Female education in Pakistan

Education has been of central significance to the development of human society. It can be the beginning, not only of individual knowledge, information and awareness, but also a holistic strategy for development and change. Education is very much connected to women’s ability to form social relationships on the basis of equality with others and to achieve the important social good of self-respect. It is important, as well, to allow women to participate in various fields so they can ensure that their voices and concerns are heard and addressed in the public forums. Education is a critical input in human resource development and is essential for the country’s economic growth. It increases the productivity and the efficiency of individuals and it produces skilled labour force that is capable of leading the economy towards the path of sustainable growth and prosperity. The progress and well-being of a country largely depends on the choices of education made available to its people. It can be one of the most powerful instruments of change. This paper attempts to illustrate the importance of female education, and some factors which support or facilitate female education in Pakistan. The paper also highlights the challenges encountered in female education, and concludes with some practical suggestions

Women empowerment through higher education in Gilgit-Baltistan

The growing social awareness across the globe has brought a number of issues to the fore among which gender equality and empowerment of women are very significant. Discrimination against women in the form of male-female differentiation constitutes the core of the gender-biased system. Education is the biggest liberating force and rise in the levels of education, which nourishes progressive outlook, and the advent of industrialization and moderanization have effected a sea change in the attitudes and thinking pattern of the people. The empowerment is not essentially political, in the fact, political empowerment will not succeed in the absence of economic empowerment. The scheme of higher education through the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) in Gilgit-Baltistan has transferred the real economic power to the hands of women and has considerably reduced their dependence on men. This has helped in empowerment of women and building self confidence, but lack of education often comes in the way and many a times they have to seek help from their husbands for day to day work viz; bank accounts, etc. Higher education provides an opportunity to these women to improve their knowledge and skills. The higher level learning will also help them to play an effective role in the whole society

Developing child friendly environment in early childhood education classroom in Pakistan

Among all levels of education, Early Childhood Education and Development (ECEd) is considered to be the most critical level for social (relationship to others), emotional (self-image and security), cognitive (thinking and reasoning) and physical development of children. Therefore, the teachers of early years need to play a significant role in the teaching and learning process through providing a friendly environment in their schools. The study employed a case study approach. Information was gathered through a combination of methods, which included classroom observations, field notes, document analysis, focus group and semi structured interviews. The focus group participants and the interviewees were selected from a variety of stakeholders, which included parents, students, teachers and head teachers from public sector to get a comprehensive and representative analysis. Informal conversations with different stakeholders and self reflections contributed to clarify different aspects of the issues and findings. In this study I explored teachers’ role in developing child friendly environment in ECE classrooms. Thus, two female ECE classroom teachers from a public secondary school in Gilgit-Baltistan of Pakistan were the primary participants of the study and they taught in early setup. The study revealed that institutional support and monitoring teachers’ personal propensity to learning for improving pupils’ learning, the prior ECED learning experiences and pedagogical content knowledge play an important role in engaging teachers in developing their thinking and teaching practice. The contribution of this thesis is that institutional and socio cultural influences are local, and derive from the Pakistani context, so have a particular significance for designing teacher development programs

What it will take to feed 5.0 billion rice consumers in 2030

Major advances have occurred in rice production due to adoption of green revolution technology. Between 1966 and 2000, the population of densely populated low income countries grew by 90% but rice production increased by 130% from 257 million tons in 1966 to 600 million tons in 2000. However, the population of rice consuming countries continues to grow and it is estimated that we will have to produce 40 more rice in 2030. This increased demand will have to be met from less land, with less water, less labor and fewer chemicals. To meet the challenge of producing more rice from suitable lands we need rice varieties with higher yield potential and greater yield stability. Various strategies for increasing the rice yield potential being employed include: (1) conventional hybridization and selection procedures, (2) ideotype breeding, (3) hybrid breeding, (4) wide hybridization and (5) genetic engineering. Various conventional and biotechnology approach are being employed to develop durable resistance to diseases and insect and for tolerance to abiotic stresses. The availability of the rice genome sequence will now permit identification of the function of each of 60,000 rice genes through functional genomics. Once the function of a gene is identified, it will be possible to develop new rice varieties by introduction of the gene through traditional breeding in combination with marker aided selection or direct engineering of genes into rice varieties

Angiotensin II: A Potential Link Between Inflammation and Hypertension in SLE

The disease Systemic Lupus Erythematosus is a chronic inflammatory, autoimmune disorder that primarily affects women during their reproductive years. Women with SLE are at a greater risk of developing hypertension, which increases their risk of mortality from a cardiac related event. A proposed mechanism for SLE hypertension suggests that inflammation in the kidneys causes renal dysfunction, presumably resulting in less water excretion, increased plasma volume, and thus high blood pressure. This experiment tests the hypothesis that the T-cells from a mouse model of SLE hyper secrete the inflammatory cytokines IL-17, IL-10, and IFN- y, and are more sensitive to the cytokine-stimulating hormone angiotensin II (ANGII). To test this hypothesis, T lymphocytes were isolated from control and SLE mice, and cytokine secretion into the culture media was determined in the presence or absence of ANG II. Thymocytes from SLE mice secreted greater levels of all three inflammatory cytokines, although excess IL-17 secretion occurred only after the onset of renal damage. Angiotensin II increased production of IFN- y, but there was no major difference between the SLE and Control groups. These results indicate that hyper secretion of IL-17, IL-10, and IFN- y by SLE T-cells may be contributing to renal inflammation, kidney damage, and therefore SLE hypertension. T-cell hypersensitivity to ANG II could not account for the hypertension, suggesting that these cells are excessively sensitive to another factor (that is present in the culture media) or have an innately higher secretion rate

Origin, dispersal, cultivation and variation of rice

There are two cultivated and twenty-one wild species of genus Oryza. O. sativa, the Asian cultivated rice is grown all over the world. The African cultivated rice, O. glaberrima is grown on a small scale in West Africa. The genus Oryza probably originated about 130 million years ago in Gondwanaland and different species got distributed into different continents with the breakup of Gondwanaland. The cultivated species originated from a common ancestor with AA genome. Perennial and annual ancestors of O. sativa are O. rufipogon and O. nivara and those of O. glaberrima are O. longistaminata, O. breviligulata and O. glaberrima probably domesticated in Niger river delta. Varieties of O. sativa are classified into six groups on the basis of genetic affinity. Widely known indica rices correspond to group I and japonicas to group VI. The so called javanica rices also belong to group VI and are designated as tropical japonicas in contrast to temperate japonicas grown in temperate climate. Indica and japonica rices had a polyphyletic origin. Indicas were probably domesticated in the foothills of Himalayas in Eastern India and japonicas somewhere in South China. The indica rices dispersed throughout the tropics and subtropics from India. The japonica rices moved northward from South China and became the temperate ecotype. They also moved southward to Southeast Asia and from there to West Africa and Brazil and became tropical ecotype. Rice is now grown between 55°N and 36°S latitudes. It is grown under diverse growing conditions such as irrigated, rainfed lowland, rainfed upland and floodprone ecosystems. Human selection and adaptation to diverse environments has resulted in numerous cultivars. It is estimated that about 120000 varieties of rice exist in the world. After the establishment of International Rice Research Institute in 1960, rice varietal improvement was intensified and high yielding varieties were developed. These varieties are now planted to 70% of world's riceland. Rice production doubled between 1966 and 1990 due to large scale adoption of these improved varieties. Rice production must increase by 60% by 2025 to feed the additional rice consumers. New tools of molecular and cellular biology such as anther culture, molecular marker aided selection and genetic engineering will play increasing role in rice improvement