ANALYSIS OF INVISIBLE CHILD LABOUR IN HAYATABAD, PESHAWAR

This study was undertaken in Hayatabad Town, Peshawar. The study investigates socio-economic factors affecting invisible child labour. The study was based on a sample of 95 households and the data were collected in July 2006. The study found that although the wages of working children were small but they contributed significantly to their households’ income. More than half of the working children were not satisfied with their present job and their employers and more than half of working children reported that their employers were harsh with them. The regression results showed that household income, landholdings and parents’ education were significant determinants of invisible child labour in the study area.Invisible child labour, poverty, Hayatabad, Pakistan

Vibration monitoring of rotor bearing system using MFS-lite

Vibrations in rotating machinery are commonly the result of mechanical faults including mass unbalance, coupling misalignment, mechanical looseness etc. Rotating machinery with overhung rotors is very common in industries. Unbalanced rotor and misaligned shafts usually cause excessive machine vibration, generates large forces on bearings and thus reduces the machine life span and may lead to property loss and even loss of human life. Two-plane balancing of overhung rotors is one of the most challenging problem that maintenance engineers may encounter. As a prerequisite, successful diagnosis of unbalanced overhung rotor system must be performed. The vibration signatures of unbalanced overhung rotors with unknown initial conditions are different from those of the systems with centre hung rotors that has been studied in the present work. Experiments were carried out on a Machinery Fault Simulator-Lite (MFS-Lite) for both balanced and unbalanced rotor systems. The data were analysed using the Balance Quest software and efforts were focused on identifying the system characteristic signatures. Further, the results were verified through analytical methods and the results were found to be satisfactory

Virtual reality (VR)-based environmental enrichment in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and mild dementia

Background: Despite an alarming rise in the global prevalence of dementia, the available modalities for improving cognition and mental wellbeing of dementia patients remain limited. Environmental enrichment is an experimental paradigm that has shown promising anti-depressive and memory-enhancing effects in pre-clinical studies. However, its clinical utility has remained limited due to the lack of effective implementation strategies.Objective: The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the usability (tolerability and interactivity) of a long-term virtual reality (VR)- based environmental enrichment training program in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and mild dementia. A secondary objective was to assess the effect of VR-based environmental enrichment on stabilization of cognitive functioning and improvement of mental wellbeing in older adults with MCI and mild dementia.Methods: A total of seven participants (four patients with MCI and three with mild dementia) received biweekly VR-based environmental enrichment over a course of 6 months. The tolerability and interactivity of the participants in the VR training was serially assessed via virtual reality sickness questionnaire (VRSQ) and recording of input-error ratio. Cognitive functioning was assessed through Montreal cognitive assessment (MoCA) before and after the study. Mental wellbeing was assessed through Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well Being Scale (WEMWBS).Results: VR-based environmental enrichment was well-tolerated by the patients with significant decrease in VRSQ scores (p \u3c 0.01) and input-error ratio (p \u3c 0.001) overtime. VR training was also effective in stabilization of MoCA scores over the course of therapy (non-significant difference in the MoCA scores before and after the therapy) and was associated with a trend (p \u3c 0.1) towards improvement in WEMWBS scores between the first and the last assessments. Qualitative observations by the care-givers further corroborated a noticeable improvement in mental wellbeing of patients.Conclusions: This pilot study shows that VR can be a feasible, tolerable, and potentially effective tool in long-term support of older adults with MCI and mild dementia

Improving micro-hardness of stainless steel through powder-mixed electrical discharge machining

Powder-mixed electrical discharge machining (PMEDM) is the technique of using dielectric fluid mixed with various types of powders to improve the machined surface output. The process is fast gaining prominence in electrical discharge machining (EDM) industry. The objective of this investigation is to determine the ability of tantalum carbide (TaC) powder-mixed dielectric fluid to enhance the surface properties of stainless steel material during EDM. The properties of investigated are the micro-hardness and corrosion characteristics of the EDMed surface. Machining was conducted with 25.0g/L concentration of TaC powder in kerosene dielectric fluid. The machining variables used were the peak current, pulse on time and pulse off time. The effects of variables on the micro-hardness of the EDMed surface were determined. Corrosion tests were also conducted on the samples that exhibited higher hardness. Results showed that the EDMed surface was alloyed with elements from the TaC powder. The micro-hardness obtained with PMEDM is about 1,200Hv. This is about 1.5 times obtained without TaC powder in the dielectric fluid. The loss in weight during corrosion test was found to be 0.056 ug/min for PMEDM which was lower than the lowest value of 10.56 ug/min obtained for the EDM without powder dielectric fluid

Employee Training & Development (T&D) in Small Medium Enterprises (SME’s) in Pakistan

Training and development in small medium enterprises is an emerging concept so the organizations should be objective driven to properly take control of their Training and Development (T&D) activities. Increasing competition and globalization means intense competition which requires skilled and trained staff which should be equally competitor of large scale firms. Managers have to work with experts to develop extensive T&D plans to drive the objectives of organization perfectly to save money and work effectively

Digital watermarking : applicability for developing trust in medical imaging workflows state of the art review

