The role of human heart-type Fatty Acid Binding Protein in the early detection of myocardial injury in Acute Coronary Syndrome

Objectives: To evaluate the use of H-FABP as a novel marker in early detection of cardiac damage (MI) in patients presenting with symptoms of the acute coronary syndrome (ACS).Methods: This cross-sectional study included 250 subjects; 125 patients of ACS presenting within four hours of the onset of chest pain and/dyspnea and 125 age and sex-matched healthy controls. An initial blood sample was taken from patients at presentation. Blood samples of healthy control subjects were also taken. The blood samples of both groups were centrifuged and stored at -200 C for H-FABP analysis. All the patients and control subjects were thoroughly examined and detailed history was taken. The diagnostic test was troponin-T.H-FABP concentrations of all samples were measured by ELISA-kit. The results were analyzed statistically. A p-value≤0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: In 125 patients of ACS, H-FABP showed a sensitivity of 85% and specificity of 83.3% for acute MI diagnosis at a cut-off level of 16 ng/ml. Positive predictive values and negative predictive values were 96.8% and 48.4% respectively. The accuracy was 84.4%and the area under the ROC curve was 0.842.Conclusion: Evaluation of heart-type fatty acid-binding Protein (H-FABP) within four hours of onset ACS symptoms may be a valuable tool in the diagnosis of AMI

Security risks in cyber physical systems—A systematic mapping study

The increased need for constant connectivity and complete automation of existing systems fuels the popularity of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) worldwide. Increasingly more, these systems are subjected to cyber attacks. In recent years, many major cyber-attack incidents on CPS have been recorded and, in turn, have been raising concerns in their users' minds. Unlike in traditional IT systems, the complex architecture of CPS consisting of embedded systems integrated with the Internet of Things (IoT) requires rather extensive planning, implementation, and monitoring of security requirements. One crucial step to planning, implementing, and monitoring of these requirements in CPS is the integration of the risk management process in the CPS development life cycle. Existing studies do not clearly portray the extent of damage that the unattended security issues in CPS can cause or have caused, in the incidents recorded. An overview of the possible risk management techniques that could be integrated into the development and maintenance of CPS contributing to improving its security level in its actual environment is missing. In this paper, we are set out to highlight the security requirements and issues specific to CPS that are discussed in scientific literature and to identify the state-of-the-art risk management processes adopted to identify, monitor, and control those security issues in CPS. For that, we conducted a systematic mapping study on the data collected from 312 papers published between 2000 and 2020, focused on the security requirements, challenges, and the risk management processes of CPS. Our work aims to form an overview of the security requirements and risks in CPS today and of those published contributions that have been made until now, towards improving the reliability of CPS. The results of this mapping study reveal (i) integrity authentication and confidentiality as the most targeted security attributes in CPS, (ii) model-based techniques as the most used risk identification and assessment and management techniques in CPS, (iii) cyber-security as the most common security risk in CPS, (iv) the notion of “mitigation measures” based on the type of system and the underline internationally recognized standard being the most used risk mitigation technique in CPS, (v) smart grids being the most targeted systems by cyber-attacks and thus being the most explored domain in CPS literature, and (vi) one of the major limitations, according to the selected literature, concerns the use of the fault trees for fault representation, where there is a possibility of runtime system faults not being accounted for. Finally, the mapping study draws implications for practitioners and researchers based on the findings.</p

Calendar Anomalies in Stock Market: A Case of KSE 100 Index

This paper aims to investigate the calendar anomalies in Karachi Stock exchange by using KSE 100 index during the period of 2008 to 2012. The study examined the existence of week days, weekend and monthly seasonal anomalies. These calendar effects are examined by applying different statistical techniques. First of all series of daily and monthly returns were calculated. Then mean and standard deviation of daily and monthly returns were calculated. The values of mean and standard deviation have rejected the first two null hypothesis and accepted the third one. The results provide an evidence for the existence of calendar anomalies at KSE 100 index. The results showed that there is significant difference among the returns of days of the week, and Friday has highest mean average return which makes it confirm that weekend effect exists at KSE. Finally monthly anomaly in stock returns is also present because there is highest positive return in the month of March.     Keywords. Stock Market, Anomalies, weekday effect, weekend effect, monthly effect, Return

