There has been an immense necessity for lessening the reliance on fossil fuels for the generation of energy, especially in the developing countries. As these conventional energy means are not only rapidly diminishing from the earth but also causing the green house gases (GHG) emissions hence global climate change. The ever rising pressures of population and development in the developing countries, like South Asia have also been raising per capita energy consumption as well as unsustainable fossil fuels exploitation. The solution to these glitches is contingent in exploring the indigenous resources based renewable-alternate energy technologies like bioenergy in these developing Asian economies, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Srilanka etc. This thesis addresses the design, implementation and operations of a medium commercial-industrial scale bioenergy plant in Pakistan that is based on effective anaerobic digestion (AD) technology and fed by indigenous bio-waste resources to develop a consistent, cost-effective and locally adaptable energy solution. There is a greater opportunity with aboriginal skills and resources that novel bioenergy technology can be integrated with prevailing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) infrastructure and setup while not only meeting the current energy demands but may also satisfy the future needs more productively. By employing the biomass derived bioenergy, there are a lot of prospects for saving fossil fuel based energy consumption in many rural and sub-urban areas of Pakistan. Bioenergy has been termed as climate neutral as it can effectively mitigate climate change effects by balancing carbon dioxide emissions. This thesis highlights the first and unique industrial scale bioenergy plant in Pakistan along-with its functional capabilities using a multi-appraisal technique. This is a an anaerobic fixed dome multi-digester, continuous flow-mode plant design, which can digest various feedstock like cattle manure, vegetable-fruit wastes, poultry wastes and sugar molasses etc. This novel scheme also has the modern technological inclusions like temperatures controls, mechanical stirrers, microwave heating system biogas scrubbers, filtration, compression and storage systems. It has deliberated high output efficiencies and is yielding 75-125 m3 of biogas per tonne of animal-cattle manure and/or vegetable-fruit wastes. v The primary valuation contained by this dissertation after the plant design, construction, setup and technology upgrades has scrutinized the design and financial cost-benefit aspects of the plant. As such all sorts of costs; like capital costs, operational and maintenance (O&M) costs and income-benefits using economic-financial modeling are well quantified and analyzed. The relevant indicators have rendered the project as highly viable. The later assessment has then evaluated the bioenergy productivities using locally accessible feedstock-substrates in various ratios of cow-buffalo manure and vegetable waste. The relevant drivers and seasonal limitations regarding bioenergy feedstock supply-chain were scrutinized so that these could be optimized as per regional conditions and variances. Following the CHP (combined heat and power) generation scenarios for this novel AD bioenergy plant, the techno-economic impacts in-terms of socio-industrial and techno-economic implications have also been thoroughly deliberated, qualified and quantified. Last but not least the environmental life cycle assessment along-with and characterization of effluent slurry-digestate as bio-fertilizer has been gauged. The research deliberations have demonstrated that this creative bioenergy plant design has prominent operational realization and is highly viable for an energy stressed country like Pakistan. Besides the primary benefits of energy generation and waste management there could be significant secondary benefits, regarding the utility and potential of digestate as highly enriched bio-fertilizer, which are yet outweighed. There are certain limitations, policy deficits and misleading conceptions among the stakeholders regarding the utilization of bioenergy on medium-large scale; however, the CHP pathway based on such novel AD system has been found quite acceptable and effective to exclude many of such limitations. Broadly such medium industrial bioenergy venture has shown encouraging socio-environmental, energy and financial paybacks.
کچھ مصنف کے بارے میں اصل نام : حافظ محمد ارشد قلمی نام:ارشد ملک تخلص: ملک ۲۹ جولائی ۱۹۹۵ء بروز ہفتہ پشاور ننھیال میں پیدایش ہوئی۔ گھر میں پہلا بچہ ہونے کے باعث والدین اور قریبی رشتہ داروں میں خوشی کی لہر دوڑ اٹھی۔ سب نے بہت پیارکیا اورنازاٹھائے۔ارشد ملک کے والد کا نام محمد اشرف ہے اور والدہ کا نام سلمہٰ اشرف ہے۔ ارشد ملک کے والدین کا تعلق ضلع فیروز پور تحصیل موگا پنڈ دولت پورہ متحدہ ہندوستان سے تھا۔ بعد ازاں جب پاکستان معرضِ وجود میں آیا تو ہجرت کر کے پاکستان کے شہر قصور کے کیمپ میں دس پندرہ دن گزارے۔ پھر قصور سے دولمی ،پھر بڈھے والا کھوہ راوی، پھر وہاں سے کہروڑ پکا آئے اور ٹھیکے پر کھیتی باڑی کا پیشہ اختیار کیا۔ پھر وہاں سے وہاڑی سکونت اختیار کی اور آج تک وہاڑی میں ہی سکونت پذیر ہیں۔ ارشد ملک کے دادا ابو کا نام حاجی محمد شریف اور دادی اماں کا نام شریفاں بی بی ہے جو بقیدِ حیات ہیں۔ ارشد ملک جب پیدا ہوئے تھے تو ان کے تایا جی کی گود میں ڈال دیا تھا۔ چوں کہ ان کی پہلی بیوی سے اولاد نہیں تھی۔ بعد ازاں دوسری شادی سے اللہ تعالیٰ نے اولاد کی نعمت سے نوازا۔ پھر ارشد ملک اپنے اصل والدین کی زیرِ کفالت آگئے۔ ابتدائی تعلیم قائد اعظم ماڈل ہائی سکول وہاڑی سے حاصل کی اور پرائمری پاس کرنے کے بعد جامعہ مدنیہ جامع مسجد باغ والی سے قرآنِ کریم کی تعلیم حاصل کرنے کے لیے داخلہ لیا۔ اور قرآنِ مجید حفظ کیا۔ حفظ کے بعد آٹھویں جماعت کا پرائیویٹ امتحان پاس کیا۔پھر گورنمنٹ تیمور شہید اسکول میں میٹرک کا امتحان پاس کیا ۔میٹرک کا امتحان پاس کرنے کے بعد گورنمنٹ پوسٹ گریجوایٹ کالج وہاڑی سے ایف۔ایس سی اور بعد ازاں...
