Progress Under Scrutiny: Poverty Reduction in Pakistan

Consumption-based poverty in Pakistan fell sharply between 1990 and 2010, according to official poverty data. Nonetheless the mainstream narrative on poverty reduction in the country remains highly contested. Key sources of evidence show improvements that are commensurate with a decrease in poverty, while others raise doubts over this decrease. The policy space in which poverty reduction is debated is also highly polarised, as revealed in the positions of multiple stakeholders involved in policy, research and civil society in Pakistan. An analysis of official poverty data shows how the estimates may be biased -- both owing to technical flaws and to the politics of measurement. As a result, it is surprisingly difficult to reach a definitive conclusion as to whether poverty reduced between 1990 and 2010 and if the stated progress is real. We discuss the implications of the high levels of contestation over official poverty data as well as the need to understand better the types of evidence that the government must produce to defend its policies to alleviate poverty, and for key stakeholders to accept these as credible. We also discuss the steps that the country is taking to depoliticise the measurement and analysis of poverty -- in and of themselves signs of progress

CAFÉ-Map : context aware feature mapping for mining high dimensional biomedical data

Feature selection and ranking is of great importance in the analysis of biomedical data. In addition to reducing the number of features used in classification or other machine learning tasks, it allows us to extract meaningful biological and medical information from a machine learning model. Most existing approaches in this domain do not directly model the fact that the relative importance of features can be different in different regions of the feature space. In this work, we present a context aware feature ranking algorithm called CAFÉ-Map. CAFÉ-Map is a locally linear feature ranking framework that allows recognition of important features in any given region of the feature space or for any individual example. This allows for simultaneous classification and feature ranking in an interpretable manner. We have benchmarked CAFÉ-Map on a number of toy and real world biomedical data sets. Our comparative study with a number of published methods shows that CAFÉ-Map achieves better accuracies on these data sets. The top ranking features obtained through CAFÉ-Map in a gene profiling study correlate very well with the importance of different genes reported in the literature. Furthermore, CAFÉ-Map provides a more in-depth analysis of feature ranking at the level of individual examples

Academic Stress Levels in Annual & Semester System: A Cross-Sectional Comparative Study on Students of Physiotherapy in Lahore, Pakistan

Physical Therapy in Pakistan has not yet been considered amongst the reputed professions due to the lack of awareness among the public. This being the very reason of the higher stress among the students studying physiotherapy is kept under consideration in this study. The main purpose of this study was to determine if the students of Annual system endure stress levels higher than those of Semester system. Also the aim was to determine which assessment system was more conducive for an effective learning & to acknowledge the major stressors among the DPT students along with their coping strategies. This study was a Comparative Cross-Sectional Study conducted in duration of 8 months. Data was collected from both male and female students of DPT who had completed 50% of their credit hours of the curriculum. The sample size calculated was found to be 343 (n=343). Exposure assessment included the International Stress Questionnaire which is most commonly used instrument for the evaluation of stress levels among students. The International Stress Questionnaire was administered into a group of 70 students from Public and Private Institutes for validation purpose. Thus 560 questionnaires were distributed among students amongst which only 384 were fully completed and thus included for the statistical analysis. Mean age of the students was found to be 21±1.34 years. Amongst 384 students, 292 were females and 92 were males.190 students were from Annual system i.e. Pass/Fail system and 194 had GPA system as their assessment system. Interpretations were done according to the standard way i.e. a score of 4 or less was supposed to be mild, 5-13 was moderate and 14 or more was severe. Amongst those from Annual system, 17 had mild, 139 had moderate and 34 had severe stress. Amongst 194 students from GPA system, 122 had mild and 72 had moderate stress whereas none of those reported to fall in the category of severe stress. Independent t test was applied to identify if there were significant differences between the two groups and the p value was found to be 0.00 i.e. highly significant. A forum should be developed to register all the students enrolled in Doctor of Physiotherapy every year encompassing all Institutes to prevent the biasness due to non-probability sampling method used to recruit sample

