Journal of Natural Sciences

Editorial Committee

Patron and Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ali

Vice Chancellor, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan

Editor: Prof. Dr. Muhammad Zuber

Dean Sciences, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan

Email: jns@gcuf.edu.pk

Managing Editor: Dr. Farhat Abbas

Department of Environmental Sciences, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan

Email: farhat@gcuf.edu.pk

Chemical Sciences: Dr. Iftikhar Hussain Bukhari

Chair Department of Chemistry, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan

Email: ifti_61@hotmail.com

Environmental, Physical and Earth Sciences: Dr. Shafaqat Ali

Department of Environmental Sciences, Government College University Faisalabad

Email: shafaqataligill@yahoo.com

National Advisory Board

Dr. A. R. Shakoori (School of Biological Sciences, Lahore)
Dr. Sarwar Alam (NIAB, Faisalabad)
Prof. Dr. Shams-u-Din Sheikh (University of Sind, Jamshoro)
Prof. Dr. Afsar Mian (Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi)
Dr. Muhammad Akbar Khan (Department of Zoology) Government College University Faisalabad)
Prof. Dr. Muhammad Arshad (University of Agriculture, Faisalabad)
Prof. Dr. Rai Niaz Ahmad (University of Agriculture, Faisalabad)
Mr. Altaf ur Rehman (Director, Citrus Research Institute, Sargodha)
Dr. Qaiser Mahmood (COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Abbottabad
Dr. Zafar M. Khalid (Director academics National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetics; NIBGE, Faisalabad)
Dr. Ejaz-ul-Islam (National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetics; NIBGE, Faisalabad)

International Advisory Board

Dr. Ali Fares (University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA)
Dr. John W. Gowing (Newcastle University, UK)
Dr. Theodore Radovich (University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA)
Dr. Saeed Bashir (Newcastle University, UK)
Dr. Ghulam N. Lashari (Qassim University, Saudi Arabia)
Dr. Barbara Rasco (Washington State University, USA)
Dr. Gleyn Bledsoe (University of Idaho, USA)
Dr. Azra Meadows (University of Glasgow, UK)
Dr. Peter S Meadows (University of Glasgow, UK)
Dr. Dominique P. Bureau (University of Guelph, Canada)
Dr. Geoff Proffitt (University of Wales, Swansea, UK)
Dr. Grant Vandenberg (University of Laval, Quebec, Canada)
Dr. Guoping Zhang (Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China)
Dr. Feibo Wu (Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China)
Dr. Weijun Zhou (Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China)
Dr. Mohammad Safeeq (Or State University, USA)
Dr. Sanjid K Deb (New Mexico State University, USA)

Business Office:

Dr. Farhat Abbas

Department of Environmental Sciences, Government College University, Faisalabad-38000, Pakistan

Email: farhat@gcuf.edu.pk

Review Process

The Editor will forward the manuscript to the Managing Editors (3 days)
The Managing Editor will conduct a preliminary review to check If the submission follows a set criteria (7 days)
After a preliminary review, the potentially publishable manuscripts will be forwarded to the relevant Subject Editors who will contact reviewers. It may be from potential reviewers or other reviewers (from a list of 3 reviewers provided by the corresponding author) (7 days)
Option to the reviewers to agree or disagree for review (3 days)
Maximum review time request to the agreeing reviewers (4 weeks)
Authors must answer review comments in 4 weeks
Subject Editor will recommend to the Managing Editor for acceptance/rejection of the manuscript. The Editor will issue an acceptance/rejection letter to the corresponding author

Publication charges

The first author will be provided free access to a PDF copy of his article in addition to a complementary hard copy of the journal. Additional hard copies will be available at a minimal charge of Rs. 1000 per copy. All readers would have online access to abstracts of the published articles.

Publication charges for each article will be Rs. 5000 (for all black and white page articles). A coloured page would cost Rs. 1000 to the author(s). Students would get 50% discount provided they are non-gainfully employees. Discount will not be given on color pages.