Medical images can be intentionally or unintentionally manipulated both within the secure medical system environment and outside, as images are viewed, extracted and transmitted. Many organisations have invested heavily in Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS), which are intended to facilitate data security. However, it is common for images, and records, to be extracted from these for a wide range of accepted practices, such as external second opinion, transmission to another care provider, patient data request, etc. Therefore, confirming trust within medical imaging workflows has become essential. Digital watermarking has been recognised as a promising approach for ensuring the authenticity and integrity of medical images. Authenticity refers to the ability to identify the information origin and prove that the data relates to the right patient. Integrity means the capacity to ensure that the information has not been altered without authorisation. This paper presents a survey of medical images watermarking and offers an evident scene for concerned researchers by analysing the robustness and limitations of various existing approaches. This includes studying the security levels of medical images within PACS system, clarifying the requirements of medical images watermarking and defining the purposes of watermarking approaches when applied to medical images

Knowledge about asthma: A cross-sectional survey in 4 major hospitals of Karachi, Pakistan

Objective: To determine knowledge and misconceptions about asthma among the local population..Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at four tertiary care hospitals; Aga Khan University Hospital, Civil Hospital Karachi, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and Ojha Institute of Chest Diseases, Karachi, from October to November 2016, and comprised hospital attendants. The questionnaire used in the study comprised 26 questions answered with a true, false or not sure answer.SPSS 20 was used for data analysis.Results: There were 400 participants. The overall mean age was 41.2±14.2 years, and 214(53.5%) of the participants were males. Moreover, 75(19%) participants thought that asthma was a psychological disorder while 181(45%) considered it an infectious disease. Nearly 174(43.5%) believed that inhaled medications had significant side effects. Besides, 264(66%) participants considered steam inhalation to be an effective treatment for asthma, 269(67%) thought that patients with asthma should avoid rice in their diet and 167(42%) considered milk as a common trigger.CONCLUSIONS: Participants\u27 knowledge about asthma was poor and misconceptions were common about the condition

Assessment of perceptual distortion boundary through applying reversible watermarking to brain MR images

The digital medical workflow faces many circumstances in which the images can be manipulated during viewing, extracting and exchanging. Reversible and imperceptible watermarking approaches have the potential to enhance trust within the medical imaging pipeline through ensuring the authenticity and integrity of the images to confirm that the changes can be detected and tracked. This study concentrates on the imperceptibility issue. Unlike reversibility, for which an objective assessment can be easily made, imperceptibility is a factor of human cognition that needs to be evaluated within the human context. By defining a perceptual boundary of detecting the modification, this study enables the formation of objective guidelines for the method of data encoding and level of image/pixel modification that translates to a specific watermark magnitude. This study implements a relative Visual Grading Analysis (VGA) evaluation of 117 brain MR images (8 original and 109 watermarked), modified by varying techniques and magnitude of image/pixel modification to determine where this perceptual boundary exists and relate the point at which change becomes noticeable to the objective measures of the image fidelity evaluation. The outcomes of the visual assessment were linked to the images Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) values, thereby identifying the visual degradation threshold. The results suggest that, for watermarking applications, if a watermark is applied to the 512x512 pixel (16 bpp grayscale) images used in the study, a subsequent assessment of PSNR=82dB or greater would mean that there would be no reason to suspect that the watermark would be visually detectable. Keywords: Medical imaging; DICOM; Reversible Watermarking; Imperceptibility; Image Quality; Visual Grading Analysis

Gastric Outlet Obstruction – An Etiological Breakup

To evaluate the etiology of gastricoutlet obstruction in Pakistani population.Methods: In this descriptive study patients withgastric outlet obstruction were included .All patientsincluded in the study received intravenous fluidsand electrolytes to correct dehydration andelectrolyte imbalance. Nasogastric suction withgastric lavage was done. Diagnosis was establishedby UGI endoscopy and biopsy and was supported byCT scan and barium studies where required.Results: The total number of patients was 39 with19 males (48.7%) and 20 females(51.3%). The age ofpatients ranged from 15 years to 70 years. The meanage was 43.41 ±16.57. The most common pathologyleading to gastric outlet obstruction was malignancy,in 21 (53.8%) patients whereas 18 patients (46.2%)had benign disease. Among the malignancies, gastriccarcinoma was the most common disease affecting 14patients (35.9%) and among the benign diseases,caustic injury induced stenosis was the mostcommon, involving 14 patients (35.9%). Pancreaticcarcinoma was found in 3 patients (7.7%) and pepticulcer disease in 4 patients (10.3%).Conclusion: Gastric outlet obstruction is a seriousand difficult to manage problem. Malignancy wasthe most common cause (53.8%) of gastric outletobstruction. Post caustic gastric outlet obstructionhas emerged as the second most common(35.9%)cause. Caustic stricture leading to gastric outletobstruction is emerging as a serious health care issuein developing countries, especially among youngfemales with poor socioeconomic status

Intelligent Information Retrieval from Unstructured Data using Natural Language Processing

Companies and recruitment agencies required to go through tons of Curriculum Vitae every day to find suitable candidates, which is inefficient if done manually by a recruiter. In this paper, an automatic system is proposed for the selection of best candidate.   This proposed model can take out all the vital information from the unstructured curricula vitae and transform them into the structured format. It will also allow recruiters to filter and search for only relevant data within the structured curricula vitae. This proposed model uses different techniques of data extraction, natural language processing and named entity recognition for converting unstructured information into the structured information