A Review on Measuring Digital Trade & E-Commerce as New Economic Statistics Products

The Internet and digitalization are fundamentally changing the way people, businesses and governments interact. This has led to a new phase of globalization underpinned by the movement of data across national borders, changing the nature, patterns and actors in international trade in goods and services. However, despite the growing importance of what is commonly referred to as digital trade, little empirical and internationally comparable information currently exists, inhibiting a full understanding of the scale and policy challenges of digital Trade, which has in turn raised concerns about the capacity of current statistics to fully capture and separate identify this phenomenon. In the other words, in digital trade economy there is a remarkable gaps and many of its statistics are not enough to fulfill the demands. It has been growing in importance, and with it, demands for detailed statistics from a number of policy areas including market access, trade facilitation, opportunities for SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), regulation, competition, digital data flows and privacy has remained yet. Providing an overall review and making practical examples in case of Iran, this study tries to open other insight toward digital trade statistics as a new product of economic statistics. Beside, in this study some of the challenges like informal or semi-informal sectors toward digital trade will be addressed and an analysis on Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conceptual framework and an inventory of current measurement practices on digital trade will be presented. Finally, a case study on economic account new digital trade activity and startup based on the internet platform in Iran will be illustrated to describe the exponential growth rate of these kind of e-commerce in Iran. Producing reliable and accurate official statistics in this case is highly desirable. On the whole, obtained result show that e-commerce has been placed in top up-warding sector of economic growth in recent years in Iran

Association of Serum PSA Levels with Histopathological Pattern of Prostate Lesions

Background: Pathological changes that mainly affect prostate gland are prostatitis, benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and cancerous lesions. Digital rectal examination (DRE), Transrectal Ultrasonography (TUS), and prostate specific antigen (PSA) followed by histopathological examination, are routinely used tests for diagnosis of prostate lesions. The aim of the present study is to determine the role of serum PSA levels in differentially diagnosing the different types of prostate lesions.Material and Methods: This retrospective (observational) study was conducted in Ibn-e-Sina Hospital Multan. Data of 2189 patients who were operated from 2007 to 2017 due to prostatic lesions were included in this analysis. Patients with BPH, prostatitis, prostate carcinoma and Prostatic Intraepithelial Neoplasia (PIN) were grouped according to serum PSA levels (ranging from 0 to >100 ng/ml) into five groups. Frequencies and percentages were calculated for different histopathological findings. Association of PSA levels with different histological patterns was determined with chi-square test with P-value < 0.05 taken as significant difference.Results: Mean age of patients was 62.45+10.64 years. On histopathology, BPH was diagnosed in 1676 (76.56%) patients, prostatitis in 133 (6.07%), carcinoma in 378 (17.26%) and PIN in 02 (0.09%) patients, respectively. Serum PSA levels of 4.01-10 ng/ml were found in 1050 (62.64%) BPH patients and in 59 (44.36%) prostatitis patients. Serum PSA levels of 10.01-20 ng/ml were found in only 40 (2.4%) BPH patients, 47 (35.33%) prostatitis patients, 22 (5.82%) carcinoma patients and in 1 (50.0%) PIN patient. Serum PSA levels of 20.01-100 ng/ml were found in 32 (1.9%) BPH patients, 11 (8.27%) prostatitis patients, 302 (79.89%) carcinoma patients, and in 1 (50.0%) PIN patient. Serum PSA levels of >100 ng/ml were absent in patients with BPH and PIN, and present in 1 (0.75%) prostatitis and 54 (14.28%) carcinoma patients.Conclusion: Benign prostatic hyperplasia was the commonest lesion in our patients (76.56%) with serum PSA levels >10 ng/ml reported in all patients with prostate carcinoma and prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN) patients

Prevalence of syphilis in Pakistani blood donors

Abstract Background: Blood transfusion is one among the common sources for transmission of the infectious diseases. In Pakistan, a country of population about 1.8 billions, blood required for transfusion is approximately 1.5 million bags per year. So, evaluation of the prevalence of syphilis among the blood donors by a retrospective study is important and critical to give a vivid picture of current situation for both the donors involved and medical practitioners.  Method: A questioner was administered and consent was taken before obtaining the blood sample for the syphilis serology from all the blood donors. ARCHITECT syphilis Treponema Pallidum (TP) assay was performed to detect the syphilis.Results: There were 449 (3.1%) confirmed cases found to be syphilis positive out of total 14,352 tested individuals. We found that male population is at far higher risk than female population. Out of 179 females, only 3 (1.6%) were found to be syphilis positive and out of 14173 males, 446 (3.1%) were having syphilis infection.Conclusions: We report high prevalence of syphilis in blood donors which was unexpected as in accordance with the previous studies. This calls for mandatory syphilis screening test of donor before transfusion of blood.  As this high prevalence poses a great risk to public health, we strongly suggest that there should me be more public awareness campaign to fight against this infectious disease

Effect Of Supplementation Of Β-Galacto-Oligosaccharide And Probiotic Mixture On Growth Performance Of Physiologically Stressed Rabbits

