Seroprevalence of Hepatitis-B virus and Hepatitis-C virus in pregnant women in Hyderabad.

Introduction: Infections of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) and the hepatitis C virus (HCV) are major global public health problem. Approximately 350 million and 190 million people worldwide are infected with HBV and HCV respectively.  Objective: To evaluate seroprevalence of hepatitis B and C among pregnant  women of Hyderabad. Methodology: This prospective cross sectional study conducted at Pathology department of a tertiary care hospital of Hyderabad during Jan 2019 to July 2019. During period of study data of 500 pregnant women recorded on pre structured proforma after taking informed consent. Causes of hepatitis other than B or C virus were excluded. Status of HCV and HBV was confirmed using Elisa method. Results: showed 7% seropositivity for HCV and 4.2% for HBV among pregnant women. Conclusion: Among pregnant females, in Hyderabad  there is a higher seropositivity of anti HCV antibodies as compared to HBsAg. Both seropositivity to HBV and HCV was found to be more prevalent in the 30-39 year age group. Keywords: Pregnant women, Hyderabad, Seroprevalence HCV, Seroprevalence HBV. &nbsp

Diagnostic yield of FNAC: Our Experience

Introduction: Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is currently recommended as first line investigation in suspected malignancy as it provide useful information to plan surgery. FNAC is the most cost-effective method of obtaining a morphological diagnosis and prognostic purpose of superficial and deep-seated lesion throughout body and also as less expensive than diagnostic surgery. Objective: To document diagnostic yield of FNAC at Mirpurkhas. Methodology: This retrospective study was conducted between 1st January 2019 to August 2020 at My Diagnostic Laboratory Mirpurkhas city. A total of 162 patients with the mostly swelling of head and neck and Breast underwent Fine needle aspiration procedure was performed. Tuberculosis suspected was additional sample was sent for slides were also stained with Ziehl Neelsen (Z.N) methods to detected acid fast bacilli (AFB) directly. Results: In our series 162 cases were analyzed that had underwent FNAC. In 29.62% cases, finding was cystic & mesenchymal lesion, followed by granulomatous inflammation in 28.22% cases. In 20.37% cases lesion diagnosed as malignant.   Conclusion: Tuberculosis is found as most common cause of cervical lymphadenopathy. Breast malignant lesion particularly in young patient can also be diagnosed with reasonable accuracy

The frequency of vibrio cholera 01 EL TOR (Inaba And Ogawa) and its Resistance Pattern in Karachi.

Introduction: Cholera is an acute infectious disease of small intestine, caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. More than 200 serogroups of V. cholerae have been identified. In Iran, Inaba strains were 75% resistant against trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole in 2011, while during 2012-13 it was 100%. Ogawa strains showed 96% resistance against trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole in 2011, whereas 100% resistant in 2012, while no resistance was seen in 2013 against the same antibiotic.   Objective: To determine the frequency of vibrio cholera 01 EL TOR (Inaba And Ogawa) and its resistance pattern in Karachi. Methodology: Samples were collected from patients with acute diarrhea with rice-water stool from Medical Unit, JPMC and NICH, Karachi between October 2015 to August 2016. These samples were then transported to Microbiology Department, Basic Medical Sciences Institute, JPMC, Karachi and processed according to standard protocol. Results: No growth was noticed in 147 (66.81%) samples while a total of 28 (12.7%) were V. cholerae species, and 45 (20.45%) were other organisms. The distribution of V. cholerae serotypes, out of 28 V. cholerae species, 13 (46.4%) were of Inaba serotypes, 09 (32.1%) were of Ogawa serotypes while 06 (21.4%) were of Non-01 serotypes. Conclusion: The susceptibility results of tetracycline and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole are not very favorable. Involvement of multidrug resistant V. cholerae O1 serotypes in the community is a very serious public health concern. Such patients were observed to be very difficult to treat in the community. &nbsp

Programmable and customized intelligence for traffic steering in 5G networks using open RAN architectures