Prevalence of Helicobacter pylori infections in patients visiting to gestroenterology department Rehman Medical Institute Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Gastritis and peptic ulcer is common worldwide as well in Pakistan. H. pylori is causative agent and can survive in acidic medium like stomach. H. pylori is unique bacteria that capable to cause stomach cancer. The objective of present study was to report the prevalence of Helicobacter pylori infections in patients visiting to Rehman Medical Institute Peshawar. In the present descriptive cross-sectional study, a total number of 150 patients visiting to Gastroenterology Department Rehman Medical Institute Peshawar were gone through H. pylori screening test by Immunochromatography (BD ICT) method and test was performed to find out prevalence of Helicobacter pylori infection in patients visiting to Gastroenterology Department Rehman Medical Institute Peshawar. Data was recorded and analysed by SPSS-22 and shown here in the form of tables. Total number of patients was 150, out of them 44 (29.3%) patients were H. pylori positive and 106(70.7%) were H. pylori negative. The prevalence of H. pylori infection is higher in the patients visiting to gastroenterology department of Rehman Medical Institute Peshawar. It is more common in males as compared to female patients. We conclude here that patients of gastroenterology should be screened for H. pylori to cope with treatment & prevention from further complications

Correlation filters for detection of cellular nuclei in histopathology images

Nuclei detection in histology images is an essential part of computer aided diagnosis of cancers and tumors. It is a challenging task due to diverse and complicated structures of cells. In this work, we present an automated technique for detection of cellular nuclei in hematoxylin and eosin stained histopathology images. Our proposed approach is based on kernelized correlation filters. Correlation filters have been widely used in object detection and tracking applications but their strength has not been explored in the medical imaging domain up till now. Our experimental results show that the proposed scheme gives state of the art accuracy and can learn complex nuclear morphologies. Like deep learning approaches, the proposed filters do not require engineering of image features as they can operate directly on histopathology images without significant preprocessing. However, unlike deep learning methods, the large-margin correlation filters developed in this work are interpretable, computationally efficient and do not require specialized or expensive computing hardware. Availability: A cloud based webserver of the proposed method and its python implementation can be accessed at the following URL: http://faculty.pieas.edu.pk/fayyaz/software.html#corehist

Behavioural Response of Whitefly Bemisia tabaci (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) Towards Volatile Organic Compounds Emitted from Eggplant Leaves

The whitefly Bemisia tabaci is considered one of the most destructive insect pests that can attack several vegetable crops worldwide. The behavior of choosing a host plant by whitefly can be significantly influenced by volatile organic compounds. The aim of this investigation is to identify and bioassay the volatile organic compounds emitted from uninfested and infested eggplant leaves with B. tabaci. The current study focuses on the interaction between whitefly and eggplant with the identification of volatile organic compounds emitted from leaves that were collected by headspace solid phase microextraction fiber and gas chromatography mass spectrum analyzed. Both uninfested and infested eggplant leaves released a total of 11 compounds. The amount of volatile organic compounds emitted from affected eggplant leaves by whitefly was higher than from uninfested eggplant leaves. Using a Y-shaped olfactometer bioassay, whitefly preferred to attract toward volatile emitted by eggplant leaves in both uninfested and infested eggplant leaves. Our results suggest these chemical compounds can play a key mediator in host finding behavior. The exploitation of one or more of these compounds can apply in an integrated management program of this pest as a lure in the sticky trap or manipulating insect behavior

Focused abdominal sonography for trauma (FAST) in blunt paediatric abdominal trauma

