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Empirical assessment of rockfall and debris flow risk along the Karakoram Highway, Pakistan
The Karakoram Highway links north Pakistan with southwest China. It passes through unique geomorphological, geological and tectonic setting. This study focused 200-km-long section of the highway starting from Besham until Chilas. Landslides are frequent and are mostly triggered by torrential rain during Monsoon and Westerlies, leading to highway blockade. Rockfall and debris flow are prime mode of slope failures. Regional to site-specific approach was implemented to assess risk associated with these two modes. Remote sensing-based techniques were used to identify potential hazardous sites, which were further investigated for risk assessment. Modified Pierson’s rockfall hazard rating system (RHRS) rated potential rockfalls, whereas semi-quantitative technique was employed to assess debris flows. Normalized scores of each site shaped the final map, further classified into four zones: very high, high, intermediate and low risk.
Journal Article
Pakistan: One Year Growth Strategy
Focus on Investment, productivity, and exports.Remove bottlenecks linked to terrifs, sludge: cost of regulation, financial &energy constraints.Initiate “Regulatory Audit”.Reduce bank’s holding of the government securities.Create a National Debt Management Office.Revisit DISCO’s management.Introduce pre-paid metering.Do away from uniform energy tariffs.Introduce wheeling and bilateral agreements.Tax SimplificationImplement Point of Sale (POS)Deregulate the real estate market by eliminating NOCs and FBR/DC rates.Tie Real estate & city development.Unlock dead capital.Internet for all.Youth Involvement—promote sports, culture & clubsPromote street vending—huge employment generation.
Journal Article
Optimization of Public Transport Route Accessibility in High Congestion Areas Using Arc GIS
Due to increasing urbanization and environmental concerns, there is a growing need to enhance and optimize public transportation systems to make them more accessible, efficient, and sustainable. The aim of this study is to improve the public transportation network by optimization of the routes in high congested areas of Rawalpindi city. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have emerged as a powerful tool for achieving such goal. The integration process involves collecting and analyzing geospatial data, including route information, passenger demographics, and real-time traffic conditions, to optimize transit routes. By incorporating real-time traffic data into the GIS model, the analysis provided insights into congestion configurations and prospective solutions. GIS-based maps presented performance metrics such as reduced travel times, enhanced accessibility scores, and better public transport usage. These metrics were critical for validating the proposed solutions and ensuring their feasibility for implementation. GIS-based route optimization study also proposed BRT systems in our study area (Rawalpindi) to create efficient, timesaving, and passenger-centric public transport options. To maximize its impact, cities need to encourage people to switch from cars to BRT. The success of a GIS-based optimization transportation system requires close collaboration between the public and private sectors.
Journal Article
Multidrug-resistant diarrheagenic E. coli pathotypes are associated with ready-to-eat salad and vegetables in Pakistan
Diarrheagenic E. coli pathotypes are major foodborne pathogens causing gastrointestinal tract infections leading to hemolytic uremic syndrome and hemorrhagic colitis. Consumption of raw vegetables is encouraged due to its nutrient content and antioxidant properties, although their ingestion is linked to a series of foodborne disease outbreaks. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of Enterotoxigenic, Enteropathogenic, and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli pathotypes in raw vegetables and ready-to-eat salad for the development of better risk management. A total of 260 vegetable and salad mix (cucumber, lettuce, spinach, and carrot) samples were collected from commercial food markets in Southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhawa, Pakistan. About 34 % vegetable samples were contaminated with E. coli strains. 32.4 % E. coli strains from vegetable sample were identified as diarrheagenic E. coli pathotypes. Similarly, 26.7 % of salad samples were contaminated with E. coli pathotypes. 15 % [two Enterotoxigenic E. coli and one Enteropathogenic E. coli] were isolated from spinach salad samples. 25 % [three Enterotoxigenic E. coli, one Enteropathogenic E. coli and one Shiga toxin-producing E. coli] were isolated from mixed salad type A. 40 % [four Enterotoxigenic E. coli, two Enteropathogenic E. coli and two Shiga toxin-producing E. coli] were isolated from mixed salad type B. 92 % diarrheagenic E. coli pathotypes showed resistance against Tetracycline and 87 % to Ampicillin. This study showed that fresh vegetable and their products were contaminated with multidrug-resistant E. coli pathotypes.
