Effects of city wastewater on the characteristics of wheat with varying doses of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium

Rapidly growing India is not only facing the problem of water scarcity, but also the mismanagement of tremendous amount of wastewater produced every day. Moreover, food sufficiency has also become challenge to feed the ever increasing population leading to excessive use of chemical fertilizers in agriculture. Therefore, the study was carried out in Aligarh City of India on wheat crop (Triticum aestivum L.) var. PBW 343 to check the suitability of city wastewater as a source of irrigation water as well as source of nutrients. Three pot experiments were conducted in the winter season of 2006-2008. In Experiment I, nitrogen (N) at the rate of 0, 40, 80, 120 kg ha-1; Experiment II, phosphorus (P) at the rate of 0, 20, 40, 60 kg ha-1; and in Experiment III, potassium (K) at the rate of 0, 15, 30 and 45 kg ha-1 were applied along with the basal doses under the three levels of water; ground water (GW), 50% wastewater (WW) and 100% WW. Lower fertilizer doses, 80 kg N ha-1, 40 kg P ha-1 and 30 kg K ha-1 together with 100%WW proved optimum in three experiments, respectively, enhancing tiller number plant-1, fresh mass plant-1, dry matter plant-1, leaf area, total chlorophyll content, photosynthetic rate (PN), nitrate reductase (NR) activity, yield parameters (ear number plant-1, length ear-1, spikelet number ear-1, grain number ear-1 and 1000 grain weight), ultimately resulting in improved grain yield as well as grain carbohydrate and protein content as compared to control as well as higher fertilizer doses. Thus wastewater application not only provided stable supply of water, but also saved fresh water and contributed to environmental security. Moreover, it reduced the use of chemical fertilizers without showing any adverse effect on the yield and quality of wheat. Physicochemical characteristics of wastewater along with microbiological and some heavy metals were analyzed, and most of them were within the permissible limits set by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Interventions for improving research productivity in clinical radiology

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of research promotion activities on overall quality and quantity of research output in a clinical department of a teaching tertiary care hospital. Simple research enhancing strategies including regular journal club, research hour, basic research skills training, hiring of research faculty, research awards, and annual research retreat and research board to increase research production were implemented in the Department of Radiology of a teaching hospital in Pakistan. A total of 77 papers were produced by the Department of Radiology before the intervention, which increased to 92 after the introduction of research initiatives. There was a significant increase in the overall proportion of publications in the international journals after the intervention (p \u3c 0.001) with an increasing trend towards indexed journals (p \u3c 0.001). The research enhancing interventions had a positive effect on increasing clinical research output by the Department of Radiology. Such interventions can also be replicated in other clinical departments to increase their research productivity

Clinical radiology research in Pakistan: from evidence to practice

OBJECTIVE: To assess the clinical radiology research productivity in Pakistan by type of publication, sources of funding and name of journals. METHODS: A systematic search strategy using key words related to techniques and type of clinical radiology was carried out to identify various studies published in Indexed (Medline) and non-indexed (Pakmedinet) medical journals. RESULTS: Total of 397 studies were identified out of which 173(43%) from Medline (indexed database) and 220 (57%) from pakmedinet (Indexed and non- indexed database of Pakistan Medical journals). Original articles were 294 (74%) but most of them (68%) were published in non-indexed journals and significantly different from other articles types (case reports, short reports, review articles and letter to editors) (p-value \u3c 0.001). No Randomized Controlled Trial was identified. No research was funded by any formal financial agency. As high as 78% of indexed studies were published by radiology centers of Sind province. Private hospitals having radiology department contributed significantly in indexed journals compared to government hospitals (p-value \u3c 0.001). Majority (74%) of the studies were done by radiologists as compared to other non-radiology clinical colleagues (p-value \u3c 0.001). The most preferred journal for publication was the Journal of Pakistan Medical Association (JPMA; N = 43) followed by Annals of King Edward medical college (Ann KEMC; N = 20). Australasian journal of radiology was the most preferred international journal for publication (Australas Radiol N = 3). No significant difference was found in radiology research production in terms of number of publication from and before the year 2000 (p-value 0.51). CONCLUSION: Clinical radiology research production from Pakistan is low in terms of quality and number. Only few studies reach the standard of publication in international medical journals. There is an urgent need of building the foundation of research programmes in radiology and strengthen research capacity building at facility and health policy level

