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This paper investigates the vibration compaction mechanism and evaluates the impact of vibration frequencies on the stability of coarse-grained soil, aiming to optimize the subgrade filling process.

This study examines the vibratory compaction behavior of coarse-grained soils through indoor vibration tests and discrete element simulations. Focusing on angular gravel (breccias) of varying sizes, the simulations were calibrated using parameters such as Young’s modulus, restitution and friction coefficients. The analysis highlights how particle shape influences compaction, revealing mesoscopic mechanisms that drive macroscopic compaction outcomes.

This study investigates the influence of vibration frequency on the compaction behavior of coarse-grained soils using discrete element simulation. By analyzing particle contact and motion, the mesoscopic mechanisms driving compaction are explored. The study establishes a positive linear correlation between contact force anisotropy (Cv) and deformation, demonstrating that higher anisotropy leads to greater structural disruption. Additionally, the increase in sliding contact percentage (SCP) at higher frequencies indicates instability in the skeletal structure, driven by uneven contact force distribution. These findings reveal how frequency-induced stress concentration affects the stability and deformation of the soil skeleton.

This research explores the effect of various vibration frequencies on the compaction behavior of coarse-grained soils, examining microscopic interactions to reveal their impact on soil stability and deformation.

The present research aims to gauge the Information Literacy Skills (ILSs) of the University Library and Information Science Professionals (LISPs) of Pakistan and consider it as a forecaster of improved Research Support Services (RSSs).

The purposive sampling method through a questionnaire was applied and administered (online and offline) to assemble data from LISPs of 219 universities of Pakistan. The questionnaire covered the eight factors of ILSs and four of RSSs.

The regression model illustrates that the predicted variation of ILSs in RSSs is statistically significant. The coefficient of determination (R²) indicates that ILSs predict 70% variance in RSSs. Furthermore, the beta coefficient demonstrates that the input value of “managing findings” toward improved RSSs is moderately high as compared to other factors of ILSs. Therefore, the study concludes that ILSs of LISPs are a prerequisite for their professional growth to improve their RSSs.

The research has discovered the whole levels of ILSs and RSSs of the university LISPs of Pakistan. The study recommends raising the ILSs of LISPs to provide more efficient RSSs.

The purpose of this study is to assess the awareness and preparedness level of the chief librarians (CLs) of the universities of Punjab and the Federal area in Pakistan concerning censorship. The study also aims to identify the preferred sources the respondents use to update their knowledge about censorship.

The research work is based on the survey method. A questionnaire was used to collect data from the CLs of 105 universities. The collected data was analysed descriptively.

The major findings of the study are that there is a dire need to improve the awareness level of the university library CLs regarding censorship. It was also found that a majority of the CLs do have not any formal written policy to handle censorship issues. However, religion was the main cause of censorship in a majority of cases. The study also indicated that social media was the most preferred source CLs use to update their knowledge.

The current study covers only the CLs of universities of Punjab and the Federal area. Therefore, its findings cannot be generalized to all the library professionals of Pakistan.

The study will help to understand the awareness level of CLs about censorship-related issues and provide an opportunity for university authorities to arrange training programs for the CLs to enhance their capabilities to deal with censorship issues.

The study will provide awareness and preparedness status of CLs regarding censorship issues.

Research support services (RSS) is an emerging and popular area in university libraries, whose increasing importance has been well documented since the early 2010s. This study aims to identify the status of RSS provided in the university libraries of Pakistan and to compare the results with relevant international studies. The research also reports on the perception of librarians regarding the application of RSS in Pakistani university libraries.

A quantitative survey was conducted of the chief librarians/head librarians working in the 175 university libraries of Pakistan. A structured questionnaire was designed and pre-tested with national and international research experts, faculty members and library professionals. SPSS was used to calculate descriptive statistics. Results of the study were compared with previous literature from an international perspective.

