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Muhammad Malik

Mittuniversitetet, Media and communication science, Graduate Student

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B. Harun Küçük

University of Pennsylvania

Christopher Witmore

Texas Tech University

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Dublin Institute of Technology

Roshan Chitrakar

Nepal College of Information Technology

Noor Azwan Shairi

Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka

Rossitza Goleva

New Bulgarian University

Badrul Hisham Ahmad

Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka

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Ataturk University

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Papers by Muhammad Malik

Identification of Drivers and Obstacles of Market Orientation among Diversified Industries of Pakistan

ABSTRACT Market Orientation (MO), being charismatic in nature, has been considered as a high prio... more

ICFHR 2012 Competition on Automatic Forensic Signature Verification (4NsigComp 2012)

2012 International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, 2012

ABSTRACT This paper presents the results of the ICFHR2012 Competition on Automatic Forensic Signa... more ABSTRACT This paper presents the results of the ICFHR2012 Competition on Automatic Forensic Signature Verification jointly organized by PR-researchers and Forensic Handwriting Examiners (FHEs). The aim is to bridge the gap between recent technological developments and forensic casework. A forensic like training set containing disguised signatures along with skilled forgeries and genuine signatures was provided to the participants. They were motivated to report the results in Likelihood Ratios (LR). This has made the systems even more interesting for application in forensic casework. For evaluation we used both the traditional Equal Error Rate (EER) and forensically substantial Cost of Log Likelihood Ratios (Ĉllr). The system having the best Minimum Cost of Log Likelihood Ratio ( Ĉllrmin) is declared winner. Various experiments both including and excluding disguised signatures from the test set are reported.

Development of Parallel Corpus and English to Urdu Statistical Machine Translation

ijens.org

In this paper we share the efforts for development of a parallel corpus for statistical machine t... more

Levo-Carnitine Normalizes Blood Glucose and Lipid Profile in Insulin Resistant Type II Diabetic Rats

researchgate.net

A Ar rm my y M Me ed di ic ca al l C Co ol ll le eg ge e R Ra aw wa al lp pi in nd di i ABSTRACT ... more A Ar rm my y M Me ed di ic ca al l C Co ol ll le eg ge e R Ra aw wa al lp pi in nd di i ABSTRACT Objective: This study was planned to determine the effect of levo-carnitine on blood glucose and lipid profile in high fat diet fed, streptozotocin induced insulin resistant type II diabetic rats. Study Design: Randomized controlled trial (RCT) Place and Duration of the Study: Department of Physiology, Army Medical College, Rawalpindi from 20th May 2008 to 15 Jan 2009. Material and Methods: Ninety Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into three groups; each having 30 rats.

Factors associated with recovery from acute optic neuritis in patients with multiple sclerosis

Neurology, Jan 17, 2014

To identify clinical and demographic features associated with the severity and recovery from acut... more To identify clinical and demographic features associated with the severity and recovery from acute optic neuritis (AON) episodes in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Adult (n = 253) and pediatric (n = 38) patients whose first symptom was AON were identified from our MS database. Severity measured by loss of visual acuity (mild attack ≤20/40, moderate attack 20/50-20/190, and severe attack ≥20/200) and recovery in visual acuity at 1 year after the attack (complete recovery ≤20/20, fair recovery 20/40, and poor recovery ≥20/50) were recorded. Demographic and clinical features associated with attack severity and recovery were identified using proportional odds logistic regression. For another group of patients, blood samples were available within 6 months of an AON attack. In this group, the impact of vitamin D level on the severity/recovery was also assessed. Men (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 2.28, p = 0.03) and subjects with severe attacks (adjusted OR = 5.24, p < 0.001) had wo...

Improving Generation in Machine Translation by Separating Syntactic and Morphological Processes

2011 Frontiers of Information Technology, 2011

This paper presents a generation approach in a Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) based machine tra... more This paper presents a generation approach in a Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) based machine translation system that subdivides the process and uses rule based modules to address the problem. The results show improvement in performance compared to the earlier work which generates the translation into Urdu using a single integrated process.

