Determinants of Neonatal and Post-neonatal Mortality in Pakistan

Ensuring the survival and well being of children is a concern of families, communities and nations throughout the world. Since the turn of the 20th century infant and child mortality in more developed countries has steadily declined and, currently, has been reduced to almost minimal levels. In contrast, although infant and child mortality has declined in the past three decades in most less developed countries, the pace of change and the magnitude of improvement vary considerably from one country to another. The inverse relationship between socio-economic variables of the parents and infant and child mortality is well established by several studies [Muhuri (1995); Forste (1994); Hobcraft, et al. (1984); Caldwell (1979); Sathar (1985, 1987)] and it holds true irrespective of the overall level of mortality in the national populations [Ruzicka (1989)]. The influence of parental education on infant and child health and mortality has proved to be universally significant [Bicego and Boerma (1993); Caldwell, et al. (1990)]. The father’s education, mother’s education and their work status each have independent effects upon child survival in developing countries [Sandiford, et al. (1995); Forste (1994); Caldwell, et al. (1983)]. Economic conditions of the household also help in explaining the variation in infant and child mortality. The nature of housing, diet, access to and availability of water and sanitary conditions as well as medical attention all depend on the economic conditions of the household. For example, poor families may reside in crowded, unhygienic housing and, thus, suffer from infectious disease associated with inadequate and contaminated water supplies and with poor sanitation [Esrey and Habicht (1986)]. Maternal factors, which are biological attributes of birth, such as the age of mother at the time of childbirth, birth order and birth interval [Forste (1994); Rutstein (1984)], have significant effects on child survival.

Human Resource Management And The Performance Of Selected Small And Medium Manufacturing Enterprises

Despite many studies on human resource management can be found in the literature, until recently, studies on the moderating effects of this factor on the relationship between innovation and firm performance are hardly existent. In filling the literature gap, this study attempts to address the questions of how HRM practices and its interactions with innovation affect the performance of SMEs. Two hundred eighty-four samples were obtained from the food and beverage, textile and clothing and wood-based small and medium manufacturing enterprises in Malaysia. Using the multiple regression analysis, this study found that human resource management practices in terms of employee and employer’s trainings interacted with innovation and significantly affected the performance of SMEs. Keywords: Human Resource Management, Innovation, Firm Performance, Malaysi

The role of trust in e-government adoption: A systematic literature review

Electronic government (e-government) is a concept that has been adopted in most countries for the purposes of providing government services digitally, improving transparency between government and citizens and enabling additional communication channels with the government. Although e-government readiness in most countries is at a high level, adoption of e-government services is still considered tentative. A critical review of the literature suggests that this may be linked to citizens’ trust in government and e-government. As such, there is a need to investigate the role of trust in e-government adoption. For this purpose, a systematic literature review was conducted in order to observe research design, methodologies and approaches adopted in these studies as well as limitations identified and recommendation for future studies. The findings highlight that quantitative techniques and survey research methods appear to have been much preferred over other available alternatives such as qualitative techniques and interview methods or mixed methods in studies relating to trust in e-government adoption

The role of courts in adjudicating human rights violations by transnational corporations

In this era of globalisation, Transnational Corporations (TNCs) operated in an accountability gap that is often leaving these entities largely unregulated in the context of human rights. While globalization has facilitated growth for such entities by lowering legal, financial and technical restrictions, a failure to agree an overarching protection mechanism and the weaknesses in current protection mechanisms creates a vacuum. This vacuum primarily exists due to inadequate legal and regulatory regimes in host states that are developing countries, and who need and seek such investment; and the general difficulties concerning the weak enforceability of international law. As a consequence, TNCs could and do commit grave human rights violations while avoiding scrutiny despite the existence of a few international, regional and institutional instruments that could hold them accountable. The efforts to fill the regulatory vacuum in which TNCs function have taken the form of ‘soft-law’ instruments, however, their purely voluntary nature and purpose in encouraging TNCs to oblige rather than holding them legally accountable appears inadequate in promoting and protecting recognised principles of human rights law. Under international law victims of corporate human rights abuses, just as any other types of victims, have the right to access an adequate remedy through recourse to judicial remedies where other informal or administrative remedial schemes are insufficient. Having an efficient and fair justice system in developing host states for the victims of corporate human rights abuses is key to ensuring access to an adequate remedy. The thesis aims at examining the role of various courts at international, regional and domestic level; in the intergovernmental, home, as well as in the developing host state, to remedy and punish human rights violations by TNCs. The reasoning underpinning the examination of judicial scrutiny acknowledges that such authorities are not an ideal forum for improving human rights mainly due to problems that prevent full access to such legal remedies. However, the existence of judicial systems and effective remedies stemming from them is nonetheless believed to remain the essential, if not an effective forum based for victims seeking redress for corporate human rights abuses. This thesis also explores the question as to adequate forum for accountability, assessing efforts made in ‘home’ states where the TNCs are headquartered, and in ‘host’ states, where they operate, and where, practice shows, many of the unremedied human rights violations persist. Although, the emphasis for host states is on potential accountability. The study uses Nigeria as case study to assess the extent of human rights violations by TNCs in developing host states, how these entities have been dealt with by the courts at domestic level, in a bid to highlight the challenges hindering access to effective remedy and justice. It proposes as a recommendation that developing countries undertake deep structural reforms, alongside vigorous involvement of several actors, including the state, related agencies, the judiciary and public interest organisations