Journal Article
Flavonoid Production: Current Trends in Plant Metabolic Engineering and De Novo Microbial Production
Flavonoids are secondary metabolites that represent a heterogeneous family of plant polyphenolic compounds. Recent research has determined that the health benefits of fruits and vegetables, as well as the therapeutic potential of medicinal plants, are based on the presence of various bioactive natural products, including a high proportion of flavonoids. With current trends in plant metabolite research, flavonoids have become the center of attention due to their significant bioactivity associated with anti-cancer, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-microbial activities. However, the use of traditional approaches, widely associated with the production of flavonoids, including plant extraction and chemical synthesis, has not been able to establish a scalable route for large-scale production on an industrial level. The renovation of biosynthetic pathways in plants and industrially significant microbes using advanced genetic engineering tools offers substantial promise for the exploration and scalable production of flavonoids. Recently, the co-culture engineering approach has emerged to prevail over the constraints and limitations of the conventional monoculture approach by harnessing the power of two or more strains of engineered microbes to reconstruct the target biosynthetic pathway. In this review, current perspectives on the biosynthesis and metabolic engineering of flavonoids in plants have been summarized. Special emphasis is placed on the most recent developments in the microbial production of major classes of flavonoids. Finally, we describe the recent achievements in genetic engineering for the combinatorial biosynthesis of flavonoids by reconstructing synthesis pathways in microorganisms via a co-culture strategy to obtain high amounts of specific bioactive compounds
Journal Article
SFPQ and Tau: critical factors contributing to rapid progression of Alzheimer’s disease
Abstract Dysfunctional RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) have been implicated in several neurodegenerative disorders. Recently, this paradigm of RBPs has been extended to pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Here, we identified disease subtype specific variations in the RNA-binding proteome (RBPome) of sporadic AD (spAD), rapidly progressive AD (rpAD), and sporadic Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (sCJD), as well as control cases using RNA pull-down assay in combination with proteomics. We show that one of these identified proteins, splicing factor proline and glutamine rich (SFPQ), is downregulated in the post-mortem brains of rapidly progressive AD patients, sCJD patients and 3xTg mice brain at terminal stage of the disease. In contrast, the expression of SFPQ was elevated at early stage of the disease in the 3xTg mice, and in vitro after oxidative stress stimuli. Strikingly, in rpAD patients’ brains SFPQ showed a significant dislocation from the nucleus and cytoplasmic colocalization with TIA-1. Furthermore, in rpAD brain lesions, SFPQ and p-tau showed extranuclear colocalization. Of note, association between SFPQ and tau-oligomers in rpAD brains suggests a possible role of SFPQ in oligomerization and subsequent misfolding of tau protein. In line with the findings from the human brain, our in vitro study showed that SFPQ is recruited into TIA-1-positive stress granules (SGs) after oxidative stress induction, and colocalizes with tau/p-tau in these granules, providing a possible mechanism of SFPQ dislocation through pathological SGs. Furthermore, the expression of human tau in vitro induced significant downregulation of SFPQ, suggesting a causal role of tau in the downregulation of SFPQ. The findings from the current study indicate that the dysregulation and dislocation of SFPQ, the subsequent DNA-related anomalies and aberrant dynamics of SGs in association with pathological tau represents a critical pathway which contributes to rapid progression of AD.
Journal Article
Biological parameters and predatory potential of Chrysoperla carnea (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae) feeding on wheat aphid Schizaphis graminum (Hemiptera: Aphididae) under laboratory conditions
Studies on biological parameters of Chrysoperla carnea (Stephens) on Schizaphis graminum (Rondani) aphid were carried out in Insecatry - Bio control Laboratories, Insect Pest Management Programme, Department of Plant and Environmental Protection, National Agricultural Research Centre, Islamabad, Pakistan. The results indicate that incubation period was 3.8 plus minus 0.08 days with 87.0% hatchability. The developmental duration of first, second and third instar larvae were 3.2 plus minus 0.13, 4.0 plus minus 0.21 and 4.8 plus minus 0.25 days, respectively. The total larval developmental duration was 12.0 plus minus 0.67 days with 85.05% survival rate of larvae. The larval predatory potential was 414.6 plus minus 0.05 aphid per larvae. The total duration and survival rate from egg to adult emergence was 24.6 plus minus 0.06 days with 73% survival rate. The pre-oviposition, oviposition and post-oviposition periods were 9.2 plus minus 1.25, 34.6 plus minus 1.72 and 7.4 plus minus 1.02 days, respectively. The female and male longevity was 51.2 plus minus 2.18 and 32.4 plus minus 2.04 days respectively. The female fecundity was 384.2 plus minus 21.20 eggs per female with 11.16 plus minus 1.31 eggs per day per female.
Journal Article