Material selection for optimum design of MEMS pressure sensors

Abstract: Choice of the most suitable material out of the universe of engineering materials available to the designers is a complex task. It often requires a compromise, involving conflicts between different design objectives. Materials selection for optimum design of a Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) pressure sensor is one such case. For optimum performance, simultaneous maximization of deflection of a MEMS pressure sensor diaphragm and maximization of its resonance frequency are two key but totally conflicting requirements. Another limitation in material selection of MEMS/Microsystems is the lack of availability of data containing accurate micro-scale properties of MEMS materials. This paper therefore, presents a material selection case study addressing these two challenges in optimum design of MEMS pressure sensors, individually as well as simultaneously, using Ashby’s method. First, data pertaining to micro-scale properties of MEMS materials has been consolidated and then the Performance and Material Indices that address the MEMS pressure sensor’s conflicting design requirements are formulated. Subsequently, by using the micro-scale materials properties data, candidate materials for optimum performance of MEMS pressure sensors have been determined. Manufacturability of pressure sensor diaphragm using the candidate materials, pointed out by this study, has been discussed with reference to the reported devices. Supported by the previous literature, our analysis re-emphasizes that silicon with 110 crystal orientation [Si (110)], which has been extensively used in a number of micro-scale devices and applications, is also a promising material for MEMS pressure sensor diaphragm. This paper hence identifies an unexplored opportunity to use Si (110) diaphragm to improve the performance of diaphragm based MEMS pressure sensors

Organizational Commitment of IT Professionals in Public Sector

This study focuses on the factors like salary/incentives, interpersonal conflicts, employeesorganization interface, job satisfaction and organizational culture, in order to clarify the behavior of organizational commitment among information technology employees in public sector organizations. The study provides an insight of the culture of public sector organization, which managers may use for the improvement of organizational commitment. The study tested and analyzed the proposed model, which gave valuable results. The result of the study also claims that organizational commitment may be increased

Development of a Scale for Assessing Emotional and Behavioral Problems of School Children

To develop a scale to assess emotional and behavioral problems in school children, a list of 109 most frequently occurring problems after validation by 20 experienced school psychologists was administered to 853 school children (grades 8-10) along with Youth Self Report (YSR; Keywords: emotional and behavioral problems, school children, reliability, validity Adolescence is known as the period that demands continual adjustment with the ever changing developmental process. During the normal growth and development, adolescents face many challenges and difficulties including changing physical growth, parental expectations, role identification and becoming a member of a society Throughout the world, extensive research has been conducted to determine the prevalence rate of emotional and behavioral problems of children and adolescents Sadia Saleem and Dr. Zahid Mehmood, Clinical Psychology Department, GC University, Lahore, Pakistan. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sadia Saleem, Clinical Psychology Department, GC University, Lahore. Email: [email protected] There have been few sporadic studies carried out in Pakistan to look at the emotional and behavioral problems of school children. Javed

Design Fabrication & Real Time Vision Based Control of Gaming Board

This paper presents design, fabrication and real time vision based control of a two degree of freedom (d.o.f) robot capable of playing a carom board game. The system consists of three main components: (a) a high resolution digital camera (b) a main processing and controlling unit (c) a robot with two servo motors and striking mechanism. The camera captures the image of arena and transmits it to central processing unit. CPU processes the image and congregate useful information using adaptive histogram technique. Congregated information about the coordinates of the object is then sent to the RISC architecture based microcontroller by serial interface. Microcontroller implements inverse kinematics algorithms and PID control on motors with feedback from high resolution quadrature encoders to reach at the desired coordinates and angles. The striking unit exerts a controlled force on the striker when it is in-line with the disk and carom hole (or, pocket). The striker strikes with the disk and pots (to hit (a ball) into a pocket) it in the pocket. The objective is to develop an intelligent, cost effective and user friendly system that fulfil the idea of technology for entertainment

Impact of Microfinance on Poverty Reduction: A Case Study of District Faisalabad

The micro - finance program extends small loans to very poor people for self-employment projects that generate income, allowing them to care for themselves and for their families. Micro-finance enables an entrepreneur to build a business or expand the existing business and create a better change in their lives. The micro-financing institutions (MFIs) provide the opportunity for the people who are living under the poverty lines by investing the affordable funds/capital and somehow by providing their management expertise. This study shows the effect of micro-financing of small business and the implications for poverty reduction. The respondents are the clients of Khushhali Bank Ltd, District Faisalabad. The data were collected with the help of well-designed and structured questionnaire, which will be analyzed by applying FGT techniques. The results showed that the poverty has been reduced by financing the peoples. Keywords:Micro finance, poverty, FG