Breast and Ovarian Cancer Risk due to Prevalence of BRCA1 and BRCA2 Variants in Pakistani Population: A Pakistani Database Report

Introduction. Pakistani population has a very rich anthrogeneological background with waves of migration from neighboring regions. Incidence rates of breast and ovarian cancer in Pakistan are on such a rapid rise that it is necessary to check the contributory factors, genetic and nongenetic. An insight into the prevalence data emphasizes the formulation of a BRCA1 and BRCA2 database for the Pakistani population. Method. In this study conducted by authors, data from diagnosed cases of both sporadic and inherited female breast and ovarian cancer cases was gathered after performing molecular genetic analysis by screening for alterations in the coding sequence of the BRCA gene. The region of interest was analyzed by the aid of various molecular biology tools such as automated DNA sequencer. Bioinformatics software was used to interpret the results, and database was prepared. Results. Mutational screening of the exons in all the samples of our study group did not reveal any pathogenic mutation. These results along with the results of the previous Pakistani studies for both BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes were summed up to prepare a Pakistani database. Percentage involvement of these genes was estimated. Nine percent of these cancers show alterations in BRCA1 gene while 3 percent have shown BRCA2 variants. The remaining 88 percent of breast and ovarian cancers can be attributed to the involvement of other genes

A Fuzzy Approach for Feature Evaluation and Dimensionality Reduction to Improve the Quality of Web Usage Mining Results

The explosive growth in the information available on the Web has necessitated the need for developing Web personalization systems that understand user preferences to dynamically serve customized content to individual users. Web server access logs contain substantial data about the accesses of users to a Web site. Hence, if properly exploited, the log data can reveal useful information about the navigational behaviour of users in a site. In order to reveal the information about user preferences from, Web Usage Mining is being performed. Web Usage Mining is the application of data mining techniques to web usage log repositories in order to discover the usage patterns that can be used to analyze the user’s navigational behavior. WUM contains three main steps: preprocessing, knowledge extraction and results analysis. During the preprocessing stage, raw web log data is transformed into a set of user profiles. Each user profile captures a set of URLs representing a user session. Clustering can be applied to this sessionized data in order to capture similar interests and trends among users’ navigational patterns. Since the sessionized data may contain thousands of user sessions and each user session may consist of hundreds of URL accesses, dimensionality reduction is achieved by eliminating the low support URLs. Very small sessions are also removed in order to filter out the noise from the data. But direct elimination of low support URLs and small sized sessions may results in loss of a significant amount of information especially when the count of low support URLs and small sessions is large. We propose a fuzzy solution to deal with this problem by assigning weights to URLs and user sessions based on a fuzzy membership function. After assigning the weights we apply a "Fuzzy c-Mean Clustering" algorithm to discover the clusters of user profiles. In this paper, we describe our fuzzy set theoretic approach to perform feature selection (or dimensionality reduction) and session weight assignment. Finally we compare our soft computing based approach of dimensionality reduction with the traditional approach of direct elimination of small sessions and low support count URLs. Our results show that fuzzy feature evaluation and dimensionality  reduction results in better performance and validity indices for the discovered clusters

Estimation of Some Genetic Parameters and Inter-Relationship of Grain Yield and Yield Related Attributes in Certain Exotic Lines of Wheat (Triticum aestivum L. )

To estimates the heritability, genetic advance and interrelationship of yield and yield related attribute in certain exotic lines of wheat introduced from ICARDA (International Center for Agriculture Research in Dry Areas), a field experiment was carried out in the research area of Plant Breeding and Genetic, PMAS, University of Arid Agricultural Rawalpindi during 2010-11. The research materials comprised of twenty three wheat genotypes including a local check variety (Chakwal 97) were planted in randomized completed block design with three replications.  Data were recorded and analyzed on plant height, days to maturity, No. of tillers m-2, spike length, 1000 grain weight, and grain yield Kg/ha. The genotypes were highly significant for all the traits except for days to maturity where non significantly difference was observed. Maximum broad sense heritability was observed for grain yield per plot (93.34) while minimum value (7.82) was recorded for days to maturity. Value of genetic advance range from minimum 0.23 for days to maturity to maximum (589.49) for grain yield (Kg/ha) was assessed. Genotypic correlation coefficient was observed greater in magnitude has compared to phonotypic correlation coefficient in maximum character pairs. Phonotypic and genotypic correlation coefficient of grain yield with No. spikelets/spike, days to maturity, No. of tillers/m2 and No. of grains/spike was observed positive and significant whereas plant height and spike length was found has deterrent traits for grain yield improvement because these characters showed negative association with grain yield. Keywords: Heritability, Genetic Advance, Phenotypic Correlation, Genotypic Correlation, Whea

