Suchergebnisse

The catastrophe that the world is now facing in the form of COVID-19, has affected most of the world economies and financial markets as a result of lockdown, travelling restrictions, and social distances. The present study attempted to investigate the effects of COVID-19 on the stock returns of the Pakistan Stock Exchange. The data employed comprises daily prices of Pakistan Stock Exchange, the daily value of exchange rate over the period 01 January 2011 to 30 April 2021, and a dummy variable for COVID-19 which takes 1 for the period during COVID-19 and 0 for the period before. The data were sourced from the Karachi Stock Exchange website, National Institute of Health Sciences Pakistan, and State Bank of Pakistan. We applied the autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (ARCH) and the associate generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic (GARCH) approaches to analyze the impact. Our findings revealed that a negative relationship exists between our variables of interest with mean returns and a positive relationship with the volatility of the KSE-100 index. This implies that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the stock price and increases the volatility of the KSE-100 index, and further affects the financial system. The study recommends that an urgent and powerful response is needed on the part of the government,including strong measures to prevent a severe stock market crash in Pakistan in near future.

Enteric fever is the massive bacterial disease in global and caused by Salmonella typhi. It is known that humans are the only natural host and reservoir for S. typhi. That transmits enteric fever through the fecal-oral route through the ingestion of infected water and food. The prevalence rate is high in South Central and South-East Asian countries recorded as (>100/100,000) cases per year. The aim of designing of the present study, there is no specific epidemiology report present at Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Total of 500 blood samples were collected from patients showing sign and symptoms of enteric fever. Sample collected from different government and private hospitals, medical laboratories, and health organizations from November 2013 to April 2014. Immuno chromatographic technique (ICT) was used for the detection of enteric fever via typhoid test kit. Out of 500 samples, 368 (73.6 %) patients were found serologically negative while 132 (26.4%) were positive. Among the positive samples, 42 (31.8%) were adult samples that included 25 IgM, 12 IgG and 5 both IgM and IgG. Infected children of age 13-15 years were 30 (22.72%) with IgM 19, IgG 8 and both IgM and IgG 3. Thirty-one (31) samples were positive among children of age group 5-12 years with 15 IgM positive, 10 IgG positive and 3 both IgM and IgG positive. Furthermore, 29 (21.96 %) were positive among children of age group 1-4 years. This high incidence of enteric fever among susceptible outdoor patients and laboratories patient show that enteric fever is a serious health problem in Rawalpindi, Islamabad. Preventive measures such as vaccination, maintaining food hygiene and awareness campaign are required in the twin cities of Rawalpindi-Islamabad for the eradication of enteric fever.

Heat stress during reproductive and grain filling phases adversely affects the growth of cereals through reduction in grain's number and size. However, exogenous application of antioxidants, plant growth regulators and osmoprotectants may be helpful to minimize these heat induced yield losses in cereals. This two year study was conducted to evaluate the role of exogenous application of ascorbic acid (AsA), salicylic acid (SA) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) applied through seed priming or foliar spray on biochemical, physiological, morphological and yield related traits, grain yield and quality of late spring sown hybrid maize. The experiment was conducted in the spring season of 2007 and 2008. We observed that application of AsA, SA and H2O2 applied through seed priming or foliar spray improved the physiological, biochemical, morphological and yield related traits, grain yield and grain quality of late spring sown maize in both years. In both years, we observed higher superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and peroxidase (POD) activity in the plants where AsA, SA and H2O2were applied through seed priming or foliar spray than control. Membrane stability index (MSI), relative water contents (RWC), chlorophyll contents, grain yield and grain oil contents were also improved by exogenous application of AsA, SA and H2O2 in both years. Seed priming of AsA, SA and H2O2was equally effective as the foliar application. In conclusion, seed priming with AsA, SA and H2O2 may be opted to lessen the heat induced yield losses in late sown spring hybrid maize. Heat tolerance induced by ASA, SA and H2O2 may be attributed to increase in antioxidant activities and MSI which maintained RWC and chlorophyll contents in maize resulting in better grain yield in heat stress conditions.