Frequency of SCF Leakage in Post-operative Patients of Tethered Spinal Cord in A Tertiary Care Hospital

Objective:  The study aimed to report the incidence of CSF leakage in patients with a tethered spinal cord, post-operatively. Materials and Methods:  A total of 75 individuals aged more than 2 years and of either gender who were hospitalized for surgery for tethered cord syndrome were included. All patients had a preoperative MRI of the spine, and those above the age of 6 had urodynamic tests. Clinical evaluations were performed until hospital release, then again at 3, 6, and 12 months. Urodynamic tests and spine MRIs were redone one year following surgery. Under general anesthesia, all patients had microscopic untethering procedures to release tethering materials and heal the thecal sac. Results:  52% of patients fall under TCS type ‘simple’, whereas, 48% of patients found with complex TCS. The frequency of CSF leakage in post-operative patients with a tethered spinal cord was found in 17.33%. No CSF leak was reported in the majority of patients (49%) patients in the age group 2-30 years. 52% of patients with simple TCS reported no CSF leak, whereas, only 13(18%) patients with complex TCS reported CSF leaks. 40% of patients reported no CSF leak who was diagnosed with complex TCS. There existed a significant relationship between the types of TCS (simple/complex) for CSF leak distribution. Conclusion:  This study concluded that the frequency of CSF leakage in post-operative patients with tethered spinal cord was found in 17.33% of patients. Keywords:  Tethered Spinal Cord (TCS), CSF Leakage, Lipomyelomeningocele

Effect of Food Quality on Customer Perceived Satisfaction Level and Mediating Effect of Food Safety on Them

Purpose:We done a study to knownnbsp impact of food safety on food quality and customerrsquos satisfaction and the purpose of our study to know how much people are concerned about safety of food what they eat in their routine life. We used questionnaire to get results and our target group is students of UET. Findings:We got to know that food safety has mediating effect on food quality and customerrsquos satisfaction and people are concerned about what they eat is either safe or not and pay attention to what adds up in their food and what they engulf in eating. Food producers and restaurants must pay attention to their food processing procedures and home cooking persons should make sure about healthy food items. Limitations:All respondents are belong to one institution. Other researcher can add respondents of many demographics.nbsp nbs

Abdul Aziz Khan

Objective:  Pituitary lesions cause morbidity and mortality in all age groups due to their hormonal hypersecretion, its mass effects, and post-surgery complications. The present study determined the frequency of functional and non-functional pituitary adenomas. Materials & Methods:  The study included patients (n = 114) presenting with functional and non-functional pituitary adenoma. Pituitary adenomas were diagnosed based on MRI brain with contrast and the size of the tumor was noted a tumor having a size of 10 mm or more was labeled as macro adenoma and a tumor having a size less than 10 mm was labeled as microadenoma. Pituitary adenomas were stratified among age, gender, duration of symptoms, types of adenomas, types of functional adenoma, and type of the tumor on a size basis. Results:  Most of the patients had TSH- secreting adenoma (21.9%). 52.6% were found with microadenoma and 47.4% had macro adenoma. Patients with functional adenoma were 30.7% and with non-functional adenoma 32.5% were male while patients with functional adenoma were 26.3% and with non-functional adenoma 10.5%were female (p = 0.018). Patients with functional adenoma (43.9%) and non-functional adenoma (8.8%) were found to have microadenoma, whereas patients with functional adenoma (13.2%) and non-functional adenoma (34.2%) were found to have macroadenoma (p = 0.000). Patients with functional adenoma having a duration of symptoms below 1 year were 11 (9.6%), 1 to 3 years were 25 (21.9%), 17 (14.9%) were 4 to 6 years, and 12 (10.5%) above 6 years duration of symptoms. Conclusion:  Patients with pituitary adenomas should be diagnosed early to receive successful therapy

Pulmonary function among stone quarry workers in India: The effect of duration of exposure, smoking status and job profile on pulmonary function tests

