ASSESSMENT OF SURFACE WATER QUALITY OF RIVER KORANG

Water quality of fresh water basins in Pakistan is being degraded because of human actions. Surface water quality at Angoori road, Phulgaran, Baheria golf city which are the main tributaries of river Korang, Rawal Lake and WASA filtration plant were investigated during June and April. Physico-chemical parameters including heavy metal detection of the water samples and possible sources of contamination were analyzed. The study showed that the pollution level in all the sampling sites is rising because of discharge of domestic wastes, poultry waste, agricultural activities and solid waste dumping directly into the sites. Parameters like COD, DO, TA and TSS and metals like lead and cadmium exceeded the permissible limits as compared with USEPA, PakEPA and WHO standards. The contamination level is higher in June as compared to April. The two station Angoori road and Rawal Lake are more contaminated as compared to other sites. Moreover WASA filtration plant is working efficiently it decreases the amount of contaminants coming from all sites and the water quality is fit for drinking

Efficient Detection of Skin Cancer Using Deep Learning Techniques and a Comparative Analysis Study

Many skin lesions may result in the wrong diagnosis of skin cancer, leading to delays and ultimately making the cure impossible. Framed within this statement, this article proposes an efficient skin cancer detection model and compares the six pre-trained models, used for transfer learning in ISIC 2019 dataset. Three most common types of skin cancer—melanoma, nevus, and basal cell carcinoma—are classified by using the transfer learning on the pre-trained models of the ISIC 2019 dataset, to conclude the most accurate detection results with training and test accuracy of 99.73% and 93.79%, respectively

AN UNUSUAL MASS OF THE CHEST WALL IN A 7 YEARS OLD CHILD: AN ASKIN'S TUMOUR

Askin’s tumour is a primitive neuroectodermal tumour developing from the soft tissues of the chest wall. It is commonly misdiagnosed due to features similar to other round blue cell tumours. The approach for its diagnosis and treatment is complex and requires a multidisciplinary team. The recommended treatment is chemotherapy and surgical excision mainly. The prognosis is dependent on many factors. We managed a child of Askin’s tumour using modalities such as neoadjuvant chemotherapy and surgical excision and found a good response.Key words: Chest wall mass, Askin’s tumour, Ewing sarcom

An Overview of Particle Swarm Optimization Variants

AbstractParticle swarm optimization (PSO) is a stochastic algorithm used for the optimization problems proposed by Kennedy [1] in 1995. It is a very good technique for the optimization problems. But still there is a drawback in the PSO is that it stuck in the local minima. To improve the performance of PSO, the researchers proposed the different variants of PSO. Some researchers try to improve it by improving initialization of the swarm. Some of them introduce the new parameters like constriction coefficient and inertia weight. Some researchers define the different method of inertia weight to improve the performance of PSO. Some researchers work on the global and local best particles by introducing the mutation operators in the PSO. In this paper, we will see the different variants of PSO with respect to initialization, inertia weight and mutation operators

Relationship between decision making styles and consumer behavior

The objective of this study is to identify the different factors that impact on consumer behavior on the bases of decision making style. The sample size of this study was two hundred and fifty. Data was collected through five point Likert scale questionnaire. SPSS was used to analyze the data. Correlation and multiple regression was performed to measure the relationship between independent and dependent variables and independent sample t-test was applied to test difference between male and female decision making style. This study concludes that there is significant relationship between male and female decision making style and female respondents are more agreed that decision making styles influence the consumer behavior. All the independent variables have significant and positive relationship with consumer behavior

Use of black soldier fly larvae composter bin to reduce household food waste

Food waste is the largest component in municipal solid waste (MSW). About 1.3 billion tons of food, which is equivalent to one third of global food production is lost or wasted every year along the food supply chain [1]. In Malaysia, total generation of MSW is 15,000 tons. This MSW consists of 50% food waste, of which 70% is disposed at the landfill sites [2]. It was reported that in average a household in Malaysia throw away around 0.5-0.8 kg uneaten food per day [3]. This food waste is recognized as huge problem worldwide and it becomes particularly severe to developing country. There are many methods that can be carried out to reduce the food waste generation. Composting method is one of the methods to convert food waste into valuable product with minimum cost

