The consanguineous marriages are strongly favored in many human populations but their prevalence and structure vary depending on culture, religion, and socioeconomic conditions of respective population. These marriages are reported as the leading cause of enhancing the prevalence of autosomal recessive genetic disorders. The challenge of genetic disorders’ burden in the population calls for the development of prevention programs. But the strategies for their implementation require the information about types and prevalence of genetic disorders and family system in population. These achievements are possible by thorough understanding of the determinants of human population genetic structure that is mainly determined by the marriage pattern. Furthermore, the pattern of close marriages in population along with other factors leads to develop the isolated groups having typically confined, well- documented, extended and multigenerational pedigrees. The extended pedigrees with rare disorders are used by geneticists for their linkage studies. Present study focuses on consanguinity and genetic disorders in the population of District Dera Ghazi Khan, Punjab, Pakistan because of its unique geographical location and population structure. The district Dera Ghazi Khan is situated in the center of Pakistan, bounded on the North by Dera Ismail Khan District of N.W.F.P; on the West by Musa Khel and Barkhan districts of Baluchistan, on the South by Rajan Pur, and on the East by river Indus that separates it from all other districts of Punjab province. The population of Dera Ghazi Khan is mainly a tri-ethnic mixture of Baloch, Natives (Non-Baloch) and Indian Migrants (Muhajirs). Social and cultural activities vary in the area but marriages are mostly endogamous within caste or tribes. The harsh and adverse environmental condition restricts the movement of people that result in development of extended families /founder population. The present study showed 70.52% endogamous marriages in the general population and 71.62%, 69.62%, and 70.42% in Baloch, Migrant, and Native populations, respectively. Furthermore high rate of consanguinity (53.57%) with 0.0301 mean coefficient of inbreeding was observed in general population. The first-cousin marriages were found more prevalent. The results were also discussed on the bases of educational status, occupation, and socioeconomic condition and a strong link with these factors wasobserved. Furthermore, statistically significant effect of consanguinity on pregnancy loss (miscarriages, abortions, prenatal deaths), and perinatal deaths (still births, birth of dead child and early neonatal deaths) were found. In addition, the effect of marriage types on specific group of genetic disorders like skin disorders (Albinism, EDs, Alopecia, Aposthia, etc), non-syndromic deafness, and thalassemia were also studied. Five families (A, B, C, D, and E) clinically showed the presence of abnormal nails and skin. In the affected individuals, nychodystrophy of fingernails and toenails started at the same time but differentially lead to anonychia on toenails and onycholysis on fingernails. The skin was abnormal, which bruises and blisters easily. The affected individuals of these skin families showed abnormally high sweating, missing finger-prints and palmoplantar keratoderma. Two families (F, G) exhibited typical features of congenital alopecia including absence of hair on the scalp, axillae, pubic, and other parts of the body. In Family F, linkage was established to hair loss locus on chromosome 8p21. Sequence analysis of HR gene revealed a single base pair deletion mutation at position 431(431delC) in exon 2, leading to frameshifts and premature termination codon 68 bp downstream in the same exon. In family G, genotyping with microsatellite markers failed to detect linkage to any of the known alopecia / ED locus. In three families (H, I, J) affected individuals had pre-lingual, severe to profound hearing loss, with no associated abnormality. The mode of inheritance of the hearing loss was autosomal recessive. Analysis of the genotypes revealed the linkage of the family H to the DFNB35 on chromosome 14, family I, to the locus DFNB44 on chromosome 7, and family J to the DFNB1 locus on chromosome 13. In family J, sequence analysis of the coding exon of GJB2 gene led to the identification of a G-to-A substitution at nucleotide position 71, resulting in a premature stop codon (W24X). For studying the spectrum of β-thalassemia mutations in the population, 164 β- thalassemia chromosomes obtained from 82 different families were analyzed and nine different mutations [IVS I-5, FSC8/9, FSC-5 (-CT), IVS-I-1(G-T), CD41/42 (-TTCT), IVS-II-848 (C-A) and CD 15 (G-A), CD16 (-C) and CD30 (G-C)] in the β-globin gene were detected. Interestingly, frequencies of these mutations vary among different ethnic groups as well as castes/ tribes.
