Search Results (11)

Plants, being sessile, have developed complex signaling and response mechanisms to cope with biotic and abiotic stressors. Recent investigations have revealed the significant contribution of phytohormones in enabling plants to endure unfavorable conditions. Among these phytohormones, jasmonic acid (JA) and its derivatives, collectively referred to as jasmonates (JAs), are of particular importance and are involved in diverse signal transduction pathways to regulate various physiological and molecular processes in plants, thus protecting plants from the lethal impacts of abiotic and biotic stressors. Jasmonic acid has emerged as a central player in plant defense against biotic stress and in alleviating multiple abiotic stressors in plants, such as drought, salinity, vernalization, and heavy metal exposure. Furthermore, as a growth regulator, JA operates in conjunction with other phytohormones through a complex signaling cascade to balance plant growth and development against stresses. Although studies have reported the intricate nature of JA as a biomolecular entity for the mitigation of abiotic stressors, their underlying mechanism and biosynthetic pathways remain poorly understood. Therefore, this review offers an overview of recent progress made in understanding the biosynthesis of JA, elucidates the complexities of its signal transduction pathways, and emphasizes its pivotal role in mitigating abiotic and biotic stressors. Moreover, we also discuss current issues and future research directions for JAs in plant stress responses. Full article

Recently, different metaheuristic techniques, their variants, and hybrid forms have been extensively used to solve economic load dispatch (ELD) problems with and without valve point loading (VPL) effects. Due to the randomization involved in these metaheuristic techniques, one has to perform extensive runs for each experiment to get an optimal solution. The process may sometimes become laborious and time-consuming to converge to an optimal solution. On the other hand, advanced calculus-based techniques, being deterministic, perform iteration systematically and come up with the same solution on each run of the experiment. Since ELD problems are constrained optimization problems, we are proposing the constrained (deterministic) optimization algorithm for their solutions. Various 13-unit, 38-unit, and 40-unit thermal test systems are considered. Valve point loading (VPL) effects are also considered in some cases. Computer-based numerical results depict that the constrained optimization algorithm shows evidence of being almost as competitive in a total fuel cost as the metaheuristic optimization techniques, especially for the less-constrained ELD problems but with far reduced computation time. This finding validates the application of the constrained optimization technique to solve the economic dispatch problem. Full article

The goal of this project is to revitalize the historic core of the city of Multan to encourage sustainable environmental protection and socio-economic development. This case study focuses on the implementation of an intervention at ‘Sarafa Bazaar’. The objective of the project is to restore the structure and provide a framework for the development of the local community. The other goal of the intervention is to improve the tourist experience and promote energy efficiency. This type of project is carried out through a process that aims to identify and address the social and urban issues that have affected the development of the city. The selected section of ‘Sarafa Bazaar’ is approximately 80 m from the Musafir Khana building and is connected to the other side of the bazaar. The walls of the Sarafa Bazaar are being renovated and conserved. A laser scanner was used to identify the number of materials and steel reinforcements needed to balance the settled facade. The renovation of the façades of the Sarafa Bazaar is being carried out to improve the overall appearance of the area. The project has been carried out through the establishment of an integrated system for the development of the city’s urban area. It involves the renovation of the façades of the Sarafa Bazaar and the establishment of public spaces. Full article

Background: Pakistan’s immunization uptake rates are still significantly lower than anticipated despite several initiatives. Lack of awareness, forgetting about vaccination schedule, and vaccine misconception/misinformation are a few of the major drivers that mitigate the rates of immunization. The current COVID-19 pandemic emphasizes the importance of immunization. The significant reductions in regular childhood vaccination during pandemic have increased the risk of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Concerns among parents over possibly exposing their children to COVID-19 during child visits may have contributed to the reported declines. Innovative and cost-effective mHealth interventions must be implemented in order to address the problem of inadequate immunization rates. In addition, it is also critical to understand the end user needs in order to reflect on the highly relevant essence of the customized healthcare experience. Objective: The aim of this study was to learn about caregivers’ attitudes toward the usability and acceptability of behavior-change smartphone applications (mobile phones) for improving immunization coverage in Pakistan. Methods: A mixed-method design was employed for this study. The study was conducted at Aga Khan University, Hospital. Parents visiting the Community Health Center for 6-week vaccination of their children were recruited. The study was conducted in two stages. Stage 1 consisted of qualitative interviews that grasped the parent’s attitudes and challenges to immunization, as well as their acceptability and accessibility of the smartphone-based behavior-change application to increase vaccine uptake. Stage 1 was followed by stage 2, in which data were collected through a questionnaire designed by using data from qualitative interviews. Results: The majority of participants agreed that immunization serves an important role in protecting their child from illnesses that cause morbidity and mortality. Almost all of them emphasized the importance of using a pre-appointment method at vaccination center in order to reduce the waiting time. Furthermore, participants were also interested in AI-based behavior modification applications related to immunization. They also wanted to have applications in their native language for better understanding and communication of related information. In our study, approximately 95.2 percent of participants agreed to accept SMS immunization updates, which was also reasonably high. Lastly, the majority of them identified forgetfulness as a significant contributor to regular immunization. Conclusion: To enhance the uptake of childhood vaccines, overall vaccination rates, and overcome barriers related to vaccination coverage, cost-effective and user-friendly mHealth AI-based smart phone applications are required to raise awareness regarding the continuation of vaccination service and the importance of timely vaccination. Parents’ experiences and attitudes must be considered while designing and evaluating the efficacy of mHealth-based interventions. Full article

