Diversity of pollinators and their role in the pollination biology of chickpea, Cicer arietinum L. (Fabaceae)

Abdul Latif,Saeed Ahmad Malik,Shafqat Saeed,Naeem Iqbal,Qamar Saeed,Khalid Ali Khan,Chen Ting,Hamed A. Ghramh 한국응용곤충학회 2019 Journal of Asia-Pacific Entomology Vol.22 No.2

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an important source of food for people worldwide. In the current study, we studied its pollination biology with special reference to floral visitors along with their visitation rate, frequency and pollen load during 2012 and 2013. We also explored the effect of floral visitors on the capsule weight, seed weight, seed numbers and seed germination. Results revealed three bees, two wasps, five flies, one moth and three butterfly species on the flowers of chickpea. Apis dorsata, A. florea, Amegilla sp. and Eristalinus aeneus were the major species with 434–474, 223–311, 69–74 and 81–136 individuals, respectively in both years. Floral visitors differed significantly in term of visitation frequency with A. florea as the most frequent visitor (9.13–9.86 visits/flower/5 min) followed by E. aeneus (5.43–5.58 visits/flower/5 min) and A. dorsata (1.72–2.31 visits/ flower/5 min) in both years. Similarly, A. florea had statistically highest visitation rate (16.85–19.99 flowers visited/min) followed by E. aeneus (9.73–10.68 flowers visited/min). A. dorsata had significantly higher pollen load on its body (84629–85,104 pollen grains) followed by A. florea (64940–65,135 pollen grains) and Amegilla sp. (64020–65,120 pollen grains). The open-pollinated flowers had significantly higher capsule weight (0.27 ± 0.01 g), seed weight (0.18 ± 0.01 g), seed numbers (1.67 ± 0.07 seeds) and seed germination (95 ± 1.38%) as compared to flowers deprived of pollinators in cages. The results suggested A. florea, A. dorsata and E. aeneus could be effective pollinators of chickpea. Hence these three species can be properly utilized on commercial scale to increase crop yield.

Investigation into shear properties of medium strength reinforced concrete beams

Shah, Attaullah,Ahmad, Saeed,Khan, Salimullah Techno-Press 2010 Structural Engineering and Mechanics, An Int'l Jou Vol.35 No.3

The shear contribution of transverse steel in reinforced concrete beams is generally assumed as independent of the concrete strength by most of the building codes. The shear strength of RC beams with web reinforcement is worked out by adding the individual contributions of concrete and stirrups. In this research 70 beams of medium strength concrete in the range of 52-54 MPa, compressive strength were tested in two sets of 35 beams each. In one set of 35 beams no web reinforcement was used, whereas in second set of 35 beams web reinforcement was used to check the contribution of stirrups. The values have also been compared with the provisions of ACI, Eurocode and Japanese Code building codes. The results of two sets of beams, when compared mutually and provisions of the building codes, showed that the shear strength of beams has been increased with the addition of stirrups for all the beams, but the increase is non uniform and irregular. The comparison of observed values with the provisions of selected codes has shown that EC-02 is relatively less conservative for low values of longitudinal steel, whereas ACI-318 overestimates the shear strength of RC beams at higher values of longitudinal steel. The Japanese code of JSCE has given relatively good results for the beams studied.

One-stage Hip Reconstruction for Developmental Hip Dysplasia in Children over 8 Years of Age

Irfan Qadir,Saeed Ahmad,Atiq uz Zaman,Chirag Muhammad Khan,Shahzad Ahmad,Amer Aziz 대한고관절학회 2018 Hip and Pelvis Vol.30 No.4

Purpose: This study was performed to assess the clinical and radiological outcomes following one-stage hip reconstruction, consisting of open reduction femoral shortening and pelvic osteotomy, for neglected developmental dislocation of the hip (DDH). Materials and Methods: This is a retrospective analysis of 77 hips in 65 patients (46 females and 19 males; 12 had bilateral dislocations), operated at a Ghurki Trust Teaching Hospital in Pakistan between 2013 and 2015. The average age at surgery was 11.02±3.43 years. According to the Tönnis classification, there were 10, 14, 22, and 31 patients in grades 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. The pelvic procedure utilized in this study was triple osteotomy (47 hips) followed by double and Salter osteotomy (18 and 12 hips, respectively). Postoperative evaluations were conducted using the modified MacKay’s scoring system (functional outcomes) and Severin’s scoring method (radiological assessment). Results: Postoperatively, there were 38 (49.4%), 19 (24.7%), 14 (18.2%), and 6 (7.8%) hips in Severin grade I, II, III and IV, respectively. According to the modified McKay criteria, there were 22 hips (28.6%) in excellent condition, 44 (57.1%) in good condition, 9 (11.7%) in fair condition and 2 (2.6%) in poor condition. Both patients with poor outcomes had an unstable, painful hip with evidence of avascular necrosis of the femoral head. Conclusion: Based on the results presented here, we recommend the single stage procedure of open reduction, femoral shortening and pelvic osteotomy for treatment of DDH in older children with good to excellent functional and radiological outcomes.

