Enhancing Vocational Training for Economic Growth in Pakistan

Training and skills development play vital role in development. The demand for vocationally trained and technically educated human resource rises with every step towards industrialisation and modernisation of production units and work premises. Therefore, skill and capital are complementary. The paper specifically reviews and analyses the status of vocational training related policies and practices and their impact on the development of human resource in Pakistan. The study revealed that there is a time lag of 3 to 10 years to harness the benefits of training. Therefore, government should plan accordingly. It also explores that there exists a wide gap between demand and supply of effective manpower and lack of coordination amongst government and private agencies. There is a need to update and revise the existing curriculums, enhance of the status of the teachers, and strengthen the Institutions. Pakistan has favourable demographic transition trend, therefore, there is a need to exploit it properly. Public and private sectors should pursue demand based policies that promote growth in Human Resource Development.

Agricultural Productivity Impact of a Mini-Dam: A Case Study of Ziarat, Balochistan

Water is the most important constituent of life without which, life cannot exist. Water is a natural resource which is also used as an input for producing different goods in factories for industrial use, productivity of crops for agriculture use also used in our daily life for domestic purpose. Despite such an importance, still the World is experiencing the issue of water scarcity [WCD (2000)]. The supply of water does not meet its demand [Bengali (2009)]. Pakistan is an agrarian economy which is also heavily dependent on water. About 45 percent of the total employment is generated from Agriculture sector [Pakistan (2011)]. Main sources of water are rivers and rainfall. Balochistan is the largest province of Pakistan. Land size is 44 percent of the total land of Pakistan [Balochistan (2010)]. Land is fertile and provides conducive environment for Agriculture. Agriculture productivity is high in Balochistan. Many vegetables and crops are grown which results in many farmers and labours livelihood. It has got varieties of species of many fruits, particularly Apple. Important fruit crops grown are Apple, Grapes, Cherry and Peach. Climate is also suitable for crops growth particularly the deciduous fruits like apple, which requires low temperature during summer season. As far as quality is concerned, apple produced in Balochistan, especially at high altitude (1600 meters to 2000 meters) are superior in quality than that produced in the rest of the country. The main reason is that due to dryness of the climate in apple producing areas like Ziarat, Killa Abdullah, Pishin, Quetta etc. Apple is one of the most popular fruit. It is delicious and crunchy and is mostly liked by health conscious and fitness lovers as it is filled with rich phyto-nutrients, which is very essential for optimal health. It also contains antioxidants, which promotes health as well as prevents several diseases. Thus, apple truly justifies the famous sayings, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” One of the distinguishing features is that there are no fungal diseases and disease free apple can be stored for a longer period in cold storage. Also the abundance of sunshine in the growing season improves the colour of apple which fetches a good price in the domestic and foreign market

Parallel Sampling-Pipeline for Indefinite Stream of Heterogeneous Graphs using OpenCL for FPGAs

In the field of data science, a huge amount of data, generally represented as graphs, needs to be processed and analyzed. It is of utmost importance that this data be processed swiftly and efficiently to save time and energy. The volume and velocity of data, along with irregular access patterns in graph data structures, pose challenges in terms of analysis and processing. Further, a big chunk of time and energy is spent on analyzing these graphs on large compute clusters and/or data-centers. Filtering and refining of data using graph sampling techniques are one of the most effective ways to speed up the analysis. Efficient accelerators, such as FPGAs, have proven to significantly lower the energy cost of running an algorithm. To this end, we present the design and implementation of a parallel graph sampling technique, for a large number of input graphs streaming into a FPGA. A parallel approach using OpenCL for FPGAs was adopted to come up with a solution that is both time- and energyefficient. We introduce a novel graph data structure, suitable for streaming graphs on FPGAs, that allows time- and memory-efficient representation of graphs. Our experiments show that our proposed technique is 3x faster and 2x more energy efficient as compared to serial CPU version of the algorithm

Power-Efficient and Highly Scalable Parallel Graph Sampling using FPGAs

Energy efficiency is a crucial problem in data centers where big data is generally represented by directed or undirected graphs. Analysis of this big data graph is challenging due to volume and velocity of the data as well as irregular memory access patterns. Graph sampling is one of the most effective ways to reduce the size of graph while maintaining crucial characteristics. In this paper we present design and implementation of an FPGA based graph sampling method which is both time- and energy-efficient. This is in contrast to existing parallel approaches which include memory-distributed clusters, multicore and GPUs. Our strategy utilizes a novel graph data structure, that we call COPRA that allows time- and memory-efficient representation of graphs suitable for reconfigurable hardware such as FPGAs. Our experiments show that our proposed techniques are 2x faster and 3x more energy efficient as compared to serial CPU version of the algorithm. We further show that our proposed techniques give comparable speedups to GPU and multi-threaded CPU architecture while energy consumption is 10x less than GPU and 2x less than CPU