Behavior of Word 'kaa' in Urdu Language

2010 International Conference on Asian Language Processing, 2010

Page 1. Behavior of word &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#x27;kaa&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#x27; in Urdu ... more

Transliterating Urdu for a Broad-Coverage Urdu/Hindi LFG Grammar

Proceedings of the Seventh Conference on International Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’10), May 1, 2010

Computational LFG grammar in development in Konstanz Aim: large-scale LFG grammar for parsing Urd... more Computational LFG grammar in development in Konstanz Aim: large-scale LFG grammar for parsing Urdu/Hindi Grammar is part of the ParGram project Collaborative, world-wide research project Devoted to developing parallel LFG grammars for a variety of languages Features and analyses are kept parallel for easy transfer between languages

Ethnicity and risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD): 4.8 year follow-up of patients with type 2 diabetes living in Scotland

Diabetologia, 2015

Aims/hypothesis Potential differences in cardiovascular risk by ethnicity remain uncertain. We ev... more Aims/hypothesis Potential differences in cardiovascular risk by ethnicity remain uncertain. We evaluated the association of ethnicity with cardiovascular disease (CVD) incidence in a large cohort of people with type 2 diabetes living in Scotland. Methods Data from Scottish Care Information-Diabetes (SCI-Diabetes) were linked to Scottish Morbidity Records (SMR01) and National Records of Scotland data for mortality for dates between 2005 and 2011. Of 156,991 people with type 2 diabetes with coded ethnicity, 121,535 (77.4%) had no CVD at baseline (White: 114,461; Multiple Ethnic: 2, 554; Indian: 797; Other Asian: 319; Pakistani: 2,250; Chinese: 387; African-Caribbean: 301 and Other: 466) and were followed up (mean±SD: 4.8±2.3 years) for the development of fatal and non-fatal CVD. Results During follow-up, 16,265 (13.4%) patients developed CVD (ischaemic heart or cerebrovascular diseases). At baseline, Pakistanis were younger and had developed diabetes earlier, had higher HbA 1c and longer duration of diabetes, but had lower BP, BMI, creatinine, proportion of smokers and proportion on antihypertensive therapy than whites. The age and sex adjusted HRs for CVD were HR 1.31 (CI 1.17, 1.47), p<0.001 in Pakistanis and HR 0.66 (CI 0.47, 0.92), p= 0.014 in Chinese compared with whites. Adjusting additionally for an area measure of deprivation, duration of diabetes, conventional CVD and other risk factors, the HR for Pakistanis (HR 1.45 [CI 1.14, 1.85], p=0.002) was significantly higher, and that for Chinese (HR=0.58 [CI 0.24, 1.40], p=0.228) lower, compared with whites. Conclusions/interpretation Compared with whites with type 2 diabetes, those of Pakistani ethnicity in Scotland were at increased risk of CVD, whereas Chinese were at lower risk, with these differences unexplained by known risk factors.

Angiotensin-converting Enzyme Inhibitor And Angiotensin II Receptor Blocker-Induced Angioedema: Overuse of Ineffective Treatment

Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 2011

STUDY OF NONLINEAR DYNAMICS USING LOGISTIC MAP

Nonlinear dynamics and chaotic systems are of great interest to mathematicians, physicists and en... more Nonlinear dynamics and chaotic systems are of great interest to mathematicians, physicists and engineers in past two decades. In this paper, it has been tried to study the nonlinear dynamics exhibited by the logistic equation. The simulations demonstrate how small, seemingly insignificant parameter changes e.g., initial conditions can dramatically alter the system response. Power electronic circuits such as DC-DC converters show a variety of nonlinear dynamics.

Pharmacokinetic studies of metformin and glibenclamide in normal human volunteers

Pakistan journal of pharmaceutical sciences, 2014

The study was aimed to evaluate various pharmacokinetic parameters of a commercially available fi... more The study was aimed to evaluate various pharmacokinetic parameters of a commercially available fixed dose combination of oral antidiabetics (Metformin/Glibenclamide 500/5mg tablets) in plasma sample of normal healthy adult male volunteers by applying an accurate, selective, and reproducible HPLC-UV analytical method for quantification of Metformin HCL and Glibenclamide simultaneously in a single chromatographic run. Previously no HPLC-UV analytical method for simultaneous estimation of Metformin/Glibenclamide has been reported in Pakistan. The human plasma samples were evaluated by using an isocratic High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) system of Sykam consisted of a pump with a column of Thermo Electron Corporation USA (ODS hypersil C18 4.6 mm x 250 mm), a UV-detector with data processing Clarity software. The mobile phase of 0.040M Potassium dihydrogen phosphate containing 0.25mL/L triethylamine at pH 3.5 (adjusted with 1:1 phosphoric acid) and acetonitrile (465: 535v/v) ...

