The synergetic impact of digital campaigns and economic incentives on environmental performance: the mediating role of household indoor and outdoor activities.

The primary goal of this research is to look into the impact of digital campaigns for environmental and economic incentives on environmental performance, with indoor and outdoor activities of households taken as mediating variables. PLS-SEM was used to evaluate and quantify the novel and complex model to meet the study's goals. Furthermore, data were gathered from 1542 Pakistani households using convenient sampling techniques. The study's findings show that digital campaigns and economic incentives significantly increase household's participation in indoor and outdoor activities, which improves environmental performance. This study contributes to the literature on environmental performance by examining digital campaigns and economic incentives as resilient influencers. Furthermore, this study assists authorities in developing an effective and efficient policy that promotes environmental savaging information while providing economic incentives to encourage the activities. At the same time, it emphasizes environmental concerns and how they can be addressed.

Study loss of vegetative cover and increased land surface temperature through remote sensing strategies under the inter-annual climate variability in Jinhua-Quzhou basin, China.

The Jinhua-Quzhou basin in China is one of the most susceptible areas to drought. Due to the loss of vegetation and great fluctuations in rainfall and surface temperature, global warming occurs. Timely, accurate, and effective drought monitoring is crucial for protecting local vegetation and determining which vegetation is most vulnerable to increased LST during the period 1982-2019. It assumes a strong correlation between loss of vegetation cover, changes in monsoon climate, drought, and increases in land surface temperature (LST). Due to significantly increased in LST, low precipitation and vegetation cover, NDVI, TVDI, VCI, and NAP are useful in characterizing drought mitigation strategies. The temperature vegetation drought index (TVDI), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), vegetation condition index (VCI), and monthly precipitation anomaly percentage (NAP) can be helped to characterize drought reduction strategies. Monthly NDVI, NAP, VCI, TVDI, normalized vegetation supply water index (NVSWI), temperature condition index (TCI), vegetation health index (VHI), and heat map analysis indicate that the Jinhua-Quzhou basin experienced drought during 1984, 1993, 2000, and 2011. Seasonal SR, WVP, WS, NDVI, VCI, and NAP charts confirm that the Jinhua-Quzhou basin was affected by severe drought in 1984, which continued and led to severe droughts in 1993, 2000, and 2011. Regression analysis showed a significant positive correlation between NDVI, TVDI, VCI, and NAP values, while NVSWI, TVDI, and VHI showed positive signs of good drought monitoring strategies. The research results confirm the correlation between loss of vegetation cover and LST, which is one of the causes of global warming. The distribution of drought changed a trend indicating that compared with the Jinhua region; the Quzhou region has more droughts. The changing trend of drought has characteristics from 1982 to 2019, and there are significant differences in drought changing trends between different Jinhua-Quzhou basin areas. Overall, from 1982 to 2019, the frequency of drought showed a downward trend. We believe that these results will provide useful tools for drought management plans and play a relevant role in mitigating the effects of drought and protecting humanity from climate hazards.

The Role of Climate Change and Its Sensitivity on Long-Term Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index, Vegetation and Drought Changing Trends over East Asia.

Droughts have become more severe and frequent due to global warming. In this context, it is widely accepted that for drought assessments, both water supply (rainfall) and demand (standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index, SPEI) should be considered. Using SPEI, we explored the spatial-temporal patterns of dry and wet annual and seasonal changes in five sub-regions of East Asia during 1902-2018. These factors are linked to excess drought frequency and severity on the regional scale, and their effect on vegetation remains an important topic for climate change studies. Our results show that the SPEI significantly improved extreme drought and mostly affected the SPEI-06 and SPEI-12 growing seasons in East Asia during 1981-2018. The dry and wet annual SPEI trends mostly affect the five sub-regions of East Asia. The annual SPEI had two extremely dry spells during 1936-1947 and 1978-2018. Japan, South Korea, and North Korea are wet in the summer compared to other regions of East Asia, with drought frequency occurring at 51.4%, respectively. The mean drought frequencies in China and Mongolia are 57.4% and 54.6%. China and Mongolia are the driest regions in East Asia due to high drought frequency and duration. The spatial seasonal analysis of solar radiation (SR), water vapor pressure (WVP), wind speed (WS), vegetation condition index (VCI), temperature condition index (TCI), and vegetation health index (VHI) have confirmed that the East Asia region suffered from maximum drought events. The seasonal variation of SPEI shows no clear drying trends during summer and autumn seasons. During the winter and spring seasons, there was a dry trend in East Asia region. During 1902-1990, a seasonal SPEI presented diverse characteristics, with clear wet trends in Japan, Mongolia, and North Korea in four different growing seasons, with dry trends in China and South Korea. During 1991-2018, seasonal SPEI presented clear dry trends in Japan, Mongolia, and North Korea in different growing seasons, while China and South Korea showed a wet trend during the spring, autumn, and winter seasons. This ecological and climatic mechanism provides a good basis for the assessment of vegetation and drought-change variations within East Asia. An understandings of long-term vegetation trends and the effects of rainfall and SPEI on droughts of varying severity is essential for water resource management and climate change adaptation. Based on the results, water resources will increase under global warming, which may alleviate the water scarcity issue in the East Asia region.

