Epidemiological trends and risk factors associated with dengue disease in Pakistan (1980–2014): a systematic literature search and analysis

BACKGROUND: Dengue is becoming more common in Pakistan with its alarming spreading rate. A historical review needs to be carried out to find the root causes of dengue dynamics, the factors responsible for its spread and lastly to formulate future strategies for its control. METHODS: We searched (January, 2015) all the published literature between 1980 and 2014 to determine spread/burden of dengue disease in Pakistan. RESULTS: A total of 81 reports were identified, showing high numbers of dengue cases in 2010, 2011, and 2013. The tendency of dengue to occur in younger than in older age groups was evident throughout the survey period and all four serotypes were recorded, with DENV1 the least common. Most dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) cases fell in the 20-45 years age range. High frequencies tended to be observed first in the Southern coastal region characterized by mild winters and humid warm summers and then the disease progressed towards the lowland areas of the Indus plain with cool winters, hot summers and monsoon rainfall. Based on this survey, new risk maps and infection estimates were identified reflecting public health burden imposed by dengue at the national level. CONCLUSIONS: Our study showed that dengue is common in the three provinces of Pakistan, i.e., Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Punjab and Sindh. Based on the literature review as well as on our study analysis the current expansion of dengue seems multifactorial and may include climate change, virus evolution, and societal factors such as rapid urbanization, population growth and development, socioeconomic factors, as well as global travel and trade. Due to inadequate remedial strategies, effective vector control measures are essential to target the dengue vector mosquito where high levels of human-vector contact occur. The known social, economic, and disease burden of dengue is alarming globally and it is evident that the wider impact of this disease is grossly underestimated. An international multi-sectoral response, outlined in the WHO Global Strategy for Dengue Prevention and Control, 2012-2020, is now essential to reduce the significant influence of this disease in Dengue endemic areas. Overall gaps were identified in knowledge around seroprevalence, dengue incidence, vector control, genotype evolution and age-stratified serotype circulation

PENGARUH TIME BUDGET PRESSURE DAN DUE PROFESSIONAL TERHADAP KUALITAS AUDIT (Studi Kasus pada Kantor Akuntan Publik Kota Bandung)

ABSTRAK Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui Pengaruh Time Budget Pressure dan Due Professional Care terhadap Kualitas Audit. Pendekatan penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah analisis deskriftif dan verifikatif dengan menggunakan data primer. Analisis statistik yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah uji asumsi klasik, analisis regresi, korelasi, pengujian hipotesis uji t. Banyaknya populasi penelitian adalah 78 orang, dan sampel penelitian digunakan metode slovin sehingga sample berjumlah menjadi 45 orang dengan sumber data yang diperoleh melalui hasil pengisian kuesioner. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian yang telah dilakukan dapat diketahui bahwa Time Budget Pressure tidak berpengaruh signifikan terhadap Kualitas Auditor dengan nilai koefesien -0,238 0,05, dan Due Professional Care berpengaruh signifikan terhadap Kaualitas Auditor dengan nilai koefisien sebesar 2,287 > ttabel 2,011 dan nilai signifikansi 0,02 < 0,05, serta besarnya pengaruh adalah 9,8% sedangkan sisanya sebesar 90,2% dipengaruhi oleh faktor lain. Kata kunci: Time Budget Pressure, Due Professional Care, Kualitas Auditor

Growth responses of NaCl stressed rice (Oryza sativa L.) plants germinated from seed in aseptic nutrient cultures supplemented with proline

Negative impact of salinity on plant germination is significant because of abundance of Na+ in culture medium, which causes growth inhibition. Effect of salinity (NaCl) in the presence of proline was assessed in rice (Oryza sativa L.) variety Khushbo-95 at seedling stage. Seeds were cultured on MS0 (MS basal medium), MS1 (MS0 + 100 mM NaCl) and MS2 (MS1 + 5 mM proline) for 20 days. Seedlings and its biomass decreased in saline culture. Similarly, total protein and sugar contents also decreased, while reducing sugars and proline contents increased. These parameters were observed to be slightly adverse in cultures supplemented with proline (MS2) and NaCl (MS2). Among cultures, leaf demography (cell size) was affected significantly; this may be the reflection of accumulation of proline, Na+ and Cl- and exclusion of K+ in developed rice seedlings.Key words: Oryza sativa L., seedling biomass, epidermal cells, proline content

