Fertiliser, Plant Nutrient Management, and Self-reliance in Agriculture

The importance of agriculture in the economy of Pakistan is well established. Agricultural plays an important role both directly and indirectly in generating economic activity, growth and development. Agriculture has strong backward and forward linkages and is vital to the food security of the country. Fertilisers have played an important role in Pakistan agriculture particularly in meeting the growing demand for food grains, fibre, fuel and fodder. Fertiliser consumption has increased during the last four decades to 2.6 million tonnes by 1997-98. The use level is, however, not only sub optimal but also imbalanced. Better plant nutrient management is, therefore, necessary for achieving self reliance in agriculture.

PORTING OF FREERTOS ON A PYTHON VIRTUAL MACHINE FOR EMBEDDED AND IOT DEVICES

The fourth industrial revolution, The Industry 4.0, puts emphasis on the need of “Smart” and “Connected” objects through the use of services provided by Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems and cloud computing to optimize the cost, development time and remote connectivity. Development of highly scalable and flexible IoT applications is the need of time. These solutions require connectivity, less development time, time-to-market and at the same time offers a high performance and great reliability. Zerynth, a small company, provides its full stack for IoT solutions. Zerynth Virtual Machine is the core component among other components in stack which allow the programmers to code in python or hybrid C/Python coding with multithreaded Real Time OS with negligible memory footprint. The Python layer, Application Layer, is totally agnostic of underlying RTOS and hardware abstraction layer. This layered software architecture of Zerynth VM makes it totally compatible with new Industry 4.0 standard. The Hardware abstraction layer, VHAL, abstracts the hardware features of supported MCU and its peripherals while RTOS layer, VOSAL, uses the features of underlying Real Time OS. Zerynth VM can be ported with different Real Time OS and various hardware platforms depending upon the application’s cost, features and other relevant parameters. Configuring Kinetis MCU (MK64FN1M0VDC12) with existing VM became the first objective of my thesis. This configuration covers from scratch the clock, boot loading and peripheral support. Since previous version of Zerynth VM had a support of only Chibi2 OS which has certain dependency on the hardware layer underneath so this became another objective to separate the Chibi2 OS from VHAL layer for total independence. Finally, Porting of FreeRTOS on Zerynth VM with Hexiwear MCU as target board could a make a room for another RTOS hence enhancing the features and support of currently available VM. This thesis report describes all porting steps, procedures and testing methodologies starting from configuring a new hardware platform Hexiwear to FreeRTOS porting on Zerynth V

Vendor Industry: Revolution in Economic Growth

The developing countries with ample human resources can be the major benefactors of vendor industry. Such countries have high potential of using people, who otherwise may be fully or partially unemployed most of the time. Poor countries are not benefiting because of financial/material foreign assistance from rich countries. In fact, many of these countries are accumulating huge foreign debts without any trickledown effect to improve the economic welfare of the common person. Poor people because of lack of education and opportunities to earn income are forced to live with minimum of food intake and poor health facilities. Empowering the common person should be the ultimate aim where national resources are to be employed. This will necessarily mean reversing national priorities, which presently seem to have painfully neglected the welfare of the majority of people living in the poor countries. The suggested model in this Paper presents an approach similar to the one adopted by the Grameen Bank. The idea was to extend interest free small loans to the eligible families (having required skill and basic education) to do business on their own. However, all this is to be handled through the private sector, and monitored by the banking authorities for repayment of all those loans within a feasible period. This Paper provides strong justification for expanding vendor industry in developing countries on terms and conditions, which can motivate and provide incentives for the poor families to earn and live an honorable life of comfort and respect in the society. The Paper analysis the effectiveness of the western advocated theories of economic growth and suggests a complete turnaround in the philosophy of national resource use. The economic growth concept advocated in this Paper is built on the ground that the developing countries cannot benefit from the foreign assistance, rather the people (a valuable resource for the poor countries) in these countries need to be focused, educated, trained and provided with the opportunities to work and to do business in their specialized domain so that they can add value to the national product (GDP)

Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW)-Based Gas Flow Sensor

There has been a growing interest in using SAW devices for sensing various physical parameters such as pressure, acceleration, temperature, and gas. The current research has been undertaken to derive a model of a SAW-based gas flow rate sensor, using the principle of heat transfer with the flow of gas. It consists of a SAW delay line fabricated on a suitable substrate and a thin film heater to heat the SAW device to a suitable temperature above the ambient. The delay line is connected in the feedback loop of an rf-amplifier resulting in a delay line stabilized SAW oscillator. When gas flows over the SAW device, it carries away heat thus lowering the temperature of the substrate. The change in the frequency of the SAW oscillator, which can be accurately measured, is proportional to flow rate of gas. The device is similar in principle to a hot wire or hot-film anemometer. This dissertation is concerned with the quantitative analysis of SAW flow sensor. Theoretical analysis to determine the characteristics of SAW flow sensor for various substrate material and geometries will be presented. From the analyses, a design of an optimal SAW flow sensor will be proposed. Mathematical model(s) will be derived to determine and predict SAW gas flow sensor behavior and characteristics for a wide range of variables and boundary conditions. These characteristics include: * Steady state temperature characteristics * Transient time response characteristics * Frequency versus temperature characteristics * Frequency characteristics versus input power to the integrated thin film heater element * Frequency change versus flow rate at constant current to the thin film heater element * Determine temperature distribution to derive average temperature The model developed in this work enables us to characterize SAW-based sensor by including substrate material properties, dimensional and wide range of operating conditions. It can predict frequency changes, temperature changes, for given values of heater power, under steady state free and forced convection conditions of fluid. It allows time response analyses and thus enables us determine parameters that can be used to obtain an optimal SAW-based sensor designs. Experimental results carried out on preliminary design of SAW flow sensor are presented and result compared with theoretical analyses

Towards Divine Economics: Some Testable Propositions

Throughout the human history, the religion has remained a fundamental feature of social construct and human behaviour. Religious orientation plays important role in shaping human perceptions about economic and non-economic activities. With few exceptions, religion has remained an un-explored area in economics. For most economists, narrative and metaphor have no place in a rational choice theory, which is a wrong belief. In fact, any approach that considers behavioural laws satisfying the criteria of objectivity, reproducibility, and refutability is scientific and falls in purview of rational choice framework. A few studies, however, do exist on economics of religion under rational choice concerning to households, groups, and entire “religious markets”. [Becker (1976); Iannaccone (1988, 1990, 1992, 1993); Mack and Leigland (1992)]. Rosenberg (1985) presents discussion of the limitations of neoclassical economic theory due to its reliance on exogenous differences in taste and preference. It is argued that these limitations cannot be circumvented by findings and theories in other disciplines (e.g., psychology), because any measurement of preferences must begin with neoclassical assumptions about rationality. The alternative to tasteendogeniety advanced by [Becker (1976)] is found to only circumvent the usual difficulties if “stable preferences” notion is interpreted as needs. Further advancement is not taking place because of the important heterogeneous variables, which have yet received little attention from economists. Such variables may be found in attitudes and values acquired by consumers in variety of social and religious environments.

Chemical investigation of Methanolic Extract of Piper betle Linn (Leaf stalk)

oai:ojs2.sriopenjournals.com:article/21Natural products have been a major source of drugs for centuries. The leaf stalk of Piper betle is used traditionally known to be useful for the treatment of various diseases like bad breath, boils and abscesses, conjunctivitis, constipation, headache, itches, mastitis, mastoiditis, leucorrhoea, otorrhoea, swelling of gum, rheumatism, cuts, and injuries. The main objective of this study is to carry out a phytochemical analysis of the methanol crude extract of the leaf stalk of P. betle. Phytochemical screening on this crude extract revealed the presence of phenols, alkaloids, steroids, terpenes, saponins, and flavonoids. After silica gel column chromatography, the crude extract led to the isolation of compound- 2-[4′-(3″-methylbut-2-en-oxy)-(3′,5′-dimethoxy)phenyl]-5-hydroxy-7-methoxy-Chromone-4 (PBT-V). Characterization of this compound was achieved via spectroscopic methods (NMR, UV, mass spectroscopy, and IR)

ダイズ低フィチン系統の生産性および子実品質に関する栄養生理学的研究

内容の要約広島大学(Hiroshima University)博士(学術)Doctor of Philosophydoctora

Study of Philanthropic Behaviour in Divine Economics Framework

Philanthropic Behaviour

DETERMINANTS OF TRADE CREDIT FINANCING: CASE OF MANUFACTURING FIRMS LISTED IN PAKISTAN

AbstractThis paper investigates the determinants of trade credit financing used by listed manufacturing firms in Pakistan. For this purpose, balanced panel data are used that consist of 327 manufacturing firms listed on KSE Pakistan and time period from 2005 to 2013. Results of system GMM estimator applied on dynamic panel data set reveal that trade credit financing used by listed manufacturing firms is significantly affected by its first lag, trade credit extended to customers, availability of short term bank credit, their sales growth, profitability, creditworthiness, collateral and financial leverage. Positive coefficient for first lag of trade credit financing shows that firms’ trade credit financing is dynamic. The speed of making adjustment in trade credit financing is found relatively high due to low cost of making adjustment. Findings of this study has managerial implication for trade credit financing decision of listed manufacturing firms. For future research, investigation of the effect of financial development on trade credit financing behavior of firms is proposed