Role of Psychological Sense of Community in Enhancing Employee’s Well-Being

Yearning for sense of community is in part fostered by decline of traditional place of community due to which people feel less satisfied at workplace. Thus drawing on psychological sense of community theory, this paper is going to focus on relationship between employee’s sense of community and life satisfaction; a critical, yet under research relationship. Using regression analysis, it was found that if employees are provided with sense of community at workplace, then they are satisfied with their life

Association of Dietary Practices and Lifestyle Modifications in Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease in Pakistani Women

Background: Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) incidence is increasing day by day due to lifestyle changes and living standards that resulted in esophagitis, esophageal adenocarcinoma, Barrett’s esophagus and many other illness worldwide. Patients with GERD live with poor quality life and have low work capacity.  Aims: Main aim of the study is to diagnose GERD in early stages for the reduction in mortality and morbidity at different age groups. Methods: The pre-tested questionnaire was used to collect data from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital Lahore. A total of 230 female patients screened for GERD symptoms were included in this study. The collection of demographic data, dietary intake, lifestyle habits, physiology, and physical analysis were gathered during the 4 months.   Results: Data analysis shows us that GERD is highly significant with age, occupation. Moreover, burping is highly significant in these patients. Fried fatty foods, spicy foods, fizzy drinks, garlic intake were also correlated to GERD symptoms. These subjects also suffer from more skin problems.  Conclusion: From our results, we infer that GERD has a very strong bond with dietary and lifestyle patterns. If these parameters are kept under control, GERD patients will be less agonize from complications and minimize our morbidity and mortality.&nbsp

Role of Psychological Sense of Community in Enhancing Employee’s Well-Being

Yearning for sense of community is in part fostered by decline of traditional place of community due to which people feel less satisfied at workplace. Thus drawing on psychological sense of community theory, this paper is going to focus on relationship between employee’s sense of community and life satisfaction; a critical, yet under research relationship. Using regression analysis, it was found that if employees are provided with sense of community at workplace, then they are satisfied with their life

Recognizing service users’ diversity: social identity narratives of British Pakistanis in a mental health context

Purpose: This study aims to investigate how British Pakistani people talk about their social identity, in the context of mental health, and how this shapes their experiences and perceptions of care delivered by the National Health Service (NHS), UK. Methodology: Eight narrative interviews were conducted amongst members of the Pakistani community living in a city in the UK. The data were analysed using a narrative analysis approach using ‘social identity’ as a theoretical lens. Findings: Considering Pakistani service users as a single social entity, and responding with generic approaches in meeting their mental health needs, may not be helpful in achieving equitable treatment. Study participants reject a simple conceptualisation of race and how a response based upon stereotypes is woefully inadequate. The study revealed that people from one ethnic or national background cannot be assumed to have a fixed social identity. Originality: This study broadens understanding of how people from a single ethnic background may construct and view their social identities markedly different to others from the same ethnic group. This has implications for service providers in understanding how their clients’ social identity is treated and understood in practice

Suitability of various plant derived gelling agents as agar substitute in microbiological growth media

Eleven putative gelling agents were investigated as agar substitutes. These included arrowroot (Maranta arundinaceae), coconut powder (Cocos nucifera), corn flour (Zea mays var. amylacea), gel rite (a water-soluble polysaccharide produced by Sphingomonas elodea), glue (Cyanoacrylates), katira gum (Cochlospermum religiosum), guar gum (Cyamopsis tetragonolobus L.), isubgol husk (Plantago ovata), pectin and rice (Oryza sativa L.) powder. Among these, guar gum was found a promising alternate candidate for agar. Media solidified with 2.8% guar gum was transparent and supportive for the growth of three test fungi (Trichoderma harzianum, Alternaria alternata and Alternaria solani) as good as agar. Guar gum also excelled in terms of cost benefit ratio when compared with agar. Guar gum fortified media was found to cost $0.005/L as compared to agar supplemented media costing$ 1.17/L. Further, guar gum is easily available and can be added with ease thereby serving as a suitable and inexpensive substitute of agar and thus, can be adopted for routine microbiological testing in resource poor countries.Key words: Guar gum, media, agar, gelling agents