Abdominal CT Segmentation for Body Composition Assessment Using Network Consistency Learning.

Estimating skeletal muscle (SM) and adipose tissues is an invaluable prognostic indicator in cancer treatment, major surgeries, and general health screening. Body composition is usually measured with abdominal computed tomography (CT) scans acquired in clinical settings. The whole-body SM volume is correlated with the estimated SM based on the measurement of a single two-dimensional vertebral slice. It is necessary to label a CT image at the pixel level to estimate SM, known as semantic segmentation. In this work, we trained a segmentation model using the labeled abdominal CT slices and the additional unlabeled slices. In particular, we trained two identical segmentation networks with differently initialized weights. Network Consistency Learning (NCL) allowed learning from unlabeled images by forcing the predictions from both networks to be the same. We segmented abdominal CT images from a newly created in-house dataset. The proposed approach gained 10% better performance in terms of Dice similarity score (DSC) than that obtained by a standard supervised network demonstrating the effectiveness of NCL in exploiting unlabeled images.Clinical relevance- An efficient and cost-effective method is proposed for assessing body composition from limited labeled and abundant unlabeled CT images to facilitate fast diagnosis, prognosis, and interventions.

Cell Nuclei Segmentation With Dynamic Token-Based Attention Network.

Cell nuclei segmentation is crucial for analyzing cell structure in different tasks, i.e., cell identification, classification, etc., to treat various diseases. Several convolutional neural network-based architectures have been proposed for segmenting cell nuclei. Although these methods show superior performance, they lack the ability to predict reliable masks when using biomedical image data. This paper proposes a novel Dynamic Token-based Attention Network (DTA-Net). Combining convolutional neural networks (CNN) with a vision transformer (ViT) allows us to capture detailed spatial information from images efficiently by encoding local and global features. Dynamic Token-based Attention (DTA) module calculates attention maps keeping the overall computational and training costs minimal. For the nuclei segmentation task on the 2018 Science Bowl dataset, our proposed method outperformed SOTA networks with the highest Dice similarity score (DSC) of 93.02% and Intersection over Union (IoU) of 87.91% without using image pre- or post-processing techniques. The results showed that high-quality segmentation masks could be obtained by configuring a ViT in the most straight forward manner.Clinical relevance- In this work, the segmentation of cell nuclei in microscopy images is carried out automatically, irrespective of their appearance, density, magnification, illumination, and modality.

Distribution Patterns of Gymnosperm Species along Elevations on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau: Effects of Climatic Seasonality, Energy-Water, and Physical Tolerance Variables.

Climate change is one of the most prominent factors influencing the spatial distribution of plants in China, including gymnosperms. Climatic factors influence gymnosperm distribution along elevational gradients on the Qinghai-Xizang (Tibet) Plateau (QTP), and understanding how species adapt to these factors is important for identifying the impacts of global climate change. For the first time, we examined the county-level distribution of gymnosperm species on QTP using data from field surveys, published works, monographs, and internet sources. We used simulated distribution data of gymnosperms (N = 79) along the elevational gradients to investigate the overall impact of environmental variables in explaining the richness pattern of gymnosperms. Eighteen environmental variables were classified into three key variable sets (climatic seasonality, energy-water, and physical tolerance). We employed principal component analysis and generalized linear models to assess the impact of climatic variables on the gymnosperm's richness pattern. Gymnosperm species are unevenly distributed across the plateau and decline gradually from the southeast to the northwest. The altitudinal gradients have a unimodal relationship with the richness of gymnosperms, with the maximum species richness at an elevation of 3200 m. The joint effects of physical tolerance and energy-water predictors have explained the highest diversity of gymnosperms at mid-elevation. Because the richness peak correlates significantly with the wettest month's precipitation and moisture index, this confirms the significance of moisture on gymnosperm distributions due to increased precipitation during the wet season. Furthermore, our results provide evidence that climatic seasonality factors are involved in the decline of gymnosperm richness at high elevations. A total of 37% of gymnosperm species on QTP are listed as vulnerable, nearly threatened, or endangered, with elevations ranging from 600 m to 5300 m. As a result, we conclude that gymnosperms are at high risk of extinction because of the current climate fluctuations caused by global climate change. Our research offers fundamental data for the study and protection of gymnosperm species along the steepest elevation gradients.

