Evaluating descriptive and clinical characteristics of type 2 diabetes mellitus patients with physical and environmental barriers to exercise

Background: Exercise is critical in the treatment of Type 2 diabetes mellitus. It is critical to identify exercise barriers in non-exercising T2DM patients. The present study aimed to evaluate the physical and environmental barriers among non-exercising T2DM patients attending a tertiary care hospital in Karachi, Pakistan. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted by recruiting patients from Family Medicine outpatient clinics at the Agha Khan University Hospital from October 2018 to April 2019. Patients between the ages of 18 and 65 who had T2DM for at least six months and exercised for fewer than 150 minutes per week or 30 minutes per day were enrolled. Barriers to exercise like physical (pain/discomfort, too overweight, co-existing illness) and environmental (too hot or cold weather, unavailability or no convenient place to exercise) were observed. The Chi-square test was used for inferential statistics. Results: Of 275 patients, mean age of the patients was 46.58 ±10.96 years. There were 146 (53.1%) males and 129 (46.9%) females. Pain and physical discomfort 110 (40%) was the most common physical barrier. Moreover, hot or cold weather was reported in 48 (17.5%) patients, no convenient or nearby place to exercise in 53 (19.3%), unavailability of parks/gym in 48 (17.5%), and environmental barriers like traffic in 35 (12.7%). Conclusions: A variety of physical and environmental barriers were discovered in this study; therefore, implementing suitable therapy to overcome these barriers will allow patients to engage in physical activities that will help them control their diabetes

Characterisation and oxidative stability of speciality plant seed oils

The past decade has seen an influx of speciality plant seed oils arriving into the market place. The need to characterise these oils has become an important aspect of the oil industry. The characterisation of the oils allows for the physical and chemical properties of the oil to be determined. Speciality oils were characterised based on their lipid and fatty acid profiles and categorised as monounsaturated rich (oleic acid as the major acyl components e.g. Moringa and Marula oil), linoleic acid rich (Grape seed and Evening Primrose oil) or linolenic acid rich (Flaxseed and Kiwi oil). The quality of the oils was evaluated by determining the free fatty acid content, the peroxide value (that measures initial oxidation) and p-anisidine values (that determines secondary oxidation products containing the carbonyl function). A reference database was constructed for the oils in order to compare batches of oils for their overall quality including oxidative stability. For some of the speciality oils, the stereochemistry of the triacylglycerols was determined. Calophyllum, Coffee, Poppy and Sea Buckthorn oils stereochemistry was determined. The oils were enriched with saturated and/or a monounsaturated fatty acids at position sn-1 and sn-3. The sn-2 position of the four oils was esterified with a polyunsaturated and/or a monounsaturated fatty acid indicating that they follow a typical acylation pathway and no novel acylation activity was evident from these studies (e.g enrichment of saturates at the sn-2 position). The oxidative stability of the oils was evaluated at 18oC and 60oC and the effect of adding a-tocopherol at commercially used level i.e 750ppm was assessed. The addition of 750ppm of a-tocopherol at 18oC increased the oxidative stability of Brown flax, Moringa, Wheat germ and Yangu oils. At 60oC Brown Flax, Manketti and Pomegranate oil polymerised after 48 hours. The addition of 750ppm a-tocopherol delayed the onset of polymerisation by up to 48 hours in Brown Flax seed oil. Pomegranate oil showed a high resistance to oxidation, and was blended into other speciality oils at 1%. Pomegranate oil increased the oxidative stability of Yangu oil at 18oC. The addition of Pomegranate oil to Wheat germ oil at 60oC, decreased the peroxide content by 10%. In Manketti and Brown Flaxseed oil at elevated temperatures, Pomegranate oil delayed the onset of polymerisation. Preliminary studies of Pomegranate oil blending to Moringa and Borage oil showed it to be more effective than a-tocopherol for certain oils. The antioxidant effects observed following the addition of Pomegranate oil may be due to its conjugated linolenic acid fatty acid, punicic acid

Effect of grafting on success and survivability of jamun (Syzygium cumini Skeels.) varieties

