77 research outputs found
Azra Ahamed: Social Sustainability for Social Housing Communities
No full textThe number of social housing projects worldwide is growing, but no mechanisms or standards exist to check if they are socially sustainable. This research investigates the social nexus between housing designs and sustainability and provide a means to assess social sustainability in housing.
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Azra Ahamed: Unveiling the Dichotomy: Aspirations and Realities in Social Housing
No full textThis image portrays the stark contrast between aspiration and reality in social housing. The lower half of the picture reveals the grim truth of social housing: crumbling walls, peeling paint, and untenable living spaces, serving as a poignant representation of the daily struggles faced by those in marginalized communities. Above, in a dreamy reflection, an alternate reality emerges. A vision of immaculate homes appears, symbolizing the unspoken dreams and aspirations of those enduring subpar living conditions. This powerful visual metaphor encapsulates the enduring hope for a brighter future, where the dream of dignified housing becomes a reality. My research explores these struggles in social housing to understand and design guidelines for social housing development making the community socially sustainable where people's housing aspirations and dignified housing becomes a reality.This image was uploaded for the SGS Research Showcase 2023. </p
Provisions for Urban Social Sustainability in City Planning: A conceptual framework
Get PDFThe success of sustainable urban planning lies with the accomplishment of environmental, economic, and social sustainability in urban areas. However, the requirements of a socially sustainable city are very unclear. This paper aims to bridge the existing theories on urban social sustainability across disciplines to provide planning pathways for socially sustainable cities. Critically reflecting on the current literature, this paper offers a detailed exploration of sustainable urban planning through the social lens. The study results in a conceptual framework by delineating three aspects: social environment, accessibility, and social infrastructure, as key contributors and discussed in detail
Correction
Get PDFArticle title: The dynamic role of sustainable development goals to eradicate the
multidimensional poverty: evidence from emerging economy
Authors: Yufei Cao, Aftab Hussain Tabasam, Syed Ahtsham Ali, Anam Ashiq, Carlos
Samuel Ramos-Meza, Vipin Jain and Malik Shahzad Shabbir
Journal: Economic Research-Ekonomska Istrazivanja
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2022.2153715
When this article was first published online, the affiliation of the last author ‘Malik
Shahzad Shabbir’ was set incorrectly. This has now been corrected as follows and
republished online.
‘Lahore Business School, University of Lahore, Pakistan
Correction
Get PDFWhen this article was first published online, the affiliation of the last author ‘Malik
Shahzad Shabbir’ was set incorrectly. This has now been corrected as follows and
republished onlin
Evaluation of Normal Tissue Objective Function for Treatment Planning of Solitary Brain Metastasis Using Intensity-modulated Radiosurgery Techniques
No full textPurpose:
The purpose of this study was to systematically examine the normal tissue objective (NTO) function by comparing its variations for planning solitary brain metastasis with intensity-modulated and volumetric-modulated arc radiosurgery techniques.
Materials and Methods:
Twenty-two cases were retrospectively planned with two NTO parameter sets named A and B using intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) techniques. The Type A set used slope, k = 0.4 mm−1 plus end dose, De = 20%, whereas the Type B set used k = 1.0 mm−1 plus De = 10%. The resulting four plan types were assessed using mean dose to 5 mm exterior ring, normal brain receiving 12 Gy (V12), 5 Gy total brain dose volume (V5), gradient index (R50%), focal index (FI), Paddick conformity index (PCI), prescription isodose surface (PIDS), and MU/Gy.
Results:
Brain doses were significantly lower for VMAT than for IMRT. R50% was more favorable for VMAT than for IMRT for each planning target volume (PTV). The mean FI was comparable between the corresponding IMRT and VMAT plan types. PCI was better for the IMRT_A plan type. PIDS was significantly lower for Type B plans than Type A for both techniques. For PTVs <3 cm3, IMRT plans showed poor dosimetry and required NTO settings stricter than Type B.