Homeobox leucine zipper proteins and cotton improvement

Advances in Bioscience and Biotechnology, 2013

Homeodomain associated leucine zipper proteins (HD-Zip) constitute a family of transcription fact... more Homeodomain associated leucine zipper proteins (HD-Zip) constitute a family of transcription factors that are characterized by the presence of a DNAbinding domain closely linked with leucine zipper motif functioning in dimer formation. This type of association is unique to plants and considered as an excellent candidate to activate developmental responses to altering environmental conditions. Cotton is the most important fiber plant with a lot of local and commercial uses in the world. HD-Zip proteins not only have key roles in different stages of vascular and inter-fascicular fiber differentiation of cotton but also are suggested to have an important role against abiotic stress that is one of the key factors limiting cotton productivity. Plants have developed various strategies to manage stress conditions through a combination of metabolic, physiological and morphological adaptations. These adaptive changes rely largely on alterations in gene expression. Therefore, transcriptional regulators play a crucial role in stress tolerance. Being a transcription factor HD-Zip might be a useful target for genetic engineering to generate multiple stress tolerance in susceptible plants. In the following chapter, we discussed how the HD-Zip proteins would play a useful role for cotton development both in fiber production and stress adaptation.

Pakistani Pharmacy Students’ Perception About Complementary and Alternative Medicine

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 2012

Objectives. To assess Pakistani pharmacy students' perceptions of complementary and alternative m... more Objectives. To assess Pakistani pharmacy students' perceptions of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), the frequency with which they use CAM, and barriers to use of CAM. Method. A CAM health belief questionnaire was administered to 595 students enrolled in a 5-year doctor of pharmacy program (PharmD) in Pakistan.

Model reduction of generalized non-singular systems using limited frequency interval Gramians

IMA Journal of Mathematical Control and Information, 2014

ABSTRACT Limited frequency interval Gramians-based model reduction techniques for generalized non... more ABSTRACT Limited frequency interval Gramians-based model reduction techniques for generalized non-singular systems are presented. These techniques generalize the results of existing limited frequency interval Gramians schemes for general non-singular systems. Numerical examples are also presented to illustrate the effectiveness of proposed techniques.

Integrated use of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria, biogas slurry and chemical nitrogen for sustainable production of maize under salt-affected conditions

Pakistan Journal of Botany

ABSTRACT Salinity is one of the most critical constraints hampering agricultural production throu... more ABSTRACT Salinity is one of the most critical constraints hampering agricultural production throughout the world, including Pakistan. Some plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) have the ability to reduce the deleterious effect of salinity on plants due to the presence of ACC-deaminase enzyme along with some other mechanisms. The integrated use of organic, chemical and biofertilizers can reduce dependence on expensive chemical inputs. To sustain high crop yields without deterioration of soil fertility, it is important to work out optimal combination of chemical and biofertilizers, and manures in the cropping system. A pot trial was conducted to study the effect of integrated use of PGPR, chemical nitrogen, and biogas slurry for sustainable production of maize under salt-stressed conditions and for good soil health. Results showed that sole application of PGPR, chemical nitrogen and biogas slurry enhanced maize growth but their combined application was more effective. Maximum improvement in maize growth, yield, ionic concentration in leaves and nutrient concentration in grains was observed in the treatment where PGPR and biogas slurry was used in the presence of 100% recommended nitrogen as chemical fertilizer. It also improved the soil pH, ECe, and available N, P and K contents. It is concluded that integrated use of PGPR, biogas slurry and chemical nitrogen not only enhanced maize growth, yield and quality but also improved soil health. So, it may be evaluated under field conditions to get sustained yield of maize from salt-affected soils.

Limited frequency interval Gramian-based model reduction for generalised non-singular discrete time systems

IET Control Theory & Applications, 2015

ABSTRACT A limited frequency interval Gramians-based model reduction technique for generalised no... more ABSTRACT A limited frequency interval Gramians-based model reduction technique for generalised non-singular discrete time systems is presented. The technique generalises the results of existing limited frequency interval Gramians-based model reduction (of discrete time systems) schemes to general non-singular discrete time systems. Numerical examples are also presented to illustrate the proposed technique.

