CUSTODIAN OF THE JEWISH HISTORY & HERITAGE: AN ACCOUNT OF NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL

The National Library of Israel (NLI), located in Jerusalem, has been dedicated to the preservation of Jewish and Israeli culture, history and heritage for over 128 years. The edifice stores valuable ancient Jewish history treasures and continues to add thousands to its collection each year. The NLI has a significant impact on the lives of Jews in Israel and around the world. Millions of documents are undergoing the digital conservation, processing, and scanning process to preserve the cultural DNA of heritage. Books, manuscripts, maps, audio and archival material, and a reference section of rare collections are all means in which cultural heritage is preserved. The NLI has envisioned to bring out rare and out of print items to the public for which digitalized has been taking swiftly. The open access of Jewish heritage is a policy goal of the NLI. The NLI is the protagonist of the notion that all these treasures of mankind\u27s history belong to everyone. This paper is an articulation of the great endeavors of the NLI in collecting and preserving the historical past of the Jewish people and how generously it is making the historical treasure available to all people world-wide

The Need for Efficient Record Management System in Pakistan

The United Nations Millennium Declaration, marked in September 2000, calls for world pioneers to battle poverty, hunger, lack of education, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. Poverty is one of the many dire issues developing countries encounter. Poverty reduction is usually attributed to economic development because it offers economic freedom. Economic freedom can only be realized through financial inclusion. Financial inclusion implies that people and organizations have access to valuable and moderate monetary facilities such as access to bank mortgages insurance and other financial issues that address exchanges, installments, reserve funds, credit and protection – delivered in a responsible and sustainable manner. Accurate record management is the foundation for financial inclusion. Pakistan is a developing country graveling with poverty. A Major cause for the lack of successful poverty elevation initiatives is the improper and incomplete record management. The goal of records management is to help an organization keep the necessary documentation accessible for both business operations and compliance audits. In addition, Records Management provides institutional accountability and timely access to information because in developing country context improper record management of its citizen is a major hindrance in achieving the concept of welfare economy in letter and spirit. An Expository Theoretical Research is used to postulate the problem of record management. The purpose of this study is to highlight the problem of record management in Pakistan. Proper record management systems allow for accurate, and transparent zakat management systems and taxation systems

Heuristic Methods for Security Protocols

Model checking is an automatic verification technique to verify hardware and software systems. However it suffers from state-space explosion problem. In this paper we address this problem in the context of cryptographic protocols by proposing a security property-dependent heuristic. The heuristic weights the state space by exploiting the security formulae; the weights may then be used to explore the state space when searching for attacks

Congeniality of workplace environment for female library and information professionals in the higher education sector

Libraries as a workplace have been studied internationally (Farler & Preston, 2012; Ocholla, 2002; Oud, 2008). From the local perspective, the only study concerning the workplace issues of libraries is by Yousaf, Tariq, and Soroya (2013), which was limited to the managerial problems faced by female librarians working at the University of the Punjab. Hence, this study is one of its nature. The study aimed to investigate the libraries' congeniality as a workplace for female Library and Information professionals (LIPs). The conceptual framework adopted the two aspects of workplace environment: i) Human, ii) and Organizational. In terms of the human environment, manager's support, relationship with colleagues, and informal communication at work, while in terms of organizational environment, workplace empowerment, workplace equality, and physical works spaces were studied. The study's population includes female LIPs who have 16 years of relevant education and are working in the libraries of HEC recognized higher education institutions of Punjab province. The explanatory-sequential mixed-method research design was considered suitable due to the sensitive nature of the topic. For the quantitative strand, the researcher utilized a survey research method based on a self-constructed questionnaire. The quantitative results highlighted that female LIPs were satisfied with the human environment at their workplaces. Participants appreciated their immediate managers' role and support in terms of respect, feedback, task allocation, and approachability. They recognized colleagues' role and informal communication in making their workplace congenial and comfortable by establishing a positive relationship with supervisors, colleagues, or subordinates at the workplace. Participants were satisfied with the ergonomic workspace provided by their organizations. Participants appreciated that their workplace gave them enough empowerment to perform, and they found no specific inequalities at their workplaces. However, some open-ended comments reveal that females face leg-pulling, favoritism, male colleagues' indecent behavior, and managers' critical behavior at the workplace, inequalities based on personal relations with a supervisor. For qualitative data, interviews were conducted with the outlier cases, and data analysis is in process. The findings may help in sensitizing the management and authorities to control the environment at workplaces as this study brings into light the prevailing working environment for females