MaxEnt model strategies to studying current and future potential land suitability dynamics of wheat, soybean and rice cultivation under climatic change scenarios in East Asia.

Climate change and variability are projected to alter the geographic suitability of lands for crops cultivation. Accurately predicting changes in the potential current and future land suitability distribution dynamics of wheat (Triticum aestivum), soybean (Glycine max) and rice (Oryza sativa) crops due to climate change scenarios is critical to adapting and mitigating the impacts of bioclimatic changes, and plays a significant role in securing food security in East Asia region. This study compiled large datasets of wheat, soybean and rice occurrence locations from GBIF and 19 bioclimatic variables obtained from the WorldClim database that affect crops growth. We recognized potential future suitable distribution regions for crops under the one socioeconomic pathway, (SSP585) for 2021-2040 and 2041-2060, using the MaxEnt model. The accuracy of the MaxEnt was highly significant with mean AUC values ranging from 0.833 to 0.882 for all models evaluated. The jackknife test revealed that for wheat, Bio4 and Bio12 contributed 17.6% and 12.6%, for soybean Bio10 and Bio12 contributed 15.6% and 49.5%, while for rice Bio12 and Bio14 contributed 12.9% and 36.0% to the MaxEnt model. In addition, cultivation aptitude for wheat, soybean, and rice increased in southeast China, North Korea, South Korea, and Japan, while decreasing in Mongolia and northwest China. Climate change is expected to increase the high land suitability for wheat, soybean, and rice in East Asia. Simulation results indicate an average decrease of unsuitable areas of -98.5%, -41.2% and -36.3% for wheat, soybean and rice from 2060 than that of current land suitability. In contrast, the high land suitable for wheat, soybean and rice cultivation is projected to increase by 75.1%, 68.5% and 81.9% from 2060 as compared with current. The findings of this study are of utmost importance in the East Asia region as they present an opportunity for policy makers to develop appropriate adaptation and mitigation strategies required to sustain crops distribution under future climates. Although the risks of wheat, soybean and rice cultivation may be significantly higher in the future because of high temperatures, heat waves, and droughts caused by climate change.

In Vitro Activity of New ß-Lactamase Inhibitor Combinations against blaNDM, blaKPC, and ESBL-Producing Enterobacteriales Uropathogens.

Antibiotic resistance in uropathogens has increased substantially and severely affected treatment of urinary tract infections (UTIs). Lately, some new formulations, including meropenem/vaborbactam (MEV), ceftazidime/avibactam (CZA), and ceftolozane/tazobactam (C/T) have been introduced to treat infections caused by drug-resistant pathogens. This study was designed to screen Enterobacteriales isolates from UTI patients and to assess their antimicrobial resistance pattern, particularly against the mentioned (new) antibiotics. Phenotypic screening of extended-spectrum ß-lactamase (ESBL) and carbapenem resistance was followed by inhibitor-based assays to detect K. pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC), metallo-ß-lactamase (MBL), and class D oxacillinases (OXA). Among 289 Enterobacteriales, E. coli (66.4%) was the most predominant pathogen, followed by K. pneumoniae (13.8%) and P. mirabilis (8.3%). The isolates showed higher resistance to penicillins and cephalosporins (70-87%) than to non-ß-lactam antimicrobials (33.2-41.5%). NDM production was a common feature among carbapenem-resistant (CR) isolates, followed by KPC and OXA. ESBL producers were susceptible to the tested new antibiotics, but NDM-positive isolates appeared resistant to these combinations. KPC-producers showed resistance to only C/T. ESBLs and carbapenemase encoding genes were located on plasmids and most of the genes were successfully transferred to recipient cells. This study revealed that MEV and CZA had significant activity against ESBL and KPC producers.