Hierarchical balancing approach for frequency-weighted model reduction

Electronics Letters, 2015

ABSTRACT A frequency-weighted balancing related model order reduction technique is proposed that ... more ABSTRACT A frequency-weighted balancing related model order reduction technique is proposed that provides stable reduced-order models for the case when both input and output weightings are included. The reduced-order models are realisation independent. Comparison with other frequency-weighted balancing related model order reduction techniques reveals the superiority of the proposed scheme.

A Frequency Limited Interval Gramians-Based Model Reduction Technique with Error Bounds

Circuits, Systems, and Signal Processing, 2015

ABSTRACT A balanced model reduction technique that is based on frequency limited interval Gramian... more ABSTRACT A balanced model reduction technique that is based on frequency limited interval Gramians is proposed. The technique provides stable models and also yields frequency response error bounds. Numerical examples are also presented. The results are comparable with other frequency limited interval Gramians-based model reduction techniques.

Bioinformatics evaluation of NPHS2 deletion mutation associated with congenital nephrotic syndrome in a consanguineous Pakistani family

Clinical genetics, Jan 21, 2014

ABSTRACT Podocin is an integral membrane protein encoded by NPHS2 gene and is exclusively express... more ABSTRACT Podocin is an integral membrane protein encoded by NPHS2 gene and is exclusively expressed in glomerular podocytes and was mapped to chromosome 1q25-31. The mutations of NPHS2 are causative of autosomal recessive familial and sporadic steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome (SRNS). The knowledge of the etiology of the disease is important to treat and cure the disease optimally. The aim of this study was to identify and evaluate the genetic cause of the congenital nephrotic syndrome in a consanguineous Pakistani family. In order to identify the inherited cause of the disease in Pakistan, we ascertained a consanguineous Pakistani family with congenital nephritic syndrome. By genetic homozygosity mapping, the disease phenotype was mapped to NPHS2 gene locus. All eight exons and exon-intron boundaries of NPHS2 gene were analyzed by using the polymerase chain reaction and direct DNA sequencing. To see the effect of mutation on protein structure and function, the mutant protein was further evaluated by applying different bioinformatics tools. A homozygous pathogenic 9 bp deletion (c.705-713del9bp) mutation in exon 5 of NPHS2 gene was found to be segregating with the disease phenotype. As a consequence of the 9 bp deletion, 3-amino acid residues (236-238) get deleted (p.Leu236_Arg238del). The deletion of three amino causes protein structural and functional changes in the podocin and are therefore responsible for causing the CNS phenotype in Pakistani family. The bioinformatics analysis also supports the adverse effect of deletion on protein structure and function.

Identification of Drivers and Obstacles of Market Orientation among Diversified Industries of Pakistan

ABSTRACT Market Orientation (MO), being charismatic in nature, has been considered as a high prio... more

ICFHR 2012 Competition on Automatic Forensic Signature Verification (4NsigComp 2012)

2012 International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, 2012

ABSTRACT This paper presents the results of the ICFHR2012 Competition on Automatic Forensic Signa... more ABSTRACT This paper presents the results of the ICFHR2012 Competition on Automatic Forensic Signature Verification jointly organized by PR-researchers and Forensic Handwriting Examiners (FHEs). The aim is to bridge the gap between recent technological developments and forensic casework. A forensic like training set containing disguised signatures along with skilled forgeries and genuine signatures was provided to the participants. They were motivated to report the results in Likelihood Ratios (LR). This has made the systems even more interesting for application in forensic casework. For evaluation we used both the traditional Equal Error Rate (EER) and forensically substantial Cost of Log Likelihood Ratios (Ĉllr). The system having the best Minimum Cost of Log Likelihood Ratio ( Ĉllrmin) is declared winner. Various experiments both including and excluding disguised signatures from the test set are reported.

Development of Parallel Corpus and English to Urdu Statistical Machine Translation

ijens.org

In this paper we share the efforts for development of a parallel corpus for statistical machine t... more

Levo-Carnitine Normalizes Blood Glucose and Lipid Profile in Insulin Resistant Type II Diabetic Rats

researchgate.net

A Ar rm my y M Me ed di ic ca al l C Co ol ll le eg ge e R Ra aw wa al lp pi in nd di i ABSTRACT ... more A Ar rm my y M Me ed di ic ca al l C Co ol ll le eg ge e R Ra aw wa al lp pi in nd di i ABSTRACT Objective: This study was planned to determine the effect of levo-carnitine on blood glucose and lipid profile in high fat diet fed, streptozotocin induced insulin resistant type II diabetic rats. Study Design: Randomized controlled trial (RCT) Place and Duration of the Study: Department of Physiology, Army Medical College, Rawalpindi from 20th May 2008 to 15 Jan 2009. Material and Methods: Ninety Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into three groups; each having 30 rats.

