Iron Supplementation Intermittently in Reducing the Severity of Depression

To investigate the effect of iron supplementation on the severity of depression among anemic students. The study design was Quasi Experimental Trial and conducted in the Department of Allied health sciences, The University of Lahore, Lahore from May to December 2019. The severity and symptoms of depression was measured by Beck’s depression scale. 781 female students were analyzed and 377 students were enrolled in the study. Written informed consent were taken from the students. A semi-structured proforma was used for documenting the outcome variables. Blood samples were taken for Hemoglobin (Hb) level. Iron supplementation significantly reduced the severity of depression (21 ± 2.98, p < 0.001) at baseline versus post study (17.47 ± 3.31, p < 0.001) by using Beck’s Depression scale (BDI). The results showed that there was a significance improvement in post study hemoglobin (Hb) in comparison with baseline Hb (Hb at baseline =10.79± 0.60, P <0.001 vs Hb at post study = 10.97 ± 0.83, P<0.001). After intervention, subjects with continued depression had high rate of iron deficiency anemia. These data are valuable as they enable us to conclude that iron supplementation can reduce the severity of depression in the iron deficient anemic students

Comparative changes in the rheological properties and cell wall metabolism in rind of healthy and creased fruit of Washington navel and navelina sweet orange ('Citrus sinensis' [L.] Osbeck)

Creasing is a physiological disorder in navel oranges and causes serious economic losses. In 2007, the comparative changes in rheological properties of the rind, levels of starch, phenolics, pectins and the activity of pectinesterase (PE) in albedo and flavedo tissues of the healthy and the creased fruit of ‘Washington Navel’ and ‘Navelina’ sweet orange at ripe stage were investigated. During 2009, dynamics of the activities of PE, exo and endo polygalacturonase (exo-PG, endo-PG), and endo-1, 4-ß -D-glucanase (EGase) enzymes in albedo and flavedo tissues of the healthy as well as the creased ‘Washington Navel’ sweet orange fruit at different maturation and ripening stages were researched. The rind hardness, stiffness and tensile force were substantially lower in the creased fruit than the healthy ones in ‘Washington Navel’ and ‘Navelina’. The levels of starch, total phenolics, total pectins and water insoluble pectins decreased in the albedo and flavedo of the creased than the healthy fruit in both the cultivars. The levels of water soluble pectins increased in the albedo and flavedo of the creased fruit when compared to the healthy ones in both the cultivars. The activities of PE in albedo and flavedo tissues were higher in the creased fruit when compared to the healthy fruit of ‘Washington Navel’ and ‘Navelina’ in 2007. The activities of PE, exo and endo PG and Endo-1, 4-ß -D-glucanase were higher in the albedo tissue of creased fruit of ‘Washington Navel’ orange at different fruit maturation and ripening stages.In conclusion, the higher activities of pectinesterase, exo- polygalacturonase, endo- polygalacturonase, and endo-1, 4-ß -D-glucanase in the albedo of creased fruit at commercial harvest seem to be associated with the enhanced loss of pectins and starch in the cell walls of albedo tissue, leading to cell wall loosening and cracks formation consequently reducing hardness, stiffness and tensile force of the rind

Identification of Drivers and Obstacles of Market Orientation among Diversified Industries of Pakistan

Market Orientation (MO), being charismatic in nature, has been considered as a high priority area for research by the Marketing Science Institute. The antecedents of MO, either act as drivers or impediments, have got paramount importance in making the organization more market oriented. The essence of umpteen times research in different cultures, mostly of the developed countries, validates the role that various organizational factors play in market orientation of organizations. But lacuna in the literature exists for such an important topic in utterly different culture of developing countries. Accordingly, the current study seeks to investigate whether or not the antecedents, proposed by Kohli and Jaworski (1990), could contribute in making Pakistani organizations market oriented. Top management emphasis, centralization and interdepartmental connectedness were found to be significant predictors of market orientation. The study results could facilitate leadership of Pakistani organizations in designing and implementation of corporate-wide change initiatives, geared at making their organizations more market orientated leading to improved organizational effectiveness and sustained competitive advantag

Leading cause of addiction among teenagers of Pakistan and the role of security forces regarding their rehabilitation

Initially cocaine, opium, cannabis and alcohol were used for the purpose of relieving the physical and mental capabilities, and for medicinal and surgical purpose. But the human spirit of innovation must have led to the use of these substances for mood-altering effects and offer an escape from the real and difficult world of existence to a more agreeable world of fantasy. The major purpose of the study is to highlight the origin and development of the drug addiction in the Pakistani Youth and role of security forces in their rehabilitation. The security forces play a major role in the controlling and smuggling of these drugs. These forces also proving helpful in the rehabilitation of addicts and in the awareness program. But due to the presence of some black sheep the number of young addicts is increasing day by day

