Husband-wife Roles as a Correlate of Contraceptive and Fertility Behaviour

In this paper, an investigation of reproductive behaviour within the socioeconomic and cultural frameworks is carried out to find the extent to which socioeconomic, cultural, and attitudinal variables (such as husband and wife’s education, family income, husband’s occupation, child mortality, exposure to the mass media, and husbandand- wife relationship in terms of egalitarian roles, role-segregation, husband’s authority, and domination in family and non-family decisions) influence the fertility decision-making process. The quantitative and qualitative techniques are used for exploring the respondents’ views regarding contraceptive and fertility behaviour. Principle Component Analysis (PCA) is applied to identify new meaningful underlying variables and to reduce the multi-dimensionality of variables. The chi-square test is employed to explore the relationships between the predictor variables and the dependent variables. Multiple linear regression is also used to establish the relative importance of each of the predictor variables. Bivariate, multiple linear regression and qualitative analysis demonstrate that preferences for smaller families and contraceptive use were found to be consistently associated with modern attitudes and behaviour towards the husband-and-wife relationship. Family income, husband’s occupation, child mortality, and age at marriage offered no explanation of the reproductive behaviour. It is concluded that cultural setting and tradition exert an important influence on reproductive behaviour independent of development in economic realities. It is suggested that for the attainment of demographicdevelopmental objectives, the issue of women’s status is not incidental; it is essential. The argument is not that improvements in women’s status need to be pursued only for population policy purposes, but rather that they comprise a crucial social developmental goal in their own right.

The effect of environment on corrosion kinetics with particular reference to temperature and pressure

Imperial Users onl

Impact of Trade Liberalization on External Debt Burden: Econometric Evidence from Pakistan

Pakistan’s leading challenge today is to lessen its debt burden in order to pursue a path that leads towards sustainable and impartial growth for poverty diminution. The consequences of trade liberalization are of growing concern, mainly in the emerging economies with severe brim over effects on their debt situation. The major objective of this paper is to discuss the current external debt problem in Pakistan and analyze how its external debt is interrelated with trade liberalization policies and measures .Using data from the last three decades, this paper investigated whether there exist a momentous relationship between external debt and the trade liberalization variables or not. In this case study ARDL bounds testing approach is employed to investigate the long run relationships and Error Correction Method (ECM) for short run dynamics. After finding the order of integration through implementing the Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Phillips-Perron unit root tests, our finding suggested a significant long run positive association between external debt and trade liberalization is existed in case of PakistanExternal Debt, Trade Liberalization, ARDL Bounds Testing, Error Correction Method

Effect of diesel generator exhaust pollutants on growth of Vinca rosea and Ruellia tuberosa

The effects of exhaust pollutants of generator on root and shoot length, root and shoot weight, number of leaflets and leaf area, leaf and total plant dry weight of Vinca rosea and Ruellia tuberosa were studied. The treatment of exhaust pollutants produced significant effects on root, shoot growth, number of leaflet and leaf area of V. rosea and R. tuberosa as compared to control. The exhaust emission treatment decreased seedling dry weight of V. rosea and R. tuberosa. The data showed that the exhaust emission significantly decreased the number of leaflet and leaf area for both species viz. V. rosea and R. tuberosa as compared to control. A significant decrease in the seedling growth performances of V. rosea and R. tuberosa resulted in decrease in seedling dry weight and showed that the exhaust treatment affects the seedling dry weight performance as compared to control treatment. It was found that the treatment of exhaust emission from a portable powered generator fueled negatively affected the seedling growth of V. rosea as compared to R. tuberosa. The findings may be helpful for plantation in polluted area.Key words: Biomass, diesel generator, exhausts emission, leaf area, pollutant, seedling growth, Ruellia tuberosa, Vinca rosea

Biowaste-Derived Carbonized Bone for Solar Steam Generation and Seawater Desalination

AbstractInterfacial solar steam generation is an emerging strategy to improve the global freshwater supply. Herein, for the first time, a plausible alternative based on bone waste is presented for low‐cost solar steam generation and seawater desalination. This is accomplished via the exploration of the appropriate carbonization conditions for the successful bone transformation into a porous carbon‐based photothermal material. The carbonized bone (CB) not only is composed of inherent interlinked mesoporous microchannels for efficient water transportation but also displays broadband light absorption, photothermal conversion, and reduced vaporization enthalpy due to its special interactions with water. The as‐prepared CB shows an apparent evaporation rate of 1.82 kg m−2 h−1 under one‐sun illumination, attributed not only to its interaction with the sunlight but also to its performance in the dark field, and a solar‐to‐vapor conversion efficiency of 80%. Furthermore, CB desalinates water with an efficiency of 99.99%. Such performance combined with its wide availability, facile fabrication, and stability makes this biowaste‐based porous material a promising system for the production of freshwater. In this way, a valuable alternative for the valorization of bone‐based food‐waste is offered, paving the way to new routes for the management of such, continuously growing, food‐waste products

On-line Handwritten Character Recognition: An Implementation of Counterpropagation Neural Net

On-line handwritten scripts are usually dealt with pen tip traces from pen-down to pen-up positions. Time evaluation of the pen coordinates is also considered along with trajectory information. However, the data obtained needs a lot of preprocessing including filtering, smoothing, slant removing and size normalization before recognition process. Instead of doing such lengthy preprocessing, this paper presents a simple approach to extract the useful character information. This work evaluates the use of the counter- propagation neural network (CPN) and presents feature extraction mechanism in full detail to work with on-line handwriting recognition. The obtained recognition rates were 60% to 94% using the CPN for different sets of character samples. This paper also describes a performance study in which a recognition mechanism with multiple hresholds is evaluated for counter-propagation architecture. The results indicate that the application of multiple thresholds has significant effect on recognition mechanism. The method is applicable for off-line character recognition as well. The technique is tested for upper-case English alphabets for a number of different styles from different peoples

