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Coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) leaves wide-ranging and catastrophic effects at normal ways of living, has disturbed the global food supply chain, and have a damaging impact on food security as well. Food industry and the government should come together to ensure that the food sector should remain open for consistent and unhindered production of food, so consumers have continued access to safe, healthy, and nutritious food during this pandemic. As the countries combat coronavirus pandemic, the food sector must keep gears of food processing and manufacturing moving on to avoid food shortage in the market. To continue the production and supply of safe food at the sites, the food processing and manufacturing facilities have the same level of health challenges which may pose hurdles to consistently of food production. To prevent such issues and critical situation, the food industry needs to take on specific precautions for site and employees to keep them safe and healthy. By appropriately maintaining the food safety systems and with special consideration to combat coronavirus transmission at premises and among employees can help food facilities to not disrupt the flow of manufactured food products and ingredients including food packaging material. Food facilities should strictly monitor staff health, personnel hygiene, and appropriate use of personnel protective equipment at the site entrance and during working and should adopt restrictive visitor policies including suppliers and contractors. Cleaning and disinfection of frequent and high touch points with approved chemicals and sanitizers with defined frequencies and practicing social distances and employee optimization during shifts can be helpful to prevent the spread of coronavirus. The management should limit their visits to the site and monitor the activities by CCTV cameras and food safety audits can be conducted with the use of remote auditing tools. Finally, the facilities should be vigilant to monitor the temperature of staff, employees and visitors, supplier, or contractor to identify if there may any sick person to avoid further spread of coronavirus and shall report to concerned health authorities if anyone symptoms matching with COVID-19.

The hexose monophosphate (HMP) shunt acts as an essential component of cellular metabolism in maintaining carbon homeostasis. The HMP shunt comprises two phases viz. oxidative and nonoxidative, which provide different intermediates for the synthesis of biomolecules like nucleotides, DNA, RNA, amino acids, and so forth; reducing molecules for anabolism and detoxifying the reactive oxygen species during oxidative stress. The HMP shunt is significantly important in the liver, adipose tissue, erythrocytes, adrenal glands, lactating mammary glands and testes. We have researched the articles related to the HMP pathway, its metabolites and disorders related to its metabolic abnormalities. The literature for this paper was taken typically from a personal database, the Cochrane database of systemic reviews, PubMed publications, biochemistry textbooks, and electronic journals uptil date on the hexose monophosphate shunt. The HMP shunt is a tightly controlled metabolic pathway, which is also interconnected with other metabolic pathways in the body like glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, and glucuronic acid depending upon the metabolic needs of the body and depending upon the biochemical demand. The HMP shunt plays a significant role in NADPH2 formation and in pentose sugars that are biosynthetic precursors of nucleic acids and amino acids. Cells can be protected from highly reactive oxygen species by NADPH 2. Deficiency in the hexose monophosphate pathway is linked to numerous disorders. Furthermore, it was also reported that this metabolic pathway could act as a therapeutic target to treat different types of cancers, so treatments at the molecular level could be planned by limiting the synthesis of biomolecules required for proliferating cells provided by the HMP shunt, hence, more experiments still could be carried out to find additional discoveries.

The performance of organic solar cells (OSCs) has been improving steadily over the last few years, owing to the optimization of device fabrication, fine-tuning of morphology, and thin-film processing. Thiophene core containing fused ring-type non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) achieved significant proficiency for highly efficient OSCs. Quantum chemical computations are utilized herein with the motive of suggesting new NIR sensitive, highly efficient low-band gap materials for OSCs. A series of extended conjugated A−π−D−π−A architectured novel fused-ring NFAs (FUIC-1-FUIC-6) containing thieno[2,3-b]thiophene-based donor core are proposed by substituting the end-capped units of synthesized molecule F10IC. Different properties including frontier molecular orbital analysis, density of states analysis, transition density matrix analysis, excitation energy, reorganizational energies of both holes (λ h ) and electrons (λ e ), and open-circuit voltage (V oc ) were performed employing the density functional theory approach. Charge transfer analysis of the best-designed molecule with the donor complex was analyzed to comprehend the efficiency of novel constructed molecules (FUIC-1−FUIC-6) and compared with the reference. End-caped acceptor alteration induces the reduction of the energy gap between HOMO−LUMO (1.88 eV), tunes the energy levels, longer absorption in the visible and near-infrared regions, larger V oc , smaller reorganizational energies, and binding energy values in designed structures (FUIC-1−FUIC-6) in comparison to reference (FUIC). The designed molecules show the best agreement with the PTBT-T donor polymer blend and cause the highest charge from the HOMO to the LUMO orbital. Our findings predicted that thieno[2,3-b] thiophene-based newly designed molecules would be efficient NFAs with outstanding photovoltaic characteristics and can be used in future applications of OSCs.