According to statistics, there are 422 million speakers of the Arabic language. Islam is the second-largest religion in the world, and its followers constitute approximately 25% of the world’s population. Since the Holy Quran is in Arabic, nearly all Muslims understand the Arabic language per some analytical information. Many countries have Arabic as their native and official language as well. In recent years, the number of internet users speaking the Arabic language has been increased, but there is very little work on it due to some complications. It is challenging to build a robust recognition system (RS) for cursive nature languages such as Arabic. These challenges become more complex if there are variations in text size, fonts, colors, orientation, lighting conditions, noise within a dataset, etc. To deal with them, deep learning models show noticeable results on data modeling and can handle large datasets. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs) can select good features and follow the sequential data learning technique. These two neural networks offer impressive results in many research areas such as text recognition, voice recognition, several tasks of Natural Language Processing (NLP), and others. This paper presents a CNN-RNN model with an attention mechanism for Arabic image text recognition. The model takes an input image and generates feature sequences through a CNN. These sequences are transferred to a bidirectional RNN to obtain feature sequences in order. The bidirectional RNN can miss some preprocessing of text segmentation. Therefore, a bidirectional RNN with an attention mechanism is used to generate output, enabling the model to select relevant information from the feature sequences. An attention mechanism implements end-to-end training through a standard backpropagation algorithm. Full article

Polymer composites have been identified as the most innovative and selective materials known in the 21st century. Presently, polymer concrete composites (PCC) made from industrial or agricultural waste are becoming more popular as the demand for high-strength concrete for various applications is increasing. Polymer concrete composites not only provide high strength properties but also provide specific characteristics, such as high durability, decreased drying shrinkage, reduced permeability, and chemical or heat resistance. This paper provides a detailed review of the utilization of polymer composites in the construction industry based on the circular economy model. This paper provides an updated and detailed report on the effects of polymer composites in concrete as supplementary cementitious materials and a comprehensive analysis of the existing literature on their utilization and the production of polymer composites. A detailed review of a variety of polymers, their qualities, performance, and classification, and various polymer composite production methods is given to select the best polymer composite materials for specific applications. PCCs have become a promising alternative for the reuse of waste materials due to their exceptional performance. Based on the findings of the studies evaluated, it can be concluded that more research is needed to provide a foundation for a regulatory structure for the acceptance of polymer composites. Full article

Limited research work is available in the literature for the theoretical estimates of axial compressive strength of columns reinforced with fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) rebars. In the present work, an experimental database of 278 FRP-reinforced concrete (RC) compression members was established from the literature to recommend an empirical model that can accurately predict the axial strength (AS) of GFRP-RC specimens. An initial assessment of 13 different previously anticipated empirical models was executed to achieve a general form of the AS model. Finally, a new empirical equation for forecasting the AS of GFRP-RC short columns was proposed using the curve fitting and regression analysis technique. The performance of the proposed empirical model over the previous experimental database represented its higher accuracy as related to that of other models. For the further justification of the anticipated model, a numerical model of GFRP-RC columns was simulated using ABAQUS and a wide parametric study of 600 GFRP-RC samples was executed to generate a numerical database and investigate the influence of various parameters using numerical and empirical models. The comparison between theoretical and numerical predictions with R² = 0.77 indicted that the anticipated empirical model is accurate enough to apprehend the AS of FRP-RC specimens. Full article

