Child Well-being and Economic Growth: A Cross Country Analysis

This study investigates the relationship between various indicators of child well-being and economic growth. It groups indicators of child well-being into four key dimensions, namely child health, child education, child nutrition, and child access to water and sanitation. The study uses panel data of 5-year averages for 184 developed and under-developing countries for the period 1960-2020. It employs the mediation/ moderation analysis to examine the conditional direct and indirect effects of our composite measures of child well-being on growth. For estimation, we use the seemingly unrelated regression method for unbalanced panel data as developed by Biorn (2004). Our results show that child health, nutrition and education have a positive impact on economic growth. However, the direct impact of child access to water and sanitation is negative which is conditional on the levels of child health. The findings of this study can help policymakers to understand the role of different aspects of child well-being in building a solid foundation for more equitable and sustainable economic growth in the future

Emotional Intelligence and Marital Adjustment among Professionals of different organizations

The present investigation was conducted to assess the relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Marital Adjustment among professionals of different organizations including doctors, engineers and lecturers. Three hundred (300) professionals (male: 150, female: 150) were selected by convenient sampling technique from different institutions of Lahore, Multan and Faisalabad. The age range of the participants was 30 to 50 years. The Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS by Schutte et al., 1998) and Dyadic adjustment Scale by Spanier (1976) were administered on the participants. Emotional intelligence scores were compared with marital adjustment scores. The Pearson’s product moment correlation and t- test were used for statistical analysis. The results showed that emotional intelligence and marital adjustment were positively correlated and significant. Males showed high marital adjustment than females p<0.01 and females were emotionally intelligent than males as p<0.01 Keywords: Emotional intelligence, marital adjustment, professionals, organization

Big Data Testing Techniques: Taxonomy, Challenges and Future Trends

Big Data is reforming many industrial domains by providing decision support through analyzing large data volumes. Big Data testing aims to ensure that Big Data systems run smoothly and error-free while maintaining the performance and quality of data. However, because of the diversity and complexity of data, testing Big Data is challenging. Though numerous research efforts deal with Big Data testing, a comprehensive review to address testing techniques and challenges of Big Data is not available as yet. Therefore, we have systematically reviewed the Big Data testing techniques evidence occurring in the period 2010-2021. This paper discusses testing data processing by highlighting the techniques used in every processing phase. Furthermore, we discuss the challenges and future directions. Our findings show that diverse functional, non-functional and combined (functional and non-functional) testing techniques have been used to solve specific problems related to Big Data. At the same time, most of the testing challenges have been faced during the MapReduce validation phase. In addition, the combinatorial testing technique is one of the most applied techniques in combination with other techniques (i.e., random testing, mutation testing, input space partitioning and equivalence testing) to find various functional faults through Big Data testing.Comment: 32 page

Emergency Presentation of Abdominal Pain with Unusual Etiology

Abdominal pain has vast differentials and routine etiologies are diagnosed easily. Difficulty arises with uncommon presentation. This is a case of 28 years old lady presenting to emergency department of Holy Family Hospital, Rawalpindi with worsening abdominal pain, vomiting and loose stools over 2 weeks. Routine examination and workup did not help to find any cause. Ultrasound abdomen suspected matted gut loops with enlarged lymph nodes. CECT abdomen confirmed a non-differentiating tissue collection in right iliac fossa. Later diagnosis of complicated gossybioma (retained gauze surrounded by fibrotic tissue with entero-enteric fistula and fecolith in appendix) was confirmed by laparoscopy that was surgically removed. Conclusion: Gossybioma is infrequent but avoidable complication that needs to be considered by surgeon meticulously especially by swab counting, avoiding staff change over during procedure and consideration in follow up visit

Emergency Presentation of Abdominal Pain with Unusual Etiology

Abdominal pain has vast differentials and routine etiologies are diagnosed easily. Difficulty arises with uncommon presentation. This is a case of 28 years old lady presenting to emergency department of Holy Family Hospital, Rawalpindi with worsening abdominal pain, vomiting and loose stools over 2 weeks. Routine examination and workup did not help to find any cause. Ultrasound abdomen suspected matted gut loops with enlarged lymph nodes. CECT abdomen confirmed a non-differentiating tissue collection in right iliac fossa. Later diagnosis of complicated gossybioma (retained gauze surrounded by fibrotic tissue with entero-enteric fistula and fecolith in appendix) was confirmed by laparoscopy that was surgically removed. Conclusion: Gossybioma is infrequent but avoidable complication that needs to be considered by surgeon meticulously especially by swab counting, avoiding staff change over during procedure and consideration in follow up visit

A Sociological Study about the Adoption of Contraception Methods and Their Effects on the Married Females’ Health in Rural Areas of Tehsil Dera Ghazi Khan-Pakistan

Population is growing rapidly & adoption of FP has been neglected by Govt. of Pakistan due to lack of services, awareness and education, traditional believes, employment & misconception. Mostly people think that the use of contraception methods is against the nature and Islam and is also harmful for health. So present study was designed in rural areas of Tehsil Dera Ghazi Khan in 2013 to investigate the knowledge level, adoption of contraception as well as to perceived positive and negative effects of contraception methods on the health of married females in rural community. 160 rural married females were interviewed to find out their demographic features; utilization of contraception and its side effects on their health in tehsil Dera Ghazi Khan. The data was analyzed by using Uni-variate (frequency distribution and percentage) and Bi-variate analysis (Chi square and Gamma Statistics) was carried out. Predominating age categories were <15 and 16-20 years, 45.6% were illiterate, and 55.6% had good mutual understandings. More than one fifth (26.2%) had 1-2 pregnancies, 59.4% had sometimes heard about contraceptive methods while 84.4% had favorable attitude towards adoption of contraception methods. Whereas 58.1% had sometimes used contraceptive methods, 31.9% got information about contraceptive methods from relatives. In adoption of different contraception methods during the life span, respondents reported both types i.e. modern injections (60.6%), spermicides (50.6%), and in traditional methods i.e. withdrawal (6.2%); adoption of herbs (5.7%) and 44.4% had faced positive effects while 19.4% faced negative effects whereas 36.2% of the respondents had both type of effects (positive/ negative) on their health after the adoption of FP methods during reproductive span. Bi-variate analysis showed positive relationship between desired of family size and utilization of contraception, Freedom of decision making vs utilization of contraception methods and mutual understanding of spouse vs adoption of contraception method. There was a need to bring positive change in societal attitude for the utilization of family planning. Keywords: FP Methods, Contraception adoption, effects, Religious opinion, Decision making, Rural Females, Socio-economic statu