Factors associated with recovery from acute optic neuritis in patients with multiple sclerosis

Neurology, Jan 17, 2014

To identify clinical and demographic features associated with the severity and recovery from acut... more To identify clinical and demographic features associated with the severity and recovery from acute optic neuritis (AON) episodes in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Adult (n = 253) and pediatric (n = 38) patients whose first symptom was AON were identified from our MS database. Severity measured by loss of visual acuity (mild attack ≤20/40, moderate attack 20/50-20/190, and severe attack ≥20/200) and recovery in visual acuity at 1 year after the attack (complete recovery ≤20/20, fair recovery 20/40, and poor recovery ≥20/50) were recorded. Demographic and clinical features associated with attack severity and recovery were identified using proportional odds logistic regression. For another group of patients, blood samples were available within 6 months of an AON attack. In this group, the impact of vitamin D level on the severity/recovery was also assessed. Men (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 2.28, p = 0.03) and subjects with severe attacks (adjusted OR = 5.24, p < 0.001) had wo...

Improving Generation in Machine Translation by Separating Syntactic and Morphological Processes

2011 Frontiers of Information Technology, 2011

This paper presents a generation approach in a Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) based machine tra... more This paper presents a generation approach in a Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) based machine translation system that subdivides the process and uses rule based modules to address the problem. The results show improvement in performance compared to the earlier work which generates the translation into Urdu using a single integrated process.

Behavior of Word 'kaa' in Urdu Language

2010 International Conference on Asian Language Processing, 2010

Page 1. Behavior of word &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#x27;kaa&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#x27; in Urdu ... more

Transliterating Urdu for a Broad-Coverage Urdu/Hindi LFG Grammar

Proceedings of the Seventh Conference on International Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’10), May 1, 2010

Computational LFG grammar in development in Konstanz Aim: large-scale LFG grammar for parsing Urd... more Computational LFG grammar in development in Konstanz Aim: large-scale LFG grammar for parsing Urdu/Hindi Grammar is part of the ParGram project Collaborative, world-wide research project Devoted to developing parallel LFG grammars for a variety of languages Features and analyses are kept parallel for easy transfer between languages

Ethnicity and risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD): 4.8 year follow-up of patients with type 2 diabetes living in Scotland

Diabetologia, 2015

Aims/hypothesis Potential differences in cardiovascular risk by ethnicity remain uncertain. We ev... more Aims/hypothesis Potential differences in cardiovascular risk by ethnicity remain uncertain. We evaluated the association of ethnicity with cardiovascular disease (CVD) incidence in a large cohort of people with type 2 diabetes living in Scotland. Methods Data from Scottish Care Information-Diabetes (SCI-Diabetes) were linked to Scottish Morbidity Records (SMR01) and National Records of Scotland data for mortality for dates between 2005 and 2011. Of 156,991 people with type 2 diabetes with coded ethnicity, 121,535 (77.4%) had no CVD at baseline (White: 114,461; Multiple Ethnic: 2, 554; Indian: 797; Other Asian: 319; Pakistani: 2,250; Chinese: 387; African-Caribbean: 301 and Other: 466) and were followed up (mean±SD: 4.8±2.3 years) for the development of fatal and non-fatal CVD. Results During follow-up, 16,265 (13.4%) patients developed CVD (ischaemic heart or cerebrovascular diseases). At baseline, Pakistanis were younger and had developed diabetes earlier, had higher HbA 1c and longer duration of diabetes, but had lower BP, BMI, creatinine, proportion of smokers and proportion on antihypertensive therapy than whites. The age and sex adjusted HRs for CVD were HR 1.31 (CI 1.17, 1.47), p<0.001 in Pakistanis and HR 0.66 (CI 0.47, 0.92), p= 0.014 in Chinese compared with whites. Adjusting additionally for an area measure of deprivation, duration of diabetes, conventional CVD and other risk factors, the HR for Pakistanis (HR 1.45 [CI 1.14, 1.85], p=0.002) was significantly higher, and that for Chinese (HR=0.58 [CI 0.24, 1.40], p=0.228) lower, compared with whites. Conclusions/interpretation Compared with whites with type 2 diabetes, those of Pakistani ethnicity in Scotland were at increased risk of CVD, whereas Chinese were at lower risk, with these differences unexplained by known risk factors.

