Appraisal of National Response to Chronic Hepatitis in Pakistan

Chronic hepatitis has emerged as a grave health crisis in Pakistan that is becoming increasingly difficult to control. The national response in the public and private sector is lacking realism, direction and strategy. The aim of the present review was to analyze the efforts directed towards elimination of this menace, outline the challenges and make pragmatic recommendations. We searched PubMed, Google Scholar and Google web search for relevant indexed literature in English using the Mesh terms ‘Chronic Hepatitis’, ‘Pakistan’, ‘Hepatitis B’, ‘Hepatitis C’, ‘Hepatitis prevention’, ‘National hepatitis control’, etc. Rigorous efforts to improve the capacity of the primary healthcare establishments are pivotal to contain further spread of hepatitis B and C infections. Combating quackery, regulating the use of medical sharps and making affordable hepatitis treatment accessible to the masses should be the principal focus of the government. Healthcare delivery units should be equipped to render complete coverage of essential quality hepatitis services in order to curb this menace

Design, Fabrication, and Characterization of Pseudomorphic and Quasi-Pseudomorphic AlGaN Based Deep Ultraviolet Light Emitting Diodes Over Sapphire

III-Nitride based deep ultraviolet (UV) light emitting diodes (LEDs) emitting below 280nm has the potential to replace mercury lamps currently used in the systems for water/air purification, germicidal and medical instruments sterilization applications. However, this potential has not yet been fully realized as the output power, quantum efficiency and lifetime of deep UV-LEDs have been limited by the large number of dislocations in the active region of the devices, arising from the lattice mismatched sapphire substrate, which has been the substrate of choice due to its high transparency to deep UV radiation. To reduce dislocations in the active region of the DUV LEDs grown on sapphire, AlN/AlGaN short period superlattice is usually grown to manage strain and filter the dislocations. However, the growth of these thick superlattice is not only time consuming but it can also cause severe substrate bowing making device fabrication a challenge. An alternative method for reducing the dislocation density in deep UV-LEDs structure is the use of low defect density bulk AlN substrates, which has more than two orders of magnitude low defect density than sapphire/AlN template. In spite of such a lower density of defects, the quantum efficiency values for DUV LEDs on bulk AlN substrate are very similar to that of DUV LEDs on sapphire. This is due to the high absorption coefficient of AlN substrate in the deep UV region; also the high cost and limited availability are important issues. This dissertation focuses on the design, fabrication and characterization of Deep UV LEDs employing the pseudomorphic structure similar to those grown on bulk AlN, in order to keep the active layers crystalline quality very close to that of the underlying AlN/Sapphire template. Other LED designs, with different degree of relaxation of the n-AlGaN current spreading layer were also investigated with the main target of achieving a cost-effective design without compromising the resulting device performance, namely output power and reliability

Cloud Based Intelligent Decision Support System for Disaster Management Using Fuzzy Logic

Field of cloud computing is an emerging field in computer science. Computational intelligence and Decisions Supports Systems (DSS) have to gained concerns as a computing solution to planned and unplanned problems of organizations in order to progress decision-making tasks in a better way. In today era, Disaster management is a big problem. To overcome this problem, a real time computation is required. Cloud computing is a tool to offer promising support to decision support system in a real time environment. In this paper, a fuzzy based decision support system is proposed to meet all the requirements using fuzzy logic inference system

Cloud Based Intelligent Decision Support System for Disaster Management Using Fuzzy Logic

Field of cloud computing is an emerging field in computer science. Computational intelligence and Decision support systems (DSS) have to gain concern as a computing solution to planned and unplanned problems of organizations in order to progress decision-making tasks in a better way. In today era, Disaster management is a big problem. To overcome this problem, a real time computation is required. Cloud computing is a tool to offer promising support to decision support system in a real time environment. In this paper, a fuzzy based decision support system is proposed to meet all the requirements using fuzzy logic inference system

An Efficient Three Step Method For finding the Root Of Non-linear Equation with Accelerated convergence.