Background: Harassment of working women is a common social and human rights problem and healthcare settings are no exception. This unacceptable situation has many avoidable determinants that need preventive measures to ensure, safe and secure working environment for nurses. Objectives: To assess the knowledge and understanding among female nursing students and nursing staff about workplace harassment in a tertiary healthcare facility. Methods: It was a cross-sectional study conducted at Tertiary care hospital Lahore from July to September 2018. Convenient sampling technique was used to collect data. Verbal informed consent of voluntary participants was taken. Anonymity and confidentiality was assured. SPSS version 21 was used for data analysis. The participants (n=80) comprised of senior female nurses students (62.5%) and senior nursing staff (37.5%), aged 18 to 46 years. Results: Awareness about common harassment forms was adequate (81.3%). Adverse effects included mental health problems (83.8%) and low self-esteem (72.5%). A large percentage of nurses (62.5%) intended to report such personal incident to institutional head and 72.5% were willing to accompany victims for such reporting. 77.5% desired arranging informative sessions and holding counseling for victims (78.8%) at workplace. Only 22.5% had vague idea about official protective legal frameworks. Conclusions: Workplace harassment of female workers is quite prevalent but under-reported phenomena in Pakistan. All organizations and institutions must have a harassment policy to protect the females.
Birds living in densely-populated (urban) areas are exposed to different environmental challenges. One of them is an exposure to a vast range of environmental pathogens simply due to lack of appropriate biosafety and biosecurity measures in hospitals and research centers. Therefore, wild/feral birds living in close vicinity to urban settings are hypothesized to be more immunocompetent and/or resistant to different pathogens than are birds living in rural settings. This hypothesis of varying immunocompetence in birds originating from rural and urban setting was evaluated using an endemic pathogen of birds, the Newcastle disease virus (NDV).The virus was isolated from migratory bird, the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), at Chashma barrage and was found to be virulent on the basis of genomic (typical F protein cleaving motif: 112R-R-Q-K-R↓F117) and biological characteristics (EID50 =108.5 mL-1 and MDT= 49.5-50 hrs). Immunocompetence among individual group of each of 20 feral birds (pigeon, mynah, sparrow, crow and quail), both from urban and rural settings (n=10), were administered 0.1mL of a mitogen (1mg/mL), the phytohemagglutinin (PHA) and thickness of patagium at different time intervals as 12, 24, 36, 48 and 60hr of post injection was measured through digital caliper. Post administration of PHA, all studied birds’ species showed a similar pattern of increase in web-thickness by the timer interval of 48 hours followed by a decline by 60 hr. Though variations in magnitude of swelling were observed among and/or within birds’ specie group, compared to their respective rural counterparts, birds originating from urban setting showed an enhanced swelling response (e.g., 1.26 2 mm ±0.03 vs 0.980 mm ±0.04 for pigeon, 0.235 mm ±0.02 vs 0.194 mm ±0.03 for sparrow, and 1.10 mm±0.03 vs 0.855 mm±0.04 crow) by 48 hours. For instance, in case of rural and urban pigeon, difference in thickness was continuous for each of the time interval (p < 0.05) whereas, in case of crow, this difference between birds in rural and urban setting was limited to time interval of 24 hrs (95% CI: 0.024-0.082; p < 0.05), 36 hrs (95% CI: 0.026-0.085; p < 0.05), 48 hrs (95% CI: 0.052-0.110; p < 0.05) and 60 hrs (95% CI: 0.036-0.097; p < 0.05). On the other hand, a lack of significant difference was found between urban and rural groups of sparrow, mynah and quail birds (p > 0.05). Following comparative immunocompetence evaluation, all birds were acclimatized for two weeks to diminish the effect of PHA and then challenged with Newcastle disease virus (1mL of 10-8 EID50/mL) isolated from mallard. The results of this study indicated that the urban birds were more resistant as evidenced by increased morbidity and mortality pattern, tissue tropism and virus shedding from 3rd dpi by 9th dpi among birds group. The study birds showed an equal potential to disseminate the virus in apparently healthy chicken where 100% mortality was observed in broiler by 6th dpi. The study outcome ascertains a need for continuous monitoring and surveillance of wild/migratory birds for NDV and also implementation of strict biosecurity measures not only in commercial setting but also in public sectors to control the spillover of pathogen to environment and wild birds.