Governance and Environmental Reporting in Pakistan

The focus of the present study is to investigate the association between environmental reporting and corporate governance traits in Pakistan. The prior studies related to the association between environmental disclosure and corporate governance characteristics show fickle findings. This study fills the gap by using cross sectional data of 100 randomly selected firms registered at Karachi Stock Exchange for the year 2015. The results of the present research showed a positive association between the level of environmental disclosure and fraction of independent directors on the board. Negative relationship was found between environmental disclosure and institutional investors. The result shows a positive association between the level of environmental reporting and board size. It confirms a positive association. The analysis revealed a lack of association between level of environmental reporting and fraction of female directors on a board. In case of control variables, positive relationship was found between firms’ profitability and level of environmental disclosure, whereas, no correlation was found between firm size and the level of environmental reporting. Moreover, the results of incremental regression indicate that ownership concentration is the most important independent variable among all the independent variables in the model

REVISITING THE ENIGMA OF WORKING CAPITAL, PROFITABILITY AND RISK: EVIDENCE FROM PAKISTAN

This study investigates the relationship between working capital management and firm profitability. We incorporate moderating effect of systematic and unsystematic risk to ascertain the impact of risk on working capital decisions. The study uses secondary data of 244 listed non-financial firms over 10 years from 2009 to 2018. The findings reveal that inventory turnover, receivable collection period and cash conversion cycle negatively influence firm performance. However, accounts payable period has significant and positive effect on firm performance. Systematic risk negatively moderates the relationship between accounts payable period and return on assets and positively moderates relationship among accounts collection period, cash conversion cycle and return on assets. Unsystematic risk has insignificant effect on the relationship between working capital and profitability

Morphological characterization of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) germplasm under rainfed environment

In this study, 11 potato cultivars were assessed based on their genetic variability of different morphological parameters, including emergence percentage (%), date of flowering, plant height (cm), number of leaves per plant, average leaf area, number of flowers per plant, number of stems per plant, and number of fruits per plant. All of these characters showed a high level of variation among all the varieties. Locally developed advanced line SH-19 showed maximum emergence percentage (92.33%). Among other characters, Asterix, Smeengi and SH-19 produced considerable amount of flowers per plant (37.39). Romeo touched the line, indicating three stems per plant and was grouped into a separate group ‘A’. Cultivars Smeengi and Aziza, Leonardo and Avalanche carried 2.67 and 1 stem per plant respectively. Moreover, the 11 cultivars were ranked and grouped into 5 groups (A to E). For number of fruits/plant, means were not very much different from one another. The pyramid of variety Asterix was the highest, indicating that this genotype is efficient in bearing fruits. Variation was observed for tuber yield among all the cultivars and was not significantly high between replications of all varieties. Overall, there was highly significant variation for this character among all the potato cultivars. All the 11 varieties were grouped into seven homogeneous groups (A to G) in which the means are not significantly different from one another. Almost every variety was in a different group. Average yield for all the varieties ranged from 22 to 7 kg. Pyramid height for Desiree was highest, indicating that maximum yield (22 kg) was produced by this variety.Keywords: Germplasm, potato, Solanum tuberosum L. Rawalakot, Azad KashmirAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(21), pp. 3214-322