Factors Contributing to Examination Malpractices at Secondary School Level in Kohat Division, Pakistan

The purpose of this research work was to identify the factors that contribute to examination malpractices at secondary school level. The target population of the study was all the heads, teachers and students at secondary school level in Kohat Division (Pakistan). The study was delimited to the 80 male secondary schools. The sample for this study was made up of 840 respondents which were selected through simple random sampling technique. A self-developed semi-structured questionnaire was used as research instrument for data collection. Descriptive statistics i.e., simple percentage, mean, standard deviation and inferential statistics i.e., ANOVA were applied for the statistical analysis of data. The findings of the study explored that there are various factors that contribute to examination malpractices i.e., corruption; poor implementation of examinations rules; students and parental threats; no fear of punishment; inadequate preparation for examination; poor invigilation; collusion; disloyalty of examination bodies; fear of failure; poor morale and economic depression of supervisory staff etc. Furthermore, the findings of the study revealed that bringing of unauthorized materials to examination hall; sending of prepared answers to students by teachers and parents; impersonation; questions and papers leakage; cheating; and scripts changing are the various forms of examination malpractices. Based on findings, it was recommended that examination rules should be implemented effectively and those who were found guilty should be given severe exemplary punishment according to the examination's rules

Finite AG-groupoid with left identity and left zero

A groupoid G whose elements satisfy the left invertive law: (ab)c=(cb)a is known as Abel-Grassman's groupoid (AG-groupoid). It is a nonassociative algebraic structure midway between a groupoid and a commutative semigroup. In this note, we show that if G is a finite AG-groupoid with a left zero then, under certain conditions, G without the left zero element is a commutative group

Soil Fertility Management for Sustainable Agriculture: A Case Studyof District Bahawalnagar, Pakistan

The study was conducted to classify soil of crop growing areas of District Bahawalnagar with respect to low, satisfactory and high soil fertility status for better management of the whole area. A total of 3624 soil samples collected from all tehsils of Bahawalnagar district (888 samples from Bahawalnagar, 743 samples from Chishtian, 528 samples from Fort Abbas, 573 samples from Haroon Abad and 892 soil samples from Minchin Abad) were tested in Soil and Water Testing Laboratory, Bahawalpur, Pakistan during 2011-2013.Soil characteristics of Bahawalnagar district were evaluated through physical and chemical analysis. Representative soil samples received/collected from farmers fields were analyzed for texture, electrical conductivity (EC), pH, organic matter (OM), available phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) contents. Texture of the soils varied from sandy loam to loam. About 66% soils had EC values within the normal range (< 4 dS m-1). The pH values of 94% soils ranged from 7.5 to 8.5 with an average of 8.03 and 5% soils had pH > 8.5. About 99% soils were poor( < 0.86%) in organic matter and only 1% samples had satisfactory level of organic matter(0.86-1.29%).About 68% soils were poor(<7 ppm) in available phosphorus, 23 % samples had satisfactory level of  available phosphorus(7-14 ppm) and only 9% samples had adequate level of available phosphorus (>14 ppm) contents. The K status of most of soils was in satisfactory (58%) and adequate range (30%). The objective of present study is to assess the soil fertility and salinity status of Bahawalnagar district for formulation of optimum fertilizer recommendations for different crops grown in the area. Key words: Soil Analysis, EC, pH, SOM, P, K, Bahawalnaga

Development of an Open Source Urdu Screen Reader for Visually Impaired People

Abstract Speech technology has enabled computer accessibility for users with visual impairments but the language barrier poses a great challenge. This project is an effort to overcome the hurdles faced by visually impaired people, in terms of language barrier, by providing them access to digital information through software which can communicate with them in Urdu. A survey was conducted in schools for blind to assess their information and communication needs. The survey helped to deduce the learning abilities, competency level and usability requirements of visually impaired children. An open source screen reader, NVDA was localized and afterwards integrated with Urdu text-to-speech system. The system was deployed in a school of visually impaired children where they participated in training and testing of the system. Results showed that visually impaired children performed equally well and in some cases even better with the localized screen reader as compared to an English screen reader

ISLES 2015 - A public evaluation benchmark for ischemic stroke lesion segmentation from multispectral MRI

