Multiple Route Generation Using Simulated Niche Based Particle Swarm Optimization

This research presents an optimization technique for multiple routes generation using simulated niche based particle swarm optimization for dynamic online route planning, optimization of the routes and proved to be an effective technique. It effectively deals with route planning in dynamic and unknown environments cluttered with obstacles and objects. A simulated niche based particle swarm optimization (SN-PSO) is proposed using modified particle swarm optimization algorithm for dealing with online route planning and is tested for randomly generated environments, obstacle ratio, grid sizes, and complex environments. The conventional techniques perform well in simple and less cluttered environments while their performance degrades with large and complex environments. The SN-PSO generates and optimizes multiple routes in complex and large environments with constraints. The traditional route optimization techniques focus on good solutions only and do not exploit the solution space completely. The SN-PSO is proved to be an efficient technique for providing safe, short, and feasible routes under dynamic constraints. The efficiency of the SN-PSO is tested in a mine field simulation with different environment configurations and successfully generates multiple feasible routes

The usage pattern and willingness of undergraduate medical students for including social media platforms as a learning tool in medical education- an online survey

Background: The rapid growth and availability of smartphones and social media platforms (SMP) have changed the medical students' approach to learn and manage the information about their academic, personal and professional lives. Methods: An online survey was done in undergraduate medical students of PIMS, Karimnagar to collect information about usage pattern and perception of SMP, and willingness to participate for using SMP as a learning tool in medical education. Results: Total 433 (Females – 275) out of 600 students participated in the survey from the first year (125), secondyear (151) and third-year (157) MBBS students. Everyone is using some type of SMP. They find SMP nearly equal to lecture materials and subject notes as a useful learning tool and there was significantly increasing trend of perception of SMP being a useful learning tool from the first-year (79%), second-year (83%) to third-year (92%), (p=0.01). Almost 93% want to see SMP used at institute level in medical education. Female students (52.4%) are significantly more willing for active participation than male students (43%), p=0.04. First-year students (56%) are more ready for active participation followed by third (48.4%) and second (43.7%) year students, p=0.08. Conclusion: Most students are willing to include SMP in medical education as a learning tool and ready to participate in different activities if they get the required training. As all students have smartphones and efficiently utilizing different services on their devices, SMP can become an effective learning tool in medical education

Use Of Apitherapy: A Sweet Approach To Bony Healing Of Extracted Tooth Socket

Objective: To determine the effect of honey in enhancing the height of bony socket healing after tooth extraction. Methods: This Quasi-experimental study includes 100 patients had were selected through convenience sampling and divided into two groups, i.e. 50 each. A tooth radiograph was taken both preoperatively and postoperatively followed by nonsurgical extraction of tooth. The experimental group was provided with honey and instructed to apply it 3 times daily for the next 10 days using an I/V syringe so that honey reached up to the depth of the socket during the initial healing phase. On the 90th postoperative day, patients were repeated with the periapical radiograph. The bony outline of the extracted tooth socket was traced on a tracing paper on the preoperative radiograph and the 90th postoperative day of the radiograph and compared for wound healing by overlapping and measuring the height through a ruler. Hence, the post-operative height of the socket was evaluated in both groups. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 17.0. Results: The mean age was 30.76 ± 6.57 and 31.02 ± 5.97 years in the non-honey and honey group respectively. A total of 24 (48%) subjects were male in the honey group compared with the non-honey group 19 (38%). Females were 26 (52%) and 31 (62%) in the honey group and non-honey group. Statistically significant  (p-value 0.001) was observed between the radiological Height of the socket on 90 days in honey and non-honey groups. Conclusion: It has been determined that honey is significantly efficient honey in enhancing the height of bony socket healing after tooth extraction. To encourage adequate socket repair after tooth extraction, it may be given as a postoperative treatment.

Correlation of Red Cell Distribution Width with Severity of Cardiovascular Diseases

Objectives: To determine the correlation of red cell distribution width (RDW) with severity of cardiovascular diseases. Methodology: This study was conducted at the Department of Pathology, Aziz Fatima Medical and Dental College, Faisalabad, over a period of one year from October 2019 to September 2020. A total of 150 participants were included in the study consisting of 75 patients of cardiovascular disease in case group and 75 participants without any cardiovascular disease in control group. All patients in the study underwent trans radial or transfemoral rout coronary angiography using 5F optitorque catheter for trans radial rout or 6F Judkins catheters for transfemoral rout. All the patient had angiography within 24 hours of admission in the hospital. Results: The patients who were diagnosed with Coronary artery Disease (CAD) had significantly higher mean age (51.45 ± 11.29 years) as compared (44.56 ± 9.45 years) to group B without out CAD. There were 53 (70.67%) males in group A, and 42 (56%) males in group B. The rate of hypertension (61.33%) was significantly higher among patient who diagnosed with CAD. The mean value of RDW CV was found significantly (p-value < 0.05) raised among patients of CAD (14.36 ± 1.02vs. 13.52 ± 0.89). The RDW SD was also significantly higher in group A (43.67 ± 4.39 vs. 41.65 ± 3.46, p-value = 0.002) in comparison to group B. Age and male gender were found to be a significant (p-value < 0.05) contributor for CVD with an odds ratio of 1.18 and 3 respectively. Conclusion: RDW is an effective easily available marker for the assessment of severity of coronary artery disease and helps in risk stratification of CAD patients for further events

Evaluation of hepatoprotective effect of chloroform and methanol extracts of <i>Opuntia monacantha</i> in paracetamol-induced hepatotoxicity in rabbits

