INDOLEAMINE 2,3 DIOXYGENASE AS AN IMMUNOTHERAPEUTIC TARGET BRINGS A NEW HOPE FOR CANCER PATIENTS

Therapeutic manipulation of immune system in cancer has been an extensive area of research in the field of oncoimmunology. Immunotherapy helps the immune system to combat against cancer. Tumour cells take an edge of immunosuppressive mechanisms and inhibit antitumour immune responses. Indoleamine 2,3 dioxygenase (IDO) is an immunosuppressive enzyme which is involved in tumour immune escape mechanism in various cancers. IDO can degrade the tryptophan into kynurenines and has an ability to enhance the immune tolerance through mammalian target of rapamycin pathway general control nonderepressible 2 (GCN2) pathway and induction of regulatory T (T-regs) cells. IDO-induced T-regs suppress the local immune responses in the tumour microenvironment and promote metastasis. IDO overexpression in various cancers is associated with poor prognosis. Several preclinical and clinical trials have been proceeding and recommend that IDO inhibitor may be an influential tool against a wide range of cancers. IDO inhibitors as adjuvant therapeutic agents may also have clinical implications. Thus, IDO has the potential to be used as an immunotherapeutic target. This review discusses the promising role of IDO in cancer and its implication in immunotherapy.Key words: Breast cancer, colorectal cancer, haematological malignancies, immunotherapy, indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase, pancreatic cancer, prostate cance

An Investigation into Annual Faculty Evaluation Process of EFL Teachers in the Middle East: Challenges for Leadership & Management

This study examined the effectiveness of the Annual Faculty Evaluations Process at an English language centre in the Middle Eastern context. It sought to determine to what extent this evaluation process helped the English language teachers improve their teaching practice. A mixed-method design was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The data were collected via teacher questionnaire & teacher interviews and triangulated via cross examination of the documents pertaining to the teacher evaluation policy and procedures used by the language centre. The findings of this case study revealed that the teachers believe that the process of annual faculty evaluation (AFE) has had a very positive impact on their professional development. However, the AFE process is quite rigid and does not take cultural diversity of the teachers into account. The report makes various recommendation in terms of teacher autonomy as well as participation in the evaluation process and using the three-track evaluation system (Danielson and McGreal, 2000) by the administration

Impact of Health Literacy on Fear of Covid-19, Protective Behavior, and Conspiracy Beliefs: University Students’ Perspective

Health literacy is an essential to respond proactively to pandemic situations like Covid-19. It helps the general public to reduce the spread of infectious diseases, prevent from over-reactions, reduce carelessness, adopt health protective behavior. The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of health literacy on fear of Covid-19, protective behavior, and conspiracy beliefs of university students in Pakistan. A cross-sectional survey using an online questionnaire was conducted at two public sector universities in Punjab with permission. A total of 271 received responses were analyzed by applying both descriptive and inferential statistics in SPSS. The results indicated students\u27 gender had a relationship with their health protective behavior indicating that female students were more likely to adopt health protective behavior as compared to male students. Besides, the students\u27 health literacy did not predict their fear of Covid-19 and conspiracy beliefs. However, the health literacy of university students predicted their health protective behavior which meant that the students with better health literacy likely to adopt health protective behavior related to Covid-19 infection. There was a need for promotion of health literacy related to Covid-19 to fight not only the current pandemic situation but also an infodemic associated with it. These results are useful for policymakers, health professionals, university and library administration for promoting health and creating awareness related to Covid-19 pandemic. It would also be helpful in developing useful directions for health literacy programs promoting health education and protective behavior to avoid and management Covid-19 infection. This research would make a worthy addition to existing research on health literacy as limited empirical studies have been conducted so far

The Costs and Benefits of Alternative Development Patterns: A Paradigm of Two Universities

Cities are places where innovation, invention, technological and knowledge spillovers occur. However, they are also places where unemployment, crime, pollution, and exploitation of human resources occur. One major problem of cities of today is the low density leapfrog/scattered development pattern that leads to high service provision costs and reduces the welfare of society. This study aims at comparing the cost of smart versus scattered development patterns for Pakistan. Due to data limitations two universities are selected for analysis purpose. On the basis of observational analysis QAU is labeled as leapfrog/scattered whereas COMSATS is categorized as Compact Development. We hypothesize that low density scattered development leads to higher service provision and social costs and compact development can lead to cost savings. The empirical exercise consisted of a randomized survey indicate that COMSATS students have better access to different facilities due to compact development pattern. The ordinal probit model was employed on survey results. Connectivity was found to be significantly associated with walkability though association is not the same as causation. The comparative analysis for service provision cost showed striking cost differential, as QAU spends a lot more than COMSATS to provide basic facilities. The results prove the baseline hypothesis. It is suggested that. QAU should use elements of smart growth like infill development and should make better use of large land endowment rather than it has become a curse. Both universities should work to raise social interaction among students. The real benefits of smart growth lie with the cities, and each city should apply smart growth to achieve cost savings and higher social capital