Angular Kinematics and Physical Fitness Analysis of Tall height and Short Height Javelin Throwers- A Case Study of The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan

This study was designed to compare the physical fitness and angular position of the university level javelin throwers. Eight tall height and (n = 08) short height javelin throwers were selected for data collection. A handgrip dynamometer, stadiometer, and weight balance were used for the measurements of physical fitness. Two video cameras a Kinovea software was utilized for video analysis of the Javelin throws. The selected variables were stature, body mass, standing broad jump, maximum bench press handgrip strength, the javelin throw distance. The angle of knee joint, elbow joints, and stride length was selected variables while performing the javelin throw. An independent t-test was applied to find mean difference among tall and short height javelin thrower. The result showed the distance of javelin throw, handgrip strength, maximum bench press, vertical jump, and standing broad jump of tall height throwers were significantly higher than short height javelin throwers. On the other hand, the tall height throwers were also significantly higher in extension of right elbow, right knee, and stride length than the short height at the time of the javelin release from hand. It was concluded the longer arms, body mass, and angular kinematics of javelin throwers are associated with the better performance. It is suggested the physical fitness would be include in the selection of javelin throw and angular movement of the right knee and elbow focused on training of javelin thrower

Detection and Localization of Firearm Carriers in Complex Scenes for Improved Safety Measures

Detecting firearms and accurately localizing individuals carrying them in images or videos is of paramount importance in security, surveillance, and content customization. However, this task presents significant challenges in complex environments due to clutter and the diverse shapes of firearms. To address this problem, we propose a novel approach that leverages human-firearm interaction information, which provides valuable clues for localizing firearm carriers. Our approach incorporates an attention mechanism that effectively distinguishes humans and firearms from the background by focusing on relevant areas. Additionally, we introduce a saliency-driven locality-preserving constraint to learn essential features while preserving foreground information in the input image. By combining these components, our approach achieves exceptional results on a newly proposed dataset. To handle inputs of varying sizes, we pass paired human-firearm instances with attention masks as channels through a deep network for feature computation, utilizing an adaptive average pooling layer. We extensively evaluate our approach against existing methods in human-object interaction detection and achieve significant results (AP=77.8\%) compared to the baseline approach (AP=63.1\%). This demonstrates the effectiveness of leveraging attention mechanisms and saliency-driven locality preservation for accurate human-firearm interaction detection. Our findings contribute to advancing the fields of security and surveillance, enabling more efficient firearm localization and identification in diverse scenarios.Comment: This paper is accepted in IEEE Transactions on Computational Social System

H. Pylori Fecal Antigen Detection taking endoscopic biopsy as gold standard in Dyspeptic Patients

Introduction: There are several invasive and non-invasive techniques used to diagnose H. pylori infection, each having its own advantages and disadvantages. Invasive methods require biopsy samples from stomach and duodenum and can be tested by various methods such as histology, Rapid urease test (RUT), microbiological culture and Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) whereas non-invasive tests include stool antigen test, serology and Urea breath test Objectives: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of H. Pylori Fecal Antigen Detection taking endoscopic biopsy as gold standard in dyspeptic Patients (18-65 years). Materials & Methods: Descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducting during 30th April 2019 to 30th October 2019 in Gastroenterology Unit, Holy Family Hospital, Rawalpindi. A total of 85 patients irrespective of gender having age 18-65 years having symptoms of dyspepsia were included. Patients having gall stones, celiac disease, pancreatic disease, Diabetes Mellitus, thyroid disease and any other patients on PPI or H2 receptors. Patients with history of alcoholism, diagnosed cases of H. Pylori infection or treatment history of H Pylori. Patients diagnosed for pancreatitis, cholecystitis, Hepatitis B or C Virus positive cases of Chronic Liver Diseases, HIV, malignancy or Ischemic Heart Disease or being pregnant were excluded. H. Pylori on Fecal Antigen Detection and endoscopic biopsy were noted. Results: Fecal Antigen Detection found that 42 were True Positive and 04 were False Positive. Among 39, Fecal Antigen negative patients, 04 (False Negative) had H. Pylori on endoscopic biopsy whereas 35 (True Negative) had no H. Pylori involvement on endoscopic biopsy (p=0.0001). Overall sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and diagnostic accuracy of H. Pylori Fecal Antigen Detection taking endoscopic biopsy as gold standard in dyspeptic Patients was 91.30%, 89.74%, 91.30%, 89.74% and 90.59% respectively. Conclusion: This study concluded that diagnostic accuracy of H. Pylori Fecal Antigen Detection in dyspeptic Patients is quite high. Keywords: helicobacter pylori, Fecal Antigen Detection, endoscopic biopsy.   &nbsp

