108,218 research outputs found
Impediments to Social Development in Pakistan
No full textThe development of infrastructure and the provision of basic services in Pakistan lie in the public domain. The quality of the built infrastructure and the service offered reflect successive governments’ capability as a channel for public sector funds, their role in overall financial and macro-economic planning and management, and their administrative efficiency in implementation, operations and management—in essence the extent to which they are able to adhere to the principles of good and humane governance. Good governance is generally conceived of as the judicious exercise of economic, political and administrative authority in the public and private spheres to manage a country’s affairs at all levels to improve the quality of life of the people. It is a continuing process where divergent opinions and desires are satisfied through compromise and tolerance in a spirit of cooperative action for the mutual benefit of the larger whole. It has three dimensions: one, the political regime; two, the systems and procedures for exercising authority; and three, the capacity of governments [World Bank (1994); UNDP (1997); OECD (1995); Commission on Global Governance (1995)]. When Pakistan gained political freedom in August 1947, it inherited an economic and social infrastructure unable to meet the demands of the large influx of refugees from India. Five decades later, policies emphasising public investment, subsidised credit and regulated private sector development have generated strong economic growth, but failed to implement successful social development. Over the last 50 years and more Pakistan’s economy, measured through its GDP, has grown by more than 10 times, an average annual growth rate of 5.1 percent. Rapid population growth, estimated to have averaged just under 3 percent annually, has resulted in real per capita increases of only 2.1 percent per year.
7° Al-Bâb al-Mahroûq et Bourg az-Zafar
No full textLacau Pierre, Farnall Harry, Simaïka Marcus H., Verrucci Ernesto, Sayed Metoualli, Sayyed Ahmad el-. 7° Al-Bâb al-Mahroûq et Bourg az-Zafar. In: Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l'Art Arabe. Fascicule 33, exercice 1920-1924, 1928. p. 363
Risk Assessment of Ambient Air Pollutants and Health Impact around Fuel Stations in Urban Cities of KSA
No full textAbstract
Background: In Saudi Arabia, fuel dispensing facilities commonly present around the residential
places, educational institutions, and various health care facilities. Fuel pollutants such as benzene,
toluene, and xylenes (BTX) and its alkyl derivatives are harmful to human health because of their
toxic, mutagenic, or carcinogenic properties. The aim of this study was to determine the BTX
concentration levels of common pollutants in and around fuel stations and their harmful health effects
in the urban cites of KSA. Methods: Forty fuel dispensing facilities were randomly selected on the
basis of three different areas: residential, traffic intersection, and petrol pump locations (refueling
stations). Portable ambient analyzer was used for measuring BTX concentration. t‑test was applied
to determine the difference between these different areas. Results: All mean concentration values
of pollutants such as BTX around residential, traffic intersection, and fuel stations are exceeding
the limits of air quality standards values (P < 0.01). The mean levels of benzene are 10.3 and 11.07
ppm in Dammam and Khobar, respectively, and they exceed the reference level of 0.5 ppm. Hazard
quotient was more than >1, which shows that carcinogenic probability has increased those who were
living and working near fuel stations. Conclusions: The results found that the high concentration
of pollutants (BTX) is in the environment around fuel stations. The environmental contamination
associated with BTX in petrol fuel stations impulses the necessity of preventive programs to reduce
the further air quality deterioration and reduce the harmful health effects.