MODLEACH: A Variant of LEACH for WSNs

Wireless sensor networks are appearing as an emerging need for mankind. Though, Such networks are still in research phase however, they have high potential to be applied in almost every field of life. Lots of research is done and a lot more is awaiting to be standardized. In this work, cluster based routing in wireless sensor networks is studied precisely. Further, we modify one of the most prominent wireless sensor network's routing protocol "LEACH" as modified LEACH (MODLEACH) by introducing \emph{efficient cluster head replacement scheme} and \emph{dual transmitting power levels}. Our modified LEACH, in comparison with LEACH out performs it using metrics of cluster head formation, through put and network life. Afterwards, hard and soft thresholds are implemented on modified LEACH (MODLEACH) that boast the performance even more. Finally a brief performance analysis of LEACH, Modified LEACH (MODLEACH), MODLEACH with hard threshold (MODLEACHHT) and MODLEACH with soft threshold (MODLEACHST) is undertaken considering metrics of throughput, network life and cluster head replacements.Comment: IEEE 8th International Conference on Broadband and Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications (BWCCA'13), Compiegne, Franc

Military Expenditures and Economic Growth in Pakistan

This paper explores the impacts of defence expenditures on economic growth and other major economic variables in the Pakistan economy over the period 1972-1995. The results of Granger-causality tests show that there is bi-directional feedback between the defence burden and GDP growth. We test four different single equation models that are widely used in the defence literature. In these frameworks we generally find the defence burden to be negatively related to GDP growth. Finally, we specify a three-equation model which explains GDP growth, average propensity to save, and the defence ratio. In single equation estimations of the savings ratio and the defence burden, we uncover some interesting relationships. The savings ratio is affected positively by the defence ratio, and negatively by the inflation rate. The Pakistani defence burden is impacted negatively by the Indian defence burden and positively by the government budget. When all three equations are estimated as a system to account for feedback and covariance between these equations, these effects are diminished and go down in statistical significance.

Classification of colon biopsy samples by spatial analysis of a single spectral band from its hyperspectral cube

The histopathological analysis of colon biopsy samples is a very important part of screening for colorectal cancer. There is, however, significant inter-observer and even intra-observer variability in the results of such analysis due to its very subjective nature. Therefore, quantitative methods are required for the analysis of histopathological images to aid the histopatholgists in their diagnosis. In this paper, we exploit the shape and structure of the gland nuclei cells for the classification of colon biopsy samples using two-dimensional principal component analysis (2DPCA) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). We conclude that the use of textural features extracted from non-overlapping blocks of the histopathological images results in a non-linear decision boundary which can be efficiently exploited using a SVM with appropriate choice of parameters for its Gaussian kernel. The SVM classifier outperforms all the remaining methods by a clear margin

Wavelet based segmentation of hyperspectral colon tissue imagery

Segmentation is an early stage for the automated classification of tissue cells between normal and malignant types. We present an algorithm for unsupervised segmentation of images of hyperspectral human colon tissue cells into their constituent parts by exploiting the spatial relationship between these constituent parts. This is done by employing a modification of the conventional wavelet based texture analysis, on the projection of hyperspectral image data in the first principal component direction. Results show that our algorithm is comparable to other more computationally intensive methods which exploit the spectral characteristics of the hyperspectral imagery data