Effect of Gas Flowrate on Nucleation Mechanism of MWCNTs for a Compound Catalyst

Activation of the catalyst particles during a CVD process can be anticipated from the carbon feeding rate. In this study, Fe2O3/Al2O3 catalyst was synthesized with uniformly dispersed iron over alumina support for onward production of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) in a fluidized bed chemical CVD reactor. The effect of the ethylene flowrate on catalytic activity of the compound catalyst and morphology of the as-grown MWCNTs was also investigated in this study. The dispersed active phases of the catalyst and optimized gas flowrate helped in improving the tube morphology and prevented the aggregation of the as-grown MWCNTs. The flowrates, below 100 sccm, did not provide sufficient reactants to interact with the catalyst for production of defect-free CNT structures. Above 100 sccm, concentration of the carbon precursor did not show notable influence on decomposition rate of the gas molecules. The most promising results on growth and structural properties of MWCNTs were gained at ethylene flowrate of 100 sccm. At this flowrate, the ratio of G and D intensity peaks (IG/ID) was deliberated about 1.40, which indicates the growth of graphitic structures of MWCNTs

Design and analysis of a photonic crystal based planar antenna for thz applications

Modern advancements in wearable smart devices and ultra-high-speed terahertz (THz) communication systems require low cost, low profile, and highly efficient antenna design with high directionality to address the propagation loss at the THz range. For this purpose, a novel shape, high gain antenna for THz frequency range applications is presented in this work. The proposed antenna is based on a photonic bandgap (PBG)-based crystal polyimide substrate which gives optimum performance in terms of gain (9.45 dB), directivity (9.99 dBi), and highly satisfactory VSWR (&lt;1) at 0.63 THz. The performance of the antenna is studied on PBGs of different geometrical configurations and the results are compared with the antenna based on the homogeneous polyimide-based substrate. The effects of variations in the dimensions of the PBG unit cells are also studied to achieve a -10 dB bandwidth of 28.97 GHz (0.616 to 0.64 THz)

Classification of Macromolecules Based on Amino Acid Sequences Using Deep Learning

The classification of amino acids and their sequence analysis plays a vital role in life sciences and is a challenging task. Deep learning models have well-established frameworks for solving a broad spectrum of complex learning problems compared to traditional machine learning techniques. This article uses and compares state-of-the-art deep learning models like Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), and Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) to solve macromolecule classification problems using amino acid sequences. The CNN extracts features from amino acid sequences, which are treated as vectors with the use of word embedding. These vectors are fed to the above-mentioned models to train robust classifiers. The results show that word2vec as embedding combined with VGG-16 performs better than LSTM and GRU. The proposed approach gets an error rate of 1.5%

Parameters identification and optimization of photovoltaic panels under real conditions using Lambert W-function

This paper proposes a new approach based on Lambert W-function to extract the electrical parameters of photovoltaic (PV) panels. This approach can extract the optimal electrical characteristics of the PV panel under variable conditions of irradiation and temperature. Three benchmarking panels (shell SP70 monocrystalline silicon, shell ST40 thin film, and KC200GT Polycrystalline Silicon) are demonstrated and analyzed considering the electrical characteristics provided by the manufacturers. A comprehensive assessment is carried out under different weather condition to validate the capability and the robustness of the proposed approach. Furthermore, the simulated output characteristics of the three modules Photovoltaic are almost comparable and reproduce faithfully the manufacturer’s experimental data The novelty of this study is the using a new hybrid analytical and numerical method that straight forward and effective given value of Root mean square error less than those obtained by others methods that indicate the estimated results are very close to the experimental values provided by the manufacturers

Design and realization of a frequency reconfigurable multimode antenna for ism, 5g-ub-6-ghz, and s-band applications

This paper presents the design and realization of a compact size multimode frequency reconfigurable antenna. The antenna consists of a triangular-shaped monopole radiator, originally inspired from a rectangular monopole antenna. Slots were utilized to notch the desired frequency while the PIN diodes were utilized to achieve frequency reconfigurability. The antenna can operate in wideband, dual-band, or tri-band mode depending upon the state of the diodes. To validate the simulation results, a prototype was fabricated, and various performance parameters were measured and compared with simulated results. The strong agreement between simulated and measured results along with superior performance as compared to existing works in the literature makes the proposed antenna a strong candidate for ISM, 5G-sub-6 GHz, and S-band applications