Teacher Development: An Overview of the Concept and Approaches

Teaching is an on-going professional activity rather than something that can be mastered once and for all through the acquisition of a restricted set of skills. It needs to be refreshed and developed with the passage of time as new ideas and approaches towards teaching and learning are discovered. This emphasises the need of development activities for staff to update and enhance their professional skills. This paper explores the concept of teacher- development giving a comprehensive account of the topic and discusses the teacher appraisal system as its integral part. A review of various approaches is also given to enhance the concept of teacher development. The paper also makes suggestions to implement a teacher development plans taking into account the phases in the successful implementation of change. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n6p14

Implementation of HR Practices in University Teachers of Pakistan

The paper in your hand basically addresses the issue of organizational citizenship behavior in a particular context of Pakistani universities teachers. As education is most neglected area in Pakistan, we want to give better understanding of the concept of OCB. This paper will provide guidelines to researchers, teachers, education sector, and other education related institutions to form such policies which can help to increase the higher education standard. Our sample size is 274 university teachers from both public and private sector, including male and female, age ranges from 25 to 60 and teaching experience ranges from less than one year to 10 years. We have taken different HR practices implemented in universities and we studied their impact on the organizational citizenship behavior with mediating effect of organizational commitment it is found significantly positive from. So, we have concluded that by practicing all these independent variables in an effective and efficient way we can increase organizational commitment and it ultimately positively affect the employee positive and cooperative kind of behaviors i-e OC

Aflatoxins Occurrence in Spices

A wide range of spices are used in most dishes as seasoning, colouring, texture developer, palatability or preserving food and beverages worldwide. However, the spices are produced mainly in developing countries where tropical and/or subtropical climate such as high temperature, heavy rainfall and humidity encourage fungal growth leading to increased occurrence of aflatoxins (AFs) in spices. Moreover, the inadequate implementation of good agricultural practice, good manufacturing practice and good hygienic practice in these countries are great alarming situation. AFs are considered as a carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic and immunosuppressive to humans and are classified as hazardous food toxins. This chapter provides the worldwide production and regulations of spices, suitable conditions for the AFs production, worldwide occurrence of AFs, detection techniques and some aspect for the reduction of AFs in spices

Willingness to pay for improved drinking water facility in Samsani Khui, Johar Town, Lahore, Pakistan

Quality of drinking water is a universal problem specifically faced by many developing countries. Willingness to pay for improved drinking water facility of the people of a rural settlement, Samsani Khui, Johar Town in Lahore, Pakistan was assessed by questionnaire survey. This article intends to scrutinize the strong relation of these dynamics with willingness to pay by correlating them using chi square and multiple regression. Conferring to results, health status of the people of selected area revealed that 50% adults and 31.9 % children suffered from diarrhea within last 6 months. Education level of 48.6% people is middle school. Income of people lies between 5000-30,000 Rupees per month. People with poor health status held strong association with willingness to pay while low income level and low education level had weak association with willingness to pay. The highest and lowest value calculated are 53.969, -4.83, respectively and the mean ratio of willingness to pay was 1.835. The average willingness to pay calculated was between Rs. 1 to 5. This study depicted that various dynamics including health status, monthly income and education level of the people are the determinants of willingness to pay (WTP) for improved drinking water facility

Evaluation of Cotton Seeds as Environmentally Liable Source for Neutral Protease

Proteases are considered one of the most imperative groups of enzymes and are used in bioremediation processes, leather, detergents, pharmaceutical and the food industry. The foremost aim of this study was to extract, purify, and characterize the protease enzyme from cotton seeds. Purification of the neutral protease was achieved with ammonium sulphate, which gave the best results at 60% concentration with a specific activity of 51 units/mg protein and 1.52 purification fold with a percentage yield of 10.5%. The protease was active and stable at a wide range of pH from 4.0–10.0 with an optimum pH of 7.0. The highest activity of the purified enzyme was found at 20 °C. The enzyme was thermally stable and retained 25% of its activity at 50o C. The activity of cottonseeds protease Fraction-IV was enhanced by 20% with ZnCl2 and 15% with CoCl2 as enzyme samples were heated for 10 minutes. The Casein and peptone assays were also performed to check its catalytic activity. Furthermore, the maximum hydrolysis rate (Vmax) and apparent Michaelis–Menten constant (Km) values of the purified protease were 19 μmol/min and 0.08 mol/L, respectively, while activation energy was found to be 12.47 KJ/mol

How information literacy influences creative skills among medical students? : The mediating role of lifelong learning

This research investigated the influence of information literacy on the creative skills of medical students through the mediation of lifelong learning. A cross-sectional survey was conducted for data collection among medical students, recruited through a stratified convenient sampling procedure, of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The questionnaire was personally administered by visiting each college with written permission. A total of 473 survey responses were collected and analysed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling. The results revealed that the information literacy of medical students had a direct and indirect but positive influence on their creative skills. Lifelong learning not had a direct but positive effect on creative skills but also mediated the relationship between information literacy and creative skills. The empirical evidence for how information literacy influences creative skills through the mediated role of lifelong learning may inform policy and practice for information literacy instructions. These results may help academicians and information specialists to initiate a credited or integrated course on information literacy in the curriculum of medical students not only in Pakistan but also in other developing countries. This research would be a worthwhile contribution to the existing research on information literacy as the mediated role of lifelong learning between information literacy and creative skills has never been examined so far.Peer reviewe