History of the Journal

Research center Government College University Faisalabad was established in Feb. 2003 under the supervision of the Prof. Dr. Asif Iqbal Khan (VC GCUF) to undertake research in various areas of knowledge. The Journal of Natural Sciences was started by the Center. The objectives of the newly established research center of fields of natural sciences are given below:

To encourage, promote and support all branches of knowledge
To contribute existence crops of knowledge through production of quality research
To hold seminars for the dissemination of research findings
To encourage multidisciplinary studies in the areas of knowledge

Aims and Scope

The Journal of Natural Sciences is devoted to the rapidly emerging fields of natural sciences including food, biological, chemical, physical, and environmental areas. The journal publishes original research (short communications, technical notes, and full length papers), review articles, and book reviews. The Journal features articles on topics such as:

Wildlife and fisheries
Botany
Climate change
Innovative practices in natural sciences
New technology
Sustainable energy use
Soil and water sciences
Hydrology
Agriculture
Food production
Environment

Instruction to Authors

Each manuscript must be accompanied by a statement that it has not been published elsewhere and that it has not been submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyrighted material from other sources and are required to sign an agreement for the transfer of copyright to the publisher. All accepted manuscripts, artwork, and photographs become the property of the publisher.

All parts of the manuscript should be typewritten, double-spaced, with margins of at least one inch on all sides. Number of manuscript pages consecutively throughout the paper. Authors should also supply a shortened version of the title suitable for the running head, not exceeding 50 character spaces. Each article should be summarized in an abstract of not more than 250 words. Avoid abbreviations, diagrams, and reference to the text in the abstract. Authors should also provide 5-7 key words for indexing purposes.

Units of measurement

Authors should adhere to SI (System International) standards. Clarity is of over-riding importance; if you are in any doubt write the units in full, e.g. litre (especially where ‘l’ might be mistaken for the number ‘1’), minute etc. These instructions concerning numbers and units apply equally to the manuscript text to labels on the axes of Figures, and to material in Tables (both column headings and column entries).

Percentage and p.p.m.: In some instances percentages are more familiar than SI units and reading is easier if they are used. The proportions of sand, silt and clay and the carbon content may be expressed as % rather than g kg-1. Parts per million (p.p.m.) must not be used to express concentrations – use the appropriate SI unit e.g. mg kg-1, mg dm-3 etc. However, p.p.m. (or ppm) is the standard unit for chemical shift in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and may be used. For gas concentrations, use µmol mol-1, or µl l-1, instead of p.p.m. or p.p.m.v.; and similarly use nmol mol-1 or nl l-1 instead of p.p.b. or p.p.b.v.”

Time: The SI unit of time is the second (s). However, it is clearly inconvenient for expressing durations of more than a few minutes or hours. Use minutes, hours, days, weeks and years as appropriate; they are not SI units and should be written in full.

Numbers: The integer numbers from 1 to 9 or 10 are spelled out in the text: one, two, …, nine, ten. Larger integers are printed as arabic numerals: 11, 12, …, except at the beginnings of sentences where they are printed as words. So, write, for example, ‘four treatments’ and ’72 plots’ in an experiment. The symbol for the decimal point in this Journal is the full stop and it is printed on the line (.). Real numbers are printed in arabic numerals, again except where they begin sentences, with or without decimal points; e.g. 2.4 m, 3 hours.

Grouping of digits: If a number contains many digits then divide these into groups of three, starting at zero or the decimal point, and separate them by spaces, not commas. For example, write 1 500 000 Pa for the matric suction at wilting point, not 1,500,000 Pa (the later is a currency style). Alternatively, you may write it as 1.5 x 106 Pa, or better as 1500 kPa or 1.5 MPa.

