GREEN SPACES AND MENTAL HEALTH: DOES FREQUENCY OF USE OR PROXIMITY AFFECT SUBJECTIVE WELLBEING AND PERCEIVED STRESS?

Urbanization is essential for economic growth; however, it has a negative effect on the environment and the psychological health of the population. Urban green spaces help in the reduction of air and noise pollution while increasing people’s wellbeing through social interactions and creating an outdoor space for physical activity. Due to the rapid urbanization of the United Arab Emirates, the research on green spaces in this region is fundamental. The study included two hypotheses: 1) Greater proximity and frequency of use results in lower perceived stress and 2) Greater proximity and frequency of use leads to greater wellbeing. The results yielded non-significant for proximity to green spaces and stress and wellbeing. However, frequency of use showed a significant correlation. Additionally, the researchers explored the most common uses of green spaces and suggestions that would increase the frequency of use through open-ended questions. The results could be a manifestation of the Attention Restoration Theory and Biophilia Theory

Importance of Screening of Patients for HBV and HCV before Elective Surgery

Objective: Objective of this study was to emphasize on the importance of screening for hepatitis B and C before undergoing elective surgery.Patients & Methods: This study was done on 110 patients who were planned for surgery. These patients were admitted in surgical ward-4 of Bahawal Victoria Hospital Bahawalpur. The duration of study was fom January 2017 to August 2017. These cases were screened for HBV and HCV by ELISA technique. Tests were done in Government laboratory of the hospital which is well equipped with a trained faculty. Which patients had previous reports older than 3 months of ELISA for HBV –DNA and HCV-RNA their test was repeated by the laboratory of hospital. Results:  Out of 110 cases 60(54.5%) were males and 50(45.4%) were females. In ELISA technique 18(16.3%) were positive for anti HCV antibodies and 12(10.9%) were positive for HBsAg antigen. Out of 18 cases 10(55.5%) were males and 8(44.4%) were females. Similarly among 12 cases positive for HBV of which 5(41.6%) were males and 7(58.3%) were females. Their age was ranging from 24 to 55 years with mean age of 37.5 years.Conclusion: The screening of patients for hepatitis B and hepatitis C is very important before any sort of surgery so that necessary measures may be taken by the doctors and nurses for protection from HBV and HCV

Quality of Financial Reporting Premium and Equity Returns

Financial statements published by a company at the end of every financial year serve three purposes: they inform, they help control and they help plan. The basic aim of transparent disclosure of accounting information is to assist the resourceful allocation of capital in the economy as they improve the investment and financing decisions. Reliable financial statements provides less biased performance measures and market efficiency also improved because transparent disclosure of accounting information reduced information asymmetry at lower cost which effects market performance. This study investigates the assets pricing mechanism in Pakistani equity market by using monthly data of equity prices from 2007-2012.To explore the joint effect of size, market and new factors quality of financial reporting by using Three Factor Model of Fama and French .Results shows that FRQP is giving negative returns with less risk but size and market premium have negative returns with higher risk. All portfolios showing negative returns mean they were in loss, so market was in decline stage.For future this study converse that information asymmetries can be reduced by transparent disclosure of accounting information because business investment strategies are affected by financial disclosure.From two pass regression we  further conclude that from past beta we can’t predict future returns because all results are insignificant so it means market price the quality of financial reporting of today’s information but it doesn’t not effect on future returns. Findings of the study also shows that explaining power of our proposed model is also better as compared to conventional CAPM So investor should carefully and diligently use these factors in designing their investment, financing and valuation strategies. Keywords: Agency Theory, Arbitrage Pricing Theory, Capital Assets pricing theory, Fama and French Three Factor Model, Signaling theory, Quality of financial reporting

Long-term clinical outcomes of percutaneous coronary intervention in saphenous vein grafts in a low to middle-income country

Background: Revascularization of saphenous vein grafts (SVGs) is challenging and debated for the last few decades. The percutaneous revascularization of SVGs was reported to have poorer long-term outcomes than native coronary artery revascularization.Purpose: We aim to study the peri-procedural complications and long-term outcomes of the percutaneous revascularization of SVGs in a low-middle-income country.Methods: In this retrospective study, we included 110 patients who underwent percutaneous revascularization from January 2011 to March 2020 and followed them retrospectively for long-term outcomes and major adverse cardiovascular events.Results: The mean age was 71 ±9, and 81% were male. The most common reason for the presentation was non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) (46%). The mean follow-up period of the study was 48±27 months. The most common comorbidity was hypertension (86%). A drug-eluting stent (80%) was placed in most of the patients, followed by a bare-metal stent (BMS) (14%) and percutaneous balloon angioplasty (POBA) (6%). We did not find any significant difference in major adverse cardiac events (MACE) (P=0.48), target vessel revascularization (TVR) (p=0.69), and target lesion revascularization (TLR) (p=0.54) with drug-eluting stent (DES) as compared to either BMS or POBA. The mean period from coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) to SVG percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) was 15± 5.5 years. Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) event, stroke, and female sex were independently associated with MACE.Conclusion: The long-term outcomes of SVG PCI are not affected by the types of stents. Female gender, ACS, and stroke are the independent predictors of MACE after SVG PCI, and statin therapy has a positive impact on the long-term outcomes of SVG PCI

