Lahore University of Management Sciences

Height estimation plays a crucial role in the planning and assessment of urban development, enabling effective decision-making and evaluation of urban built areas. Accurate estimation of building heights from remote sensing optical imagery poses significant challenges in preserving both the overall structure of complex scenes and the elevation details of the buildings. This paper proposes a novel end-to-end deep learning-based network (Stereoential Net) comprising a multi-scale differential shortcut connection module (MSDSCM) at the decoding end and a modified stereo U-Net (mSUNet). The proposed Stereoential network performs a multi-scale differential decoding features fusion to preserve fine details for improved height estimation using stereo optical imagery. Unlike existing methods, our approach does not use any multi-spectral satellite imagery, instead, it only employs freely available optical imagery, yet it achieves superior performance. We evaluate our proposed network on two benchmark datasets, the IEEE Data Fusion Contest 2018 (DFC2018) dataset and the 42-cities dataset. The 42-cities dataset is comprised of 42 different densely populated cities of China having diverse sets of buildings with varying shapes and sizes. The quantitative and qualitative results reveal that our proposed network outperforms the SOTA algorithms for DFC2018. Our method reduces the root-mean-square error (RMSE) by 0.31 m as compared to state-of-the-art multi-spectral approaches on the 42-cities dataset. The code will be made publically available via the GitHub repository.

Cu2O semiconductor attained much research interest due to excellent electronic and optical response. In this work, Vanadium-doped Cu2O compositions were studied for electronic, thermoelectric, and optical response using density functional theory. The thin films were experimentally fabricated using the chemically derived spin coating method. The X-ray diffraction analysis revealed the growth of crystalline thin films with cubic structure having space-group 224-Pn-3m. The scanning electron micrographs exhibit the uniform grain growth with well-defined grain boundaries for pure Cu2O films. Density of states spectra display the maxima for O-2p and Cu-3d while V-3d states occupied the conduction band. The value of the experimental band gap for pure Cu2O is estimated as 2.02 eV and found to decrease with V-doping. The Seebeck coefficient and specific heat are found to increase with the increment in V-doping content due to thermal fluctuations. A steady increase is observed in real epsilon with the increase in energy and dopant concentration.

The primary purpose of this research is to explain the importance of a significant aspect of a sustainable environment: green packaging. Green packaging has been revealed to have an astounding effect on a sustainable environment. Misuse of carbon products negatively affects the environment and pollutes the surroundings to a great extent, for which one feasible solution is green packaging. The phenomenon has been investigated using two independent variables: green packaging and multi-sensory packaging. Consumer environmental knowledge has been used as a mediating variable, and consumer perception has been used as a moderating variable, whereas the dependent variable is ecological sustainability. Current research is quantitative, and data were collected from 302 FMCG customers through a Self-Administered questionnaire survey. The research approach was deductive, and the nature of the study was explanatory. AMOS software and the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique have been used to test the proposed hypotheses. According to the study's findings, green packaging has a significant and positive effect on environmental sustainability, while multisensory packaging has a negative impact. Consumer perception positively moderates the relationship between green packaging and ecological sustainability. At the same time, consumer environmental knowledge had no mediating effect between green packaging, multi-sensory packaging, and ecological sustainability. This research fills the literature gap, as few studies exist on the relationship between green packaging and

We derive closed‐form solutions of two‐sector renewable natural resource‐based economic growth model using the partial Hamiltonian approach. The partial Hamiltonian approach provides the first integrals of the model under consideration. These first integrals are used to derive two different closed‐form solutions when the elasticity of output is equal to the inverse of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. We also compute the closed‐form solution for the first integral obtained with a constraint on the parameter. We then analyze the balanced growth path and show that all the closed‐form solutions converge to the same constant growth rate. The closed‐form solution constructed with the aid of the partial Hamiltonian approach is cost‐effective and straightforward to deduce optimal growth path.

The quantum singular value transformation (QSVT) algorithm is a general framework to implement most of the known algorithms and provides a way forward for designing new algorithms. In the present work, the impact of noise on the QSVT algorithm is examined for bit flip, phase flip, bit-phase flip, and depolarizing noise models for a small number of qubits. The small number of noisy qubits approximates the currently available noisy quantum computers. For simulation results, the QSVT implementation of the Grover search and quantum phase estimation (QPE) algorithms is considered. These algorithms are among the basic quantum algorithms and form the building blocks of various applications of quantum algorithms. The results showed that the QSVT implementation of the Grover search and QPE algorithms has a consistently worse dependence upon noise than the original implementation for all four noise models. The probability of success of the Grover algorithm and phase measured by the QPE algorithm were found to exponentially depend upon the error probability in the noisy channels but only linearly dependent on the number of qubits.