Introduction: A conducive learning environment is crucial to the effective delivery of curriculum and professional and social development of the students. This cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate students’ perception of the learning environment in private-sector pharmacy institutes of Pakistan. Methods: The overall learning environment and its various aspects were compared between different pharmacy institutes, year of study and gender. Questionnaires, based on the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM) and demographic information, were completed by 527 undergraduate pharmacy students enrolled at six private-sector pharmacy institutes in Pakistan. Participants were selected by convenience sampling and the scores were compared across grouping variables identified via demographic information. Results: The total DREEM score across the sample was 116.10±25.39 (mean ± S.D), indicating an overall positive perception of the learning environment among students of the private-sector pharmacy institutes. Similarly, the sub- scale scores also reflected students’ positive perception of various aspects of the educational environment including learning, teachers, institutional atmosphere, academic self-perception and social self-perception across the sample. Total DREEM score and sub-scale scores were consistent between male and female students and across all years of Pharm. D. programme included in this study. Scores of the individual institutes reflect the prevalence of an overall conducive learning environment in the private-sector pharmacy institutes under study. A comparison of the total DREEM score and sub-scale scores of the individual institutes also reflects that learning environment of a few institutes, as perceived by their respective students, is significantly better than the others. Conclusion: The positive perception held by the students of private-sector pharmacy institutes in Pakistan is suggestive of the existence of a conducive learning environment that is contributory towards students’ learning of professional and social abilities.

Background and objectivesAs a seasonal crop, the government (Pakistan) and the milling industry purchase and store a reasonable quantity of wheat (T. aestivum) annually. After filling in jute/polypropylene bags, the major portion of this wheat is stacked in a room type warehouse under uncontrolled conditions. The aim of this study was to find the impact of the storage period, initial grain moisture, annual temperature variations, relative humidity, and fumigation on rheological changes in wheat stored in a hot steppe climate using the latest approach (mixolab).FindingsDuring this study, the gluten index (GI) (72.4%–97.1%) and falling number (FN) (455–593.1 s) values increased for most of the storage months and showed a strong negative temperature correlation. Significant variability was also noted during the storage period in mixolab behavior and a strong correlation was found with the storage temperature. The starch gelatinization (C3) (1.824–2.063 Nm) and C3‐C2 (1.320–1.583 Nm) increased, while retrogradation (C5) (2.833–2.506 Nm) and cooling setback (C5‐C4) (1.265–0.840 Nm) decreased over most of the month. Pasting properties (C4) showed a mixed pattern during storage (1.7965–1.536 Nm). The GI and FN were positively correlated with C3 and C3‐C2, and negatively correlated with C5‐C4. Fumigation showed significant effect on GI and FN of the grains, while the initial grain moisture (<11%) showed non‐significant impact on most of the rheological characteristics during storage.ConclusionsMost of the rheological characteristics of wheat (GI, FN, and mixolab) changed significantly during the storage period, while the fumigation and initial grain moisture did not show any significant impact.Significance and noveltyThe quality characteristics of stored wheat vary depending on the geographical region. For millers, it will be important to understand these variations to produce a consistent quality flour.

The sample was comprised of 381 PSTs and 302 DTEs from the 12 districts of the province. Quantitative data was collected through specifically designed questionnaires. The data was analyzed by using Mean Score, Chi-Square was used to compare the group frequencies and t-test was used to see the significance difference between the means of both groups. Qualitative data was collected through interviews and analyzed by using NVIVO software version 10. Majority of the PSTs and DTEs agreed that mentoring process helped them out in decreasing the professional stress and helped out in covering the backlogs of unseen days in an educational year. Both groups of respondents were agreed that mentoring process was not helpful in achieving the pre-set targets. Mentoring process may be designed in such a way that it should help the PSTs in managing the activities of absent days. Mentoring process should be designed to help out the PSTs in managing the teaching activities in a realistic ways. Directorate of Staff Development (DSD) should evolve a inclusive mentoring model for implementation of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) activities in different areas of professional development of Primary School Teachers with reference to research, training, monitoring and evaluation.

The current study aimed at the quinoa-wheat composite flour's characterization (including total phenolics, total flavonoids, and antioxidant activity) as well as its effect on dry cake sensory quality. Findings revealed a rise in ash content, fat, protein, and crude fiber of composite-flour (0.56-1.23%, 1.13-1.76%, 10.14-11.02%, and 0.23-1.04%, respectively) with an increase of quinoa flour (5-20%). The addition of quinoa flour to the composite flour enhanced cake texture (0.26-.70 kg), but it also decreased L-value of cake crumb (55. 29-50.73). Total flavonoids (56.44-59.48 mg QE/100 g) and antioxidant activity (4.66-9.76%) increased as quinoa flour was increased, whereas total phenolics (8.68-5.46 mgGAE/g) decreased. By mixing wheat flour with quinoa flour, the nutritional value of wheat flour was increased. During sensory evaluation, the cake made from composite-flour containing 10% quinoa-flour scored the highest overall acceptability. Sensory quality of last two treatments, which included 15% and 20% quinoa flour, was lower. Quinoa seeds had a better nutritional profile than wheat, with higher levels of amino acids, minerals, dietary fibers, and oil. Since wheat is a staple food in Pakistan, adding quinoa-flour would help to reduce malnutrition in Pakistan. Furthermore, no previous research on the suitability of quinoa-wheat flour for dry cake has been conducted on Pakistani wheat flour.