Phylogenetic relationships of a novel bat fly species infesting the geographically widespread Old World fruit bat, Rousettus leschenaultii, in Southern Asia.

The global epidemiological significance of bats and their blood-sucking ectoparasites is increasingly recognized. However, relevant data are scarce from Pakistan where the Palearctic and Oriental zoogeographic regions meet. In this study, 200 bats belonging to five species were examined for the presence of ectoparasites in Pakistan. Bat flies were found only on Leschenault's fruit bat (Rousettus leschenaultii). The prevalence of infestation did not correlate with habitat type and host traits including age, reproductive status, and sex. All bat flies represented the same Eucampsipoda species which was shown to be morphologically different from all species of its genus with known south Asian distribution and belonged to a separate phylogenetic group. These results highlight the existence of a hitherto undescribed bat fly species in southern Asia, which is not shared by the fruit bat species (R. leschenaultii) and insectivorous ones (e.g., Rhinopoma microphyllum) thus probably playing a role only in intraspecific transmission of pathogens.

Molecular epidemiology of Bartonella species from sympatric mammals collected in urban and rural areas of Punjab, Pakistan.

Bartonella can infect a variety of mammals including humans and has been detected in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Roughly two-thirds of identified Bartonella species are found and maintained in rodent reservoirs, with some of these species linked to human infections. Rodents (N=236) were caught from the Sahiwal division of Punjab, Pakistan and tested for Bartonella using PCR targeting gltA and rpoB genes, followed by sequencing of rpoB-positive samples. Genetic relatedness to other published Bartonella spp. rpoB gene sequences were examined using BLAST and phylogenetic analysis. Overall, 7.62% (18/236) of rodents were positive for both gltA and rpoB fragments. Rattus rattus and R. norvegicus had 7.94% (12/151) and 7.05% (6/85) positivity rates for Bartonella DNA, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis revealed a close relatedness between Bartonella spp. from Pakistan to Bartonella spp. from China, Nepal, and Malaysia. This study is the first reported detection of Bartonella spp. in R. rattus and R. norvegicus from the Sahiwal area of Punjab, Pakistan.

Distribution patterns of fern species richness along elevations the Tibetan Plateau in China: regional differences and effects of climate change variables.

Because of its distinct geological history, frigid temperature, and rich biodiversity, the Tibetan Plateau gives an excellent opportunity to assess the effect of climate change on determining species richness. The distribution patterns of fern species richness and their underlying processes have long been a matter of debate in ecology research, with various hypotheses suggested over the years. Here, we explore richness patterns of fern species in Xizang on the southern and western Tibetan Plateau along an elevational gradient (100-5300 m a.s.l.) and evaluate climatic factors causing the spatial decrease and increase of fern species richness. We used regression and correlation analyses to relate the species richness with elevation and climatic variables. Throughout our research, we identified 441 fern species from 97 genera and 30 families. The Dryopteridaceae family (S = 97) has the highest number of species. All energy-temperature and moisture variables except drought index (DI) had a significant correlation with elevation. The altitude has a unimodal relationship with fern species, and the species richness is the largest at an altitude of 2500 m. The horizontal richness pattern of fern species on the Tibetan Plateau also showed that areas of extremely high species richness are mainly distributed in Zayü and Mêdog County, with an average elevation of 2800 m and 2500 m, respectively. The richness of fern species has a log-linear relationship with moisture-related factors such as moisture index (MI), mean annual precipitation (MAP), and drought index (DI). Because the peak corresponds spatially with the MI index, the unimodal patterns confirm the significance of moisture on fern distributions. Our results showed that mid-altitudes have the highest species richness (high MI), but high elevations have lower richness due to high solar radiation, and low elevations have lower richness due to high temperatures and low precipitation. Twenty-two of the total species are classified as nearly threatened, vulnerable or critically endangered, and varied in elevation from 800 m to 4200 m. Such relationships between the distribution and richness of fern species and climates on the Tibetan Plateau can provide data support for future predictions of the impacts of climate change scenarios on fern species, the ecological protection of representative fern species, and references for the planning and construction of nature reserves in the future.

A Global Survey of Hypervirulent Aeromonas hydrophila (vAh) Identified vAh Strains in the Lower Mekong River Basin and Diverse Opportunistic Pathogens from Farmed Fish and Other Environmental Sources.