Antecedents, Consequences And Control Of Opportunistic Behavior In Strategic Networks

In the Strategic Management literature, the problem of cooperation arising from conflicts of interest has been described as the problem of motivation. Under assumptions of self-interest, or its stronger forms (such as opportunism), collectively beneficial outcomes do not result for because of the actions motivated by the self interests of individual members. In this paper, the author presents a host of antecedents that can spur and/or facilitate such opportunistic pursuits in members of a strategic network. The influence of these antecedents has been reflected in the ex-ante and ex-post phases of network life cycle. It is postulated that the problem can be resolved by securing an alignment in partners’ interest which together with alignment in actions contributes to the bottom line through increased ability to yield an integrated response to the adaptation requirements stemming from disturbances in networks’ environment. A detailed discussion been administered on how opportunism can be controlled through formal measures like contracts, TSIs, vertical integration and game theoretic stipulations,  and the informal controls like relational norms, identification, and culmination of trust and commitment

Improving flood estimation in ungauged catchments

For the ungauged sites, in order to link the index flood to catchment descriptors, statistical models such as multiple regression are most widely used. In this paper, the Flood Estimation Handbook (FEH) statistical methodologies are analysed and hence recalibrated using all data available as well as cross validation process, the availability of more flow records produced better results. Similarly, using correlation analysis, appropriate catchment descriptors are selected, and a new simple non-linear regression model is proposed. The use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) is investigated to estimate the flood index from the catchment descriptors and are compared to traditional non-linear regression models. The National River Flow Archive (NRFA) data has been utilized to estimate the index flood (QMED) for 337 ungauged catchments in the UK. The results showed that i) there are several catchment descriptors (e.g. catchment area, mean annual rainfall) that are directly correlated to QMED; ii) the recalibrated FEH models produce better results than the original models and so it is important to recalibrate this model as new data becomes available; iii) the proposed non-linear power-law model produces slightly better results than the FEH model; iv) the QMED estimates obtained from ANNs have shown improved performance as compared to the traditional non-linear regression models. In addition to that, given the fact that the number of catchments is not large enough to separate the data set in calibration and validation, we used cross validation (where each model is trained for n-1 data points, and then tested against the remaining 1 unseen data point demonstrating the real performance of model), to test the true performance of the models. The cross-validation results showed that the performance of the models decreases, but the ANNs still produces slightly better results compared to the nonlinear regression models.Outgoin

Husband-wife Roles as a Correlate of Contraceptive and Fertility Behaviour

In this paper, an investigation of reproductive behaviour within the socioeconomic and cultural frameworks is carried out to find the extent to which socioeconomic, cultural, and attitudinal variables (such as husband and wife’s education, family income, husband’s occupation, child mortality, exposure to the mass media, and husbandand- wife relationship in terms of egalitarian roles, role-segregation, husband’s authority, and domination in family and non-family decisions) influence the fertility decision-making process. The quantitative and qualitative techniques are used for exploring the respondents’ views regarding contraceptive and fertility behaviour. Principle Component Analysis (PCA) is applied to identify new meaningful underlying variables and to reduce the multi-dimensionality of variables. The chi-square test is employed to explore the relationships between the predictor variables and the dependent variables. Multiple linear regression is also used to establish the relative importance of each of the predictor variables. Bivariate, multiple linear regression and qualitative analysis demonstrate that preferences for smaller families and contraceptive use were found to be consistently associated with modern attitudes and behaviour towards the husband-and-wife relationship. Family income, husband’s occupation, child mortality, and age at marriage offered no explanation of the reproductive behaviour. It is concluded that cultural setting and tradition exert an important influence on reproductive behaviour independent of development in economic realities. It is suggested that for the attainment of demographicdevelopmental objectives, the issue of women’s status is not incidental; it is essential. The argument is not that improvements in women’s status need to be pursued only for population policy purposes, but rather that they comprise a crucial social developmental goal in their own right

Co-teaching Effectiveness: Students’ Achievement in Mathematical Proficiencies and Content Strands

In Pakistan Mathematics is being taught by single teacher. In contrast co-teaching has shown its positive effects on students’ academic achievement in Mathematics. Keeping in view the importance of co-teaching, this study was aimed at examining the co-teaching effectiveness to enhance students’ scores in mathematics. An experimental research design, Solomon Four Group was applied in this study to conduct an experiment. A school in the public sector was selected on convenient basis with due permission of headmaster. There were 118 students studying in that school at 8th grade situated in Sargodha district. A teaching module of mathematics was developed on two content strands of 8th grade mathematics i.e. algebra & geometry. The duration for one lesson was one hour. There were 20 lessons in the module and were validated by two mathematics experts. Students’ achievement was measured by using an achievement test of mathematics. Pakistan National Educational Assessment System had developed and validated the items. Data were analyzed by applying Mean, Standard deviation, and independent sample t-test. Co-teaching was found to be more effective than single teacher’s teaching in enhancing students’ achievement score in algebra and geometry with mathematical proficiencies. It was recommended that a topic on co-teaching should be included in courses preparing teachers of Mathematics