Novel Mixed EWMA Dual-Crosier CUSUM Mean Charts without and with Auxiliary Information

The classical cumulative SUM (CUSUM) chart is commonly used to monitor a particular size of the mean shift. In many real processes, it is assumed that the shift level varies within a range, and the exact level of the shift size is mostly unknown. For detecting a range of shift size, the dual-CUSUM (DC) and dual-Crosier CUSUM (DCC) charts are used to provide better detection ability as compared to the CUSUM and Crosier CUSUM (CC) charts, respectively. This paper introduces a new mixed exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA)-DCC (EDCC) chart to monitor process mean. In addition, AIB-based EWMA-DC (EDC) and EDCC charts (namely, AIB-EDC and AIB-EDCC charts) are suggested to detect shifts in the process mean level. Monte Carlo simulations are used to compute the run length (RL) characteristics of the proposed charts. A detailed comparison of the proposed schemes with other competing charts is also provided. It turns out that the proposed chart provides better performance than the counterparts when detecting a range of mean shift sizes. A real-life application is also presented to illustrate the implementation of the existing and proposed charts. 2022 Muhammad Arslan et al.Scopu

Applications of Carbon Based Materials in Developing Advanced Energy Storage Devices

With the increasing pressure of population, the energy demand is growing explosively. By 2050, it is expected that the world population may reach to about 9 billion which may result in the increase of energy requirement to about 12.5 trillion watts. Due to increasing pressures of population, industries and technology, concerns to find possibilities to cope with increasing demand of energy resources, arise. Although the renewable energy resources including fossil fuels, wind, water and solar energy have been used for a long time to fulfill the energy requirements, but they need efficient conversions and storage techniques and are responsible for causing environmental pollution due to greenhouse gases as well. It is thus noteworthy to develop methods for the generation and storage of renewable energy devices that can replace the conventional energy resources to meet the requirement of energy consumption. Due to high energy demands, the sustainable energy storage devices have remained the subject of interest for scientists in the history, however, the traditional methods are not efficient enough to fulfill the energy requirements. In the present era, among other variety of advanced treatments, nano-sciences have attracted the attention of the scientists. While talking about nano-science, one cannot move on without admiring the extraordinary features of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and other carbon based materials. CNTs are on the cutting edge of nano science research and finding enormous applications in energy storage devices. Excellent adsorption capabilities, high surface area, better electrical conductivity, high mechanical strength, corrosion resistance, high aspect ratio and good chemical and physical properties of CNTs have grabbed tremendous attention worldwide. Their charge transfer properties make them favorable for energy conversion applications. The limitation to the laboratory research on CNTs for energy storage techniques due to low specific capacitance and limited electrochemical performance can be overcome by surface functionalization using surface functional groups that can enhance their electrical and dispersion properties. In this chapter, ways CNTs employed to boost the abilities of the existing material used to store and transfer of energy have been discussed critically. Moreover, how anisotropic properties of CNTs play important role in increasing the energy storage capabilities of functional materials. It will also be discussed how various kinds of materials can be combined along CNTs to get better results

Wind energy potential in Pakistan : A feasibility study in sindh province

The environment and the economy are negatively impacted by conventional energy sources, such as coal, gasoline, and other fossil fuels. Pakistan’s reliance on these resources has resulted in a catastrophic energy crisis. This has driven the government to make critical decisions such as early retail closures, power outages for the industrial sector, and an increase to two days a week vacations. Wind energy, accessible and affordable, will become a viable option for meeting Pakistan’s present and future energy demands. Approximately 3% of Pakistan’s land can produce nearly 132 GW of power with an installed capacity of 5 MW per km2. In this study, four zones (Karachi, Thatta, Badin, and Jamshoro) in Sindh province are assessed for the feasibility of wind energy generation. The installed capacity, generator types, and detailed specifications are provided for each zone. Moreover, the wind mapping of Pakistan is presented considering the four potential zones. The zones are analyzed using annual wind speed and power output considering wind data measured at 50 m height over one year. The higher mean speed is recorded at Jamshoro compared to other zones. The analysis indicates that all four sites are suitable for large-scale wind power generation due to their energy potential