Hypervirulent Aeromonas hydrophila (vAh) has emerged as the etiologic agent of epidemic outbreaks of motile Aeromonas septicemia (MAS) in high-density aquaculture of farmed carp in China and catfish in the United States, which has caused millions of tons of lost fish. We conducted a global survey to better understand the evolution, geographical distribution, and phylogeny of vAh. Aeromonas isolates were isolated from fish that showed clinical symptoms of MAS, and pure cultures were screened for the ability to utilize myo-inositol as the sole carbon source. A total of 113 myo-inositol-utilizing bacterial strains were included in this study, including additional strains obtained from previously published culture collections. Based on a gyrB phylogeny, this collection included 66 A. hydrophila isolates, 48 of which were vAh. This collection also included five new vAh isolates from diseased Pangas catfish (Pangasius pangasius) and striped catfish (Pangasianodon hypophthalmus) obtained in Cambodia and Vietnam, respectively. Genome sequences were generated from representative vAh and non-vAh isolates to evaluate the potential for lateral genetic transfer of the myo-inositol catabolism pathway. Phylogenetic analyses of each of the nine genes required for myo-inositol utilization revealed the close affiliation of vAh strains regardless of geographic origin and suggested lateral genetic transfer of this catabolic pathway from an Enterobacter species. Prediction of virulence factors was conducted to determine differences between vAh and non-vAh strains in terms of virulence and secretion systems. Core genome phylogenetic analyses on vAh isolates and Aeromonas spp. disease isolates (55 in total) were conducted to evaluate the evolutionary relationships among vAh and other Aeromonas sp. isolates, which supported the clonal nature of vAh isolates. IMPORTANCE This global survey of vAh brought together scientists that study fish disease to evaluate the evolution, geographical distribution, phylogeny, and hosts of vAh and other Aeromonas sp. isolates. In addition to vAh isolates from China and the United States, four new vAh isolates were isolated from the lower Mekong River basin in Cambodia and Vietnam, indicating the significant threat of vAh to modern aquaculture and the need for improved biosecurity to prevent vAh spread.

Cross-cultural diversity analysis: traditional knowledge and uses of freshwater fish species by indigenous peoples of southern Punjab, Pakistan.

BACKGROUND: Fisheries have tremendous cultural and educational importance in human societies. The world is undergoing fast environmental and cultural changes, and local knowledge is being lost. Understanding how people interpret environmental change and develop practices in response to such change is essential to comprehend human resource use. This study was planned with the intent to document and conserve the knowledge about the uses of the freshwater fish fauna among the residents in South Punjab, Pakistan. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were conducted to collect data from informers (N = 88). Principal component analysis, relative frequency citation, fidelity level, relative popularity level, rank-order priority, and similarity index were used to analyze the fish data. RESULTS: Overall, a total of 43 species of fishes were utilized in the study region, but only 26 species were utilized ethnomedicinally to treat a variety of illnesses such as asthma, body weakness, burn, chicken pox, cold, cough, eyesight, hepatitis, impotence, joint pain, night blindness, skin burn, spleen treatment, stomach infection, and weakness. The uses of fishes were analyzed employing various indices. The highest use value (UV) of 0.86 was calculated for spotted snakehead (Channa punctata), whereas the lowest UV of 0.05 was attained by karail fish (Securicula gora). Moreover, Channa punctata, Cyprinus carpio, Labeo rohita, Oreochromis niloticus, Wallago attu, Hypophthalmichthys molitrix, Rita rita, Sperata seenghala, Notopterus notopterus, Labeo dyocheilus, Systomus sarana, Puntius punjabensis, Securicula gora, Ompok bimaculatus, and Ompok pabda were the most popular species with RPL = 1.0. Out of the total, 20 species had a "zero" similarity index, while the ethnomedicinal use of 12 species (i.e., Labeo dyocheilus, Labeo boggut, Systomus sarana, Puntius punjabensis, Aspidoparia morar, Securicula gora, Crossocheilus diplochilus, Mastacembelus armatus, Ompok bimaculatus, Ompok pabda, Labeo gonius, and Sperata seenghala) was documented for the first time for a variety of diseases (i.e., body weakness, stomach infection, skin burn, joint pain, impotence, asthma, spleen treatment, and chicken pox). CONCLUSION: Our findings showed that the local people of the study area hold noteworthy traditional knowledge about the medicinal and cultural uses of fish species. Furthermore, a comprehensive analysis of active chemicals and in vivo and/or in vitro activities of chemicals derived from ichthyofauna with the highest FC as well as UVs could be interesting for research on new drugs.