LEARN: A multi-centre, cross-sectional evaluation of Urology teaching in UK medical schools

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the status of UK undergraduate urology teaching against the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) Undergraduate Syllabus for Urology. Secondary objectives included evaluating the type and quantity of teaching provided, the reported performance rate of General Medical Council (GMC)-mandated urological procedures, and the proportion of undergraduates considering urology as a career. MATERIALS AND METHODS: LEARN was a national multicentre cross-sectional study. Year 2 to Year 5 medical students and FY1 doctors were invited to complete a survey between 3rd October and 20th December 2020, retrospectively assessing the urology teaching received to date. Results are reported according to the Checklist for Reporting Results of Internet E-Surveys (CHERRIES). RESULTS: 7,063/8,346 (84.6%) responses from all 39 UK medical schools were included; 1,127/7,063 (16.0%) were from Foundation Year (FY) 1 doctors, who reported that the most frequently taught topics in undergraduate training were on urinary tract infection (96.5%), acute kidney injury (95.9%) and haematuria (94.4%). The most infrequently taught topics were male urinary incontinence (59.4%), male infertility (52.4%) and erectile dysfunction (43.8%). Male and female catheterisation on patients as undergraduates was performed by 92.1% and 73.0% of FY1 doctors respectively, and 16.9% had considered a career in urology. Theory based teaching was mainly prevalent in the early years of medical school, with clinical skills teaching, and clinical placements in the later years of medical school. 20.1% of FY1 doctors reported no undergraduate clinical attachment in urology. CONCLUSION: LEARN is the largest ever evaluation of undergraduate urology teaching. In the UK, teaching seemed satisfactory as evaluated by the BAUS undergraduate syllabus. However, many students report having no clinical attachments in Urology and some newly qualified doctors report never having inserted a catheter, which is a GMC mandated requirement. We recommend a greater emphasis on undergraduate clinical exposure to urology and stricter adherence to GMC mandated procedures

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Dynamic priority real-time scheduling on power asymmetric multicore processors

The use of real-time systems is growing at an increasing rate. This raises the power efficiency as the main challenge for system designers. Power asymmetric multicore processors provide a power-efficient platform for building complex real-time systems. The utilization of this efficient platform can be further enhanced by adopting proficient scheduling policies. Unfortunately, the research on real-time scheduling of power asymmetric multicore processors is in its infancy. In this research, we have addressed this problem and added new results. We have proposed a dynamic-priority semi-partitioned algorithm named: Earliest-Deadline First with C=D Task Splitting (EDFwC=D-TS) for scheduling real-time applications on power asymmetric multicore processors. EDFwC=D-TS outclasses its counterparts in terms of system utilization. The simulation results show that EDFwC=D-TS schedules up to 67% more tasks with heavy workloads. Furthermore, it improves the processor utilization up to 11% and on average uses 14% less cores to schedule the given workload

Vitamin D Deficiency as a Risk Factor of Breast Cancer

Background: To determine the frequency of Vitamin D insufficiency in patients with breast cancer.Methods: In this comparative study diagnosed cases of carcinoma breast (n=50) were enrolled. Equal number were taken as control. Patients undergoing current dialysis treatment, elevated liver enzymes, primary hyperparathyroidism, hypercalcemia, hypercalciuria, or Paget’s disease and already taking therapy to improve vitamin D levels were excluded. Vitamin D levels were measured by Enzyme Linked Immunosorbant Assay(ELISA).Chi square test was applied to compare the vitamin D deficiency in cases and controls. Odds ratio were calculated. Stratification was done for duration of disease (in months) age of patients, family history to control the effect modifier.Results: In our study, 64%(n=32) in cases and 100%(n=50) in controls were between 25-45 years of age while 36%(n=18) in cases group were between 46-65 years of age, Mean+SD was calculated as 40.60+10.02 and 32.08+4.12 respectively.Frequency of vitamin D deficiency was 92% in cases and 63% in controls.Conclusion: Fequency of Vitamin D insufficiency in patients with breast cancer was significantly higher as compared to the controls. Dietary vitamin D and casual sunlight exposure may be among the modifiable risk factors for breast cancer