Enhancing Vocational Training for Economic Growth in Pakistan

Training in general and skills development in particular, not only play a vital role in individual, organisational and overall national economic growth but are integral part of Human Resource Development (HRD). Skill development may be defined as a process to acquiring and sharpening capabilities to perform various functions associated with their present and future roles [Tripathi (2003)]. Moreover, literature suggests that human capabilities can be improved through better education and training [Haq (2002)]. Enhanced skills enable individuals to be more productive and spawn more money. It not only raises the rate of return on investment and increases employability but also ensures the implementation of various development projects in the time [Booth and Snower (1996) and O’Conner and Lunati (1999)]. To summarise, vocational education and training are indispensable instruments for improving labour mobility, adaptability and productivity, thus contributing to enhancing firms’ competitiveness and redressing labour market imbalances [Cailods (1994)]

Catalytic Degradation of Organic Dyes in Aqueous Medium

Water pollution by the textile industry is an emerging issue. Textile industry is the major industrial sector which contributes to water pollution. Textile industry releases a huge amount of unfixed dyes in wastewater effluents. About 20% of the dye production all over the world is discharged as waste in industrial effluents by textile industry. These dyes are highly stable and colored substances which disturb the aqueous ecosystem significantly. Therefore, there is a need for methods to remove organic dyes from textile industrial effluents. Photo catalysis and catalytic wet oxidation are best practices for degradation of dyes in wastewater. In photo catalysis, the dye molecules can be completely degraded into inorganic non-toxic compounds by irradiation of the dye solution under visible or ultraviolet light in the presence of semiconductor metal-oxide photo catalysts. In catalytic wet oxidation, various metal-based catalysts in supported or unsupported form can be used as heterogeneous catalysts for degradation of dyes in the presence of oxygen or hydrogen peroxide. These processes have several preferences like easy separation of the catalyst from reaction mixture and recycling of the catalyst

Outcome of non-malignant papillary lesions of the breast on core biopsy: An experience from a tertiary care center in Pakistan

Background: Papillary lesions of the breast constitute a heterogeneous group ranging from non-malignant papillomas to papillary carcinoma. While surgical excision is recommended for atypical papilloma or papillary DCIS/ carcinoma on core biopsy, controversy persists in the management of benign papillomas which are diagnosed with core needle biopsy (CNB) since there are variable reported rates for tumor upgrade. The purpose of this study was to determine the outcome of papillary lesions of the breast diagnosed at image-guided CNB, after surgical excision or follow-up, and to identify potential predictors of high-risk lesions/malignancy on imaging.Materials and methods: We retrospectively identified 52 non-malignant papillary lesions on core biopsy between January 2012 and June 2018. The outcome of surgical excision, as well as clinical and imaging features of these lesions, were assessed. The final histologic upgrade was recorded, and variables were compared between benign and atypical lesions on core biopsy as well as between upgraded and non-upgraded lesions after surgical excision. Results: Thirty-six lesions out of 52 lesions were benign papillomas on core biopsy, while 16 were papillary lesions with ADH/DCIS. All of these lesions except four benign papillomas were excised. Of the 32 benign papillomas excised, 7 were upgraded to papilloma with ADH/DCIS and one to DCIS with the focus of invasion. Among the 16 atypical lesions excised, one was upgraded to papillary DCIS with a final upgrade rate of 17.3%. There was no statistically significant clinical or imaging feature among those that were upgraded on excision from those that were not upgraded. Conclusion: Non-malignant papillary lesions have a significant upgrade rate. There are no reliable clinical or imaging features that can pre-surgically predict upgrade. Therefore, surgical excision of all papillary lesions is recommended for definitive diagnosis

Co-movement between Sukuk, Conventional Bond and Islamic Stock Markets under Bullish and Bearish Market Conditions: An Application of Quantile-on-Quantile Regression

This study explores the asymmetric co-movement between conventional bonds market, sukuk market and Islamic stock markets of top ten Islamic economies. The study used daily data ranging from 1st January 2008 to 31st December 2019. However, for the dependency structure, we used Quantile-on-Quantile (QQ) method, which captures the dependence between the entire distributions of financial assets and uncovers some nuance features of the relationship. The empirical findings show that under the stress condition (bearish condition), both bonds and stocks markets negatively commove. However, in the bullish market condition, these markets show week positive correlation/ co-movement in all the sample economies. The findings also confirmed that under the bearish condition, a mild negative correlation exists between sukuk and Islamic stock markets except for Malaysia. However, in the bullish market condition, sukuk markets and stock markets show strong positive correlation in all sample economies. Furthermore, study also enriches quantiles estimation by using quantiles granger causality approach. The findings show that the conventional bond market, sukuk market and Islamic stock market granger cause to each other on all the quantiles (in bullish or bearish market conditions)