Please do not write ‘1.5 E06′ or ‘1.5*106‘. Note that there is no space between numbers in the range 1000 to 9999. For any number less than 1 and greater than -1 insert 0 before the decimal point. For example, print ‘0.25 1′ and not ‘.25 1′.

Prefixes: The combination of a prefix and a symbol for a unit is regarded as a single symbol and is written with no space between the prefix and the unit; for example, ‘kPa’ and not ‘k Pa’ or ‘kg’ not ‘k g’.

Derived units: A derived unit formed from several basic units is separated into the basic units by spaces; thus metre per second is written m s-1, not ms-1 (ms would be millisecond). For amounts of substance leave a space between the unit and the symbol of the substance, e.g. kg P ha-1, not kgP ha-1, and not kg ha-1 P. Similarly, insert a space between the number and the unit, as 1.5 MPa.

Powers: When a unit is raised to a power, the power refers only to the unit and not to any number preceding it; for example, 2.3 cm3 means 2.3 cubic centimetres, not (2.3 cm)3. Note that, in English, 2 m2 is 2 square metres; 2 m squared means an area 2 m x 2 m, i.e. 4 m2.

Abbreviations should generally only be used if they are widely known, e.g. OC (organic carbon), SOM (soil organic matter), NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance), and should be given in full when they are first used: this includes chemical symbols as with, for example, nitrogen (N). The rule adopted by the Journal is to terminate an abbreviation by a full stop (.) if it is a curtailment of a word (such as ed. for editor). A contraction with the first and last letters intact does not take a full stop (for example, eds for editors). Where an abbreviation, however common, is first used in the text, it must be spelled out in full; for example ‘back-scattered electron scanning images (BESI)’. Avoid starting sentences with an abbreviation.

Statistics: We receive many papers that are weakened by inappropriate and/or mis-used statistical methods. Thus the basic advice is: Present the results of statistical analysis only where appropriate and ensure that the methods of analysis used are appropriate to your purposes. If in any doubt you should take advice from a professional statistician. If the Editors have any concerns, the manuscript will be referred to a statistical panel and this may delay the decision-making process.

The following notes are designed to help you with your analysis.

Design of surveys and experiments For experiments, state the experimental design, taking care to distinguish between replication of plots or samples in the field and replication for determinations in the laboratory. Analyse the data according to the design, and report the results as either tables or graphs of means and their standard errors only. Do not attach letters to estimates to represent the results of multiple range tests (and use these sparingly as they are often meaningless).

Significance Statistical significance is to some extent a matter of personal judgement, and provided you report the standard errors readers can decide for themselves whether your results are significant. It is also a matter of sample size. If you wish to state your judgement then you should do so in the text. Avoid the use of stars in tables to indicate significance. Please also consider carefully the use of the word ‘significant’. This should only be used in a statistical context where the significance of a difference or change can be expressed as a probability.

Correlation and regression Express a linear relation by the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, denoted r. Use regression to express how one variable, the dependent variable, varies in response to change in one or more other predictor variables. Give the regression equation, with standard errors on the coefficients, and the coefficient of determination, R2. Quoting R2 on its own is not acceptable (Webster, 1997). Note that R2 is not necessarily the best way of relating the relationship between measurements; a 1:1 line is very often equally informative.

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) Many authors use ANOVA inappropriately or fail to report the results fully. The latter is also particularly true of so-called multiple-range tests and similar procedures that add little statistical rigour to papers and should be avoided wherever possible. A properly conducted and reported ANOVA is of much greater value. If you carried out such an analysis, then it will greatly improve your paper if you make full use of the output in a table (Webster, 2007).

Principal components analysis (PCA) Many such analyses are described inadequately and have to be returned to authors for improvement. Unless you are thoroughly familiar with PCA, you should study Webster (2001) and/or seek advice from a professional statistician.

Repeated measurements In some investigations, such as field monitoring, studies of leaching and experiments in soil biology, measurements are made non-destructively from the same experimental locations. The data at any one location are then likely to be correlated in time, and the statistical analysis of those data should take into account that possibility. Webster & Payne (2002) describe ways in which that might be done.