5G and beyond mobile networks will support heterogeneous use cases at an unprecedented scale, thus demanding automated control and optimization of network functionalities customized to the needs of individual users. Such fine-grained control of the Radio Access Network (RAN) is not possible with the current cellular architecture. To fill this gap, the Open RAN paradigm and its specification introduce an “open” architecture with abstractions that enable closed-loop control and provide data-driven, and intelligent optimization of the RAN at the userlevel. This is obtained through custom RAN control applications (i.e., xApps) deployed on near-real-time RAN Intelligent Controller (near-RT RIC) at the edge of the network. Despite these premises, as of today the research community lacks a sandbox to build data-driven xApps, and create large-scale datasets for effective Artificial Intelligence (AI) training. In this paper, we address this by introducing ns-O-RAN , a software framework that integrates a real-world, production-grade near- RT RIC with a 3GPP-based simulated environment on ns-3, enabling at the same time the development of xApps and automated large-scale data collection and testing of Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)- driven control policies for the optimization at the user-level. In addition, we propose the first user-specific O-RAN Traffic Steering (TS) intelligent handover framework. It uses Random Ensemble Mixture (REM), a Conservative Q-learning (CQL) algorithm, combined with a state-of-the-art Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture, to optimally assign a serving base station to each user in the network. Our TS xApp, trained with more than 40 million data points collected by ns-O-RAN, runs on the near-RT RIC and controls the ns-O-RAN base stations. We evaluate the performance on a large-scale deployment with up to 126 users with 8 base stations, showing that the xApp-based handover improves throughput and spectral efficiency by an average of 50% over traditional handover heuristics, with less mobility overhead

Preserving Data Privacy During Data Transfer in MANETs

Mobile adhoc networks consists of large number of mobile nodes, and is usually deployed to transfer data from a sender to a receiver using multi-hop routing. The data being transmitted may contain sensitive information, and undesired disclosure of information can lead to launching of various attacks, thus breaching the data privacy. Earlier works achieve data privacy by using approaches such as data transformation and data perturbation. However, these approaches introduce higher overheads and delays. We propose a computational intelligence based data privacy preserving scheme, where rough set theory is used to anonymize the data during data transfer. Data packets are enclosed within capsules that can be opened only by the designated node, thus preventing the undesired leakage of the data. Also, route between a sender and a receiver is changed dynamically by selecting more than one trusted 1-hop neighbor nodes in each routing step. The proposed data privacy preserving scheme is tested by considering different case studies in a MANET deployed for stock market. Theoretical analysis for data privacy is presented in terms of Information Gain by an attacker and Attacker Overhead, and the performance of proposed scheme against some of the attacks is also discussed. The simulation results show the effectiveness of proposed scheme

Design, Development and Implementation of the IR Signalling Techniques for Monitoring Ambient and Body Temperature in WBANs

Healthcare systems such as hospitals, homecare, telemedicine, and physical rehabilitation are expected to be revolutionized by WBAN (Wireless Body Area Networks). This research work aims to investigate, design, optimize, and demonstrate the applications of IR (Infra-Red) communication systems in WBAN. It is aimed to establish a prototype WBAN system capable of measuring Ambient and Body Temperature using LM35 as temperature sensor and transmitting and receiving the data using optical signals. The corresponding technical challenges that have to be faced are also discussed in this paper. Investigations are carried out to efficiently design the hardware using low-cost and low power optical transceivers. The experimental results reveal the successful transmission and reception of Ambient and Body Temperatures over short ranges i.e. up to 3-4 meters. A simple IR transceiver with an LED (Light Emitting Diodes), TV remote control IC and Arduino microcontroller is designed to perform the transmission with sufficient accuracy and ease. Experiments are also performed to avoid interference from other sources like AC and TV remote control signals by implementing IR tag

An Optimum Solution for Electric Power Theft

Electric power theft is a problem that continues to plague power sector across the whole country. Every year, the electricity companies face the line losses at an average 20-30% and according to power ministry estimation WAPDA companies lose more than Rs. 125 billion. Significantly, it is enough to destroy the entire power sector of country. According to sources 20% losses means the masses would have to pay extra 20% in terms of electricity tariffs. In other words, the innocent consumers pay the bills of those who steal electricity. For all that, no any permanent solution for this major issue has ever been proposed. We propose an applicable and optimum solution for this impassable problem. In our research, we propose an Electric power theft solution based on three stages; Transmission stage, Distribution stage, and User stage. Without synchronization among all, the complete solution can not be achieved. The proposed solution is simulated on NI (National Instruments) Circuit Design Suite Multisim v.10.0. Our research work is an implicit and a workable approach towards the Electric power theft, as for conditions in Pakistan, which is bearing the brunt of power crises alread

Factors affecting Farmer's Participation in Watershed development activities

ABSTRAC

Unusual cause of lumbar canal stenosis in 8th decade of life – Spinal epidural lipomatosis

Spinal Epidural lipomatosis (SEL) is an uncommon condition, usually presents in young and middle aged patients, with male preponderance. Idiopathic SEL is rare, particularly in 8th decade of life. SEL should also be considered as a differential diagnosis in approach of elderly patient presenting with lumbar canal stenosis. Such a case of 77 year old man is presented here