Influence of caregiving and personality on the stress level of caregivers of cancer patients: Role of social support as a mediating variable

Informal caregivers have always been a source of providing care to the individuals with chronic illness such as cancer. Increasing rate of pediatric cancer has shifted the patients from hospitals to the home settings. This shift involves the caregivers of pediatric cancer to face ongoing social and emotional challenges that may result in enduring illness and caregiving-related stress. Using Stress Process Theory as the foundation for the theoretical framework, the purpose of this research was to measure the level of variables and to examine the correlation and effects of aspects of caregiving, dimensions of personality and social support on the stress of caregivers of cancer patients in Pakistan. It also aimed to measure mediating effect of social support and the strongest predictor of caregiver’s stress. A total of 286 family caregivers were chosen as respondents from eight cancer treatment hospitals. Stratified and simple random sampling technique was utilized for this process. Descriptive and inferential statistics were performed in order to find the relationship between independent variables (caregiving and personality), mediating variable (social support) and dependent variable (caregiver’s stress). Findings showed that there were no significant direct relation between aspects of caregiving as well as extraversion, neuroticism and openness personality traits with stress. Whereas, conscientiousness and agreeableness personality traits were significantly related to stress of caregivers. Results also revealed that social support acts as a potential mediator between aspects of caregiving and stress as well as extraversion, openness, agreeableness personality traits and stress. Findings also found that agreeableness was the strongest predictor of stress of caregivers. This study presented new information to researchers and practitioners to identify strongest predictors of stress in caregivers along the stress continuum process. It illustrates the distinctive impact of personality and social support on caregiver’s stress. Therefore, helps in developing and implementing effective interventions to fulfill caregiver’s needs must be enhanced in order to reduce their stress level and improve their quality of life

Comparative Economic Analysis of Laser Land Leveling and Conventional Land Leveling on Wheat Crop in Sindh, Pakistan

Present study was designed to compare of laser land leveling technology with conventional land leveling method on wheat crop. Compared with conventional method overall cost of wheat by laser leveling technology was high, due to highest land leveling cost. Overall high yield was obtained 45mds/acre by using laser leveling technology compared with conventional method of sowing as 38mds/acre. Due to uniform irrigation and fertilizer application with laser leveling technology total revenue of wheat production was received by the laser leveling technology growers Rs. 46260Rs/acre and conventional grower’s 39178Rs/acre. Study results further indicate that by using laser leveling technology wheat growers obtained higher gross margin 23250 Rs/acre, as compared to conventional growers 17576 Rs/acre. About 21 percent of irrigation was saved by the adoption of laser leveling technology, to survive in water shortage problem and utilize this saved water to increase operational holding

Information theoretic framework for stochastic sensitivity and specificity analysis in biochemical networks

Biochemical reaction networks involve many chemical species and are inherently stochastic and complex in nature. Reliable and organised functioning of such systems in varied environments requires that their behaviour is robust with respect to certain parameters while sensitive to other variations, and that they exhibit specific responses to various stimuli. There is a continuous need for improved models and methodologies to unravel the complex behaviour of the dynamics of such systems. In this thesis, we apply ideas from information theory to develop novel methods to study properties of biochemical networks. In the first part of the thesis, a framework for the study of parametric sensitivity in stochastic models of biochemical networks using entropies and mutual information is developed. The concept of noise entropy is introduced and its interplay with parametric sensitivity is studied as the system becomes more stochastic. Using the methodology for gene expression models, it is shown that noise can change the sensitivities of the system at var- ious orders of parameter interaction. An approximate and computationally more efficient way of calculating the sensitivities is also developed using unscented transform. Finally, the methodology is applied to a circadian clock model, illustrating the applicability of the approach to more complex systems. In the second part of the thesis, a novel method for specificity quantification in a receptor-ligand binding system is proposed in terms of mutual information estimates be- tween appropriate stimulus and system response. The maximum specificity of 2 × 2 affinity matrices in a parametric setup is theoretically studied. Parameter optimisation methodology and specificity upper bounds are presented for maximum specificity estimates of a given affinity matrix. The quantification framework is then applied to experimental data from T-Cell signalling. Finally, generalisation of the scheme for stochastic systems is discussed.Open Acces