پروفیسر محمد نعیم الرحمن پروفیسر محمد نعیم الرحمن مرحوم ریڈر شعبۂ عربی و فارسی الہ آباد یونیورسٹی کی وفات علمی حلقہ کا بڑا المناک سانحہ ہے، مرحوم مشہور مصنف و مترجم مولوی خلیل الرحمن صاحب مرحوم صاحب اندلسیات کے خلف الصدق اور خود ممتاز صاحب علم اور علم و فن کے خدمت گزار تھے، عربی، فارسی اور انگریزی کے علاوہ فرنچ اور عبرانی سے بھی واقف تھے، عربی زبان سے ان کا تعلق محض درس و تعلیم تک محدود نہ تھا، بلکہ ان کو اس کا ذوق اور ان میں اس کی خدمت کا جذبہ تھا، انجمن عربی صوبہ متحدہ کے معتمد اور اس کے سرگرم کارکن تھے، انھوں نے الہ آباد یونیورسٹی میں عربی کی اہمیت اور مسلمان طالب علموں میں اس کا ذوق قائم رکھا، بہت سے علمی اور تعلیمی اداروں کے رکن اور ممبر تھے، تصنیف و تالیف سے بھی ذوق تھا، متعدد کتابوں کے مصنف، مترجم اور مرتب تھے، عربی و فارسی کی بہت سی درسی کتابیں لکھیں، ان کی قلمی یادگاروں میں مورخ عبدالواحد مراکشی تمیمی کی ’’المعجب فی تخلیص اخبار المغرب‘‘ کا اردو ترجمہ خلافت موحدین خصوصیت کے ساتھ لائق ذکر ہے، مرحوم کی عمر پچپن چھپن سال سے زیادہ نہ تھی اور صحت ایسی تھی کہ مشکل سے پینتالیس سال کے معلوم ہوتے تھے، چند مہینے بیمار رہ کر، ۲۷؍ فروری کو انتقال کیا، اﷲ تعالیٰ اس خادم علم کو نعیم جنت سے سرفراز فرمائے۔ (شاہ معین الدین ندوی،اپریل ۱۹۵۰ء)
Peace has always been a fundamental need of humanity and social beings. Despite of all the worldly, scientific and materialistic progress in almost every domain of life, eternal peace is missing. Peace education is a process of achieving peace, at personal, inter-personal, national and international levels, through education, focusing on promoting universal brotherhood, fraternity, global citizenship and the culture of peaceful co-existence. This article aims to institutionalize peace education and culture at secondary government schools of Lahore, Pakistan. A questionnaire focusing on peace education and inculcating of peace culture was used for data collection. The data revealed peace education is implicitly taught but it is not practiced in schools and hence, is not part of school curriculum. Also peace culture-related activities are missing in the school curriculum and there is a dire need of such activities.
Price and wage setting behaviour is a crucial issue in the economic literature, especially for the knowledge of monetary policy transmission mechanism. The present study analyzes the price and wage setting behaviour of firms from Industrial estates of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, using survey-based data. The survey is conducted in the year 2017 in four major industrial estates of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, namely, Hayatabad, Nowshera, Gadoon and Hattar Industrial Estates. A sample of 342 firms is selected through stratified random sampling and respondents are the managers of the firms. Price setting behavior is measured through frequency of price change, length of price contract and importance of demand and cost shocks for price change. The wage setting variable is measured through frequency of wage change. To estimate the effects of determinants of price change/rigidity, models are estimated through ordinary least squares technique in case of frequency of price change as dependent variable while binary logistic technique is used in all other cases. It is found that 70% of the firms have more than five competitors. Most of the firms have only regular customers or a combination of both regular and occasional customers. 60.8% of the firms set the price of their main product, so most of firms operate in imperfectly competitive market structure. 70.8% firms involve in price discrimination, in which 50% of the firms adopt first degree price discrimination. Most of the firms use current information (44%) or a combination of all information (40%) for price-setting of their product, which means that the firms practice is not aligned with traditional Philips curve rather it is consistent with hybrid Philips curve. 26% of the firms in our sample follow time-dependent pricing policy, 21% of the firms follow state-dependent rule and 52.6% firms use a combination of both time and state-dependent pricing policies, i.e. they practice mixed strategy. A relatively high proportion of firms change prices at the change of new calendar year with most of the firms changing prices at the start of fiscal year or calendar year. The most important factors for price stickiness are implicit and explicit price contracts, and minimum price volatility and less uncertainty. Imperfect competitive market structure of firms, number of regular customers, backward-looking behavior, and credibility of central bank and size of the firm are important determinants of price rigidity. While economic literacy and information set regarding expected inflation make the prices flexible. Firms‘ likelihood of price increase higher than that to price decrease in response to both demand and supply shocks. Furthermore, supply-side factors lead to higher frequency of price change than demand-side factors do. The cost of raw material and cost of energy are the most important causes of price change, both for the price increase and decrease. Demand and cost shocks are important determinants of price change for imperfectly competitive firms, backward-looking firms, firms run by managers having more information about economic conditions, while credibility of central bank is important determinant of price change in case of demand shocks only. Size of firms and information set regarding expected inflation do not have any effect. Most of the firms change wage rate once in a year both for permanent workers and daily wagers. Majority of the firms follow time-dependent wage policy. Half of the firms, which are following time-dependent wage policy, change the wage rate at the end or start of the fiscal year. Most of the firms are not found to index wages for permanent workers and daily wagers. Moreover, the percentage of firms not involved in wage indexation is higher for daily workers than for permanent worker. Labor productivity, employment level in the economy, government regulations, taxes, demand for the product, and inflation are important factors of wage change but the most important factor is the labour productivity and least important is pressure from the labour union. Imperfect competition and size of the firms are the important determinants of wage flexibility, because they increase the frequency of wage change, while wage indexation, information set of expected inflation and fringe benefits provided to workers are the important determinants of wage rigidity, because these factors decrease the probability of a firm to change the wage rate. Owing to weak traditional channel of monetary policy, it is important for monetary policy of Pakistan to focus on other channels of monetary transmission mechanism, like asset price channel, balance sheet channel or credit channel; credibility of central bank has to be established to stabilize prices; pre-emptive measures should be taken on the part of central bank to counter supply shocks; wage cuts at the times of recession be avoided; and disinflationary policies be carefully designed as sacrifice ratio, albeit moderate, is not zero.