Results of the study indicated that most of the university libraries are providing basic RSS and that they have good collections of both general and subject-specific works to meet the needs of researchers. Most respondents not only were interested in providing RSS but also emphasized that libraries should upgrade their collection to meet researchers’ requirements. However, results of the study also indicated that there was noticeably less support for both the more advanced and newer research support services.

Because the delivery of RSS enables libraries to help meet a university’s strategic research goals, the findings will be of interest to university library and information science executives, policymakers and administration. The suggested recommendations highlight those service areas which are most in need of improvement.

This research provides an updated perspective on the delivery of research support services by university libraries in Pakistan.

This study aims to explore the personality traits (agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience and neuroticism) of the students. The differences among the personality traits of students toward social networking sites (SNS) usage, benefits and risks are also analyzed.

Two instruments including; BFI scale and self-structured instrument, were administered to collect data. Kruskal–Wallis test was applied to determine the differences between the personality traits of students.

Results revealed that the majority of the students (298) possessed openness to experience, while only 12 possessed extraversion in their personality traits. Moreover, students possessing the extraversion trait use more SNS that impact negatively, while, students of the conscientiousness trait use SNS moderately that impact positively on their health, education and daily routine life. However, students of neuroticism are increasingly more users of SNS without considering the benefits or risks of SNS. Moreover, students having extraversion and conscientiousness traits can more judge the benefits and risks of SNS as compared to other personalities’ students. A significant difference was found among the personality traits of student’s use of SNS and risks while no difference was observed toward SNS benefits.

The findings of this study will help the students studying in different Pakistani universities/institutions to identify their personality traits and reduce the negative effects of SNS.

The main aim of this paper is to evaluate the satisfaction level of researchers with electronic resources as well as the uses, purposes, reasons and problems faced by them in using of these resources in the context of Pakistani Universities.

This paper opted for a quantitative study using a questionnaire for survey. Response rate was 80 per cent and data were analyzed from 261 researchers of two universities of Pakistan. Five-point Likert scale ranked from “Dissatisfied” (5) to “Extremely Satisfied” (1) was used to evaluate the satisfaction level of researchers.

The paper found that mostly researchers were “Very Satisfied” with electronic resources though they faced problems in using of these resources.

Research scholars from Faculty of Arts, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, and Bahauddin Zakariya University of Multan, Punjab, Pakistan, were included in this paper.

This paper advances knowledge about the current status of the use of university library electronic resources, helps librarians in Pakistani university libraries understand the information need of the researchers more specifically, and provides some guidelines for the efficient and effective use of these resources.

This paper fulfils the identified need of researchers and indicates how researchers can utilize electronic resources in a better way.

COVID-19 continues to spread, and cause increasing deaths. Physicians diagnose COVID-19 using not only real-time polymerase chain reaction but also the computed tomography (CT) and chest x-ray (CXR) modalities, depending on the stage of infection. However, with so many patients and so few doctors, it has become difficult to keep abreast of the disease. Deep learning models have been developed in order to assist in this respect, and vision transformers are currently state-of-the-art methods, but most techniques currently focus only on one modality (CXR).

This work aims to leverage the benefits of both CT and CXR to improve COVID-19 diagnosis. This paper studies the differences between using convolutional MobileNetV2, ViT DeiT and Swin Transformer models when training from scratch and pretraining on the MedNIST medical dataset rather than the ImageNet dataset of natural images. The comparison is made by reporting six performance metrics, the Scott–Knott Effect Size Difference, Wilcoxon statistical test and the Borda Count method. We also use the Grad-CAM algorithm to study the model's interpretability. Finally, the model's robustness is tested by evaluating it on Gaussian noised images.

Although pretrained MobileNetV2 was the best model in terms of performance, the best model in terms of performance, interpretability, and robustness to noise is the trained from scratch Swin Transformer using the CXR (accuracy = 93.21 per cent) and CT (accuracy = 94.14 per cent) modalities.