Investigation into shear properties of medium strength reinforced concrete beams

Attaullah Shah,Saeed Ahmad,Salimullah Khan 국제구조공학회 2010 Structural Engineering and Mechanics, An Int'l Jou Vol.35 No.3

The shear contribution of transverse steel in reinforced concrete beams is generally assumed as independent of the concrete strength by most of the building codes. The shear strength of RC beams with web reinforcement is worked out by adding the individual contributions of concrete and stirrups. In this research 70 beams of medium strength concrete in the range of 52-54 MPa, compressive strength were tested in two sets of 35 beams each. In one set of 35 beams no web reinforcement was used, whereas in second set of 35 beams web reinforcement was used to check the contribution of stirrups. The values have also been compared with the provisions of ACI, Eurocode and Japanese Code building codes. The results of two sets of beams, when compared mutually and provisions of the building codes, showed that the shear strength of beams has been increased with the addition of stirrups for all the beams, but the increase is non uniform and irregular. The comparison of observed values with the provisions of selected codes has shown that EC-02 is relatively less conservative for low values of longitudinal steel, whereas ACI-318 overestimates the shear strength of RC beams at higher values of longitudinal steel. The Japanese code of JSCE has given relatively good results for the beams studied.

Industrial Internet of Things Based Efficient and Reliable Data Dissemination Solution for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Latif, Shahid,Mahfooz, Saeed,Ahmad, Naveed,Jan, Bilal,Farman, Haleem,Khan, Murad,Han, Kijun WILEY INTERSCIENCE 2018 WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS AND MOBILE COMPUTING Vol.2018 No.-

<P>Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is the other name of industrial Internet. It integrates a variety of existing industrial automation technologies with computing, machine learning, and communication technologies. Vehicular ad hoc network, an application of IIoT, is a self-organized network of vehicles which tends to provide improved road safety, diminished traffic congestion, and ultimate comfort to the travellers. In VANETs, vehicles exchange data with each other directly or through roadside units (RSUs). Data dissemination in VANETs experiences numerous challenging issues including broadcast storm, network partitions, intermittent connectivity between vehicles, and limited bandwidth. In literature, various data dissemination schemes are proposed. However, most of these schemes are designed for either urban or highway VANET scenarios and evaluated under sparse or dense traffic conditions. Moreover, these schemes do not effectively overcome the aforementioned issues simultaneously. In this paper, we present a new data dissemination protocol for VANETs, which disseminates the emergency messages in different scenarios under varying traffic conditions. During dense traffic conditions, DDP4V employs the segmentation of transmission region of a vehicle in order to select the most appropriate next forwarding vehicle (NFV). Accordingly, it divides the transmission region of a vehicle in three distinct segments and selects vehicle(s) inside the highest priority segment to forward the message to all neighbour vehicles, whereas it also uses implicit acknowledgements for guaranteed message delivery during sparse traffic Conditions. Simulation results show that DDP4V protocol outperforms the other existing related protocols in terms of coverage, network overhead, collision, and end-to-end delay.</P>

Effect of temporal data aggregation on the perceived structure of a quantitative plant–floral visitor network

Asif Sajjad,Shafqat SAEED,Mudssar ALI,Fawad Zafar Ahmad KHAN,권용정,Mariano DEVOTO 한국곤충학회 2017 Entomological Research Vol.47 No.6

Seasonal turnover in plant and floral visitor communities changes the structure of the network of interactions they are involved in. Despite the dynamic nature of plant–visitor networks, a usual procedure is to pool year‐round interaction data into a single network which may result in a biased depiction of the real structure of the interaction network. The annual temporal dynamics and the effect of merging monthly data have previously been described for qualitative data (i.e. describing the occurrence of interactions) alone, while its quantitative aspect (i.e. the actual frequency with which interactions occur) remain little explored. For this, we built a set of 12 monthly networks describing year‐round plant–floral visitor interactions in a 30‐hectare planted forest and its adjacent agricultural landscape at Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan, Pakistan. A total of 80 plant and 162 insect species, which engaged in 1573 unique interactions, were recorded. Most network properties (particularly the number of plants, visitors and unique interactions) varied markedly during the year. Data aggregation showed that while animal species, plant species, unique interaction, weighted nestedness, interaction diversity and robustness increased, connectance and specialization decreased. The only metric which seemed relatively unaffected by data pooling was interaction evenness. In general, quantitative metrics were relatively less affected by temporal data aggregation than qualitative ones. Avoiding data aggregation not only gives a more realistic depiction of the dynamic nature of plant–visitor community networks, but also avoids biasing network metrics and, consequently, their expected response to disturbances such as the loss of species.