Ischemic stroke is the most common cerebrovascular disease, and its diagnosis, treatment, and study relies on non-invasive imaging. Algorithms for stroke lesion segmentation from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) volumes are intensely researched, but the reported results are largely incomparable due to different datasets and evaluation schemes. We approached this urgent problem of comparability with the Ischemic Stroke Lesion Segmentation (ISLES) challenge organized in conjunction with the MICCAI 2015 conference. In this paper we propose a common evaluation framework, describe the publicly available datasets, and present the results of the two sub-challenges: Sub-Acute Stroke Lesion Segmentation (SISS) and Stroke Perfusion Estimation (SPES). A total of 16 research groups participated with a wide range of state-of-the-art automatic segmentation algorithms. A thorough analysis of the obtained data enables a critical evaluation of the current state-of-the-art, recommendations for further developments, and the identification of remaining challenges. The segmentation of acute perfusion lesions addressed in SPES was found to be feasible. However, algorithms applied to sub-acute lesion segmentation in SISS still lack accuracy. Overall, no algorithmic characteristic of any method was found to perform superior to the others. Instead, the characteristics of stroke lesion appearances, their evolution, and the observed challenges should be studied in detail. The annotated ISLES image datasets continue to be publicly available through an online evaluation system to serve as an ongoing benchmarking resource (www.isles-challenge.org).Peer reviewe

Biosorption of lead(II) and chromium(VI) on groundnut hull: Equilibrium, kinetics and thermodynamics study

The biosorption of lead(II) and chromium(VI) on groundnut hull was investigated. Batch biosorption experiments were conducted to find the equilibrium time and biosorption capacity. Effect of parameters like pH, temperature and initial metal concentration was studied. The maximum biosorption capacity of lead(II) and chromium(VI) was found to be 31.54 \ub1 0.63 and 30.21 \ub1 0.74 mg g-1, respectively. The optimum pH for lead(II) and chromium(VI) removal was 5 \ub1 0.1 and 2 \ub1 0.1, respectively. The temperature change, in the range of 20 - 45\ubaC affected the biosorption capacity. The maximum removal of lead(II) was achieved at 20 \ub1 2\ubaC, where as maximum uptake of chromium(VI) was observed at 40 \ub1 2\ubaC. The biosorption data was fitted to the Langmuir and the Freundlich isotherm models. The Langmuir model showed better representation of data, with correlation coefficient greater than 0.98. The kinetics of biosorption followed the pseudo second order kinetics model. The thermodynamics parameters were evaluated from the experimental data

Genome-wide association study of lifetime cannabis use based on a large meta-analytic sample of 32330 subjects from the International Cannabis Consortium

Cannabis is the most widely produced and consumed illicit psychoactive substance worldwide. Occasional cannabis use can progress to frequent use, abuse and dependence with all known adverse physical, psychological and social consequences. Individual differences in cannabis initiation are heritable (40-48%). The International Cannabis Consortium was established with the aim to identify genetic risk variants of cannabis use. We conducted a meta-analysis of genome-wide association data of 13 cohorts (N=32 330) and four replication samples (N=5627). In addition, we performed a gene-based test of association, estimated single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based heritability and explored the genetic correlation between lifetime cannabis use and cigarette use using LD score regression. No individual SNPs reached genome-wide significance. Nonetheless, gene-based tests identified four genes significantly associated with lifetime cannabis use: NCAM1, CADM2, SCOC and KCNT2. Previous studies reported associations of NCAM1 with cigarette smoking and other substance use, and those of CADM2 with body mass index, processing speed and autism disorders, which are phenotypes previously reported to be associated with cannabis use. Furthermore, we showed that, combined across the genome, all common SNPs explained 13-20% (P&lt;0.001) of the liability of lifetime cannabis use. Finally, there was a strong genetic correlation (rg=0.83; P=1.85 × 10(-8)) between lifetime cannabis use and lifetime cigarette smoking implying that the SNP effect sizes of the two traits are highly correlated. This is the largest meta-analysis of cannabis GWA studies to date, revealing important new insights into the genetic pathways of lifetime cannabis use. Future functional studies should explore the impact of the identified genes on the biological mechanisms of cannabis use.</p

Catalytic degradation of carbamazepine by surface modified zerovalent copper via activation of peroxymonosulfate: Mechanism, degradation pathways and ecotoxicity.

ABSTRACTIn this research work, surface modified nano zerovalent copper (nZVC) was prepared using simple borohydride reduction method. The spectroscopic and crystallographic results revealed the successful synthesis of surface modified nano zerovalent copper (nZVC) using solvents i.e., ethanol (ETOH), ethylene glycol (EG) and tween80 (T80). The as-synthesized material was fully characterized for morphological surface and crystal structural properties. The results indicated that EG provides excellent synthesis environment to nZVC compared to ETOH and T80 in terms of good dispersion, high surface area and excellent catalytic properties. The catalytic efficiency of nZVC/EG was investigated alone as well as with the addition of peroxymonosulfate (PMS) in the absence of light. The degradation results demonstrated that the involvement of PMS synergistically boosted the catalytic efficiency of synthesized nZVC/EG material. Furthermore, the degradation products (DPs) of CBZ were determined by GC-MS and subsequently the degradation pathways were proposed. The ecotoxicity analysis of the DPs was also explored. The proposed (nZVC/EG/PMS) system is economical and efficient and thus could be applied for the degradation of CBZ from aquatic system after altering the degradation pathways in such a way that results in harmless products formation