Exploration of black boxes of supervised machine learning models: A demonstration on development of predictive heart risk score

Machine learning (ML) often provides applicable high-performance models to facilitate decision-makers in various fields. However, this high performance is achieved at the expense of the interpretability of these models, which has been criticized by practitioners and has become a significant hindrance in their application. Therefore, in highly sensitive decisions, black boxes of ML models are not recommended. We proposed a novel methodology that uses complex supervised ML models and transforms them into simple, interpretable, transparent statistical models. This methodology is like stacking ensemble ML in which the best ML models are used as a base learner to compute relative feature weights. The index of these weights is further used as a single covariate in the simple logistic regression model to estimate the likelihood of an event. We tested this methodology on the primary dataset related to cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), the leading cause of mortalities in recent times. Therefore, early risk assessment is an important dimension that can potentially reduce the burden of CVDs and their related mortality through accurate but interpretable risk prediction models. We developed an artificial neural network and support vector machines based on ML models and transformed them into a simple statistical model and heart risk scores. These simplified models were found transparent, reliable, valid, interpretable, and approximate in predictions. The findings of this study suggest that complex supervised ML models can be efficiently transformed into simple statistical models that can also be validated

Effects of a high-dose 24-h infusion of tranexamic acid on death and thromboembolic events in patients with acute gastrointestinal bleeding (HALT-IT): an international randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

Background: Tranexamic acid reduces surgical bleeding and reduces death due to bleeding in patients with trauma. Meta-analyses of small trials show that tranexamic acid might decrease deaths from gastrointestinal bleeding. We aimed to assess the effects of tranexamic acid in patients with gastrointestinal bleeding. Methods: We did an international, multicentre, randomised, placebo-controlled trial in 164 hospitals in 15 countries. Patients were enrolled if the responsible clinician was uncertain whether to use tranexamic acid, were aged above the minimum age considered an adult in their country (either aged 16 years and older or aged 18 years and older), and had significant (defined as at risk of bleeding to death) upper or lower gastrointestinal bleeding. Patients were randomly assigned by selection of a numbered treatment pack from a box containing eight packs that were identical apart from the pack number. Patients received either a loading dose of 1 g tranexamic acid, which was added to 100 mL infusion bag of 0·9% sodium chloride and infused by slow intravenous injection over 10 min, followed by a maintenance dose of 3 g tranexamic acid added to 1 L of any isotonic intravenous solution and infused at 125 mg/h for 24 h, or placebo (sodium chloride 0·9%). Patients, caregivers, and those assessing outcomes were masked to allocation. The primary outcome was death due to bleeding within 5 days of randomisation; analysis excluded patients who received neither dose of the allocated treatment and those for whom outcome data on death were unavailable. This trial was registered with Current Controlled Trials, ISRCTN11225767, and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT01658124. Findings: Between July 4, 2013, and June 21, 2019, we randomly allocated 12 009 patients to receive tranexamic acid (5994, 49·9%) or matching placebo (6015, 50·1%), of whom 11 952 (99·5%) received the first dose of the allocated treatment. Death due to bleeding within 5 days of randomisation occurred in 222 (4%) of 5956 patients in the tranexamic acid group and in 226 (4%) of 5981 patients in the placebo group (risk ratio [RR] 0·99, 95% CI 0·82–1·18). Arterial thromboembolic events (myocardial infarction or stroke) were similar in the tranexamic acid group and placebo group (42 [0·7%] of 5952 vs 46 [0·8%] of 5977; 0·92; 0·60 to 1·39). Venous thromboembolic events (deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism) were higher in tranexamic acid group than in the placebo group (48 [0·8%] of 5952 vs 26 [0·4%] of 5977; RR 1·85; 95% CI 1·15 to 2·98). Interpretation: We found that tranexamic acid did not reduce death from gastrointestinal bleeding. On the basis of our results, tranexamic acid should not be used for the treatment of gastrointestinal bleeding outside the context of a randomised trial

Changes in Selected Blood Biochemical Components of Industrial Workers Occupationally Exposed to Textile Dyes: A Preliminary Study

Abstract.-Present study was designed to evaluate the effects of chemicals used in textile dyes on the health of occupationally exposed workers. The various blood biochemical parameters of a total of 62 male textile workers (20-45 years of age) involved in the dyeing processes for a period of six months to 20 years and 50 non-industrial workers were compared to assess the health of industrial workers. The levels of acid phosphatase (AP), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) were found to be low while those of aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and albumin were higher in textile industry workers. The changes observed in the blood component did not correlate with the age and job duration. A significant (p≤0.05) depletion in ALP and elevation in ALT was recorded in most of the age groups along with alterations in AP, LDH, AST and globulin. On the other hand significant decrease in AP, ALP, LDH and increase in AST was observed in workers involved in the dying processes for 6-10 years. The present study suggests that occupational exposure to textile dyes causes adverse effects on the health of industrial workers, though these effects are not related to the age or duration of exposure