Tumour Lysis Syndrome and Partial Remission Occurring After Administration of a Test Dose of Obinutuzumab

Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) is one of the most common haematological malignancies worldwide, with an increasing prevalence in the elderly population. Obinutuzumab is a type II anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody which showed superiority over rituximab in combination chemotherapy with chlorambucil for the treatment of CLL in the CLL11 trial (NCT01010061) and is becoming part of standard first line treatment for CLL in the elderly based on its potent efficacy and benign safety profile. We report the case of a chemotherapy naive patient who develop tumour lysis syndrome despite appropriate prophylaxis, and had partial remission of her disease after receiving only the initial test dose of obinutuzumab

PUBLIC DEBT AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN PAKISTAN: A REASSESSMENT

This study examined the effect of public debt on economicgrowth for Pakistan over the period 1972 to 2012. Autoregressivedistributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing procedure was applied toexplore the long and the short run liaison between public debt andeconomic growth. This study examined the effect of public debt onboth the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Grass NationalProduct (GNP) unlike other studies, which examined only oneindicator of economic growth. Public debt includes both externaldebt and domestic debt. Our findings reveal a significant negativeeffect of external debt on GDP and GNP in the long run and in theshort run. Further, debt servicing is inversely influencing GDP andGNP in the short run. However, domestic debt is found to have noeffect on economic growth. This study suggests that reliance on publicdebt should be minimized as this adversely effects economic growthin Pakistan

Doctors’ Knowledge of Hypertension Guidelines Recommendations Reflected in Their Practice

Aim. To evaluate doctors’ knowledge, attitude, and practices and predictors of adherence to Malaysian hypertension guidelines (CPG 2008). Methods. Twenty-six doctors involved in hypertension management at Penang General Hospital were enrolled in a cross-sectional study. Doctors’ knowledge and attitudes towards guidelines were evaluated through a self-administered questionnaire. Their practices were evaluated by noting their prescriptions written to 520 established hypertensive outpatients (20 prescriptions/doctor). SPSS 17 was used for data analysis. Results. Nineteen doctors (73.07%) had adequate knowledge of guidelines. Specialists and consultants had significantly better knowledge about guidelines’ recommendations. Doctors were positive towards guidelines with mean attitude score of 23.15±1.34 points on a 30-point scale. The median number of guidelines compliant prescriptions was 13 (range 5–20). Statistically significant correlation (rs = 0.635, P<0.001) was observed between doctors’ knowledge and practice scores. A total of 349 (67.1%) prescriptions written were guidelines compliant. In multivariate analysis hypertension clinic (OR = 0.398, P=0.008), left ventricular hypertrophy (OR = 0.091, P=0.001) and heart failure (OR = 1.923, P=0.039) were significantly associated with guidelines adherence. Conclusion. Doctors’ knowledge of guidelines is reflected in their practice. The gap between guidelines recommendations and practice was seen in the pharmacotherapy of uncomplicated hypertension and hypertension with left ventricular hypertrophy, renal disease, and diabetes mellitus

Impact of Human Resources Management Practices on Turnover, Productivity and Corporate Financial Performance

In developing countries, the human resource availability is quite easy but the most unfortunate part is its effective and efficient management. It is a well established fact that it is human beings behind the machines which can drive or drown the organizations. Human behavior and psychology is driven and motivated by varying degree of factors. The researchers across the globe have evolved and successfully practiced certain HRM techniques in order to achieve best performance and productivity from human capital. Unfortunately this area remained neglected and human resource could not be exploited to its full potential in Pakistan despite the fact that the country possesses  one of the best human capital in the world. This paper is an Endeavour to identify the best Human Resource Management practices applicable to Pakistani environments and analyze their positive effects on labor turnover, productivity and corporate financial performance. In order to achieve this objective, a survey questionnaire was designed and disseminated among respondents. A total of 200 questionnaires were distributed, out of which 145 completed questionnaires were received. The authors analyzed the data by using statpro software. the major conclusions and findings were; Need for articulation of vision, mission and values for organization, lack of performance management system, lack of benefit and compensation program, issue of corporate loyalty, poor workforce alignment, absence of HR development and training programs, lack of Human Resource Information System(HRIS),and non adoption of TQM. Keywords: HRM, Productivity, Pakistan, Turnover

Family control and corporate risk-taking in China: Does working capital strategy matter?

This study uses the data of A-share listed family firms during the period 2010-18 and employs multiple regression analysis to verify the role of family control and working capital strategy for corporate risk-taking in China. This study also explores the regulatory role of family control in the relationship between working capital strategy and corporate risk-taking of Chinese listed family firms. Results show that greater family control encourages risk-taking behavior in Chinese firms whereas conservative working capital strategy diminishes corporate risk-taking. The results also suggest a regulatory role for family control on the effects of working capital strategy for family firms’ risk-taking behavior. Strong family control weakens the negative association between working capital conservatism and corporate risk-taking. This study’s findings may help managers of family firms to adjust risk-taking behavior in response to changing working capital strategy. The results are robust to different measures of corporate risk-taking and working capital strateg

Overhead Based Cluster Scheduling of Mixed Criticality Systems on Multicore Platform

The cluster-based technique is gaining focus for scheduling tasks of mixed-criticality (MC) real-time multicore systems. In this technique, the cores of the MC system are distributed in groups known as clusters. When all cores are distributed in clusters, the tasks are partitioned into clusters, which are scheduled on the cores within each cluster using a global approach. In this study, a cluster-based technique is adopted for scheduling tasks of real-time mixed-criticality systems (MCS). The Decreasing Criticality Decreasing Utilization with the worst-fit (DCDU-WF) technique is used for partitioning of tasks to clusters, whereas a novel mixed-criticality cluster-based boundary fair (MC-Bfair) scheduling approach is used for scheduling tasks on cores within clusters. The MC-Bfair scheduling algorithm reduces the number context switches and migration of tasks, which minimizes the overhead of mixed-criticality tasks. The migration and context switch overhead time is added at the time of each migration and context switch respectively for a task. In low critical mode, the low mode context switch and migration overhead time is added to task execution time, while the high mode overhead time of migration and context switch is added to the execution time of a task in high critical mode. The results obtained from experiments show the better schedulablity performance of proposed cluster-based technique as compared to cluster-based fixed priority (CB-FP), MC-EKG-VD-1, global and partitioned scheduling techniques e.g., for target utilization U=0.6, the proposed technique schedule 66.7% task sets while MC-EKG-VD-1, CB-FP, partitioned and global techniques schedule 50%, 33.3%, 16.7% and 0% task sets respectively

The Impact of CRISPR-Cas System on Antiviral Therapy

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-associated protein nuclease (Cas) is identified as an adaptive immune system in archaea and bacteria. Type II of this system, CRISPR-Cas9, is the most versatile form that has enabled facile and efficient targeted genome editing. Viral infections have serious impacts on global health and conventional antiviral therapies have not yielded a successful solution hitherto. The CRISPR-Cas9 system represents a promising tool for eliminating viral infections. In this review, we highlight 1) the recent progress of CRISPR-Cas technology in decoding and diagnosis of viral outbreaks, 2) its applications to eliminate viral infections in both pre-integration and provirus stages, and 3) various delivery systems that are employed to introduce the platform into target cells