Objective: To evaluate the role of focussed abdominal sonography for trauma in blunt paediatric abdominal trauma patients, and to see if the role of computed tomography scan could be limited to only those cases in which sonography was positive.Methods: The retrospective study covered 10 years, from January 1,2000 to December 31,2009, and was conducted at the Department of Radiology and Department of Emergency Medicine, Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi. It comprised cases of 174 children from birth to 14 years who had presented with blunt abdominal trauma and had focussed abdominal sonography for trauma done at the hospital. The findings were correlated with computed tomography scan of the abdomen and clinical follow-up. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and accuracy of focussed abdominal sonography for trauma were calculated for blunt abdominal trauma. SPSS 17 was used for statistical analysis.Results: Of the total 174 cases, 31 (17.81%) were later confirmed by abdominal scan. Of these 31 children, sonography had been positive in 29 (93.54%) children. In 21 (67.74%) of the 31 children, sonograpy had been true positive; 8 (25%) (8/31) were false positive; and 2 (6%) (2/31) were false negative. There were 6 (19.3%) children in which sonography was positive and converted to laparotomy. There was no significant difference on account of gender (p\u3e0.356). Focussed abdominal sonography for trauma in the study had sensitivity of 91%, specificity of 95%, positive predictive value of 73%, and negative predictive value of 73% with accuracy of 94%. All patients who had negative sonography were discharged later, and had no complication on clinical follow-up.Conclusions: Focussed abdominal sonography for trauma is a fairly reliable mode to assess blunt abdominal trauma in children. It is a useful tool to pick high-grade solid and hollow viscous injury. The results suggest that the role of computed tomography scan can be limited to those cases in which focussed sonography is positive

Production of Remedial Proteins through Genetically Modified Bacteria

Recombinant DNA technology has created biological organisms with advanced genetic sequences and has been extensively used to express multiple genes for therapeutic purposes when expressed in a suitable host. Microbial systems such as prokaryotic bacteria has been successfully utilized as a heterologous systems showing high therapeutic potency for various human diseases. Bioengineered bacteria have been successfully utilized for producing therapeutic proteins, treating infectious diseases, and disease arise due to increasing resistance to antibiotics. Prominently E. colifound to be the most widely used expression system for recombinant therapeutic protein production i.e. hormones, enzymes and antibodies. Besides E. coli, non-pathogenic lactic acid bacteria has also been considered as an excellent candidate for live mucosal vaccine. Likewise, S. typhimuriumhas been deployed as attenuated type of vaccination as well as in treatment strategy of various cancers due to its ability of wide progression in tumors. The present article is a summarized view of the main achievements and current developments in the field of recombinant therapeutics using bacterial strains focusing on their usability in therapeutics and future potential. 

Inovasi Desain Dan Produksi Kain Lurik Pedan untuk Memenuhi Kebutuhan Accesories Interior Perhotelan LAPORAN AKHIR PROGRAM HI-Link Tahun ke-1 dari rencana 3 tahun

Substansi dari kegiatan Hi-link ini bertujuan meningkatkan kinerja produktifitas dan efisiensi yang akhirnya terjadi kenaikan omzet penjualan produk pada industri tenun Lurik pedan CV. Warisan Multi Tenun. Potensi keunikan kain Lurik Pedan tidak sekedar dipasarkan dalam bentuk kain tetapi dimanfaatkan secara maksimal melalui pengembangan inovasi desain Accessories dan pelengkap Hotel sebagai langkah strategis pemasaran yang menjadi core kegiatan ini. Beberapa industri kerajianan yang ada di Kabupaten Klaten ( industry mebel, industry pengecoran logam, industri gerabah, dan accessories interior) disinergiskan untuk lebih memberdayakan orientasi tersebut. Untuk mencapai tujuan tersebut diimplementasikan kegiatan dalam bentuk antara lain : pelatihan, pendampingan, redesign, pengadaan peralatan dan perlengkapan, dan pameran produk. Pelatihan berupa desain dan produksi accessories dan pelengkap hotel, redesign, (redesign meliputi : lay out area workshop dan showroom, fasade , perapian dinding dan interior sign, bak pewarnaan benang, pola lighting , corporate identity), pengadaan alat TTG berupa tungku pemasak benang, ATBM, alat pengering benang, dan perlengkapan display pameran. Kegiatan tersebut di atas akan dialokasi dalam tiga tahun berdasarkan urgensi yang disingkronkan kinerja produksi UKM yang diplot dalam schedule master yang telah disepakati bersama