The environment and the economy are negatively impacted by conventional energy sources, such as coal, gasoline, and other fossil fuels. Pakistan’s reliance on these resources has resulted in a catastrophic energy crisis. This has driven the government to make critical decisions such as early retail closures, power outages for the industrial sector, and an increase to two days a week vacations. Wind energy, accessible and affordable, will become a viable option for meeting Pakistan’s present and future energy demands. Approximately 3% of Pakistan’s land can produce nearly 132 GW of power with an installed capacity of 5 MW per km2. In this study, four zones (Karachi, Thatta, Badin, and Jamshoro) in Sindh province are assessed for the feasibility of wind energy generation. The installed capacity, generator types, and detailed specifications are provided for each zone. Moreover, the wind mapping of Pakistan is presented considering the four potential zones. The zones are analyzed using annual wind speed and power output considering wind data measured at 50 m height over one year. The higher mean speed is recorded at Jamshoro compared to other zones. The analysis indicates that all four sites are suitable for large-scale wind power generation due to their energy potential.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has stressed the global health system to a significant level, which has not only resulted in high morbidity and mortality but also poses a threat for future pandemics. This situation warrants efforts to develop novel therapeutics to manage SARS-CoV-2 in specific and other emerging viruses in general. This study focuses on SARS-CoV2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) mutations collected from Saudi Arabia and their impact on protein structure and function. The Saudi SARS-CoV-2 RdRp sequences were compared with the reference Wuhan, China RdRp using a variety of computational and biophysics-based approaches. The results revealed that three mutations—A97V, P323I and Y606C—may affect protein stability, and hence the relationship of protein structure to function. The apo wild RdRp is more dynamically stable with compact secondary structure elements compared to the mutants. Further, the wild type showed stable conformational dynamics and interaction network to remdesivir. The net binding energy of wild-type RdRp with remdesivir is -50.76 kcal/mol, which is more stable than the mutants. The findings of the current study might deliver useful information regarding therapeutic development against the mutant RdRp, which may further furnish our understanding of SARS-CoV-2 biology.
Breast cancer is the most often diagnosed cancer in women affecting one in eight at the age of 80 in US. Breast is the most threatening cancer among women which leads to death. Early diagnosis of breast cancer can save their lives which decreases the mortality rate. Mammography is a standard screening method for breast cancer diagnosis that identifies occurrences of breast cancer in women`s at early stages without symptoms. In this study, we employed transfer learning in deep learning to increase the neural network's performance and reduce the false positive rate. In addition, we proposed a pre-trained VGG-19 neural network to extract features of individual microcalcification to predict breast cancer. The proposed method was evaluated on two public databases the CBIS-DDSM and DDSM and achieved 0.98 sensitivities respectively. The proposed method obtained higher sensitivity than other residual neural networks and previous studies.