Conclusions:
The application of NTO variations demonstrated varied dosimetry for IMRT and VMAT techniques. The NTO parameter variations produced field size and/or beamlet size/shape variations. The strict NTO parameter set generated more conformal beam apertures to reduce the brain dose. VMAT plan types showed significantly lower brain doses and better dosimetry for all target sizes
Visit to Pakistani Women's Madrasas: April 2007
Get PDFI visited five women's madrasas, in addition to meeting separately with other male madrasa leaders and briefly sitting in on Hafiz Khalil and Shabbir Ahmed's own 10-day workshop. The report documents the experiences of the author touring women's madrasas in Pakistan
Retraction note: Assessment of Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles (TiO2-NPs) Induced Hepatotoxicity and Ameliorative Effects of <em>Cinnamomum cassia</em> in Sprague-Dawley Rats (<em>Biological Trace Element Research</em>, (2018), 182, 1, (57-69), 10.1007/s12011-017-1074-3)
No full text\ua9 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024.The Editors-in-Chief have retracted this article after concerns were raised about data presented in Tables 2, 4, and 5 and error bars in Figs. 1, 2, 3, 12, 13, 14, and 15. The authors failed to provide raw data and evidence of ethical approval. The Editors-in-Chief therefore have lost confidence in the data presented in this article. Authors, Muhammad Shakeel, Farhat Jabeen, and Sadia Zafar do not agree to this retraction. Authors, Rehana Iqbal, Abdul Shakoor Chaudhry, Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Saleem Khan, Adeel Khalid, Samina Shabbir, and Muhammad Saleem Asghar have not responded to any correspondence from the editor/publisher about this retraction
A deconstruction of factors that affect performance of women entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia
Get PDFFemale entrepreneurship in Western countries has received ample research interest over the last decade. Research about female entrepreneurs in the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA) and particularly in Saudi Arabia is, however, still in its infancy. Little is known about the financial and business support resources available to these women, or whether or not the specific needs of female entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia are effectively met by the available economic and financial infrastructure. The aim of the present research study is twofold. Firstly, the author attempts to assess the role of non-government and non-profit organisations in providing financial support and business development services (BDS) such as training, information and advice to female entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia. Secondly, the author attempts to identify the specific needs of female entrepreneurs or women who wish to start a business. These aims are reached by surveying available financial programmes and business development programs (BDS) in Saudi Arabia. This part of the study relies on a thorough review of research literature and the evaluation of available financing and business programmes. Thirdly, primary data are collected from businesswomen in Saudi Arabia who run their own small or medium enterprise or who plan to start their own business in the foreseeable future and have already taken steps to start their own business. The author conducted one-on-one interviews with 30 Saudi business women to identify their needs, personal experiences, and perceived barriers that hinder their ability to run or start a business in Saudi Arabia. The author uses a semi-structured interview format to collect data. The expected results of the research were twofold: (1) the analysis conducted as part of this study is expected to uncover the main difficulties that female entrepreneurs are facing in Saudi Arabia when running their own business; (2) the study’s results provide insights that allow the researcher to determine whether or not the assistance of non-profit organisations is actually helpful in this area. The study’s findings are also expected to have implications for policy makers trying to boost female entrepreneurship.The present study made several significant findings; specifically, female entrepreneurs desire access to better training not only to hone their entrepreneurial skills but also to take advantage of the affordances of modern communication technologies. Secondly, cultural norms and tribalism hold women back from reaching their full potential as entrepreneurs. This not only has negative effects on women’s access to financing, but also on their abilities to access education and other resources. Moreover, the financing options for women are very limited; except for one state-sponsored program women were not aware of other “official channels” they could use to finance their businesses. Non-governmental organizations such as professional organizations for women are still lacking; participants expressed their wish that such organizations would expand their offerings to women. Female entrepreneurs highlighted the importance of social support networks, especially families and male relatives (fathers, husbands) in setting up their business and becoming successful. And lastly, women were motivated to become entrepreneurs out of a desire to become self-sufficient and make a positive contribution to their community.The findings of this study make significant contributions to the scant body of research on female entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia in that they shed light on the specific barriers women encounter. Moreover, the study highlights the importance of social support networks in the population of female entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia and demonstrates how cultural norms, tribalism, and conservative family values permeate Saudi Arabia’s bureaucracy and financial institutions and thus create barriers for women.The major limitation of the study is its qualitative research design. While the author expected to obtain rich qualitative data that helps gain a deeper understanding of female entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia, findings of the study cannot be generalized to the entire population of Saudi female entrepreneurs. Moreover, this type of research is also prone to self-report bias. Given the specific cultural context of the study, self-report bias may take on two forms. Women may either overstate or understate their business success or the barriers they experience. Secondly, participants may not be willing to freely speak their mind on the subject under consideration because of social and cultural conventions that prevent them from doing so. The author expects that some answers will have social desirability bias (Creswell, 2009). Building effective rapport and trust with participants will therefore be of paramount importance to obtain unbiased responses.Despite these limitations, the author hopes to make a valuable contribution on which other researchers and policy makers can build. The author provides a comprehensive list of recommendations arising from the findings from the study. The recommendations not only address gaps in research and suggestions for future research but also give practical advice to policy makers, the Saudi government and NGO stakeholders seeking to boost female entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia
Deep stylometry and lexical and syntactic features based author attribution on PLoS digital repository
No full textIn this paper, we address the problem of author attribution through unsupervised clustering using lexical and syntactic features and novel deep learning based Stylometric model. For this purpose, we download all available 158918 publications accessible till 1 July 2015 from PLOS.org - an open access digital repository of full text publications. After pre-processing, out of these, we use 803 single authored publications written by 203 unique authors. For unsupervised modeling, stylometric markers such as lexical and syntactic features are used as a distance matrix by employing k-Means clustering algorithm. For supervised modeling, we present a novel long short-term memory (LSTM) based deep learning model that predicts the testing accuracy of a given publication written by an author. Finally, our unsupervised model shows that 88.17% authors are classified into correct cluster (all papers written by the same author) with at most 0.2 coefficient of Entropy error. While our deep learning based model consistently shows above 95% accuracy across all the given testing samples of publications written by an author with an average loss of 0.21
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