Capital Structure Theories and Speed of Capital Adjustment towards Target Capital Structure along Life Cycle Stages of Asian Manufacturing Firms

Purpose: Firms have different costs and benefits and asymmetric information across their life cycle stages and hence each stage has different financial pattern and speed of adjustment towards target capital. Methodology: We use System GMM to test the hypotheses. We use market leverages proxies for the capital structure, life cycle proxies: introduction, growth, mature, shakeout and decline and the control determinants of capital structure such as profitability, tangibility, firm size and growth opportunities. We estimate the financial pattern and speed of adjustment along life cycle stages of manufacturing firms from eleven Asian economies over the period of 2010-2018. Findings: The results show that firms in earlier stages have more long term debt than mature stage. The speed of adjustment towards target capital structure is highest in mature stage than the other stages. The control determinants significantly affect market leverages. Implications: The findings suggest that management has to consider life cycle stages of their firms in order to adjust capital structure. Stockholders should consider stage of firm with relation to profitability and capital structure for long term prospects

Review on EMG Acquisition and Classification Techniques: Towards Zero Retraining in the Influence of User and Arm Position Independence

The surface electromyogram (EMG) is widely studied and applied in machine control. Recent methods of classifying hand gestures reported classification rates of over 95%. However, the majority of the studies made were performed on a single user, focusing solely on the gesture classification. These studies are restrictive in practical sense: either focusing on just gestures, multi-user compatibility, or rotation independence. The variations in EMG signals due to these conditions present a challenge to the practical application of EMG devices, often requiring repetitious training per application. To the best of our knowledge, there is little comprehensive review of works done in EMG classification in the combined influence of user-independence, rotation and hand exchange. Therefore, in this paper we present a review of works related to the practical issues of EMG with a focus on the EMG placement, and recent acquisition and computing techniques to reduce training. First, we provided an overview of existing electrode placement schemes. Secondly, we compared the techniques and results of single-subject against multi-subject, multi-position settings. As a conclusion, the study of EMG classification in this direction is relatively new. However the results are encouraging and strongly indicate that EMG classification in a broad range of people and tolerance towards arm orientation is possible, and can pave way for more flexible EMG devices

How electromyography readings from the human forearm are made cryptic, trivial, or non-trivial information for use in synthetic systems

The success of reading potentials generating from human muscle activities is evident that proves that the human body’s neural system is naturally electronics. Now, modern engineering is accepting it as one field of engineering science. Due to this, the concept of a cyborg is beginning to realize as products such as exoskeletons and neuroprostheses. The object of this work, however, is to view from a different perspective as to how this is beneficial to the functions beyond the mentality of today’s applications. We hypothesized that the recorded potentials from muscle activities may be regarded similar as to the signals that jump between synapses in the biological neurons. We suggest that these signals, instead of mere electrical in nature, their waveforms might include emotion characteristics from uniquely combined muscle activities and feeling. The system codes the signals where the newly created information may be made cryptic, trivial, or nontrivial depending on how they are going to be utilized in the synthetic systems. So that the artificial system could sense, for instance, the emotion of the human host

The Classification of EMG Signals with Zero Retraining in the Influence of User and Rotation Independence

The surface electromyogram (EMG) contains information directly related to muscle contraction and modern classification techniques can obtain near-zero error when identifying various gestures over the forearm. However, good results come at a compromise over the ease of use. Once the EMG classifier trained on a user is changed, the accuracy rate will be greatly reduced. Furthermore, changing the position of the forearm also causes drop in accuracy rate. Acknowledging the limitations of EMG classification, this study aims to investigate the EMG signals based on the gestures, and evaluate if there are any gestures which are inherently robust to these variations. The EMG of forearm gestures have been classified in the combined influence user independence, rotation independence and hand exchange independence. Experiment results on 20 participants indicated that truly independent classification can be achieved for most forearm gestures (up to 100%) in some arm positions. Hand exchange is also not feasible as the study has shown that the data field for both hands are fairly different. Out of the nine gestures under study, only the wrist extension was found to be truly independent of all the influences