A survey and taxonomy on nonorthogonal multiple-access schemes for 5G networks

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The intensity in the requirements of Internet of Things and mobile internet makes the efficiency of fifth-generation (5G) wireless communications very challenging to achieve. Accomplishing the drastically increasing demand of massive connectivity and high spectral efficiency is a strenuous task. Because of the very large number of devices, 5G wireless communication systems are inevitable to satisfy the traffic requirements. Recently, nonorthogonal multiple-access (NOMA) schemes are immensely being explored to address the challenges in 5G, which include effective bandwidth utilization, support for a massive number of devices, and low latency. This paper provides the reader with a holistic view of multiple-access schemes, methods, and strategies for optimization in NOMA. First, we discuss the taxonomy of multiple-access schemes in the literature; then, we provide a detailed discussion of objectives, constraints, problem types, and solution approaches for NOMA. This paper also discusses the decoding methods and key performance indicators used in NOMA. Finally, we outline future research directions

Prevalence of Lumbo-Pelvic Pain in Pregnant Women of Third Trimester in Lahore Pakistan

BACKGROUND: Lower back and pelvic girdle symptoms are a common problem during pregnancy. Lumbo-pelvic pain is known to have detrimental effects on quality of life in pregnant women in many domains including physical activity, travel, social relationships, and emotional health. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to determine the prevalence of lumbo-pelvic pain among pregnant women in their third trimester from Lahore. METHODS: This cross-sectional short survey was conducted at Lady Aitcheson and Lady Willington Hospitals Lahore. A total no of 560 pregnant women in third trimester took part in the study. RESULTS: Pregnant women included in this study showed 40.6% of lumbo-pelvic pain and 59.4% with no lumbo-pelvic pain. The prevalence of lumbar pain was more prevalent among all three components of lumbo-pelvic pain. CONCLUSION: The findings of this study clearly indicated that prevalence of lumbo-pelvic pain is more significant in pregnancy. The point prevalence of lumbo-pelvic pain is 62.1%. Increased abdominal weight and hormonal changes put more burdens on the pelvic and lower back

Learning paradigms for communication and computing technologies in IoT systems

© 2020 Elsevier B.V. Wireless communication and computation technologies are becoming increasingly complex and dynamic due to the sophisticated and ubiquitous Internet of things (IoT) applications. Therefore, future wireless networks and computation solutions must be able to handle these challenges and dynamic user requirements for the success of IoT systems. Recently, learning strategies (particularly deep learning and reinforcement learning) are explored immensely to deal with the complexity and dynamic nature of communication and computation technologies for IoT systems, mainly because of their power to predict and efficient data analysis. Learning strategies can significantly enhance the performance of IoT systems at different stages, including at IoT node level, local communication, long-range communication, edge gateway, cloud platform, and corporate data centers. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of learning strategies for IoT systems. We categorize learning paradigms for communication and computing technologies in IoT systems into reinforcement learning, Bayesian algorithms, stochastic learning, and miscellaneous. We then present research in IoT with the integration of learning strategies from the optimization perspective where the optimization objectives are categorized into maximization and minimization along with corresponding applications. Learning strategies are discussed to illustrate how these strategies can enhance the performance of IoT applications. We also identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) used to evaluate the performance of IoT systems and discuss learning algorithms for these KPIs. Lastly, we provide future research directions to further enhance IoT systems using learning strategie

Energy efficient resource allocation for NOMA in cellular IoT with energy harvesting

© 2017 IEEE. The Internet of Things (IoT) offers connectivity of massive low-power devices and sensors through the Internet which requires spectrum and energy efficient solutions. Recently, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been investigated to address the challenges associated with spectral efficiency and dense deployment of a large number of devices in 5G cellular networks. Further, energy harvesting can enhance the energy efficiency of IoT devices. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient resource allocation scheme for NOMA (EERA-NOMA) in cellular IoT with RF energy harvesting to address the above mentioned challenges. We model a framework to optimize user grouping of IoT devices in most appropriate resource blocks, power allocation, and time allocation for information transfer and energy harvesting. The objective is to maximize energy efficiency while satisfying constraints on the minimum data rate requirement of each user and transmit power. We adopted mesh adaptive direct search (MADS) algorithm to solve the formulated problem. Simulation results are presented to show the performance of proposed framework in comparison with existing work