Phylogenetics of HCV: Recent advances

Hepatitis C virus (HCV), a virus present in human population from indefinite time period, has affected millions of people globally, by causing liver infection which in majority of cases leads to chronicity, cirrhosis, end stage liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The disease burden is expected to increase in the developing and under developed world in future. The distribution of HCV genotypes is changing, as are the modes of transmission. Evolution of HCV is a highly dynamic process as it exploits all known mechanisms of genetic variation including recombination and mutation, to ensure its survival. It occurs both through multiple processes of adaptive selection that drive sequence change and through drift, in which phenotypically neutral sequence changes accumulate over time without altering the phenotype or behaviour of the virus. However, despite its potential to change rapidly, the longer-term evolution of HCV appears to be remarkably conservative. Phylogenetic and statistical models of viral evolution are useful in reconstructing mutational pathways of drug resistance. The two major divisions of viral heterogeneity include genotypes and quasispecies. The rate of nucleotide changes varies significantly among the different regions of the viral genome. The present HCV classification is incomplete, as new genotypes and variants are being identified till yet. Diversification of HCV occurred over time but with different rates. Host immune pressure is thought to be a main factor driving diversification in HCV quasispecies. Core and hypervariable regions are more diverse while 5' un-translated region (UTR) and 3' UTR are highly conserved across the genotypes.Keywords: HCV, phylogeny, 5' UTR, viral evolution, recombination, quasispeciesAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 9(36), pp. 5792-5799, 6 September, 201

Online Education and Internet Connectivity Problems: A Perspective of the Teachers and Undergraduate Dental Students

OBJECTIVES Assessment of difficulties and glitches regarding internet connectivity faced by undergraduates and teachers during online learning.  METHODOLOGY This study was conducted using an online questionnaire. 186 undergraduate students and teachers were included from CMH, Lahore. The duration of this study was 3 months. . RESULTS There was found to be no statistical difference in reluctance to use online platforms (p=0.17), frequent loss of internet (p=0.181), difficulty in dealing with the loss of connection (p=0.181), disturbance in planned schedule due to loss of connection (p=0.213), lagging behind in schedule (p=0.630), inability to convey the message (p=0.093), lack of internet in remote areas (p=0.302), lack of training to deal with connection problems (p=0.766), poor connection due to technical problems in devices (p=0.089) and poor quality internet (p=0.740) among faculty and students. CONCLUSION The problems due to internet connectivity issues in online education were faced more by students as compared to faculty

"How Did They Come Across?" Lessons Learned from Continuous Affective Ratings

Social distance, or perception of the other, is recognized as a dynamic dimension of an interaction, but yet to be widely explored or understood. Through CORAE, a novel web-based open-source tool for COntinuous Retrospective Affect Evaluation, we collected retrospective ratings of interpersonal perceptions between 12 participant dyads. In this work, we explore how different aspects of these interactions reflect on the ratings collected, through a discourse analysis of individual and social behavior of the interactants. We found that different events observed in the ratings can be mapped to complex interaction phenomena, shedding light on relevant interaction features that may play a role in interpersonal understanding and grounding. This paves the way for better, more seamless human-robot interactions, where affect is interpreted as highly dynamic and contingent on interaction history.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2306.1662

Cloning and expression of hepatitis B surface gene in E. coli

Background: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is among the smallest DNA viruses resulting in ~800,000 deaths each year. Pakistan is considered a country affected by HBV. In Pakistan, the most dominant genotype is D. HBV is an enveloped virus of 3.2 kb. The study's goal was to express hepatitis B surface antigen in a bacterial host to produce a recombinant protein.Method: Blood samples were collected in EDTA coated vacutainer from patients after their consent. DNA was extracted from serum through the phenol-chloroform method; Hepatitis B surface gene was cloned in TA cloning vector, subclone in pET 28a expression vector. An expression vector containing the Surface gene was then transformed into a competent bacterial host BL21 and inducted with IPTG at 0.1-0.2mM concentration for expression. The expressed proteins (soluble and pellet form) were analyzed on SDS PAGE.Results: Hepatitis B Surface gene of 681bp after PCR were detected under UV light then successfully cloned and subcloned in pET 28 expression vector. The restricted fragment indicating the gene of interest was 681bp when analyzed on 1.2% Agarose gel under UV light. The required protein of 25kDa was obtained in soluble form when detected on 12% SDS PAGE after staining with Coomassie Blue dye.Conclusion: Hepatitis B surface gene was successfully expressed in both insoluble and pellet forms using E.coli. The expression of surface protein needs to maximize through optimizing conditions to be used as potent candidate for vaccine production to prevent hepatitis B infection.Keywords: Hepatitis B virus; Surface gene; Cloning vector; pET expression vector  

Graphene triggered enhancement in visible-light active photocatalysis as well as in energy storage capacity of (CFO)1-x(GNPs)x nanocomposites

Cobalt ferrite-graphene nanoplatelets ((CFO)(GNPs)) nanocomposites are promising for efficient photocatalysis and high-performance supercapacitors. Multifunctional (CFO)(GNPs) nanocomposites prepared via facile chemical method have been investigated for their physio-chemical characteristics like crystal structure, morphology, chemical composition, optical properties, infrared vibrational modes, photocatalytic and supercapacitor applications. Interestingly, the photocatalytic activity of CFO nanostructures has been improved significantly from 38.3% to 98.7% with the addition of graphene which can be attributed to control over recombination of charge carriers. It is also found that the specific capacitance of the prepared (CFO)(GNPs) nanocomposite electrode at 0.5 Ag is three times higher than that of only CFO based electrode which could be due to the conducting nature of graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs). The enhanced photocatalytic and improved electrochemical characteristics suggest the effective use of prepared nanocomposites in water purification and supercapacitor nanodevices