The present study aims to explore the acquisition order of eight English grammatical inflectional morphemes, i.e. plurals , possessive-s', third person singular, present tenses , past tense-ed, present participle-ing, past participle-en, comparative-er, and superlative-est by young Sindhi ESL (English as second language learners) learners at the high school. The study aimed to test the hypothesis that the high school English learners do not follow the universal order of grammatical morphemes and to investigate the effect of linguistic interference of L1 (Sindhi) in the acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes. The primary instrument used for data collection in this study was written essays. The time gap between first and second samplings was around three months. A mixed methods research design was utilized. The study used an exploratory-descriptive-qualitative methods coupled with a quantitative as per the objectives of the study corresponding to the research questions. A convenience sampling technique was employed to select participants from 10th Grade level. Specifically, the data was analyzed using the Dulay and Burt (1974) scoring method. The statistical tests were utilized to test the null hypothesis. The data confirmed that they indeed do not follow the universal order of grammatical morphemes. There exists the effect of linguistic inference of L1 in the ABOUT THE AUTHOR Abdul Malik Abbasi is a Ph.D. in Linguistics (2016) with a specialization in Experimental Phonetics. The phonetics-phonology interface, speech perception & production, corpus-based approaches, English language teaching to ESL learners. Dr. Malik conducted research in intonational phonology, morphology and the lexical-stress interface; designed speech production experiments; analyzed large audio datasets using computational methods; contributed to technical writing and scientific presentations.

The techno-economic selection of an appropriate light source poses a significant challenge in areas experiencing power and energy crises, such as Pakistan, as electric lamps have become prevalent in domestic, commercial, and industrial settings. The ultimate choice is significantly affected by the conversion efficiencies, efficacies, useful working hours, life cycles, harmonics, and power factors of light lamps. An experimental study has been carried out to measure voltage and current harmonic distortions generated by various commercial fluorescent tubes, compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) and light-emitting diodes (LED) array lamps. The experiments were conducted using the conventional utility Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) source and an autonomous generator set Total Harmonic Distortion (THDv ≤ 2) to observe authentic power losses linked with harmonics. According to the results, the power loss range caused by distorted power factor is (30 to 35%), (1.5 to 28%), and (1% to 5%) for CFL, tube lights, and LED, respectively. The presence of high order harmonics leads to increased power utilization beyond the rated capacity, thereby augmenting the losses. Based on a comprehensive parametric analysis of a wide range of lamps, LED lamps emerge as the optimal choice for power conservation and environmental preservation. This suggests the need for frugality adaptation in conjunction with enhancing machine efficiency, efficient power end-use, and energy conservation practices for the purpose of conserving electricity.

Counterintuitive to the generally prevailing positive view of political skill, we suggest that this social competency also has the potential to foster dysfunctional outcomes for organizations. Drawing insights from moral licensing theory, the study examines a framework that explains how politically skilled employees strategize to fulfill their self-serving objectives through leader-member exchange (LMX) relations. The findings from a multi-source sample of 250 private sector employees supported our proposed framework and demonstrated that political skill is indirectly related to self-serving counterproductive behaviors through LMX, with psychological entitlement as an important boundary condition. The study’s implications, its strengths and limitations, and future research directions are also discussed. JEL Classification: D23

Equitable water allocation in real-world irrigation systems is hampered by supply fluctuations, posing a significant challenge to the goal of promoting fairness among consumers. In this paper, we concern ourselves with the limits of equity achievable for any water allocation scheme across the entire spectrum of water supply conditions. In the process, we develop a typology of canonical water allocation mechanisms that categorizes mechanisms w.r.t. the distribution of fulfilled demand across the users. Adopting specific notions of supply reliability and distribution equity, we derive the theoretical performance limits for all canonical mechanisms and extend the analysis to arbitrary allocation mechanisms. We show that for any value of supply reliability, the best possible equity is realized by mechanisms that uniformly distribute water among users, whereas the worst possible equity is associated with mechanisms that prioritize the demand of some users before allocating water to others. We also show that any intermediate equity level can be realized by adjusting the initial entitlements prior to allocating water to fulfill demands, in an approach we categorize as hybrid allocation. We parameterize the performance boundaries for such allocation schemes based on the fraction of supply allocated to initial entitlements. We discuss how this parameter can serve as a policy tool to balance the goals of equitable water access with other system-level objectives. In the end, we complement the analytical results with numerical simulations of a selected agricultural district from a real-world irrigation system and speculate about the application of our study to large-scale hierarchical systems.