H. Pylori Fecal Antigen Detection taking endoscopic biopsy as gold standard in Dyspeptic Patients

Introduction: There are several invasive and non-invasive techniques used to diagnose H. pylori infection, each having its own advantages and disadvantages. Invasive methods require biopsy samples from stomach and duodenum and can be tested by various methods such as histology, Rapid urease test (RUT), microbiological culture and Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) whereas non-invasive tests include stool antigen test, serology and Urea breath test Objectives: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of H. Pylori Fecal Antigen Detection taking endoscopic biopsy as gold standard in dyspeptic Patients (18-65 years). Materials & Methods: Descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducting during 30th April 2019 to 30th October 2019 in Gastroenterology Unit, Holy Family Hospital, Rawalpindi. A total of 85 patients irrespective of gender having age 18-65 years having symptoms of dyspepsia were included. Patients having gall stones, celiac disease, pancreatic disease, Diabetes Mellitus, thyroid disease and any other patients on PPI or H2 receptors. Patients with history of alcoholism, diagnosed cases of H. Pylori infection or treatment history of H Pylori. Patients diagnosed for pancreatitis, cholecystitis, Hepatitis B or C Virus positive cases of Chronic Liver Diseases, HIV, malignancy or Ischemic Heart Disease or being pregnant were excluded. H. Pylori on Fecal Antigen Detection and endoscopic biopsy were noted. Results: Fecal Antigen Detection found that 42 were True Positive and 04 were False Positive. Among 39, Fecal Antigen negative patients, 04 (False Negative) had H. Pylori on endoscopic biopsy whereas 35 (True Negative) had no H. Pylori involvement on endoscopic biopsy (p=0.0001). Overall sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and diagnostic accuracy of H. Pylori Fecal Antigen Detection taking endoscopic biopsy as gold standard in dyspeptic Patients was 91.30%, 89.74%, 91.30%, 89.74% and 90.59% respectively. Conclusion: This study concluded that diagnostic accuracy of H. Pylori Fecal Antigen Detection in dyspeptic Patients is quite high. Keywords: helicobacter pylori, Fecal Antigen Detection, endoscopic biopsy.   &nbsp

Carotid artery disease in patients undergoing elective coronary artery bypass surgery

OBJECTIVE: To determine frequency of carotid artery disease in patients undergoing elective coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) using Doppler sonography.STUDY DESIGN: Observational study. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY: Radiology Department, The Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, from January 2005 to September 2008. METHODOLOGY: Patients with known cardiovascular disease waiting for CABG surgery were enrolled for carotid artery Doppler sonography. A predefined data entry form was used for data collection. Coronary angiography findings, carotid artery findings and other associated factors were noted from medical and radiological records. Frequency and pattern of carotid artery disease along with associated risk factors were evaluated. Data was entered and analyzed in SPSS version 15. Pearson chi-square for categorical and independent t test was applied for continuous variables at 95% confidence level. P-value of less than 0.05 were considered significant. RESULTS: A total of 176 patients (85% male, mean age=65 years) undergoing elective coronary artery bypass grafting were evaluated preoperatively for carotid artery disease by neck color Doppler sonography. Twenty percent of patients were found to have advanced carotid artery disease (\u3e 50% stenosis), 6% had critical stenosis (\u3e 75% stenosis) and 3% had complete stenosis. Frequency of atherosclerotic plaques was 50%, more common on right side and more prevalent in common carotid artery. Family background of carotid or coronary artery disease and history of smoking were significantly associated with presence of carotid artery disease (p \u3c 0.05). CONCLUSION: A sizeable proportion of patients undergoing elective coronary artery bypass grafting surgery for coronary artery disease were found to have coexistant carotid artery disease