Muhammad Asif Kamran

Phytoremediation strategies for soils contaminated with heavy metals: Modifications and future perspectives

Presence of heavy metals in agricultural soils is of major environmental concern and a great threat to life on the earth. A number of human health risks are associated with heavy metals regarding their entry into food chain. Various physical, chemical and biological techniques are being used to remove heavy metals and metalloids from soils. Among them, phytoremediation is a good strategy to harvest heavy metals from soils and have been proven as an effective and economical technique. In present review, we discussed various sources and harmful effects of some important heavy metals and metalloids, traditional phytoremediation strategies, mechanisms involved in phytoremediation of these metals, limitations and some recent advances in phytoremediation approaches. Since traditional phytoremediation approach poses some limitations regarding their applications at large scale, so there is a dire need to modify this strategy using modern chemical, biological and genetic engineering tools. In view of above, the present manuscript brings both traditional and advanced phytoremediation techniques together in order to compare, understand and apply these strategies effectively to exclude heavy metals from soil keeping in view the economics and effectiveness of phytoremediation strategies.

Comparative institutional analysis of customary rights and colonial law in spate irrigation systems of Pakistani Punjab

This paper investigates how political processes shape the institutional arrangements and affect the rules-in-use and performance of small-scale tribal and state-administered irrigation systems in Pakistan’s Punjab region using the ADICO institutional grammar proposed by Crawford and Ostrom. Externally crafted rules failed to fully incorporate context-specific needs and enforceability due to complex and unclear institutional statements as compared to locally evolved customary rules. The formulation and enforceability of policy designs need to be improved for effective management and the institutional grammar needs to be expanded for broader applicability across different linguistic contexts.

Farm risks and uncertainties: Sources, impacts and management

Owing to the variable economic and biophysical environment, agricultural activities are subjected to variety of risks and uncertainties. Our contemporary review of the previous literature distinguished two major types of risk in agriculture. First, business risk which include production, market, institutional and personal risks. Second, financial risks resulting from different methods of financing the farm business. The relative importance of these risk sources may depend on the geographical location, government policies and legislations, the presence of formal (state owned) and/or traditional risk coping tools, type of agricultural product etc. There is a wide array of risk management tools available to the farmers to manage their risks at farm level. The adoption of these risk management strategies are heavily influenced by farmers’ risk perceptions their attitude towards risk, farm and farm household characteristics and farmers’ access to publically provided services including agricultural credit and information. An insubstantial proportion of literature also revealed farmers’ behavior of simultaneous adoption of multiple risk coping tools in managing their farm risks and therefore suggesting future studies to investigate farmers’ decisions making process in context of simultaneous adoption of the available risk coping tools.

Social Networking Sites Shaping Behavior

Abstract User behaviors on Social Networking Sites (SNSs) are being studied largely in terms of intention touse. By employing Technology Adoption Model (TAM), the relation between user behavior and actual use of SNScan be investigated. To investigate the effect of characteristics associated with human behavior on the actual useof SNS by focusing on users having background in Computer Science, a framework was constructed by employingTAM along with external variables. Moreover, hypotheses were formed and evaluation was carried out by conductingstatistical analysis. The results concluded that social influence, perceived control and hedonism are the elementsfound to be positively associated with the SNS use. Additionally, the construct of disclosure was found to benegatively associated with the SNS use that represents user resistance for information sharing. It was also foundthat privacy is the only concern common in users having a background in computer science.

Institutional response to external disturbances in spate irrigation systems of Punjab, Pakistan

Social ecological systems (SESs) - spate irrigation system in our case - operate under an environment of stress due to several external and contextual factors. Spate irrigation systems are more complex due to uncertain flows and can exhibit unexpected changes due to novel shocks. Therefore, actions directed at enhancing robustness to a particular set of disturbances can trigger changes in ecological dynamics that may, in turn, alter the set of disturbances faced by irrigators. This paper looks on the institutional change and resulting water rights and operational rules-in-use in such a context in spate irrigation systems in Punjab province. The sustainability framework (Anderies et al., 2004) has been used for analysis of entities involved in case studies of SESs. The study has important policy implications about how the institutional arrangements imposed from external agencies fail to address new disturbance regimes as the mechanisms remain in place for longer time horizons.