Angiotensin-converting Enzyme Inhibitor And Angiotensin II Receptor Blocker-Induced Angioedema: Overuse of Ineffective Treatment

Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 2011

STUDY OF NONLINEAR DYNAMICS USING LOGISTIC MAP

Nonlinear dynamics and chaotic systems are of great interest to mathematicians, physicists and en... more Nonlinear dynamics and chaotic systems are of great interest to mathematicians, physicists and engineers in past two decades. In this paper, it has been tried to study the nonlinear dynamics exhibited by the logistic equation. The simulations demonstrate how small, seemingly insignificant parameter changes e.g., initial conditions can dramatically alter the system response. Power electronic circuits such as DC-DC converters show a variety of nonlinear dynamics.

Pharmacokinetic studies of metformin and glibenclamide in normal human volunteers

Pakistan journal of pharmaceutical sciences, 2014

The study was aimed to evaluate various pharmacokinetic parameters of a commercially available fi... more The study was aimed to evaluate various pharmacokinetic parameters of a commercially available fixed dose combination of oral antidiabetics (Metformin/Glibenclamide 500/5mg tablets) in plasma sample of normal healthy adult male volunteers by applying an accurate, selective, and reproducible HPLC-UV analytical method for quantification of Metformin HCL and Glibenclamide simultaneously in a single chromatographic run. Previously no HPLC-UV analytical method for simultaneous estimation of Metformin/Glibenclamide has been reported in Pakistan. The human plasma samples were evaluated by using an isocratic High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) system of Sykam consisted of a pump with a column of Thermo Electron Corporation USA (ODS hypersil C18 4.6 mm x 250 mm), a UV-detector with data processing Clarity software. The mobile phase of 0.040M Potassium dihydrogen phosphate containing 0.25mL/L triethylamine at pH 3.5 (adjusted with 1:1 phosphoric acid) and acetonitrile (465: 535v/v) ...

Homeobox leucine zipper proteins and cotton improvement

Advances in Bioscience and Biotechnology, 2013

Homeodomain associated leucine zipper proteins (HD-Zip) constitute a family of transcription fact... more Homeodomain associated leucine zipper proteins (HD-Zip) constitute a family of transcription factors that are characterized by the presence of a DNAbinding domain closely linked with leucine zipper motif functioning in dimer formation. This type of association is unique to plants and considered as an excellent candidate to activate developmental responses to altering environmental conditions. Cotton is the most important fiber plant with a lot of local and commercial uses in the world. HD-Zip proteins not only have key roles in different stages of vascular and inter-fascicular fiber differentiation of cotton but also are suggested to have an important role against abiotic stress that is one of the key factors limiting cotton productivity. Plants have developed various strategies to manage stress conditions through a combination of metabolic, physiological and morphological adaptations. These adaptive changes rely largely on alterations in gene expression. Therefore, transcriptional regulators play a crucial role in stress tolerance. Being a transcription factor HD-Zip might be a useful target for genetic engineering to generate multiple stress tolerance in susceptible plants. In the following chapter, we discussed how the HD-Zip proteins would play a useful role for cotton development both in fiber production and stress adaptation.

Pakistani Pharmacy Students’ Perception About Complementary and Alternative Medicine

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 2012

Objectives. To assess Pakistani pharmacy students' perceptions of complementary and alternative m... more Objectives. To assess Pakistani pharmacy students' perceptions of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), the frequency with which they use CAM, and barriers to use of CAM. Method. A CAM health belief questionnaire was administered to 595 students enrolled in a 5-year doctor of pharmacy program (PharmD) in Pakistan.

Model reduction of generalized non-singular systems using limited frequency interval Gramians

IMA Journal of Mathematical Control and Information, 2014

ABSTRACT Limited frequency interval Gramians-based model reduction techniques for generalized non... more ABSTRACT Limited frequency interval Gramians-based model reduction techniques for generalized non-singular systems are presented. These techniques generalize the results of existing limited frequency interval Gramians schemes for general non-singular systems. Numerical examples are also presented to illustrate the effectiveness of proposed techniques.