The chloroform and methanol extracts of Opuntia monacantha were studied for its hepatoprotective effect against paracetamol induced liver damage in rabbits. Results proved that both extracts at 200, 400 and 600 mg/kg body weight in one week protocol showed significant (p<0.001) hepatoprotective activity by reducing the magnitude of liver markers including alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, alkaline phasphatase and total bilirubin levels. The results were supported by histopathological studies of liver tissue. Chemical analysis of O. monacantha indicated the presence of alkaloids, tannins, saponins, flavonoids and  polysaccharides and its hepato-protective potential may be due to the presence of flavonoids. Its is concluded that 600 mg/kg is the potent dose of both extracts of O. monacantha as hepatoprotective plant

Epidemiological Data of Neurological Disorders in Pakistan and Neighboring Countries: A Review

Neurological disorders are the impairments of nervous system and are an important and growing cause of morbidity, mortality, and disability. In addition to health costs, those suffering from these conditions are also frequently victimized of stigmatization and discrimination. Stigmatization further minimizes the patients\u27 access to treatment and social activities. These disorders, therefore, require special attention particularly in developing countries where unfortunately, the burden of these disorders remains largely unrecognized. Moreover, the burden imposed by such chronic neurological conditions in general can be expected to be particularly devastating in poor populations. These conditions are emerging as severe public health concerns in the developing countries due to the facts such as unawareness, Illiteracy, large numbers of people who are untreated, and unavailability of inexpensive but effective interventions. Regrettably, reliable population-based data from developing countries including Pakistan on the epidemiology of neurological disorders are extremely limited. Although, some information on epidemiological aspects of neurological diseases are available from some developing countries (Pakistan, Iran, India, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia and China) but disease prevalence and pattern are based on geographical, social, cultural, religious, and ethnic factors. In this review, w e critically analyzed data of 209 studies regarding the burden and prevalence of hypertension, depression, Stroke, Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD), epilepsy, and Parkinson\u27s disease (PD) in Pakistan and neighboring countries

Weight patterns and perceptions among female university students of Karachi: A cross sectional study

Background: Body weight and its perception play an important role in the physical and mental well-being of a person. Weight perception is found to be a better predictor of weight management behaviour as compared to actual weight. In Pakistan, studies have been done on the prevalence of weight status but weight perception is still unexplored. The study was done to examine relationships between body weight perception, actual weight status, and weight control behaviour among the female university students of Karachi.Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out during Sep-Nov 2009 on female students in four universities of Karachi, Pakistan. Our final sample size included 338 female university students. Height and weight were measured on calibrated scales. A modified BMI criterion for Asian populations was used.Results: Based on measured BMI; the prevalence of underweight, normal weight and overweight females was 27.2%, 51.5% and 21.3% respectively. As a whole, just over one third (33.73%) of the sample misclassified their weight status. Among underweight (n=92), 45.70% thought they were of normal weight. No one who was truly underweight perceived them self as overweight. Among the normal weight (n= 174), 9.8% thought they were underweight and 23.6% considered themselves overweight. Among the overweight (n=72); 18.3% considered themselves normal. Only one female student thought she was underweight despite being truly overweight.Conclusions: Our study shows that among female university students in Karachi, the prevalence of being underweight is comparatively high. There is a significant misperception of weight, with one third of students misclassifying themselves. Underweight females are likely to perceive themselves as normal and be most satisfied with their weight. Health policy makers should implement these findings in future development of health interventions and prevention of depression, social anxiety and eating disorders associated with incorrect weight perception among young females. Studies that employ a longitudinal approach are needed to validate our findings

An Efficient Channel Access Scheme for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are getting more popularity due to the potential Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) technology. It provides many efficient network services such as safety warnings (collision warning), entertainment (video and voice), maps based guidance, and emergency information. VANETs most commonly use Road Side Units (RSUs) and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) referred to as Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) mode for data accessing. IEEE 802.11p standard which was originally designed for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) is modified to address such type of communication. However, IEEE 802.11p uses Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) for communication between wireless nodes. Therefore, it does not perform well for high mobility networks such as VANETs. Moreover, in RSU mode timely provision of data/services under high density of vehicles is challenging. In this paper, we propose a RSU-based efficient channel access scheme for VANETs under high traffic and mobility. In the proposed scheme, the contention window is dynamically varied according to the times (deadlines) the vehicles are going to leave the RSU range. The vehicles with shorter time deadlines are served first and vice versa. Simulation is performed by using the Network Simulator (NS-3) v. 3.6. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme performs better in terms of throughput, backoff rate, RSU response time, and fairness

Priority-Based Cloud Computing Architecture for Multimedia-Enabled Heterogeneous Vehicular Users

In recent days, vehicles have been equipped with smart devices that offer various multimedia-related applications and services, such as smart driving assistance, traffic congestions, weather forecasting, road safety alarms, and many entertainment and comfort applications. Thus, these smart vehicles produce a large amount of multimedia-related data that require fast and real-time processing. However, due to constrained computing and storage capacities, such huge amounts of multimedia-related data cannot be processed in on-board standalone devices. Thus, multimedia cloud computing (MCC) has emerged as an economical and scalable computing technology that can process multimedia-related data efficiently while providing improved Quality of Service (QoS) to vehicular users from anywhere, at any time and on any device, at reduced costs. However, there are certain challenges, such as fast service response time and resource cost optimization, that can severely affect the performance of the MCC. Therefore, to tackle these issues, in this paper, we propose a dynamic priority-based architecture for the MCC. In the proposed scheme, we divide multimedia processing into four different subphases, while computing resources to each computing server are assigned dynamically, according to the workload, in order to process multimedia tasks according to the multimedia user Quality of Experience (QoE) requirements. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated in terms of service response time and resource cost optimization using the CloudSim simulator