Showing papers by "Muhammad Ramzan published in 2017"

Enhanced Bio-ethanol Production from Old Newspapers Waste Through Alkali and Enzymatic Delignification

Abstract: Producing bioethanol from various lignocellulosic wastes is considered as a promising strategy to overcome global energy crisis and waste management in one consolidated step. In this study, we investigated the use of old newspaper waste as potential raw materials for bioethanol production. Two state-of-the-art technologies, alkali (NaOH) and enzymatic (ligninolytic) pre-treatments were applied for the delignification of old newspaper waste. The maximum delignification of 37.7 and 42.2% were achieved with alkali (4.0% after 24 h) and ligninolytic extract (25 mL) treatments, respectively. The delignified residues were then treated with cellulase extract from Trichoderma harzianum that resulted in 56.2 and 63.8% cellulose hydrolysis in alkali and enzyme treated substrates, respectively. The enzymatically digested hydrolyzates were submitted for fermentation anaerobically, and up to 11.95 and 12.69 g/L ethanol concentration was recorded, respectively. Effects of several processing parameters such as fermentation duration, substrate level, pH, temperature, and inoculum volumes were optimized that led to significantly higher ethanol production of 17.8 and 20.4 g/L for alkali and enzyme treated substrates, respectively. The results obtained suggested that ligninolytic pre-treatment is a more efficient and environmentally friendlier approach as compared to alkali treatment for economic bio-ethanol production.

Use of Social Media Tool “Whatsapp” in Medical Education

Abstract: We are living in an era of technology where smart phones and hence social media has entered into many aspects of our life. Many professions are using social media to improve communication between colleagues. Social media tools are gaining attention in medical education as well. Objective: To explore the potential of WhatsApp as an instructional strategy for 4 th Year MBBS students in Ophthalmology. Methods: We made two groups of students on WhatsApp one for males and one for females. Topic of lecture, relevant images of taught topic and MCQs and SEQs were shared in both groups and students were encouraged to ask questions if they had any. After ten lectures the students were asked to give their feedback on our activity of WhatsApp group on an anonymous questionnaire. Results: Two hundred and thirty four students, 145 (62.0%) female and 86 (36.8%) males students filled in the anonymous questionnaire. One hundred and eighty nine students (88.77%) were using social media to learn medicine while 45 students (19.23%) were not. Sixty seven students (29.39%) were using both WhatsApp and Facebook, 65 students (28.51%) were using Facebook, 57 students (25%) were using WhatsApp. Sixty percent of students were using social media once or more than twice a day. Eighty eight (63.8%) female students and 66 (77.7%) male students ranked this activity as high or above. To the open ended question we got appreciative comments and some suggestion. Conclusion: WhatsApp is an effective social media tool to motivate, augmentand perhaps improve the learning of undergraduates in addition to traditional teaching.

Fuzzy Approach to Prioritize Usability Requirements Conflicts: An Experimental Evaluation

Abstract: The lack of attention to the correlation between the attributes of usability requirements leads to several problems with software development. This paper presents a novel framework that focuses on the mapping of usability requirements attributes to the linguistic assessment from the users using fuzzy logic. Our proposed framework prioritizes conflicting usability requirements attributes. For implementation, we have used MATLAB Fuzzy Logic Tool box. This proposed framework is aimed at helping the requirement analyst in taking better decisions by automating the whole process of identifying and resolving usability requirements conflicts. The major task in the proposed system involves determining the numerical value for each attribute considering their respective importance in different quantitative and qualitative evaluation standards. On the basis of numerical value, conflicts and their respective severities are identified.

Textural Properties and Enzyme Activity of Mango (Mangifera indica L.) Fruit Coated with Chitosan during Storage

Abstract: Mango is a tropical fruit and deteriorates very fast after harvest due to ripening and senescence. This study investigated the effect of different concentration of chitosan coatings 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5% on postharvest quality and activities of cell wall degrading enzyme on mango cv. Choke Anan fruit stored at 25°C for 12 days. Fruit not treated with chitosan served as the control. The results showed that pre-storage application of chitosan coatings, especially at 1.5% significantly reduced decay symptoms, weight loss, respiration rate, ion leakage, malondialdehyde (MDA) content and maintained higher firmness of mango fruit as compared to the control. Chitosan coating treatment inhibited polygalactronase (PG) and pectin methylesterase (PME) enzyme activities. Moreover, chitosan coatings had a positive effect on retaining higher total phenolic and antioxidant activity, which reduced in the control fruit. These results suggest that chitosan coatings might be protected the fruit from quick deterioration and maintained the quality of mango by enhancing the antioxidant defense system during storage.

Final fate of charged anisotropic fluid collapse

Abstract: This paper studies the effects of charge on spherically symmetric collapse of anisotropic fluid with a positive cosmological constant. It is observed that electromagnetic field places restriction on the bounds of cosmological constant, which acts as repulsive force against the contraction of matter content and hence the rate of destruction is faster in the presence of electromagnetic field. We have also noted that the presence of charge affects the time interval between the formation of cosmological horizon (CH) and black hole horizon (BHH). When the electric field strength E(t, r) vanishes, our investigations are in full agreement with the results obtained by Ahmad and Malik [Int. J. Theor. Phys. 55, 600 (2016)].