Models compared are pretrained on MedNIST and leverage both the CT and CXR modalities.

The rate of cesarean sections has been rapidly increased in the last few decades in all the developing as well as developed countries. The rate of cesarean sections determined by the World Health Organization has been crossed by many countries, like Brazil, India, China, USA, Australia, etc. Similarly, this rate has also increased in Pakistan. The purpose of this paper is to explore and identify the factors that are responsible for the rising rate of cesarean sections in Pakistan.

These factors are categorized under medical and non-medical factors. The medical factors include the obesity of mother, age of mother, weight of the baby, umbilical cord prolapse, fetal distress, abnormal presentation, dystocia and failure to progress. The non-medical factors include financial incentives of doctors, time convenience for doctors, high tolerance to surgery, patient’s preference toward cesarean section, private hospitals, public hospitals, income status of patients, rural areas, urban areas and the education of patients. To identify the critical factors, data have been collected and a multi-criteria decision-making technique, called Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory, is used.

The result shows that the medical factors that are responsible for the rise in the rate of cesarean sections are umbilical cord prolapse, age of mother and obesity of mother. On the other hand, the non-medical factors that are the reasons for the increase in cesarean sections are the large number of private hospitals and the unethical acts of the doctors in these hospitals, preference of patients, and either the unavailability of doctors or poor conditions of hospitals in rural areas.

Cesarean section is an important surgical intervention and is considered to be very essential in the cases of existing as well as potential medical problems to the mother or the baby. Cesarean section is also performed for non-medical reasons. In Pakistan, the number of private hospitals has increased and these hospitals provide good health care. However, these hospitals do not work under the rules and regulations set by the government. The doctors in private hospitals perform unnecessary cesarean sections in order to fulfill the demands of private hospital’s owners. In addition to this, it is also found that, nowadays, most women prefer to give birth through cesarean section in order to eliminate the pain of normal vaginal delivery.

This purpose of this paper is to clustering Kuwaiti consumers choice of Sharia-complaint financial products and services based on several factors such as religiosity, financial knowledge, customer value, satisfaction, trust, service quality, relationship with service providers and innovation.

The study uses self-organizing maps, a neural network technique, in order to cluster and segment consumers of Sharia-compliant financial products and services in Kuwait. From a marketing perspective, SOM can be viewed as a flexible clustering technique in which different clusters are identified without the rigid traditional statistical assumptions of linearity or normality.

This paper shows that consumers of Sharia-compliant financial products in Kuwait can be clustered into three distinct segments: enthusiasts, laggards and rejectors. The enthusiasts represent the largest cluster with a frequency of around 66 percent, while the Rejectors represent the smallest segment with a frequency of 10 percent.

This paper advances our knowledge about the behavioral aspects of financial consumer choice within a non-traditional Sharia-compliant financial products context.

The aim of this study is to provide an insight to international readers into the perspective of doctoral level research in Pakistan. The factors which led to the start of this program and difficulties encountered in this regard at different universities are discussed.

The study is mainly based on review of the literature. Research theses approved at MPhil and PhD level are evaluated. Some information collected from Library and Information Science (LIS) schools through personal communication is also provided.

The problems that did not allow success in the doctoral programs in LIS were: lack of encouragement by seniors in a real sense; low esteem for indigenous PhD degree in the eyes of fellow professionals; little or no impact of early recipients of the degree on profession; and non‐availability of financial assistance to the prospective candidates. Of the findings mention is made of: no fixed criteria for admission; the research topics do not concern the problems; and absence of proper supervision/guidance resulting in poor quality of thesis in most cases. Suggestions include: formation of a high level committee comprising senior library educators under the Higher Education Commission to work out problems and streamline the process; maintenance of close links with library schools in other countries, particularly in the English speaking world, which are interested in global librarianship.

This paper is the only evaluation of postmaster level LIS education in Pakistan. The findings are useful for planners of LIS education at postmaster level in Pakistan as well as in other developing countries.