Cardiac surgery in octogenarians

In Europe and North America, cardiac surgery can be done successfully on octogenarians, but differences in patient selection, surgical and bypass techniques prevent us from concluding similarly in Pakistan. This study investigated the short and long-term outcomes of cardiac surgery in octogenarians operated over a 5 years period at The Aga Khan University Hospital, from January 2001 to December 2006. Seventeen octogenarians, (mean age 81.7 ± 2.3) underwent coronary artery bypass graft (CABG). Thirty-days hospital mortality was reported in only 1 patient. Surgical complication of any kind was reported in 13 (76.5%) patients with pleural effusion being the commonest in hospital complication seen in 11 (64.7%) patients. About 13 (92.9%) patients were satisfied with the results of the surgery and reported post-surgery improvement in quality of their life. Cardiac surgery has an important role in the management of elderly patients with medically refractory cardiac symptoms, but the implications of widespread cardiac surgery in the elderly need to be addressed

Contribution of cloud computing in the reduction of carbon dioxide emission

The Information Technology industry is rapidly expanding and as a result its contribution to carbon dioxide emission is also rapidly increasing. Fortunately, the cloud computing industry is perceived by many to be a viable solution for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Accordingly, there are numerous studies which try to prove that cloud computing can reduce carbon dioxide emissions up to more than half of the current carbon dioxide emissions. In this paper, two of such studies where reviewed to assess whether cloud computing is indeed a viable candidate for limiting and reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the IT industry. All the information gathered in this paper prove that; cloud computing is a promising technology which could reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The percentage of decrease can range from 10% to 90%. The effectiveness of the carbon dioxide emission reduction process is highly dependent on the size of the business organization. Accordingly the size of the organization is negatively correlated to the efficiency of carbon dioxide reduction. This means that as the size of the organization increase, carbon dioxide emission reduction decrease. This paper also presented the four reasons why cloud computing can reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which are: dynamic provisioning, multi-tenancy, server utilization, and data center efficiency

Active control of base pressure with counter clockwise rotating cylinder at Mach 2

The effect of dynamic cylinder as an active controller to control the base pressure for different level of expansion have been experimentally investigated at Mach 2 through CD nozzle for area ratio 9. Solitary counter clockwise rotating cylinder of 2 mm diameter when seen from top, at 2 mm from side wall of square duct and 8 mm from square nozzle exit in the base region is mounted as a controller. Base pressure in the wake area after sudden expansion of jets from the exit of nozzle has been measured. The length-to-width ratio of sudden expansion duct taken is 10. The experiments were carried out by operating jets for different nozzle pressure ratios (NPR). The wall pressure distribution was also measured for with and without control cases in the duct to see that the amplitude of oscillations does not adversely influence the flow field in the duct. Counter clockwise rotating cylinder as an active controller were found to increase the base pressure as high as 62 percent at NPR 8.5 and 53 percent at NPR 7.8. The control effectiveness is marginal for over expanded nozzles. The wall pressure flow field with and without control are identical with minor fluctuations

Performance evaluation of distributed mMulti media wireless sensor network

The demand for multimedia services i.e. audio, video and data with improve QoS and optimum utilization of resources in WSN’s has posed new challenges. As the intensity of traffic increases; it demands for higher bandwidth and dedicated resources to reduce packet loss and delay. There have been analytical models proposed where priorities were assigned to video and voice packets to reduce packet loss and optimize resource utilization. In this paper distributed scheme is proposed to handle video, voice and data packets by having multiple sink nodes. There are shared sink nodes where video, voice and data packets are serviced and dedicated sink nodes only for video and voice packets. The proposed scheme has shown that the packet loss for data packets is higher than voice and video packets. The simulation results show that the performance of the network is improved when priorities are assigned to video and voice packets by giving dedicated resources

GAIT RECOGNITION PROGRESS IN RECOGNIZING IMAGE CHARACTERISTICS

We present a humans credentials system centered on ambulation characteristics. This problem is as eminent as acoustic gait recognition. The objective of the scheme is to explore sounds radiated by walking persons (largely the musical note sounds) and identifies those folks. A cyclic model topology is engaged to denote individual gait cycles. This topology permits modeling and detecting individual steps, leading to very favorable identification rates

Do pro-poor schools reach out to the poor? Location choice of BRAC and ROSC schools in Bangladesh

Location choice of ‘one teacher, one classroom’ non-formal primary schools pioneered by Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) is studied vis-à-vis its replication under government-managed Reaching-Out-of-School (ROSC) project using school Census data. Both types of schools have a statistically significant presence in poor sub-districts within a district. However, BRAC schools avoid pockets that lack public infrastructure and suffer from female illiteracy, while ROSC schools have greater presence in regions that have poor access to cities and roads. Moreover, ROSC schools better target regions that are under-served by government schools; the opposite is true for BRAC schools and state-recognised madrasas

Differential Image Compression for Telemedicine: A Novel Approach

Telemedicine is one of the most emerging technologies of applied medical sciences. Medical information related to patients is transmitted and stored for references and consultations. Medical images occupy huge space; in order to transmit these images may delay the process of image transmission in critical times. Image compression techniques provide a better solution to combat bandwidth scarcity problems, and transmit same image in a much lower bandwidth requirements, more faster and at the same time maintain quality. In this paper a differential image compression method is developed in which medical images are taken from a wounded patient and are compressed to reduce the bit rate of these images. Results indicate that on average 25% compression on images is achieved with 3.5 MOS taken from medical doctors and other paramedical staff the ultimately user of the images

Predicting most productive requirements elicitation teams using MBTI personality traits model

The social and collaborative nature of requirements elicitation process bases its core dependency on aptitude, attitudes, and personality characteristics of its participants. The participant's personality characteristics are directly related with their personality traits, which can be categorized using different model has been used successfully for the assessments of personality of software engineers since last few decades. In this article, the personality traits for requirements elicitation teams have been predicted using MBTI personality assessments model, on the basis of their industry demands job descriptions/tasks and major soft skills. The article presents a complete personality prediction process using a systematic approach based on major soft skills mapping with job descriptions, personality attributes and personality. The obtained results show that extroversion and feelings personality traits are the most suitable assigned the task of requirements elicitation. The obtained results are very much aligned with the already published scholar's work for software engineer's personality assessments and development team composition

The Mediating Role of Benefit Management for Sustaining the Performance of Infrastructure Projects

Benefit management is a valuable approach, promoted and supported by strategic management for maximizing organizational benefits. It has also been recognized as a means of improving project performance, though more research is needed to understand how it works. This research adds to the contemporary literature on public sector project management by studying the links between project governance, benefit management, and project performance from a developing country perspective. This study provides insights for project professionals who are working in government organizations for optimizing the benefits of investment. The study provides a reference to formulate strategies for managing and governing the performance of government-funded projects in developing countries like Pakistan. The research uses a positivist approach and quantitative design. The quantitative technique is employed to address all the aspects of the study. The structural equation modeling revealed that benefit management acted as a mediating factor in the relationship between project governance dimensions and public sector project performance. This study highlights the importance of incorporating a comprehensive benefit management approach to streamline the benefit management process by aligning projects with the organizational strategy for sustaining project performance. These findings stress the need for a comprehensive benefit management approach in improving the project performance of government-sponsored projects. The study attempts to improve the understanding of project professionals about the role and significance of benefit management, which will be helpful to get organizational support for the employees who are striving to improve the project performance in Pakistan