A Group Chain Acceptance Sampling Plan for Lifetimes Following Beta Burr Type-X Distribution with Minimum Angle Approach

Majid Liaqat,Nadia Saeed,Moustafa Omar Ahmed Abu-Shawie,Rehan Ahmad Khan Sherwani 대한산업공학회 2021 Industrial Engineeering & Management Systems Vol.20 No.3

The group chain acceptance sampling plans are widely used in industrial sectors when we want to minimize the inspection by selecting number of batches representing the whole lot. The research is based on the construction of plan parameters of group chain acceptance sampling (GCAS) plan when life of the items follows Beta Burr Type-X (BB-X) distribution. The various design parameters i.e. optimum number of groups, minimum mean ratio, operating characteristic (OC) values and minimum angles are calculated by satisfying and obeying producer’s and consumer’s risks at a certain specified quality level. Assuming prefixed number of item, the scale parameters and termination time, the plan parameters are calculated. The application of proposed plan is provided on real life data set and the results of tables with the help of classical examples are also discussed for illustrative purpose.

Synthesis and Physicochemical Studies of Perovskite Manganite La<SUB>0.8</SUB>Ca<SUB>0.2</SUB>Nn<SUB>1-x</SUB>Co<SUB>x</SUB>O₃ (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.3)

D. Turki,Zafar Khan Ghouri,Saeed Al-Meer,Khaled Elsaid,M. I. Ahmad,Ahmed Easa,M. Ellouze,E. K. Hlil 한국자기학회 2017 Journal of Magnetics Vol.22 No.3

The physicochemical properties of La0.8Ca0.2Mn1−xCoxO₃ nanopowders as a function of Co content (x) have been investigated. La0.8Ca0.2Mn1−xCoxO₃ nanopowders were synthesized by sol-gel method and morphologically and structurally well characterized by Scanning electron microscopic (SEM), Infrared spectroscopic (IR) and Raman spectroscopic techniques. IR spectra shows peak at around 600 cm<SUP>−1</SUP> attributed to the stretching mode of MnO6 octahedral and peak at 700 cm<SUP>−1</SUP> assigned to La-Ca-O-Mn bending vibrations. Raman spectra indicate peaks at around 512 and 652 cm<SUP>−1</SUP> related to the Jahn-Teller octahedral distortions. The intensity of these peaks increases with increasing Co doping. The UV-visible spectra were measured in the frequency range of 200-800 nm and two energy gaps were found at 1.63 eV and 3.294 eV for x = 0, 0.1 and 0.3.

Gelatin nanoparticles-preparation by nanoprecipitation method

Kwang-Hee Lim,Saeed Ahmad Khan,Eun Ju Lee 한국생물공학회 2008 한국생물공학회 학술대회 Vol.2008 No.4

Aberrant Promoter Methylation at CpG Cytosines Induce the Upregulation of the E2F5 Gene in Breast Cancer

Arshad Ali,Farman Ullah,Irum Sabir Ali,Ahmad Faraz,Mumtaz Khan,Syed Tahir Ali Shah,Nawab Ali,Muhammad Saeed 한국유방암학회 2016 Journal of breast cancer Vol.19 No.2

Purpose: The promoter methylation status of cell cycle regulatory genes plays a crucial role in the regulation of the eukaryotic cell cycle. CpG cytosines are actively subjected to methylation during tumorigenesis, resulting in gain/loss of function. E2F5 gene has growth repressive activities; various studies suggest its involvement in tumorigenesis. This study aims to investigate the epigenetic regulation of E2F5 in breast cancer to better understand tumor biology. Methods: The promoter methylation status of 50 breast tumor tissues and adjacent normal control tissues was analyzed. mRNA expression was determined using SYBR® green quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and methylation- specific PCR was performed for bisulfite-modified genomic DNA using E2F5-specific primers to assess promoter methylation. Data was statistically analyzed. Results: Significant (p<0.001) upregulation was observed in E2F5 expression among tumor tissues, relative to the control group. These samples were hypo-methylated at the E2F5 promoter region in the tumor tissues, compared to the control. Change in the methylation status (Δmeth) was significantly lower (p=0.022) in the tumor samples, indicating possible involvement in tumorigenesis. Patients at the postmenopausal stage showed higher methylation (75%) than those at the premenopausal stage (23.1%). Interestingly, methylation levels gradually increased from the early to the advanced stages of the disease (p<0.001), which suggests a putative role of E2F5 methylation in disease progression that can significantly modulate tumor biology at more advanced stage and at postmenopausal age (Pearson’s r=0.99 and 0.86, respectively). Among tissues with different histological status, methylation frequency was higher in invasive lobular carcinoma (80.0%), followed by invasive ductal carcinoma (46.7%) and ductal carcinoma in situ (20.0%). Conclusion: Methylation is an important epigenetic factor that might be involved in the upregulation of E2F5 gene in tumor tissues, which can be used as a prognostic marker for breast cancer.