An audit of the students\u27 corner of Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association

Objective: To analyze the pattern of the first author\u27s institutional affiliation and the distribution of different article types published in the students\u27 corner of the Journal of Pakistan Medical Association.Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out in July 2005 and analyzed the students\u27 corner (whenever present) of the Journal of Pakistan Medical Association from January 1998 to June 2005.Results: For the 90 issues of the journal in the stipulated period, 96 articles were published in the students\u27 corner. Original studies 46 (47.9%) were the most commonly published article category followed by personal opinion/review category (43.8%) and case-reports 8 (8.3%). The number of personal opinion/review articles has been steadily decreasing. Students from Aga Khan University contributed 74 (77.1%) articles followed by students from Ziauddin Medical University 10 (10.4%). Almost 95% of the authors were from private medical colleges. Sindh was the location of the first authors institution in 90 (93.8%) cases.CONCLUSION: A major chunk of all articles published in the students\u27 corner of the Journal of Pakistan Medical Association originates from two private medical colleges in Sindh. Efforts must be made to increase student participation across the country. This may be done by asking students to begin scientific writing by submitting personal opinion articles. Further research is needed to assess the status of student research in terms of published output in Pakistan

Relationship between Major developed equity markets and Major Frontier Equity Markets of World

The core aim of this study is to compute the long run relationship between frontier equity markets Pakistan (KSE 100 Index), Argentina (MERVAL BUENOS AIRES) stock Exchange, NSE.20 (Kenya), MSM 30 (MSI) Oman and equity markets of developed world (OMXS30) Sweden, SMI (Switzerland), SSE Composite Index (China) and STI index (Singapore) by taking weekly values from stock return prices for the period 1st week of January-2000 to last week of January/2014.  Descriptive statistic, Correlation, Augmented dickey fuller (ADF), Phillips Perron test, Johanson and Jelseluis test of co-integration, Granger causality test, Variance Decomposition Test and Impulse Response are used to find the relationship among frontier and developed markets. The results of this study reveal that frontier markets have no long run relationship with equity markets of developed world. Furthermore, this study is helpful for investors to enhance the returns by diversifying the unsystematic risk at given level of profit because results of this study confirm that markets are no co-integrated

Automation of The SLA Life Cycle in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has become a prominent paradigm to offer on-demand services for softwares, infrastructures and platforms. Cloud services are contracted by a service level agreement (SLA) between a cloud service provider (CSP) and a cloud service user (CSU) which contains service definitions, quality of service (QoS) parameters, guarantees and obligations. Cloud service providers mostly offer SLAs in descriptive format which is not directly consumable by a machine or a system. The SLA written in natural language may impede the utility of rapid elasticity in a cloud service. Manual management of SLAs with growing usage of cloud services can be a challenging, erroneous and tedious task especially for the CSUs acquiring multiple cloud services. The necessity of automating the complete SLA life cycle (which includes SLA description in machine readable format, negotiation, monitoring and management) becomes imminent due to complex requirements for the precise measurement of QoS parameters. Current approaches toward automating the complete SLA life cycle, lack in standardization, completeness and applicability to cloud services. Automation of different phases of the SLA life cycle (e.g. negotiation, monitoring and management) is dependent on the availability of a machine readable SLA. In this work, a structural specification for the SLAs in cloud computing (S3LACC in short) is presented which is designed specifically for cloud services, covers complete SLA life cycle and conforms with the available standards. A time efficient SLA negotiation technique is accomplished (based on the S3LACC) for concurrently negotiating with multiple CSPs. After successful negotiation process, next leading task in the SLA life cycle is to monitor the cloud services for ensuring the quality of service according to the agreed SLA. A distributed monitoring approach for the cloud SLAs is presented, in this work, which is suitable for services being used at single or multiple locations. The proposed approach reduces the number of communications of SLA violations to a monitoring coordinator by eliminating the unnecessary communications. The presented work on the complete SLA life cycle automation is evaluated and validated with the help of use cases, experiments and simulations

Volatility of stock markets (An analysis of South Asian and G8 countries)

The objective of this study is to make an analysis of volatility of stock markets between South Asian Stock Markets and Stock Markets of Group of Eight Countries. For this purpose, three major South Asian countries Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka are selected while Group of Eight Countries include France, Russia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and USA. The stock indexes include KSE 100 (Pakistan), SENSEX (India), ASPI (Sri Lanka), CAC 40 (France), DAX (Germany), S &P / TSX Composite (Canada), FTSE MIB (Italy), RTS (Russia), Nikkei 225 (Japan), S & P 500 (USA) and FTSE 100 (UK). Data is collected from the period of January 1st 2005 to August 31st 2015. ARCH and GARCH model is used to analyze the volatility of South Asian Stock Markets and stock markets of Group of Eight Countries. The findings show that South Asian Stock Markets are less volatile while Stock Markets of Group of Eight Countries are high volatile. This study is helpful for investors and decision maker to handle the trend of stock market and provide a direction for investors to reduce the barrier factors which affect stock market efficiency.&nbsp

