Silencing SMS: the anatomy of ‘mCurfews’ in India

Vibodh Parthasarathi and Arshad Amanullah contextualise recent curbs on SMS messages in India and argue that such measures question the efficacy of traditional regulatory responses to emergent media technologies

Bullying of medical students in Pakistan: a cross-sectional questionnaire survey.

Background: Several studies from other countries have shown that bullying, harassment, abuse or belittlement are a regular phenomenon faced not only by medical students, but also junior doctors, doctors undertaking research and other healthcare professionals. While research has been carried out on bullying experienced by psychiatrists and psychiatry trainees in Pakistan no such research has been conducted on medical students in this country. Methodology/Principal Findings: We conducted a cross-sectional questionnaire survey on final year medical students in six medical colleges of Pakistan. The response rate was 63%. Fifty-two percent of respondents reported that they had faced bullying or harassment during their medical education, about 28% of them experiencing it once a month or even more frequently. The overwhelming form of bullying had been verbal abuse (57%), while consultants were the most frequent (46%) perpetrators. Students who were slightly older, males, those who reported that their medical college did not have a policy on bullying or harassment, and those who felt that adequate support was not in place at their medical college for bullied individuals, were significantly more likely to have experienced bullying. Conclusion: Bullying or harassment is faced by quite a large proportion of medical students in Pakistan. The most frequent perpetrators of this bullying are consultants. Adoption of a policy against bullying and harassment by medical colleges, and providing avenues of support for students who have been bullied may help reduce this phenomenon, as the presence of these two was associated with decreased likelihood of students reporting having being bullied

Minorities in Indian Urdu News: Ahmadis, Journalistic Practice and Mediated Muslim Identity

A case study of a protest campaign against the Ahmadiyya community in Punjab and its coverage in Urdu language news media of India, this paper locates its narrative at the intersection of media, politics and religion. It seeks to advance the field theory project beyond western media systems by applying it to Indian Urdu news. It demonstrates that the religious field is a neighbouring field of Urdu news and the former wields powerful influence over the latter. Moreover, the religious field with the help of news media uses politics to have its voice heard. The paper specifically reads into the manner in which Urdu dailies covered Majlis Ahrar-e Islam Hind's (a Muslim interest group) protest campaign to cancel Pranab Mukherjee's (then Finance Minister of India) visit to Qadian, Punjab in 2009. He was set to participate in an annual function of the Ahmadis who are a persecuted minority group among Muslims. The protest campaign, with an active support of Urdu dailies, got transformed into a media campaign against the Ahmadis and was successful in getting the Minister's visit cancelled. The paper investigates the dynamics of collaboration between Urdu news and the ulama that made possible transformation of anti-Ahmadi campaign into a media campaign. It attempts to elucidate the uncritical support that Majlis Ahrar-e Islam Hind received from Urdu dailies. For this purpose, it delves into normative structure of Urdu news field and its journalistic practices. It draws attention to their implications for Indian Muslim identity

The role ofc-myc and E2F-1 as negative regulators of terminal myeloid differentiation

Abnormalities in both growth and differentiation appear to be required for leukemogenesis. Hematopoiesis provides an excellent system to dissect the molecular genetics of differentiation and to study genetic lesions which block terminal differentiation. Negative regulators of terminal differentiation are likely to be encoded by genes whose expression is rapidly down-regulated upon induction of differentiation. The role of two such genes, c-myc and E2F-1, during terminal differentiation was examined in murine M1 myeloid leukemic cells. Derivative cell lines of M1 that expressed either c-myc or E2F-1 in a deregulated mode were tested for their response to the differentiation inducer, interleukin-6. Deregulated c-myc blocked terminal differentiation at an intermediate stage and also induced a program of p53-independent apoptosis. Interestingly, this is the first study to attribute a role for c-myc in mediating apoptosis during the physiologically relevant process of differentiation. In order to characterize the molecular machinery underlying the c-myc-mediated apoptosis, advantage was taken of the fact that unlike M1myc cells, M1myb cells, which express deregulated c-myb and are also blocked for terminal differentiation, do not undergo apoptosis when treated with IL-6. A comparision of the differential expression patterns of key gene products in M1myc and M1myb cells revealed that in IL-6-treated M1myc cells, but not in M1myb cells, bcl-2 is down-regulated, p15 is induced and Rb is concomitantly hypophosphorylated. However, further analyses showed that overexpressing bcl-2 in M1myc cells only delayed cell death and preventing Rb hypophosphorylation also did not abrogate apoptosis. The results of this study indicate, therefore, that none of these molecular changes are causal events in the myc-mediated apoptosis during differentiation. The deregulated expression of E2F-1 also blocked differentiation of M1 cells, but at an earlier stage than the c-myc block. M1E2F cells did not undergo apoptosis and continued to proliferate normally even in the presence of induced p15, p16, and Rb hypophosphorylation. Hence, deregulated E2F-1 prevents the terminal differentiation of M1 cells and uncouples the expression of p15, p16, and Rb hypophosphorylation from growth arrest

Factors associated with an increased likelihood of having experienced bullying or harassment: Simple Multiple Logistic Regression Analysis

*<p>Statistically significant at the level of P<0.05</p

Prevalence of antibiotic resistance pattern in shigella isolates procured from pediatric patients at Faisalabad - Pakistan

Shigella infection (shigellosis) is an intestinal disease caused by a shigella isolates belongs to a family Enterobacteriacea. Watery diarrhea, abdominal pain and tenesmus are the prominent symptoms of shigella infection. The present study was designed to determine period prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility of Shigella species recovered from stool specimens obtained from diarrheal paediatric patients under 5 years of age. This cross-sectional study was carried out for a period of six months (Jan to June, 2016). All Shigella isolates were identified based on colony morphology, microscopic characteristics, and biochemical characteristics. After applying Kirby Baur disc diffusion method only 22 (18.96) stool specimens were found positive for Shigella isolates among the 116 stool specimens. The isolates were also found susceptible to Levofloxacin (72.72), Azithromycin (59.09), and Cefotaxime (40.90). However, the said isolates were resistant to Lincomycin (100) and Penicillin-G (100), followed by Amoxicillin (95.45) and Oxacillin (95.45). The chi-square test was used to check the close association among antimicrobial agents used and as highly significant (p-value < 2.2e-16). Based on antimicrobial susceptibility findings, Levofloxacin, Azithromycin and Cefotoxime were found effective for the control of shigellosis. © 2022 Pakistan Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. All rights reserved