We have made an effort to design an accurate numerical strategy to be applied in the vast computing domain of numerical analysis. The purpose of this research is to develop a novel hybrid numerical method for solving a nonlinear equation, That is both quick and computationally cheap, given the demands of today's technological landscape. Sixth-order convergence is demonstrated by combining the classical Newton method, on which this method is largely based, with another two-step third-order iterative process. The effectiveness index for this novel approach is close to 1.4309, and it requires only five evaluations of the functions without a second derivative. The findings are compared to standard practice. The provided technique demonstrates higher performance in terms of computational efficiency, productivity, error estimation, and CPU times. Moreover, its accuracy and performance are tested using a variety of examples from the existing literature. Keywords: efficient scheme, nonlinear application, nonlinear functions, error estimation, computational cost

Prevalence of NAFLD in Healthy and Young Male Individuals

Introduction. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is an important cause of liver disease in adults and the most common cause of liver disease in children (Lavine and Schwimmer 2004). The abnormalities include increased liver fat without inflammation (steatosis) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). NASH may lead to fibrosis, cirrhosis, and ultimately liver failure if it is not treated (Matteoni et al. 1999). The objective of the study is to estimate the magnitude of the problem which will help us to formulate strategies in managing the potentially difficult problem. Materials and Methods. We included 1000 individuals between the ages of 30 and 50 years who came for annual checkup. The patients with other comorbidities like diabetes, ischemic heart disease, chronic liver disease, or renal diseases were excluded from the study. History of alcohol ingestion was also taken; any individual with history of alcohol intake was also excluded. All of them underwent investigations including CBC, LFTs, height and weight. The individuals who were found to have increased ALT (50 to 150 u/L) further underwent investigations including ultrasound of abdomen hepatitis b and c serology RA and ANA antibodies. All the individuals who were found to have viral or autoimmune illness were excluded from the study. The individuals having raised ALT levels and ultrasound evidence of fatty liver were taken. Results. 13.5% of the individuals were found to have NAFLD among those selected for the study. Conclusion. Mass campaign regarding physical and dietary measures needs to be undertaken in general masses regarding the gravity and potential prevention of the disease

Dog Coat Colour Genetics: A Review

Canis lupus familiaris is one of the most beloved pet species with hundreds of world-wide recognized breeds, which can be differentiated from each other by specific morphological, behavioral and adoptive traits. Morphological characteristics of dog breeds get more attention which can be defined mostly by coat color and its texture, and considered to be incredibly lucrative traits in this valued species. Although the genetic foundation of coat color has been well stated in the literature, but still very little is known about the growth pattern, hair length and curly coat trait genes. Skin pigmentation is determined by eumelanin and pheomelanin switching phenomenon which is under the control of Melanocortin 1 Receptor and Agouti Signaling Protein genes. Genetic variations in the genes involved in pigmentation pathway provide basic understanding of melanocortin physiology and evolutionary adaptation of this trait. So in this review, we highlighted, gathered and comprehend the genetic mutations, associated and likely to be associated variants in the genes involved in the coat color and texture trait along with their phenotypes. Moreover, genetic diversity of other associated genes were also pointed out to understand this phenomena in detail along with their genotypes for better understanding the expression and mode of inheritance of this trait for describing dog breeds with more accuracy.Keywords: Dog breeds; Dog color variants; Dog texture genetics; Dog breed differentiation 

A study to assess knowledge and attitude of infertile Kashmiri couples

Background: Infertility is defined as the inability to conceive naturally after one year of regular unprotected sexual intercourse. The chance to conceive depends on multiple factors like the length of sexual intercourse, frequency of coitus and age of couples. This could be due to male as well as female factors and deficiencies.Methods: This is a cross sectional observational study conducted on infertility patients. A fertility questionnaire was designed for both the partners with questions covering knowledge and attitude towards infertility.Results: A total 100 couples were selected in which prevalence of primary and secondary infertility was 72% and 28% respectively. The mean duration of infertility was 3 years. On scoring their level of knowledge, 52% had inadequate knowledge, 44% had moderate knowledge and 4% had adequate knowledge. There was no statistically significant difference in the knowledge in relation to their educational qualification and type of infertility among participants.Conclusions: Infertility is common problem affecting 10-15% of the population. The knowledge about infertility and its risk factors is generally limited among the participants, in spite of their educational status