Improving drought mitigation strategies and disaster risk reduction through MODIS and TRMM-based data in relation to climate change over Pakistan.

Drought is an extreme climatic event that mostly occurs as a result of low rainfall, which leads to lack of water in various agro-ecological conditions of Pakistan. The condition could be further exacerbated by the prevailing dry weather. Therefore, accurate, timely, and efficient drought monitoring is crucial to ensure that its adverse effects are mitigated. In this study, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and TRMM-based data were used together with remote sensing techniques to improve drought mitigation and disaster risk reduction strategies. In order to monitor drought mitigation and disaster risk reduction strategies in Pakistan, the crop water stress index (CWSI), vegetation condition index (VCI), normalized vegetation supply water index (NVSWI), vegetation health index (VHI), and temperature vegetation drought index (TVDI) were chosen as the instrument. Due to low rainfall and significantly low vegetation, CWSI, NDVI, TVDI, and VHI are useful in characterizing drought mitigation strategies in Pakistan. Monthly NDVI, NAP, NVSWI, TVDI, VCI, and VHI values and heat map analysis show that Pakistan suffered from drought in years 2001, 2002, and 2006. Seasonal CWSI, NDVI, VHI, and TVDI confirmed that Pakistan was affected by severe drought in 2001, which continued and led to severe drought in 2002 and 2006. We generate spatial correlation coefficients between NDVI and NVSWI, VCI, and VHI, and NVSWI and VCI and VHI, while the VCI and VHI values are significantly positively correlated. CWSI, NDVI, VHI, and TVDI show positive signs of effective climate change drought mitigation and disaster risk reduction strategies in Pakistan. Thus, these drought indices have been confirmed to be a complete drought monitoring indicator and reduce the risk of drought in Pakistan.

Planting models and mulching materials management to improve anti-oxidant defense system, grain hormone balance and production of maize in semi-arid regions.

The water shortage and weeds damage have become severe problems in the dry-land farming system of China, the farming commonly using mulching materials strategy as a water-saving and weeds precaution agricultural technology. However, it is still unclear whether various mulching applications under different cultivation models can improve the antioxidant defence system, herbicide tolerance, and grain hormone balance, photosynthetic capacity and grain yield of corn. Therefore, during 2018-2019, a two-year study was conducted, and the following six treatments were used: CT: traditional planting; SM: corn stalk mulch; FM: plastic mulch; RT: ridges cultivation without plastic mulch; RP: Plastic mulch covering ridges and furrows; RPS: Plastic covering on ridges and straw on furrows. The results revealed that the RPS treatment enhanced the soil water storage in the jointing and filling stages, and obtained a higher chlorophyll stability index, IAA, Z + ZR, ABA, corn yield and other plant hormone content, compared with the control plot. Furthermore, this improvement is attributed to the reduction of oxidative damage of malondialdehyde (MDA) content at different growth stages. The RPS and RP treatments considerably improved the superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT), also decreased considerably the MDA, H2O2 and O2- contents at various growth stages. The RPS treatment had a higher ability to reduce the H2O2 and O2-, and the better anti-oxidant enzyme activity due to the lower level of lipid peroxidation, which can efficiently protect the photosynthesis mechanism and significantly improve (54.8%) biomass, (49.5%), WUEg, (89.1%), WUEb and (98.0%) grain yield are higher than CT treatment. In conclusion, RPS treatment has a great potential in improving grain hormone balance, antioxidant defence system and corn production in semi-arid areas.

Molecular detection of Toxoplasma gondii among commensal rodents from the Sahiwal division, Punjab, Pakistan.