Introduction: Despite advances in technology, in India workers of stone processing industry continue to be at high risk for lung function deterioration. This study was designed to analyse the effect of duration of exposure, job profile and smoking on lung function of stone quarry workers from Jammu city, Jammu and Kashmir State, India. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among 100 male stone crusher workers, selected through multi-stage random sampling technique. Effect of risk factors on the pulmonary function tests of the workers was analysed by ‘Students independent t-test’, one-way ANOVA and simple linear regression. The significance threshold was set up at P < 0.05. Results: We observed a significant reduction in lung function in subjects having duration of exposure above 10 years (Group III) with respect of stone crushers with duration of exposure up to 5 years (Group I) and 6 to 10 years of exposure (Group II). Lung function tests revealed a statistically significant (P < 0.05) reduction in lung function test parameters among manual workers compared to non-manual group of workers and among smokers compared to non-smokers. However, simple linear regression analysis revealed that only increase in duration of silica dust exposure was significantly associated with a reduction in pulmonary function tests, specifically in FVC (P = 0.019), FEV3 needs to be as subscript (P = 0.016), FEF25 (P = 0.016), FEF0.2-1.2 (P = 0.048), PEFR (P = 0.019) and MVV (P = 0.001) values. Conclusion: Duration of silica dust exposure is the most important determinant of pulmonary function deterioration. Therefore, limiting cumulative silica dust exposure can effectively reduce damage to airways in silica-exposed workers

Factors motivating smoking cessation: A cross-sectional study in a lower-middle-income country

Introduction: Only one-quarter of smokers in Pakistan attempt to quit smoking, and less than 3% are successful. In the absence of any literature from the country, this study aimed to explore factors motivating and strategies employed in successful smoking cessation attempts in Pakistan, a lower-middle-income country.Methods: A survey was carried out in Karachi, Pakistan, amongst adult (≥ 18 years) former smokers (individuals who had smoked ≥100 cigarettes in their lifetime but who had successfully quit smoking for \u3e 1 month at the time of survey). Multivariable logistic regression, with number of quit attempts (single vs. multiple) as the dependent variable, was performed while adjusting for age, sex, monthly family income, years smoked, cigarettes/day before quitting, and having suffered from a smoking-related health problem.Results: Out of 330 former smokers, 50.3% quit successfully on their first attempt with 62.1% quitting cold turkey . Only 10.9% used a cessation aid (most commonly nicotine replacement therapy: 8.2%). Motivations for quitting included self-health (74.5%), promptings by one\u27s family (43%), and family\u27s health (14.8%). Other social pressures included peer-pressure to quit smoking (31.2%) and social avoidance by non-smokers (22.7%). Successful smoking cessation on one\u27s first attempt was associated with being married (OR: 4.47 [95% CI: 2.32-8.61]), employing an abrupt cessation mode of quitting (4.12 [2.48-6.84]), and telling oneself that one has the willpower to quit (1.68 [1.04-2.71]).Conclusion: In Pakistan, smoking cessation is motivated by concern for self-health and family\u27s health, family\u27s support, and social pressures. Our results lay a comprehensive foundation for the development of smoking-cessation interventions tailored to the population of the country.Implications: Little is known about the patterns and strategies employed by smokers who are attempting to quit smoking, especially in lower-middle-income countries like Pakistan. Likewise, there are very few smoking cessation programs designed to assist in quitting. Our study will allow for a better understanding of the culture-specific motivating factors and strategies that most contributed to successful quit attempts. Based on these results, evidence based smoking cessation interventions can be developed tailored to the socioeconomic demographic of our country and region, including smoking cessation clinics and public outreach and media campaigns highlighting key elements of successful smoking cessation

Real time vision-based implementation of plant disease identification system on FPGA

Plant diseases have turned into a dilemma as it can cause significant reduction in both quality and quantity of agricultural products. To overcome that loss, we implemented a computer vision based real time system that can identify the type of plant diseases. Computer vision-based applications are computationally intensive and time consuming, so FPGA-based implementation is proposed to have a real time identification of plant diseases. In this paper an image processing algorithm is proposed for identifying two types of disease in Potato leaves. The proposed algorithm works well on images taken under different luminance conditions. The hardware/software-based implementation of the proposed algorithm is done on Xilinx ZYNQ SoC FPGA. Results show that our proposed algorithm achieves an accuracy of up to 90%, whereas the hardware implementation takes 0.095 seconds achieving a performance gain of 76.8 times as compared to the software implementation

