پروفسیر نورالحسن ہاشمی
افسوس ہے کہ اردو کے بلند پایہ ادیب و محقق اور لکھنؤ یونیورسٹی کے سابق صدر شعبۂ اردوپروفیسر نورالحسن ہاشمی ۲۸؍ نومبر کو وفات پاگئے، اردو کے علاوہ ان کو ہندی، اودھی، انگریزی اور فارسی زبانوں پر بھی پوری دسترس تھی، اردو کی کئی کلاسیکل کتابیں تحقیق و تدوین کے بعد شائع کیں جن میں نوطرز مرصع، بکٹ کہانی، کلیات ولی اور قدیم روزنامچہ قابل ذکر ہیں، ان کی سب سے اہم علمی، ادبی اور تحقیقی کتاب ’’دلی کا دبستان شاعری‘‘ ہے، انہوں نے غالب کے کلام کا اودھی میں منظوم ترجمہ بھی کیا تھا اور ’’اندرونم‘‘ کے نام سے ان کا مجموعہ کلام بھی شائع ہوا تھا، مرحوم نیک اور خاموش طبع تھے اس لئے علمی قابلیت کے باوجود زیادہ شہرت نہیں حاصل کرسکے، اﷲ تعالیٰ غریق رحمت کرے، آمین۔ (ضیاء الدین اصلاحی، دسمبر ۲۰۰۰ء)
The ultimate goal of an education system is to produce a better citizen and create a better society. In this regard, it is the responsibility of state to design its education system on sound grounds. In Pakistan, there is dual education system, modern education system and traditional Madrasah system. Modern education system prepares its students on the bases of western education pattern while Maddris develop their students in the light of their own respective schools of thought. Thus, the two educational systems are producing two different categories of graduates, leading to imbalance and intodlerance in the society. To bridge this gap between the two systems and to make the education system harmonious, the government has passed “Pakistan Madrasa ‘h Education Board Ordinance ". Three model Maddris have been set up as a pilot project in Karachi and Sakkar for boys and in Islamabadfor girls. It was supposed to be extended in other cities as well but due to the reservations of Ulamd ' and their bitter opposition, the process did not get due attention among the public. In this paper, the authors will try to bring out the Ulamd’s reservations on "Pakistan Madrasah Education Board” in order to bringforth the policy suggestionsfor the betterment of the program.
Influenza viruses, in seasonal and pandemic forms, cause the most severe respiratory infections in humans. The currently licensed, egg-based vaccines fail to meet the global vaccine demand during a pandemic. Moreover, there is a constant need to reformulate these vaccines on annual basis according to the circulating viral strains. In order to develop efficient prophylactic measures, alternate vaccine strategies and production platforms need to be exploited. Subunit vaccines, like recombinant hemagglutinin, offer an alternative over conventional vaccines. Current study was designed to clone and express soluble influenza hemagglutinin (HA) of H9 and/or H7, which could be used as a vaccine candidate. To achieve high level of secretory expression and stabilized native trimer structure, HA was assembled with sequence for the tissue plasminogen activator signal peptide (tPA-SP) and foldon domain of bacteriophage T4 fibritin (FT) respectively by employing splicing by overlap extension amplification. The amplified product was cloned in pCMVR-8kb having human cytomegalovirus (CMV) immediate-early enhancer and promoter for transient expression of HA in 293F cells. SDS PAGE analysis confirmed a band of ≃ 70 kDa corresponding to H9HA and H7HA which was further confirmed by Western blot analysis and purified by Ni-NTA agarose column. The purified recombinant protein was found biologically active. This expression and purification process can be scaled up easily and recombinant protein can be produced rapidly which can then be used for further studies on virus-host interactions, viral pathogenesis and development of vaccines.The failure of currently available antiviral agents, due to high mutation rate of the influenza virus, calls for employing rigorous strategies to develop safe and potent inhibitory strategies against the virus. Nanoparticles have been studied extensively as potential antimicrobials, their applications recently extended to development of antivirals. In the present study, silver nanoparticles were successfully developed by green synthetic approach using bark extract of Cinnamomum cassia (Cinnamon) and leaves extract of Thymus vulgaris (Thyme). The synthesized nanoparticles were characterized using UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Plant extracts (Cinnamon and Thyme) and their corresponding nanoparticles were tested against avian influenza virus subtype H7N3 in Vero cells and the viability of cells was determined by tetrazolium dye (MTT) assay. The silver nanoparticles derived from plant extracts enhanced the antiviral activity and were found to be effective in both treatments, when incubated with the virus prior to infection and introduced to cells after infection. Moreover, the safety profile of the extract and the nanoparticles showed that they were non-toxic to Vero cells even at a concentration of 500 μg/ml. The biosynthesized nanoparticles may, hence, be a promising approach to provide treatment against influenza virus infections. Further research on characterization and mechanism of action of nanoparticles is required to develop better antiviral therapeutics for highly mutating viruses.