Women LIS researchers in Pakistan have been publishing their research since 1977. This paper provides a bibliometric analysis of the 43 years (1977–2020) of their research. This study conducted a bibliometric analysis of the data collected from four data sources, the Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, LISA, and LISTA, to include the maximum number of scholarly publications by women Pakistani LIS researchers working in Pakistan or abroad. The study findings highlighted an upward trend in publications since 1977. It appears to have gathered momentum after the year 2003. The University of the Punjab was the top-ranked organization in publishing research by woman LIS researchers, and the Department of Information Management at the University of the Punjab was identified as being the most prolific in this regard. The researchers had published over 40% of their research in national journals and the rest in international journals of good repute. Kanwal Ameen led the list of woman researchers with over 100 research publications to her name. The main areas of research were academic libraries, information literacy, and evolving trends in LIS. This is the first research paper highlighting the different dimensions of Pakistani LIS women researchers since they started publishing in 1977. The findings of the study would help future researchers to understand trends and various bibliometric aspects of publications originating from women LIS researchers in Pakistan. The findings could also help LIS researchers and funding organizations in promoting the profession.

This essay examines modern states’ strategic destruction and patronage of Muslim shrines to consolidate majoritarian power. Drawing on Rian Thum’s notion of shrines as “durable sacred geography,” it conceptualizes shrines as active historical agents embedded in expansive transnational networks. Their extensive sacred geography enables shrines to persist as generative fulcrums that sustain meaning by bridging heterogeneous times and spaces despite tumultuous change. Challenging prevalent views of shrines as passive symbols, the essay delineates how the flexible reassembly of tradition across far-reaching networks empowers shrines to endure as pivotal arenas of ritual contestation from the medieval era into modernity. Their astounding continuity relies on mobilizing expansive geographies to creatively reconfigure tradition across eras.

Synergistic interaction between influenza and pneumonia is well established in the literature. In this study, we present a model for the transmission dynamics of co-infection with influenza and pneumococcal pneumonia, with the goal of assessing the effects of influenza co-infection on the transmission of pneumonia. We derive an expression for the basic reproductive number $\mathcal{R}_0 = \max({\mathcal{R}_{f},\mathcal{R}_{p}})$ where $\mathcal{R}_{f}$ and $\mathcal{R}_{p}$ are respectively the reproductive numbers for flu and pneumonia. We show that in the case $\mathcal{R}_{f} \leq 1 \leq \mathcal{R}_{p}$, infection with influenza is driven to extinction while pneumonia is endemic, with the endemic state being globally asymptotically stable. The converse result holds in the case where $\mathcal{R}_{p} \leq 1 \leq \mathcal{R}_{f}$. We also show the existence of the co-infection equilibrium. In this case, we show that the presence of co-infection results in a possible backward bifurcation in the system at $\mathcal{R}_0 = 1$; epidemiologically, this means that the spread of the infection will be harder to control. Numerical simulations are presented to verify the analytic results and gain further insights.

This case is designed for MBA and undergraduate courses, aiming to emphasize the importance of stakeholder management in projects and familiarize participants with effective stakeholder management tools. The scenario revolves around a project involving community revitalization and historic preservation located in Lahore, Pakistan, known as the ‘City of Gardens’. The project area includes significant historical landmarks and charming, close-knit residential neighbourhoods where interconnected communities have lived for generations. The case unfolds through the perspective of Kamran Lashari, the protagonist, who inherits a challenging project burdened by a history of unsuccessful and possibly unmotivated predecessors. This project is facing a multitude of issues, spanning technical and managerial aspects. Its success is critical not only for its own sake but also because it sets the precedent for a series of ambitious community revitalization projects planned within the City of Gardens. Failure here could jeopardize future projects, strain relations with donors and permanently alienate the local community. The local community has harboured scepticism towards such endeavours, given their prior experiences with half-hearted attempts that brought inconvenience without any lasting benefits. These past efforts have left a bitter taste, making the community wary of new initiatives. Additionally, the project relies heavily on its partnership with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which provides invaluable technical support without substantial financial compensation. However, in Kamran Lashari’s inherited situation, this crucial partnership appears to be in shambles. In the classroom setting, students are encouraged to delve into a systematic analysis of the project’s extensive array of stakeholders, each with their own unique interests. This case provides an ideal backdrop for examining various stakeholder analysis frameworks, including the Warees Framework, Donaldson and Preston’s (1995) theory distinguishing between influencers and stakeholders based on power, legitimacy and urgency, as well as the power-support matrix. These frameworks offer valuable tools for dissecting and understanding the complex web of relationships and interests involved in this high-stakes project.