Jamun (Syzygium cumini Skeels) is a vital fruit crop for arid regions. An investigation was conducted to assess the propagation success of four jamun varieties (CISH-42, CISH-37, Konkan Bahadoli and Goma Priyanka) in the south western region of Punjab. Data were collected on grafting success, graft survival, sprout initiation, number of sprouts and leaves per graft, graft height, and chlorophyll index. The results revealed that the variety Konkan Bahadoli recorded highest graft success (83.7%, 82.8%) and survival rates (76.6%, 73.9%) during both the years, followed by Goma Priyanka. The var. Konkan Bahadoli recorded earliest sprouting (16.6 days, 15.3 days, respectively in both years) and superior growth parameters, including the number of sprouts and leaves, graft height, and chlorophyll index. Overall, the var. Konkan Bahadoli responded best to grafting performed in March under south-western region of Punjab

Assessment of Farm Animal Welfare using Organic Animal Husbandry Standards as Yardstick: A micro-level study in India

Animal welfare has attracted widespread attention worldwide in recent times including within the conventional systems of intensive production in industrialized countries. It can be assessed in a number of ways, also, the yardstick of welfare may differ from people to people and region to region since OIE is only now considering development of more science-based internationally acceptable criteria for animal welfare. In this study, the organic livestock production standards, developed inter alia, the Government of India (GOI) under its National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP), were used to assess the practices being followed at farmers' level in India. Organic production standards are supposed to keep animal welfare as one of the top most requirements with no compromise on welfare issues. A micro-level study was conducted in Bankura district (22038′N-23038′N and 86036′E-87046′E) in India with 50 tribal and 50 non-tribal farmers practicing mixed crop-livestock farming. The farmers (average landholding 1.02 ha, average herd size 4.02 cattle equivalent), were asked about several animal welfare criteria including those for draft animals. It was found that almost all farmers, either, tribal or non-tribal provide shelter to animals against extreme weather conditions. Ninety percent of the farmers provided immediate treatment to sick animals and none of the farmers used sick animals at work. However, 26.46% of non tribals beat their animals at work. Nine point eighty-five percent of farmers confessed that they sometimes overload their animals. The average duration of work in summer, rainy season and winter was found to be 5.27 h, 7.09 h and 5 h, respectively. In the study, it was found that the welfare standards were well cared of though farmers were not organic per se, nor they have had any specific training or programme on animal welfare measures. It is recommended that the organic animal standards may be used as the yardstick to measure animal welfare even in conventional non-organic forms of livestock production systems as is demonstrated in the current study

Trip Planner: A Big Data Analytics Based Recommendation System for Tourism Planning

Foreign tourism has gained immense popularity in the recent past. To make a rational decision about the destination to be visited one has to go through variety of social media sources with very large number of reviews, which is a tedious task. Automated analysis of these reviews is quite complex as it involves non structured text data having slang terms also. Moreover, these reviews are pouring in continuously. To overcome this problem, this paper provides a Big Data analytics-based framework to make appropriate selection of the destination on the basis of automated analysis of social media contents based upon the adaptation and augmentation of various tools and technologies. The framework has been implemented using Apache Spark and Bidirectional Encoder Representation Transformers (BERT) deep learning models through which raw text review are analysed and a final score based on five metrics is obtained to recommend destination for visit

Maximum rainfall probability distributions pattern in Haryana –A case study

The present study has been undertaken to fit best probability distribution of rainfall in Ambala District of Haryana State. The analysis showed that the maximum daily rainfall among the years ranged between 41mm (1980) to 307.9mm (2009) indicating a very large variation during the period of study. The mean of maximum daily rainfall of all years annually is 112.13mm. The means of monthly and weekly values ranged from 33.10-88.92mm and 8.77- 46.28 mm, respectively. The maximum daily rainfall in a year/monsoon season was307.9 mm and monthly maximum daily rainfall in monsoon season ranged from 105 -307.9mm. The weekly maximum daily rainfall ranged from48 mm-307.9 mm. It was also observed that the minimum among the maximum daily rainfall was 41mm for annual, 34mm for season and 0 in all the months and weeks. The maximum value of coefficient of variation was observed in the first week which indicated a large fluctuation in the rainfall data set and minimum value of coefficient of variation 0.464 was observed for the whole year which shows that fluctuation was minimum for the whole year. Generalized extreme value distribution was found to be best fit probability distribution for most of the periods