This study explored the effects of prebiotic β-Galacto-oligosaccharide (β-GOS) and probiotic supplementation as a nutritional strategy to mitigate stress-induced impacts on growth performance in rabbits. Twenty male rabbits were randomly assigned to four groups: A (negative control, no stress), B (positive control, Dexa-stressed 15 mg/kg [D-S 15], C (D-S 15 + probiotic mixture), and D (D-S 15 + 0.2% β-GOS). Initial body weight did not differ significantly (P > 0.05) among the groups. However, a significant difference (P < 0.05) in weekly body weight was observed from weeks 1 to 12. Body weight increased linearly across all groups, with the final body weight at week 12 being highest in group A (2.32±0.52 g), followed by group C (2.09±0.32 g) and group D (2.01±0.51 g), while group B had the lowest weight (1.87±0.61 g). A significant difference (P < 0.05) in average daily gain was also recorded, with group A showing the highest gain (5.7±0.43 g), while groups C and D showed lower gains (5.3±0.24 g and 5.0±0.61 g, respectively). Group B exhibited the lowest daily gain (4.2±0.17 g). Feed intake followed a similar pattern, with group A having the highest intake at week 12 (126±0.13 g), followed by groups C (124±0.13 g), D (123±0.03 g), and B (116±0.09 g). Feed efficiency was significantly different (P < 0.05), with group A showing the best feed efficiency (4.9±0.14), while group B recorded the poorest efficiency (5.0±0.17). Overall, stress significantly reduced growth performance in rabbits by decreasing body weight gain, feed intake, and feed efficiency, while probiotic and prebiotic β-GOS supplementation improved these parameters, indicating its potential to mitigate the adverse effects of stress

Emergence of resistance to fluoroquinolones and third-generation cephalosporins in Salmonella Typhi in Lahore, Pakistan

Extensively drug-resistant (XDR) Salmonella Typhi has been reported in Sindh province of Pakistan since 2016. The potential for further spread is of serious concern as remaining treatment options are severely limited. We report the phenotypic and genotypic characterization of 27 XDR S. Typhi isolated from patients attending Jinnah Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan. Isolates were identified by biochemical profiling; antimicrobial susceptibility was determined by a modified Kirby-Bauer method. These findings were confirmed using Illumina whole genome nucleotide sequence data. All sequences were compared to the outbreak strain from Southern Pakistan and typed using the S. Typhi genotyping scheme. All isolates were confirmed by a sequence analysis to harbor an IncY plasmid and the CTX-M-15 ceftriaxone resistance determinant. All isolates were of the same genotypic background as the outbreak strain from Sindh province. We report the first emergence of XDR S. Typhi in Punjab province of Pakistan confirmed by whole genome sequencing

HybridEval: An Improved Novel Hybrid Metric for Evaluation of Text Summarization

The present work re-evaluates the evaluation method for text summarization tasks. Two state-of-the-art assessment measures e.g., Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation (ROUGE) and Bilingual Evaluation Understudy (BLEU) are discussed along with their limitations before presenting a novel evaluation metric. The evaluation scores are significantly different because of the length and vocabulary of the sentences, this suggests that the primary restriction is its inability to preserve the semantics and meaning of the sentences and consistent weight distribution over the whole sentence. To address this, the present work organizes the phrases into six different groups and to evaluate “text summarization” problems, a new hybrid approach (HybridEval) is proposed. Our approach uses a weighted sum of cosine scores from InferSent’s SentEval algorithms combined with original scores, achieving high accuracy. HybridEval outperforms existing state-of-the-art models by 10-15% in evaluation scores

Firm performance, corporate governance and executive compensation in Pakistan

yesThis study examines the effects of firm performance and corporate governance on chief executive officer (CEO) compensation in an emerging market, Pakistan. Using a more robust Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation approach for a sample of non-financial firms listed at Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) over the period 2005 to 2012, we find that both current and previous year accounting performance has positive influence on CEO compensation. However, stock market performance does not appear to have a positive impact on executive compensation. We further find that ownership concentration is positively related with CEO compensation, indicating some kind of collusion between management and largest shareholder to get personal benefits. Inconsistent with agency theory, CEO duality appears to have a negative influence, while board size and board independence have no convincing relationship with CEO compensation, indicating board ineffectiveness in reducing CEO entrenchment. The results of dynamic GMM model suggest that CEO pay is highly persistent and takes time to adjust to long-run equilibrium

The CNS Relapse in T-Cell Lymphoma Index Predicts CNS Relapse in Patients With T- And NK-Cell Lymphomas

Little is known about risk factors for central nervous system (CNS) relapse in mature T-cell and natural killer cell neoplasms (MTNKNs). We aimed to describe the clinical epidemiology of CNS relapse in patients with MTNKN and developed the CNS relapse In T-cell lymphoma Index (CITI) to predict patients at the highest risk of CNS relapse. We reviewed data from 135 patients with MTNKN and CNS relapse from 19 North American institutions. After exclusion of leukemic and most cutaneous forms of MTNKNs, patients were pooled with non-CNS relapse control patients from a single institution to create a CNS relapse-enriched training set. Using a complete case analysis (n = 182), including 91 with CNS relapse, we applied a least absolute shrinkage and selection operator Cox regression model to select weighted clinicopathologic variables for the CITI score, which we validated in an external cohort from the Swedish Lymphoma Registry (n = 566). CNS relapse was most frequently observed in patients with peripheral T-cell lymphoma, not otherwise specified (25%). Median time to CNS relapse and median overall survival after CNS relapse were 8.0 and 4.7 months, respectively. We calculated unique CITI risk scores for individual training set patients and stratified them into risk terciles. Validation set patients with low-risk (n = 158) and high-risk (n = 188) CITI scores had a 10-year cumulative risk of CNS relapse of 2.2% and 13.4%, respectively (hazard ratio, 5.24; 95% confidence interval, 1.50-18.26; P = .018). We developed an open-access web-based CITI calculator (https://redcap.link/citicalc) to provide an easy tool for clinical practice. The CITI score is a validated model to predict patients with MTNKN at the highest risk of developing CNS relapse