Integrated use of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria, biogas slurry and chemical nitrogen for sustainable production of maize under salt-affected conditions

Pakistan Journal of Botany

ABSTRACT Salinity is one of the most critical constraints hampering agricultural production throu... more ABSTRACT Salinity is one of the most critical constraints hampering agricultural production throughout the world, including Pakistan. Some plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) have the ability to reduce the deleterious effect of salinity on plants due to the presence of ACC-deaminase enzyme along with some other mechanisms. The integrated use of organic, chemical and biofertilizers can reduce dependence on expensive chemical inputs. To sustain high crop yields without deterioration of soil fertility, it is important to work out optimal combination of chemical and biofertilizers, and manures in the cropping system. A pot trial was conducted to study the effect of integrated use of PGPR, chemical nitrogen, and biogas slurry for sustainable production of maize under salt-stressed conditions and for good soil health. Results showed that sole application of PGPR, chemical nitrogen and biogas slurry enhanced maize growth but their combined application was more effective. Maximum improvement in maize growth, yield, ionic concentration in leaves and nutrient concentration in grains was observed in the treatment where PGPR and biogas slurry was used in the presence of 100% recommended nitrogen as chemical fertilizer. It also improved the soil pH, ECe, and available N, P and K contents. It is concluded that integrated use of PGPR, biogas slurry and chemical nitrogen not only enhanced maize growth, yield and quality but also improved soil health. So, it may be evaluated under field conditions to get sustained yield of maize from salt-affected soils.

Limited frequency interval Gramian-based model reduction for generalised non-singular discrete time systems

IET Control Theory & Applications, 2015

ABSTRACT A limited frequency interval Gramians-based model reduction technique for generalised no... more ABSTRACT A limited frequency interval Gramians-based model reduction technique for generalised non-singular discrete time systems is presented. The technique generalises the results of existing limited frequency interval Gramians-based model reduction (of discrete time systems) schemes to general non-singular discrete time systems. Numerical examples are also presented to illustrate the proposed technique.

Hierarchical balancing approach for frequency-weighted model reduction

Electronics Letters, 2015

ABSTRACT A frequency-weighted balancing related model order reduction technique is proposed that ... more ABSTRACT A frequency-weighted balancing related model order reduction technique is proposed that provides stable reduced-order models for the case when both input and output weightings are included. The reduced-order models are realisation independent. Comparison with other frequency-weighted balancing related model order reduction techniques reveals the superiority of the proposed scheme.

A Frequency Limited Interval Gramians-Based Model Reduction Technique with Error Bounds

Circuits, Systems, and Signal Processing, 2015

ABSTRACT A balanced model reduction technique that is based on frequency limited interval Gramian... more ABSTRACT A balanced model reduction technique that is based on frequency limited interval Gramians is proposed. The technique provides stable models and also yields frequency response error bounds. Numerical examples are also presented. The results are comparable with other frequency limited interval Gramians-based model reduction techniques.

Bioinformatics evaluation of NPHS2 deletion mutation associated with congenital nephrotic syndrome in a consanguineous Pakistani family

Clinical genetics, Jan 21, 2014

ABSTRACT Podocin is an integral membrane protein encoded by NPHS2 gene and is exclusively express... more ABSTRACT Podocin is an integral membrane protein encoded by NPHS2 gene and is exclusively expressed in glomerular podocytes and was mapped to chromosome 1q25-31. The mutations of NPHS2 are causative of autosomal recessive familial and sporadic steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome (SRNS). The knowledge of the etiology of the disease is important to treat and cure the disease optimally. The aim of this study was to identify and evaluate the genetic cause of the congenital nephrotic syndrome in a consanguineous Pakistani family. In order to identify the inherited cause of the disease in Pakistan, we ascertained a consanguineous Pakistani family with congenital nephritic syndrome. By genetic homozygosity mapping, the disease phenotype was mapped to NPHS2 gene locus. All eight exons and exon-intron boundaries of NPHS2 gene were analyzed by using the polymerase chain reaction and direct DNA sequencing. To see the effect of mutation on protein structure and function, the mutant protein was further evaluated by applying different bioinformatics tools. A homozygous pathogenic 9 bp deletion (c.705-713del9bp) mutation in exon 5 of NPHS2 gene was found to be segregating with the disease phenotype. As a consequence of the 9 bp deletion, 3-amino acid residues (236-238) get deleted (p.Leu236_Arg238del). The deletion of three amino causes protein structural and functional changes in the podocin and are therefore responsible for causing the CNS phenotype in Pakistani family. The bioinformatics analysis also supports the adverse effect of deletion on protein structure and function.