The use of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) jackets as external confinement is becoming popular, especially in seismic areas, because of its ability to enhance the strength and ductility of reinforced concrete to perform as a sustainable symmetric structural member. Therefore, various researchers have worked out for the prediction of strength and strain models of FRP-confined concrete. This study presents the improved strain models for the FRP confined cylindrical concrete members. Different previously proposed models of axial strain of FRP-confined concrete were evaluated based on a large database of 678 specimens from previous experiments and an improved model was proposed using the general regression analysis technique. Furthermore, the proposed model was validated using the previous experimental work of FRP-wrapped concrete cylinders and their finite elements analysis (FEA) using the ABAQUS software. The accuracy of the proposed strain model was quite satisfactory in comparison with the previous experimental and FEA results of the present study. Moreover, the proposed empirical strain model was used for the parametric study to investigate the effect of different geometric and material parameters such as the compressive strength of unconfined concrete, diameter of the cylinder, elastic modulus and thickness of the FRP layers, on the axial strain of FRP-wrapped cylinders. A close agreement among the proposed strain models and experimental outputs was observed. This study will help in understanding the behavior of sustainable FRP-confined symmetric concrete members. Full article

The amount of fines in sand greatly influence the permeability of sandy soils. Thus, this research was conducted to study the effect of plastic and non-plastic fines on the permeability of three types of sands (Lawrencepur sand, Chenab sand and Ravi sand). For this purpose, plastic and non-plastic fines were collected from different location of Lahore. Samples were prepared by mixing plastic and non-plastic fines into each type of sand separately, in amounts ranging from 0% to 50% with increments of five percent. Overall 63 samples were prepared. Sieve analysis and hydrometric analysis were performed to obtain particle size distribution for each sample. Atterberg’s limits were also determined and each sample was classified according to the Unified Soil Classification System (USCS). Compaction tests were performed on all samples as per the procedure in a standard Proctor test. The test samples were compacted in permeability molds with optimum moisture contents to obtain the density, as per a standard Proctor test. Hydraulic conductivity tests were performed on all sixty-three samples using a constant head permeameter and a falling head permeameter. Permeability results were plotted against the percentage of fines added. It was noted from the curves that the permeability of sand-fine mixtures shows a decreasing trend with the addition of fine contents. A few trials were performed to formulate a correlation. Validation of the correlation was performed with the results of 52 data sets from the field. Finally, the devised correlation was compared with three empirical equations proposed by Mujtaba, Kozeny–Carman and Hazen. Full article

This research intends to explore the sustainable masonry bond formation and interface behaviour of brick masonry bonds with different cement mortar ratios. To test the sustainable behaviour of different brick bonds, different tests were applied to evaluate the performance of the developed five brick masonry structures with the help of four mortar ratios. Following that pattern, the methodologies of a prism triplet test, a bond wrench test, a shear bond test and strength tests for brick masonry were applied. The prism triplet test explained the bonding behaviour of mortar by producing a maximum strength (0.21 MPa) with a 1:3 mix ratio, and the minimum strength (0.095 MPa) with a 1:8 mix ratio. The bond wrench test showed a bond strength of maximum 0.0685 MPa with a mortar ratio of 1:3 and a minimum of 0.035 MPa with a mortar ratio of 1:8. The strength tests for masonry structures expressed that compressive strength (0.786 MPa) and flexural strength (0.352 MPa) were found to be at maximum level with a mortar ratio (1:3) with an English bond formation. For predictions of compressive and flexural strength, artificial neural networks (ANNs) were deployed, and successful predictions of these values along with the relationships between different properties of the material, mortar combinations and bond combinations are presented to complete the exploration of the relationship. This pattern can be helpful for the selection of sustainable brick masonry formations for housing development. Full article

Surface water is an important source of water supply for irrigation purpose and in urban areas, sewage water is being disposed of in nearby canals without treatment. A study was conducted to investigate the dynamics of water quality of irrigation canal as a result of this practice. The study ascertained the impact of different salinity parameters, indices and approaches to examine the hazardous effects on quality of canal water. The study analyses the samples collected for various parameters like pH, TDS, EC, Na, Cl, Ca, Mg, K, CO₃, HCO₃ etc. It helped to decide the restriction on use of water based on FAO-UN guidelines. Investigations were focused on assessment of contaminants affecting the quality of water and having hazardous effects on different stages of irrigation water usage. Wilcox diagram and Doneen’s approach-based analysis helped to identify the class and quality of water. This study shall help to analyze the quality of water and provide support to the decision makers for better water resource management and policy development for irrigation purpose i.e., treatment and distribution of water resource. Full article