Keywords: Air, benzene, fuel, pollution, toluene, xylene
Waste Glass Upcycling Supported by Alkali Activation: An Overview
No full textAlkali-activated materials are gaining much interest due to their outstanding performance, including their great resistance to chemical corrosion, good thermal characteristics, and ability to valorise industrial waste materials. Reusing waste glasses in creating alkali-activated materials appears to be a viable option for more effective solid waste utilisation and lower-cost products. However, very little research has been conducted on the suitability of waste glass as a prime precursor for alkali activation. This study examines the reuse of seven different types of waste glasses in the creation of geopolymeric and cementitious concretes as sustainable building materials, focusing in particular on how using waste glasses as the raw material in alkali-activated materials affects the durability, microstructures, hydration products, and fresh and hardened properties in comparison with using traditional raw materials. The impacts of several vital parameters, including the employment of a chemical activator, gel formation, post-fabrication curing procedures, and the distribution of source materials, are carefully considered. This review will offer insight into an in-depth understanding of the manufacturing and performance in promising applications of alkali-activated waste glass in light of future uses. The current study aims to provide a contemporary review of the chemical and structural properties of glasses and the state of research on the utilisation of waste glasses in the creation of alkali-activated materials
Voltage-Dependent EV Battery Charger Models for Power Flow and Harmonic Emission Studies
No full textThe ongoing large-scale electrification of road transportation sector will result in significantly increased demands from electric vehicle (EV) battery chargers (EVBCs), impacting not only network power flows and load profiles, but also power quality levels and harmonic emissions. Typically, on-board EVBCs are modelled as a "constant power"load type, without considering their voltage-dependent characteristics will result in errors in estimated component loading and harmonic emission limits, as well as required network upgrades to connect the new EV loads. This paper presents details of the development of two component-based EVBC models that incorporate both voltage dependency and state-of-charge dependency of their power demand and harmonic emission characteristics. The developed models are experimentally validated using actual measurement data under both sinusoidal and distorted input voltage supply conditions, demonstrating their applicability for assessing impact of EVBCs on network power flows and harmonic emission levels
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Foreign Aid and the Public Sector: A Model of Fiscal Behaviour in Pakistan
No full textThe main aim of this paper is to demonstrate the impact of foreign capital inflows on government’s fiscal behaviour in Pakistan. Government’s fiscal response is measured in terms of social, non-development, and development expenditures as well as revenues. This paper specifies and estimates a fiscal behaviour model for the period 1976–95. The threestage least squares results suggest that foreign capital flows into the public sector have strong positive impact on social and non-development expenditures and, in contrast to what the government and donor agencies believe, have little effect on development spending. In other words, proceeds from foreign loans and aid are largely consumed rather than invested productively. The results also reveal the strong substitutable interdependence between social and non-development expenditures. Furthermore, the finding clearly demonstrates that foreign assistance causes a strong shift of public domestic resources from development projects to non-development activities. In addition to the above, the results show that a large fraction of government revenues is used to finance social and non-development expenditures. The results also demonstrate that foreign assistance enhances taxation efforts of the Government of Pakistan.
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
No full textWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
The construction of Karen Karnak: The multi-author-function
No full textThis thesis is situated within the comparatively recent developments of Web 2.0 and the emergence of interactive WikiMedia, and explores the mode of authorship within a Read/Write culture compared to that of a Read/Only tradition. The hypothesis of this study is that the role of the audience has become merged with the author, and as such, represents new functions and attributes, distinct from a more conventional concept of authorship, in which the roles of audience and author are more separate. Read/Write and participatory culture, as defined by this study, is focused on collaboration, and includes the influences of D.I.Y. culture, Open-Source practices and the production of text by multiple authors. Multi-authorship presents a re-thinking of several concepts which support the notion of the individual author, since the focus of multi-authorship is not on attribution and ownership of a finished text, but on the continued malleability of a text. Modes of multi-authorship, demonstrated in the use of the pseudonyms Alan Smithee and Karen Eliot, represent declarative authors whose names signify multiple origins, whilst concurrently indicating a distinct body of work. The function of these names form an important context to this study, since primary research involves the construction of an experimental mode of multi-authorship utilising WikiMedia technology and the interaction of thirty nine participants, who are invited to create a body of work under the collective pseudonym Karen Karnak. The data generated by this experiment is analysed using aspects of Michel Foucault's author-function to identify and determine power structures inherent in the WikiMedia context. The interplay of power structures, including concepts such as identity, ownership and the body of work, affect the resulting mode of authorship and contribute to the construction of Karen Karnak, suggesting further areas of research into the emerging multi-author
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