Reducing poisoning by arsenic in tubewell water

Rwanda must create an additional 200,000 jobs per year to absorb its expanding population. Increasing exports could play an important role in achieving this goal. A new policy brief by the IGC outlines the challenges Rwanda needs to overcome to improve its trade balances

Evaluation of renal function in subclinical and overt hypothyroidism

Background: Thyroid hormones can cause significant changes in renal function such as decrease in sodium re-absorption in the proximal tubules, impairment in the concentrating and diluting capacities of the distal tubules, a decrease in the urinary urate excretion and a decrease in the renal blood flow and glomerular filtration rate (GFR). This study was therefore planned to analyse the changes in biochemical markers of renal function in patients with subclinical and overt hypothyroidism and to correlate these values with the thyroid profile of the patients with an aim to determine whether thyroid dysfunction has deleterious effects on renal function.Methods: Study was conducted on 200 patients, in the age group of 20-70 years, in the Department of Medicine, in collaboration with Department of Biochemistry, GMC Jammu over a period of 6 months. After centrifugation, the serum was divided into 2 aliquots: one for renal function tests and the other for thyroid function tests.Results: Age wise, mean was found to be 33.2±9.3 years for euthyroid group and 42.8±8.7 years for hypothyroid group. Patients with both subclinical hypothyroidism and overt hypothyroidism showed statistically significant rise in TSH levels as compared to controls.Conclusions: It was seen that primary hypothyroidism is associated with a reversible elevation of serum creatinine in adults as well as children. It is believed that renal impairment with hypothyroidism is due to reduced cardiac output and increased systemic and renal vasoconstriction leading to reduced renal blood and plasma flow and decreased GFR

Distressed Lonely Siblings’ Struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Background: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a common and often disabling, psychiatric disorder  Earlier it was considered a difficult-to-treat disorder these viewpoints are radically changed in the last three decades as cognitive behavioural therapy (exposure and response prevention therapy), has shown significant results for individuals suffering from OCD. In the present report, two cases of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which happened to be siblings (one male one female), are being reported. In contrast to most other case reports depicted in world literature, the two siblings reported here were living under a roof but couldn’t talk for years. Both felt that their relationship suffered badly through their illness; as both of them were having a distressing sexual obsession of each other, along with other compulsions. The case report illustrated the journey of two distressed and lonely siblings’ struggle with OCD. Assessment & Management: OCD was diagnosed applying the existing criteria for OCD in the tenth revision of the International Statistical Classification of Disease and Related Health Problems (ICD-10), in addition, Y-BOCS also used to determine the severity of symptoms, pre-treatment and improvement Post-treatment. Therapy was adapted component from cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) & exposure and response prevention (ERP) and typically involves 16 to 20 sessions. Outcome: This case report shows that Psychological intervention led to significant symptomatic improvement in the patients discussed. By present findings and understanding of the cases, it is to claim for sure that for successful treatment of OCD psychological treatment must be used. Keywords: Obsessive compulsive disorder, sexual thoughts, exposure and response preventio

EVALUATION OF THE EFFECT OF ELEVATED CO2 ON BIOEFFICACY OF BUPROFEZIN INSECTICIDE AGAINST BROWN PLANT HOPPER, Nilaparvata lugens (STÅL)

The effect of elevated CO2 (570±25ppm) on the brown plant hopper (BPH) population, rice yield parameters, and efficacy of buprofezin (0.05%) in terms of spray volume was studied in an open top chamber (OTCs) during rainy season 2017 and 2018. The pest population was observed to be higher during 2017 compared to the rainy season of 2018. Under elevated CO2, rice plants had more vegetative tillers (18%) and reproductive tillers (22.1%), but there was a decrease in 1000-seed weight (11.2%), seed number per panicle (3.91%), and grain yield (18.8%) in comparison to ambient CO2 grown rice plants. The spray volumes of 700, 600, 500, and 400 l/ha each caused higher BPH mortality under ambient CO2 compared to elevated CO2. A spray volume of 500 l/ha did not prove as effective under elevated CO2 as under ambient CO2. Lower efficacy of spray volume of 500 l/ha under elevated CO2 could be ascribed to higher canopy size under elevated CO2 due to higher tillering. Increased crop canopy size under elevated CO2 may thus require higher spray volume to ensure proper coverage. Results of the study suggested a need to revise spray volume recommendations to facilitate effective management of BPH under climate change