A Study of Stress Factors and Their Impact on Students’ Academic Performance at University Level

The main emphasis of the study is on the academic performance and the stress management in applied science among the students of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Sindh University Campus Dadu. What is the level of stress on the academic success of the students? How does it affect their lifestyle and health? This is what the research study covers to counteract the general stress among the students. The purpose of the study is to inquire and bring light to measure and check the present stress among students of the university. While doing the research a quantitative method was applied for collecting and analyzing the data. The Questionnaires were distributed among different students for this purpose. Innumerable factors of stress were found in the results and the factors were grouped in four categories which are; -Environmental Factors, Academic Factors, and Personal Factors. In environmental factors, the stress was about the happening the fate in the future. The students were found worried about future that what would happen about their fate? How it will happen? What is about to happen? When they came into contact with the new people it raised their stress. Also the class workload was the main reason for the stress among the students regarding academic factors. When the students were experiencing the workload of the class the group of the students came under stress. The last factor was a personal factor which was mainly due to the financial problem among the students. The stress of all categories can be managed through stress management courses and doing different extracurricular activities which will help to divert the attention of the students on different occasions. This study has drawn significant conclusions and Suggests further measures for practitioners which could help other to manage stress. The limitations are also mentioned so that those who are conducting research for the similar cases can extract better results and ways of curbing stress. A survey questionnaire was designed to collect the response from students, the five-point Likert scale was used from strongly agree to strongly disagree. SPSS-21 version was used to interpret the results through different quantitative techniques like descriptive, regression, and correlation. ____________

Development and Performance Evaluation of Indigenous Piston Press Briquetting Machine for Crop Residue

Pakistan produces massive amount of crop residue with high bulk volume and low density. This residue is difficult to handle, transport, and store. Only a little amount of energy is recovered from it due to inefficient techniques while remaining is wasted. Farmers often use on site disposal via burning to remove this residue which results in release of enormous amount of harmful gases to the environment due to incomplete combustion. There is need to have modern technologies to convert loose biomass residue into dense, well-shaped product like briquettes that would be easy to burn and sustainable to the environment. Moreover, these energy blocks in the form of briquettes can be utilized in energy extraction systems as an alternative of wood and expensive fossil fuels (crude oil, natural gas and coal). Specially, deployment in electricity power generation plants can provide huge relieve from the energy shortage in the country. The present study shows the development, optimization and performance evaluation of intermediate pressure briquettes forming machine, working on mechanical piston press technology with production capacity ≈300 kg/m3 and produces 85 mm diameter briquettes. To develop it locally available material, technology and man power was used to reduce the cost of machine. Concavity of machine’s die was optimized at 20° tapered. It was optimized based on durability, density and compressible strength of briquettes at 20% moisture content, 9 mm particle size and 300° Cmould (die) temperature using a specific binder ratio i.e. crop residue: slurry: starch = 12:3:1. Comparison of Exhaust gases (CO, CO2, NOx and SO2) analysis of the raw biomass and briquettes showed that burning of briquettes released from 43 to 6 times less toxic gases as compared to their loose straws and conventional solid fuels. Payback period and benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of briquettes formation plant were calculated as eight months and 1.25 respectively.So, economical, environment friendly and good quality solid fuel was produced from crop residue.