Tables Prepare Tables separately from the text and put each on a separate page with its heading and with double spacing if there is room. Make sure that the table heading can be understood without the need for undue reference to the text.

Design your Tables so that they will fit either in a single column of the printed Journal or across two columns. Avoid large Tables that are likely to occupy more than one page. Provide all columns with headings, with the first letter of each heading capitalized.

Values in Tables are pure numbers. The variables to which they refer usually have dimensions, such as mol litre-1 for concentration and g cm-3 for bulk density. The scale of the variable is, therefore, divided by the unit in which it is measured.

The unit should be specified in column headings etc by placing it after a solidus, /, to indicate the division and not, for example by enclosing in parentheses: thus ‘/mol litre-1‘ and ‘/g cm-3‘.

Footnotes to Tables should be referred to by upright, i.e. not italic, superscript letters (a,b, etc.).

The fonts used in Tables and equations must be the same as those in the text. Symbol fonts and styles on graphs and their axes should be the same as used in the text.

Figures and other artwork

Figures Figures should be informative, attractive and readable. Make sure that the caption can be understood without the need for undue reference to the text.

Put each Figure on a separate page. Design them to fit either into a single column of the Journal (83 mm), intermediate width (115 mm), or to span the width of the page (175 mm). Figures will be reduced to approximately half their original size, so prepare them for this reduction.

Lettering should be sans serif, of a size that will be 2-3 mm in height when reduced, either upright or italic to match the Roman or italics in the text. Lines should be thick enough to be at least 0.33 mm in width when reduced, and symbols should be 2-3 mm across when reduced.

Label the axes of graphs with the names of the variables followed by the solidus and the units. Similarly, the axes of graphs must be annotated with the names of the variables followed by the solidus and the units, for example, ‘Concentration /mol litre-1‘. The scales must be annotated correctly with pure numbers. Do not enclose units on tables or figures in parentheses (…).

Give values on any one axis with the same number of decimals, except at the origin which you should label with a plain ‘0’ and no decimal point.

Number each Figure BUT put the captions to the Figures on a separate page.

Authors would have to pay for publishing colour Figures.

Photographs and drawings To be submitted in ‘jpg’ or ‘tif’ formats with at least 300 dpi resolution.

Number each Pictures Put the captions to the Pictures on a separate page.

Authors would have to pay for publishing colour Pictures.

References

Use the following style to list references used in text.

Journals:

Webster, R. 2001. Statistics to support soil research and their presentation. European Journal of Soil Science 52, 331-340.

Webster, R., Payne, P.W. 2002. Analysing repeated measurements in soil monitoring and experimentation. European Journal of Soil Science 53, 1-13.

Ali, S., Zeng, F., Cai, S., Qiu, B., Zhang, G.P. 2011. The interaction of salinity and chromium in the influence of barley growth and oxidative stress. Plant, Soil and Environment 57, 153–159.

Books:

Book reference

Taiz, L., Zeiger, E. 2006. Plant Physiology, 4th edition, Sinauer Associates, Massachusetts

Multiauthored edited book reference

Gorham, J., Jones, R.G.W. 1993. Utilization of Triticeae for Improving Salt Tolerance in Wheat. In: Leith, H., Massoum A.A. (eds.). Towards the: Rationale Use of High Salinity Tolerant Plants. pp: 27–33. Kluwer Academic Publications, The Netherlands

Proceedings:

Ali, S., Hayat, T., Ali, B., Gill, R.A., Jahangir, M.M. 2011. Effect of Copper on growth, root morphology, photosynthesis, physiological parameters, antioxidant enzymes and mineral nutrition in cotton. Abstract published in Proceedings of the ‘5th international Congress of Chemistry and Environment’ held from 27-29 May in Port Dickson, Malaysia, 77.