Toxoplasmosis is a zoonotic disease in humans and animals caused by the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Rodents not only act as intermediate hosts for T. gondii but are also a significant source of T. gondii infection for other hosts. There is limited information about the prevalence of this protozoan within rodents in Pakistan. The current study was conducted to determine the prevalence of T. gondii in commensal rodents as well as associated risk factors. A total of 236 rats including Rattus rattus and Rattus norvegicus were captured from three districts of the Sahiwal division in Punjab province, Pakistan. Brain samples were collected from each specimen. Data was gathered about rodent species, gender, age, location, districts, seasonality, and habitat type. PCR assays were used to screen for T. gondii from the brain samples. A Chi-square analysis was used to investigate the association between positive samples and risk factors. A total of 236 rodent spleen samples were examined for detection of the B1 and SAG3 genes of T. gondii DNA by conventional PCR, and 14 (5.9%) were positive. T. gondii prevalence was higher in R. norvegicus (8.2%) compared to R. rattus (4.6%). All risk factors were statistically non-significant. This study provides evidence of T. gondii in rodents in the Sahiwal division and indicates that other animals and humans are at risk of infection.

Remote sensing strategies to monitoring land use maps with AVHRR and MODIS data over the South Asia regions.

In South Asia, annual land use and land cover (LULC) is a severe issue in the field of earth science because it affects regional climate, global warming, and human activities. Therefore, it is vitally essential to obtain correct information on the LULC in the South Asia regions. LULC annual map covering the entire period is the primary dataset for climatological research. Although the LULC annual global map was produced from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) dataset in 2001, this limited the perspective of the climatological analysis. This study used AVHRR GIMMS NDVI3g data from 2001 to 2015 to randomly forests classify and produced a time series of the annual LULC map of South Asia. The MODIS land cover products (MCD12Q1) are used as data from reference for trained classifiers. The results were verified using the annual map of the LULC time series, and the space-time dynamics of the LULC map were shown in the last 15 years, from 2001 to 2015. The overall precision of our 15-year land cover map simplifies 16 classes, which is 1.23% and 86.70% significantly maximum as compared to the precision of the MODIS data map. Findings of the past 15 years show the changing detection that forest land, savanna, farmland, urban and established land, arid land, and cultivated land have increased; by contrast, woody prairie, open shrublands, permanent ice and snow, mixed forests, grasslands, evergreen broadleaf forests, permanent wetlands, and water bodies have been significantly reduced over South Asia regions.

Impact assessment of drought monitoring events and vegetation dynamics based on multi-satellite remote sensing data over Pakistan.

Drought is a complex hazard caused by the disruption of rainwater balance, and it always has an impact on ecological, farming and socio-economic. In order to protect farming land in Pakistan, effective and timely drought monitoring is extremely essential. Therefore, a regular drought monitoring is required to study drought severity, its duration and spread, to ensure effective planning and to help reduce their possible adverse impacts. In this study, multi-satellite data were used for reliable drought monitoring. For monitoring changing trend of drought in Pakistan, the NVSWI, DSI, VCI, and NAP indices were chosen as a tool incorporated with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-based NDVI and ET/PET. Due to the low vegetation and significantly high changing trend of drought, NDVI, DSI and TVDI are useful to characterize drought frequency in Pakistan. The yearly DSI index shows that Pakistan suffered of drought with low vegetation during 2001, 2002 and 2006 study years. The seasonal DSI, VCI, NAP, NDVI, and NVSWI values confirmed that 2001, 2002 and 2006 led to severe drought years in Pakistan. The regression analysis between VHI, VCI, NDVI and NVSWI values are significantly positively correlated. The NAP, DSI, and NVSWI showed the positive signs for good drought monitoring indices for agricultural regions of Pakistan. The trend of drought change from 2001 to 2017 also showed characteristics. The results showed that from 2001 to 2017, the drought trend of the whole region changed obviously, and the overall drought frequency showed a downward trend. The good performance of DSI, and NVSWI could, explicitly, contribute progressively towards improving specific drought mitigation strategies and disaster risk reduction at regional and national levels.

The impact of entrepreneurial education on the propensity of business students to support new ventures: A moderated mediation model.

This research aims to investigate the role of financial self-efficacy in mediating the relationship between entrepreneurial education and venture capital intention, as well as the moderating influence of government support on the relationship between financial self-efficacy and venture capital intention. The target population consists of Lahore students from public and private universities who have already studied entrepreneurship. Based on the 250 responses to the online survey the findings show the mediating role of financial self-efficacy between entrepreneurial education and intention toward venture capital. Moreover, it also indicates the moderated effect of government support on the relationship between financial self-efficacy and intention toward venture capital. This study will not only help the curriculum committees in business schools to design entrepreneurial education outlines that enable the students to explore the different financing modes by including financial knowledge to cope with financial challenges but also to the government officials in devising financing plans accompanied by their expertise in the development of a business.