INVESTIGATION OF THE ROLE OF SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS IN WEB SERVICE QUALITY

Context/Background: Use of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) is crucial to provide the value added services to consumers to achieve their requirements successfully. SLAs also ensure the expected Quality of Service to consumers. Aim: This study investigates how efficient structural representation and management of SLAs can help to ensure the Quality of Service (QoS) in Web services during Web service composition. Method: Existing specifications and structures for SLAs for Web services do not fully formalize and provide support for different automatic and dynamic behavioral aspects needed for QoS calculation. This study addresses the issues on how to formalize and document the structures of SLAs for better service utilization and improved QoS results. The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is extended in this study with addition of an SLAAgent, which helps to automate the QoS calculation using Fuzzy Inference Systems, service discovery, service selection, SLA monitoring and management during service composition with the help of structured SLA documents. Results: The proposed framework improves the ways of how to structure, manage and monitor SLAs during Web service composition to achieve the better Quality of Service effectively and efficiently. Conclusions: To deal with different types of computational requirements the automation of SLAs is a challenge during Web service composition. This study shows the significance of the SLAs for better QoS during composition of services in SOA

RETRACTED: A study of the attitudes of the teacher educators towards secondary school teacher education programme in Pakistan

This article has been retracted at the request of the Author. Please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).Reason: This article was not presented at the 2010 World Conference on Educational Sciences and therefore should not have been included in this issue

Mobile Phone to Youngsters: Necessity or Addiction

This study focuses on exploring the pattern of mobile phone usage among youngsters in Pakistan to delineate the extent of addictive behavior towards its usage. For this purpose questionnaires were used to elicit the responses. University students were selected as population and simple random sampling technique was used. Sample was consisting of 500 students out of which 400 students responded back comprising 80% response rate for this research. Findings of this study revealed that majority respondents are able to have definite priorities between their responsibilities & commitments and their cell phone usage. Very few are those who always exhibit the extreme addictive behaviors and rest is the majority who are not frequently involved in addictive usage patterns. Thus, youngsters use their cell phones under reasonable limits and do not tend towards extreme behaviors leading towards addictive cell phone usage

Evaluation of ‘English for Undergraduates’- a course-book for English Language Teaching at University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan from Teachers' Perspectives

English language course-books are inevitable in English language classes. Teachers often find English language course-books very helpful. The evaluation of English language course-books will make the course-books more effective. This study evaluates ‘English for Undergraduates’- a course-book prescribed for English language classes at University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan (UOSJP). The framework of Alan Cunningsworth (1995) is partially adapted to evaluate the book on the criteria of reading skill, writing skill, representation of culture and the organization of its contents.This research study is exploratory, based on survey research design using quantitative method. This study performs post-use evaluation of ‘English for Undergraduates’ using checklist method. Questionnaire based on adapted criteria checklist is used as a data-collecting instrument. Twenty-seven (27) English language teachers of University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan (UOSJP) are the sample of this study. Data obtained is analyzed through SPSS (version 23.0) and interpreted through descriptive statistics technique. The findings of this study reveal that ‘English for Undergraduate’ meets the low degree of evaluation on the criteria of reading, culture and organization; however, criteria of writing skill meets the moderate degree of evaluation. Keywords: Textbook Textbook Evaluation Criteria for Textbook Evaluation DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/10-22-08 Publication date: November 30th 202

NEUROREGENERATIVE EFFECTS OF D-α-TOCOPHEROL ON THE CRUSHED SCIATIC NERVE OF DIABETIC RATS

ABSTRACTObjective: This present study is designed to explore the neuroregenerative effects of d-α-tocopherol on peripheral nerve in both healthy and diabeticrats.Methods: 24 albino rats were divided into four groups; healthy control, diabetic control, healthy treated, and diabetic treated. Diabetes was inducedby single subcutaneous injection of alloxan (100 mg/kg). Treated groups were administered d-α-tocopherol orally, daily (200 mg/kg) for 3 weeks.Through a mid-thigh incision, sciatic nerve was crushed with Kocher's forceps, and skin wound was closed with absorbable suture. Sciatic functionaland static indices were used to assess the functional recovery in conjunction with histological, histomorphological, and biochemical analyses at theend of 3 weeks.Results: It was noticed that d-α-tocopherol supplementation accelerates functional recovery, enhances the antioxidant levels, and promotes theregeneration and extracellular matrix reorganization of peripheral nerves.Conclusion: It is concluded that the d-α-tocopherol appears to be an optimistic option in the management of peripheral nerve crush injury in bothhealthy and diabetics.Keywords: Antioxidant, d-α-tocopherol, Diabetes, Rats, Regeneration, Sciatic nerve

Postoperative outcome of early appendectomy in patients having appendicular mass by laparoscopic surgery

Objective: To determine the frequency of postoperative outcome of early appendectomy in patients having appendicular mass by laparoscopic surgery.Methodology: It was a descriptive & case series study. Study was conducted in the department of surgery Liaquat University Hospital Jamshoro/Hyderabad, during the time period of Jan 2015 to Dec 2017. Patients were both gender and patients aged between 10-40 years having tender and palpable right iliac fossa mass on clinical examination confirmed on ultrasound abdomen as appendicular mass. Patients with mass in right iliac fossa but with associated features like fixed and immobile mass for more than 1 month, bleeding per rectum, history of weight loss, cardio respiratory diseases like recent myocardial infarction, congestive cardiac failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and renal diseases like glomerulonephritis, nephrotic syndrome and renal failure etc, gynecological and obstetrical diseases in female patients were excluded from the study. The postoperative hospital stay was counted and wound infection was noted.Results: During the study period of one year, total of 73 patients with appendicular mass were included in this study.  The age range 10 to 40 years with mean age ± SD (range) was 25.75±9.2 years. Out of them 46 (63.0%) were male whereas 27(37.0 %) were females During operation we found appendicular abscess in 12(16.43%) cases followed by perforated appendix in   10(13.69%) cases, while during operations we found in adhesions in 15(20.5%) cases and difficulty in localisation of appendix 06 (8.21%) cases. The mean hospital stay + SD (range) was 4.91 +1.65 (3-9 days).  Wound infection was seen in 15(20.5 %) cases.Conclusion: Early appendectomy can be safely performed in appendix mass without any increased risk of mortality and morbidity. The outcome of early surgical management of appendicular lump showed benefits for single hospitalization, shorter hospital stay and lower treatment costs