An Efficient Lightweight Image Encryption Scheme Using Multichaos

With an immense increase in Internet multimedia applications over the past few years, digital content such as digital images are stored and shared over global networks, the probability for information leakage and illegal modifications to the digital content is at high risk. These digital images are transferred using the network bandwidth; therefore, secure encryption schemes facilitate both information security and bandwidth issues. Hence, a state-of-the-art lightweight information security methodology is required to address this challenge. The main objective of this work is to develop a lightweight nonlinear mechanism for digital image security using chaos theory. The proposed scheme starts by changing a plain image into an encrypted image to improve its security. A block cipher, using lightweight chaos, has been added to achieve this objective for digital image security. We utilized multiple chaotic maps to generate random keys for each channel. Also, Arnold cat map and chaotic gingerbread map are used to add confusion and diffusion. During the permutation stage, image pixels are permuted, while in diffusion stage, pixels are distorted utilizing gingerbread map to add more security. The proposed scheme has been validated using different security parameter tests such as correlation coefficient tests (CC), whose results have been observed closer to zero and information entropy (IE) value is 7.99, respectively, which is almost equal to the ideal value of 8. Moreover, number of pixels changing rate (NPCR) obtained value is higher than 99.50%, while the unified average changing intensity (UACI) is 33.33. Other parameters such as mean absolute error (MAE), mean square error (MSE), lower value of peak to signal noise ratio (PSNR), structural content (SC), maximum difference (MD), average difference (AD), normalized cross-correlation (NCC), and histogram analysis (HA) is tested. The computed values of the proposed scheme are better. The achieved results after comparison with existing schemes highlight that the proposed scheme is highly secure, lightweight, and feasible for real-time communications

Metrology Process to Produce High-Value Components and Reduce Waste for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Conventionally, a manufactured product undergoes a quality control process. The quality control department mostly ensures that the dimensions of the manufactured products are within the desired range, i.e., the product either satisfies the defined conformity range or is rejected. Failing to satisfy the conformity range increases the manufacturing cost and harms the production rate and the environment. Conventional quality control departments take samples from the given batch after the manufacturing process. This, in turn, has two consequences, i.e., low-quality components being delivered to the customer and input energy being wasted in the rejected components. The aim of this paper is to create a high-precision measuring (metrology)-based system that measures the dimension of an object in real time during the machining process. This is accomplished by integrating a vision-based system with image processing techniques in the manufacturing process. Experiments were planned using an experimental design which included different lightning conditions, camera locations, and revolutions per minute (rpm) values. Using the proposed technique, submillimeter dimensional accuracy was achieved at all the measured points of the component in real time. Manual validation and statistical analysis were performed to check the validity of the system

Gut integrity and duodenal enteropathogen burden in undernourished children with environmental enteric dysfunction

Environmental enteric dysfunction (EED) is a subclinical condition of intestinal inflammation, barrier dysfunction and malabsorption associated with growth faltering in children living in poverty. This study explores association of altered duodenal permeability (lactulose, rhamnose and their ratio) with higher burden of enteropathogen in the duodenal aspirate, altered histopathological findings and higher morbidity (diarrhea) that is collectively associated with linear growth faltering in children living in EED endemic setting. In a longitudinal birth cohort, 51 controls (WHZ \u3e 0, HAZ \u3e -1.0) and 63 cases (WHZ\u3c -2.0, refractory to nutritional intervention) were recruited. Anthropometry and morbidity were recorded on monthly bases up to 24 months of age. Dual sugar assay of urine collected after oral administration of lactulose and rhamnose was assessed in 96 children from both the groups. Duodenal histopathology (n = 63) and enteropathogen analysis of aspirate via Taqman array card (n = 60) was assessed in only cases. Giardia was the most frequent pathogen and was associated with raised L:R ratio (p = 0.068). Gastric microscopy was more sensitive than duodenal aspirate in H. pylori detection. Microscopically confirmed H. pylori negatively correlated with HAZ at 24 months (r = -0.313, p = 0.013). Regarding histopathological parameters, goblet cell reduction significantly correlated with decline in dual sugar excretion (p\u3c 0.05). Between cases and controls, there were no significant differences in the median (25th, 75th percentile) of urinary concentrations (μg/ml) of lactulose [27.0 (11.50, 59.50) for cases vs. 38.0 (12.0, 61.0) for controls], rhamnose [66.0 (28.0, 178.0) vs. 86.5 (29.5, 190.5)] and L:R ratio [0.47 (0.24, 0.90) vs. 0.51 (0.31, 0.71)] respectively. In multivariable regression model, 31% of variability in HAZ at 24 months of age among cases and controls was explained by final model including dual sugars. In conclusion, enteropathogen burden is associated with altered histopathological features and intestinal permeability. In cases and controls living in settings of endemic enteropathy, intestinal permeability test may predict linear growth. However, for adoption as a screening tool for EED, further validation is required due to its complex intestinal pathophysiology