In this chapter, we examine the concept of and issues with regard to urban liveability in the major cities of Bangladesh since the country's independence in 1971. Section 1 provides a conceptual framework for understanding liveability and the changing nature of the components of liveability with economic development. In section 2, we briefly recount the history of common notions of urban development and current evidence on the provision of urban housing including approaches towards low-income housing. In section 3, we review the successive governments' policies towards housing and urban development as reflected in six Five Year Plans and a few policy papers on the subject. Section 4 summarises major infrastructure and on-going housing projects against the overall socio-economic development of the country. The final section concludes by reflecting our understanding of the government's policy on urban containment and the interweaving of business actors into governmental decision-making – a hegemonic project of neo-liberalism.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the traditional pedagogical educational system worldwide. The story of Pakistan is also not different from that of the rest of the world. Pakistan’s higher education institutes were closed for classes due to the outbreak. Some universities started the virtual education system, and it is critically important to assess the behavioral intentions of university students toward online education during the COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan. This is the first study investigating students' responses to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, an online survey was conducted to obtain the students' responses from the higher institutions providing online classes during COVID-19. The results were evaluated using multivariate analysis and descriptive statistics. It was observed that there is a significant difference between male and female students concerning the positive consequences of COVID-19 on students. According to the findings, the students' intentions for online education are more concerned with saving time to complete the degree program. Higher education institutions should also provide online educational opportunities to students besides traditional physical modes. Online educational interventions will be helpful for students during unavoidable circumstances like political instabilities, natural disasters, viral disease outbreaks, etc. to complete degrees and diplomas. Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2024-SIED1-02 Full Text: PDF
rapidly disappearing.Biodiversity is deeply disturbed.Annual fossil fuel combustion releases billions of tons of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming and climate change.From 1960 to 2015 agricultural production increased three times because of the Green Revolution that enhanced productivity and improved the use of land, water, and other natural resources for agricultural purposes.That period Abstract | Food insecurity is becoming more alarming for Pakistan due to a range of issues including market instability, climate change, natural disasters and natural calamities.Therefore, rural advisory services to improve food security among the farming community are imperative.The present study was designed to explore various rural advisory service mechanisms for improving food security in the Sargodha district.The sample size of the study was 120 farmers.An interview schedule was used as a research instrument for data collection using the face-to-face interview method.Descriptive statistics; mean, frequencies and percentages were applied to draw results and to interpret.The prominent mode of rural advisory services by the public sector was 'training program' whereas for the private sector it was 'advice on phone'.
The obstacles to continuous cropping of Chinese herbs such as Panax notoginseng in Yunnan have become increasingly prominent. Soil steam disinfection can still be used as one of the first methods to solve the problem of continuous cropping obstacles of Panax notoginseng. However, the steam will condense into a large amount of liquid water when it is cold, which will cause soil pore plugging and seriously affect the steam diffusion efficiency. Therefore, it is necessary to study the influence mechanism of pore structure of Yunnan red loam on heat and mass transfer of steam disinfection. The results show that: (1) When the aggregate sizes of Yunnan red loam are <2 mm, 2-4 mm and 4-6 mm, the steam diffuses in the form of matrix flow in 1/4 ellipse. However, when the aggregate sizes of Yunnan red loam are 6-8 mm and >8 mm, the steam diffuses irregularly along the macropore in the form of macropore steam flow. (2) When disinfecting for 330s, the heating range of the single steam disinfection pipe corresponding to the treatment of <2 mm and 2-4 mm is more than 18 cm in the horizontal direction and 0-20 cm in the vertical direction, and the maximum temperature in the high temperature area can reach more than 90 °C, meeting the disinfection temperature requirements. This study can lay a theoretical foundation for the formulation of the disinfection pipe spacing and it is necessary to add some devices to break the soil into fine aggregates in the future.
Maize crop is cultivated for the purpose to obtain high production of grains. Term maize is derived from Latin language, meaning life benefactor. Its grains possess high nutritional values. Because of high importance of maize grains, a study was performed according to CRD by three replications to examine the mitigating effects of antioxidants such as citric acid, ascorbic acid and salicylic acid to salt toxicity. Foliar application of these three antioxidants were done at 200 ppm concentration and one treatment as mixture of 100 ppm of all three antioxidants. Data was noted for different growth, physiological and yield attributes. Analysis of data revealed that 100 ppm concentration mixture of all three antioxidants provided highest results for all attributes. The 100 ppm antioxidant mixture foliar application caused 8% increase in plant height and 29% increase in ear length as compared to controlled plants sprayed with water. It also caused significant increase in concentration of all photosynthetic pigments such as Chl a, Chl b and carotenoids. Foliar application with 100 ppm of antioxidant mixture also caused 21% increase in catalase activity and 27% increase in peroxidase activity. This treatments also helped plants to accumulate more potassium and provided lowest (0.44) Na+/K+ ratio. Hundred grain weight was observed highest (44.7) in plants sprayed with 100 ppm of antioxidant mixture. Harvest index of those plants were also highest (45.65). So, from these results it can be assumed that 100 ppm antioxidant mixture foliar application provided highest results followed by 200 ppm concentration of ascorbic acid.
Cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) are the newly introduced plant-based materials in the construction industry to ensure sustainable development. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques especially machine learning (ML) models has assisted to economized civil engineering. This research aims to determine the compressive strength of cellulose nanofibers reinforced concrete by using supervised regression machine learning techniques for analysis before adopting to utilize. To achieve this task, the machine learning models: Random Forest (RF), Linear Regression (LR), Support Vector Regressor (SVR), Gradient Boosting Regressor (GBR), Ada Boosting Regressor (ABR), K-Neighbor Regressor (KNN), Bagging Regressor (BR), XG Boost Regressor (XGBR), Decision Tree (DT), and Pruned Decision Tree (PDT) were implemented. An experimental-based dataset containing 695 data points was prepared and split into two categories (Training dataset = 70%, Testing dataset = 30%) for the evolution of ML models. There were seven independent variables: cement (kg/m3), water (kg/m3), CNFs (kg/m3), superplasticizer (kg/m3), fine aggregate (kg/m3), coarse aggregate (kg/m3), and age (Day) variables as an input and one dependent variable: compressive strength fc of CNFs reinforced concrete (MPa) as an output. The following metrics were employed to gauge the ability of the model: R2, MAPE, MAE, MSE, and RMSE. The findings specified that seven out of ten models (RF, BR, XGBR, DT, GBR, ABR, and KNN) to predict the compressive strength of CNFs concrete had a firm capability (R2 >0.72, MAPE ≤ 0.1, and MAE ≤ 5) confirming to the standard of R2 value greater than 0.60 and metrics values very less, close to one. According to the sensitivity analysis of Random Forest model, water and cement were the factors with the biggest effects on the prediction of CNFs reinforced concrete, while the smallest effecting variable was coarse aggregate. It was concluded that the RF, BR, and DT were the premier predicting models.
In recent years, the problematic circumstances of the constant cropping problem in facility crops have become increasingly serious. Compared to chemical disinfection, soil steam disinfestation offers the benefits of environmental protection and being pollution-free, which can effectively reduce the problem of constant cropping in crops. However, during the steam disinfection procedure, a large quantity of liquid water is formed due to the condensation of high-temperature steam, which causes soil pore blockage, seriously affecting the mass and heat transfer efficacy of steam and, thus, affecting the disinfection efficiency. Therefore, to solve this problem, this paper proposes the use of hot air dehumidification to remove excess water from soil pores and achieve the goal of dredging the pores. However, further exploration is needed on how to efficiently remove excess water from different pore structures through hot air applications. Therefore, this paper first used CFD simulation technology to simulate and analyze the hot air flow field, mass, and heat transfer in soil aggregates of different sizes (<2 mm to >8 mm). Then, based on the soil hot air heating experimental platform, research was conducted on the mass and heat transfer mechanism of hot air under diverse soil pore conditions. The results show that as the soil particle size increases from <2 mm to >8 mm, the number of soil macropores also increases, which makes the soil prone to the formation of macropore thermal currents, and the efficiency of hot air heating for dehumidification first increases and then decreases. Among them, the 4–6 mm treatment has the best dehumidification effect through hot air heating, with a deep soil temperature of up to 90 °C and a water content reduction of 6%. The 4–6 mm treatment has a high-temperature heating and dehumidification area of 15–20 cm deep. The above results lay the theoretical foundations for the parameters of hot air heating and dehumidification operations, as well as the placement of the hot air pipe. This paper aims to combine hot air dehumidification technology, for the removal of excess water from soil, and dredging soil pores, ultimately achieving the goal of improving soil steam disinfection efficiency.
Strawberry (Fragaria ananassa) is grown from mid-October to the end of April in Lahore, Sheikhupura, Sialkot and Gujranwala Districts of the Punjab. A huge amounts of pesticides especially fungicides are sprayed on it indiscriminately to protect it from different diseases and fungal attacks. Present experiment was planned for determination of pesticide residues in strawberry. For this purpose, 40 samples of strawberry were collected from Sheikhupura, Lahore, Sialkot, and Gujranwala districts of Punjab, Pakistan for determination of residues of Malathion, Chlorpyrifos, Profenofos, Atrazine, Carbofuron, Tricyclazole, Difenoconazole, Azoxystrobin, Tebuconazole and Cypermethrin in strawberry. The accuracy, precision, specificity, linearity, limit of detection and quantification were measured. The recovery ranged from 89.3 % to 108% with RSD ranging from 1.66 % to 14.2 %. The linearity showed reliable range (0.995–0.999). The limit of detection ranged from 0.006 to 0.04 μg g-1. Data showed that all the samples contain multi-residues of different pesticides. Among these 40 samples pesticide residues were most often found. All the samples contained multiresidues of different pesticides. The percentage of samples having pesticides residues are , Carbofuron (50 %), Malathion (37.50 %), Profenofos (32.50 %), Chlorpyrifos(25 %), Cypermethrin (20 %), Difenoconazole in (47.50 %), Tricyclazol in ( 52.50 %), Tebuconazole in (50.00 %), and Azoxystrobin in (20 %) of the samples analyzed.
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