Comparison of Outcomes in Early versus Delayed Cholecystectomy in Patients of Acute Biliary Pancreatitis

Objective: to compare the outcomes of early versus delayed cholecystectomy in patients of mild to moderate acute biliary pancreatitis.Study Design: Randomizd controlled trialPlace and duration: study was conducted in general surgery department of Lahore General Hospital Lahore, Services Hospital Lahore and Holy Family Hospital Rawalpindi from January 2017 to January 2018.Methodology: All the patients who were diagnosed as mild to moderate acute biliary pancreatitis and selected for cholecystectomy. Data collection was done via non probability consecutive sampling included patients’ demographics, conversion to open surgery, hospital stay and complications were assessed. Results: The mean duration of surgery and mean length of stay of early group was 90.00±3.55 minutes and 9.06±1.16 days, respectively. Conversion to open, overall complications, preoperative and postoperative was noted as 18%, 12%, 2% and 10%, respectively. Mortality was observed as 2%. While, the mean duration of surgery and mean length of stay of delayed group was 91.14±2.15 minutes and 9.88±2.24 days, respectively. Conversion to open, overall complications, preoperative and postoperative was noted as 14%, 14%, 6% and n=4 (8%), respectively. Mortality was observed as 6%.The differences were statistically significant for duration of surgery and length of stay (p=0.005) and (p=0.001), respectively.Conclusion: Results of our study reveal that patients of acute biliary pancreatitis treated with cholecystectomy at the index day have shorter hospital stay and less biliary events as compare to delayed cholecystectomy. Similarly conversion to open surgery, duration of surgery and complications are also less in early cholecystectomy. Keywords: acute biliary pancreatitis, early cholecystectomy, delayed cholecystectomy, hospital stay, conversion to open surgery

High performance thin layer chromatography analysis of seed extracts of Tudri Surkh (Cheiranthus cheiri)

Background: To develop the high-performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) finger print profile of hydroalcoholic and ethylalcohol extracts of seeds of Tudri Surkh (Cheiranthus cheiri). Methods: Chromatographic technique was used for separation of components from hydroalcoholic and ethylalcohol extracts of seeds and HPTLC was carried out using CAMAG HPTLC system equipped with Linomat V applicator, and WinCATS software.Results: HPTLC profiling of the extract confirm the presence of various phytochemicals. At 640 nm HPTLC finger print of hydroalcoholic extract revealed 16 components with Rf=0.05-0.94 while ethylalcohol extracts revealed 19 components peaks with Rf=0.07 to 0.96. Well separated and compact greenish, yellow and pink bands were visualized using anisaldehyde sulphuric acid reagent.Conclusions: We conclude that HPTLC fingerprint profiling of seed extracts of Tudri Surkh (Cheiranthus cheiri) revels presence of various compounds and can be utilized as a marker for standardization and proper identification of the plant material to be used for preparation of traditional drugs

The Association Between Subclinical Hypothyroidism and Erectile Dysfunction

Objective: To assess the association between subclinical hypothyroidism and erectile dysfunctionStudy Design: cross sectional study.Study Place and Duration: department of General Medicine at Lahore General Hospital Lahore, Services Hospital Lahore and Holy Family Hospital Rawalpindi from January 2018 to June 2018Material and methods: A total number of 180 subjects were involved in this study. The study patients were categorized into three groups’ i.e. erectile dysfunction with sub clinical hypothyroidism, erectile dysfunction with euthyroidism and controls with euthyroidism. Data was subjected statistical analysis with the help of computer software SPSS version 23. Mean±S.D was calculated for quantitative variables. For qualitative variables, frequency and percentages were calculated. Independent t test and Chi square was applied to assess the statistical difference. P value of less than or equal to 0.05 was considered as statistically significant.Results: The difference between the ED with SCH group and the ED with euthyroidism group was statistically insignificant for FT3 (p=0.135) and E2 (p=0.318). The difference between the ED with SCH group and the controls with euthyroidism group was statistically significant except FT3 (p=0.098).Conclusion: Patients with erectile dysfunction commonly present with subclinical hypothyroidism and it can be concluded that subclinical hypothyroidism is associated with erectile dysfunction. However severity of erectile dysfunction is not associated to subclinical hypothyroidism. From the results of this study, recommendations regarding the need of thyroid function screening for men presenting with erectile dysfunction can be made. Keywords: Subclinical Hypothyroidism, Erectile Dysfunction, Euthyroidism, Thyroid, thyroxine, triiodothyronin