Decoherence effects on multiplayer cooperative quantum games

Abstract: We study the behavior of cooperative multiplayer quantum games [35,36] in the presence of decoherence using different quantum channels such as amplitude damping, depolarizing and phase damping. It is seen that the outcomes of the games for the two damping channels with maximum values of decoherence reduce to same value. However, in comparison to phase damping channel, the payoffs of cooperators are strongly damped under the influence\ amplitude damping channel for\ the lower values of decoherence parameter. In the case of depolarizing channel, the game is a no-payoff game irrespective of the degree of entanglement in the initial state for the larger values of decoherence parameter. The decoherence gets the cooperators worse off.

Evaluating Urdu to Arabic Machine Translation Tools

Abstract: Machine translation is an active research domain in fields of artificial intelligence. The relevant literature presents a number of machine translation approaches for the translation of different languages. Urdu is the national language of Pakistan while Arabic is a major language in almost 20 different countries of the world comprising almost 450 million people. To the best of our knowledge, there is no published research work presenting any method on machine translation from Urdu to Arabic, however, some online machine translation systems like Google , Bing and Babylon provide Urdu to Arabic machine translation facility. In this paper, we compare the performance of online machine translation systems. The input in Urdu language is translated by the systems and the output in Arabic is compared with the ground truth data of Arabic reference sentences. The comparative analysis evaluates the systems by three performance evaluation measures: BLEU (BiLingual Evaluation Understudy), METEOR (Metric for Evaluation of Translation with Explicit ORdering) and NIST (National Institute of Standard and Technology) with the help of a standard corpus. The results show that Google translator is far better than Bing and Babylon translators. It outperforms, on the average, Babylon by 28.55% and Bing by 15.74%.

Does use of multi-source feedback (msf) affect the attitudes of postgraduate trainees: experience of a teaching hospital

Abstract: Objective: To explore the affects of multi source feedback (MSF) on the attitudes of post-graduate trainees.Study Design: Prospective mixed method study.Place and Duration of Study: Department of Ophthalmology, Lahore General Hospital (LGH) and PostgraduateMedical Institute (PGMI) Lahore, from Jul 2012 to Jun 2013.Material and Methods: This prospective mixed method study was conducted in the Department ofOphthalmology, LGH and PGMI, Lahore from July 2012 to June 2013. Participants were FCPS trainees and raters were the consultants, postgraduate trainees, house officers, nursing and paramedical staff. Modified mini-PAT Questionnaire was used. Survey I was followed by Survey II conducted after three months to determine any change. SPSS version 20 was used and paired sample t-test was applied to compare residents’ mean scores. A p-value <0.05 was considered significant.Results: Mean score for question 1-12 was 4.00 ± 0.16 and 4.43 ± 0.14 for survey I (before intervention) and survey II (post intervention) respectively. Mean difference in overall score from two surveys was 0.43 ± 0.06, which was statistically significant (p-value=0.000) showing overall improvement in scores from survey I to survey II. The highest mean score was awarded to question number 7 i.e. trainee respects patient’s confidentiality and lowest to question 4 i.e. ability to manage time effectively, in both surveys.Conclusion: There was improvement in practice if MSF was delivered in accurate and timely manner withmaintenance of the confidentiality and facilitative feedback.

Profile of non fasting lipid levels in normal weight and obese school children of 6-11 years age

Abstract: Background: Compelling evidence exists that the atherosclerotic process begins in childhood and progresses slowly into adulthood, at which time it leads frequently to coronary heart disease. The present study aims to determine the presence of non fasting hypertriglyceridemia in normal weight and obese primary school children 6-11years. Material and Methods: A total of 86 school children with 25 normal weight and 61 obese were included in this study. Body-mass-status was determined according to the WHO, 1995 criteria. Non-fasting blood sample was used for lipid screening including Triglyceride (TG); Total Cholesterol (CH), Low Density and High Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol (LDL-C and HDL-C). TG and CH were assessed by enzymatic and LDL-C and HDL-C through direct method. Results: Mean, for the TG level was observed higher in normal weight girls (181.30 ±15.04 mg/dl) than normal weight boys (141.87 ±37.60 mg/dl). Similar trend was observed in obese children. Mean for the TG concentration in obese girls was assessed higher (238.1 ±95.2 mg/dl) than (204.15 ±55.48 mg/dl) in obese boys. The observed value of 170 mg/dl was calculated as normal for non fasting triglyceride in this study. TG level of 200-400mg was taken as high and a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Same is recorded as 1.7% in obese girls and 1.4% in obese boys. Conclusion: The present study has expressed a significant non-fasting hypertriglyceridemia in obese children especially in obese girls. Non fasting lipid screening is a better option especially for children at risk for CVD and avoids the burden of fasting; is convenient both, for children and parents and that it is less costly and time consuming.