Video Surveillance-Based Intelligent Traffic Management in Smart Cities

Visualization of video is considered as important part of visual analytics. Several challenges arise from massive video contents that can be resolved by using data analytics and consequently gaining significance. Though rapid progression in digital technologies resulted in videos data explosion that incites the requirements to create visualization and computer graphics from videos, a state-of-the-art algorithm has been proposed in this chapter for 3D conversion of traffic video contents and displaying on Google Maps. Time stamped visualization based on glyph is employed efficiently in surveillance videos and utilized for event detection. This method of visualization can possibly decrease the complexity of data, having complete view of videos from video collection. The effectiveness of proposed system has shown by obtaining numerous unprocessed videos and algorithm is tested on these videos without concerning field conditions. The proposed visualization technique produces promising results and found effective in conveying meaningful information while alleviating the need of searching exhaustively colossal amount of video data

Visceral leishmaniasis among children presenting with pancytopenia

Background: Pancytopenia can result from either a failure of production of hematopoietic progenitors or peripheral destruction of a cellular element either due to infection, immune-mediated damage or hypersplenism. Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), one of the chronic parasitic diseases in the world that affects millions of people recently, leishmaniasis has been seen with increasing frequency in patients with Pancytopenia.Objective: To determine the frequency of visceral leishmaniasis among children presenting with pancytopenia at Pediatric Department, Azzd Jammu and Kashmir Medical College MuzaffarabadMethodology This cross sectional study was conducted at the Department of paeds SKBZ/ CMH, Muzaffarabad. The study duration was 6 months from June 2018 to December 2018. All children with pancytopenia either of gender were enrolled. After taking informed demographic information, all the cases underwent bone marrow sampling to assess the Visceral Leishmaniasis. All the data was collected by self-made proforma.Results: Total 75 patients were studied; their mean age of patients was 6.74±3.14 years. Males were in majority 67.69% and 32.31% were females. Leishmaniasis was found 15.38% of the cases. Leishmaniasis was statistically insignificant according to age and gender; p-values were quite insignificant.Conclusion: It is concluded that the visceral leishmaniasis in children with pancytopenia was 15.38%

Coagulation Profile in Diabetes and Its Association with Diabetic Microvascular Complications

Objective: To investigate the hemostatic parameters and to assess their relationship with microvascular complications in patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus. Study Design: Comparative cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Armed Forces Institute of Ophthalmology, Rawalpindi Pakistan, from Jul to Dec 2020. Methodology: Patients with type-2 diabetes aged 40-70 years of both genders were included. We included sixty subjects with diabetes and sixty healthy individuals. HBA1c, prothrombin time, activated partial thrombin time, and fibrinogen levels were measured in both groups, and retinal photographs were taken. Results: The platelet count was in the normal range for both groups but significantly lower in cases compared to controls (177.5±18.3 vs 231.2±18.1, p<0.001). Similarly, the mean fibrinogen level was significantly higher among cases compared to controls (298.2±11.4 vs 256.6±6.5, p<0.001). No significant difference was found between mean prothrombin time and activated partial thromboplastin time among the groups. Most complicated cases belonged to the group with more than 7% glycosylated haemoglobin compared to non-complicated cases (p<0.001). A significant association between the level of HBA1c and diabetic retinopathy was found. Conclusion: The study showed that with a rise in glycemic index, the coagulation profile derangement occurs, with an increase in fibrinogen levels, decrease in platelets count and increase in microvascular complications

Odonata Naiads of Potohar Plateau, Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract:-A series of collection surveys conducted during two consecutive years to explore Odonata naiads of Potohar plateau revealed 34 species under 6 families and 21 genera. Specimens were collected from different aquatic habitats that include almost all sort of waters including static, flowing, acidic, alkaline, brackish or saline. Details showing valid names, collection localities, ecological observations, number of individual male/female collected are provided for each species

A Novel Single-Fed Dual-Band Dual-Circularly Polarized Dielectric Resonator Antenna for 5G Sub-6GHz Applications

In this research article, a single-fed dual-band circular polarized (CP) dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) for dual-function communication, such as GPS and WLAN, was made. Initially, the proposed design process was initiated by designing a linearly polarized singly fed-DRA. To attain CP fields, the cross-shape conformal metal strip was optimized to excite the fundamental and the high-order mode in the two frequency bands. The metallic strip (parasitic) was utilized on top of the rectangular DRA to improve and widen the impedance and axial ratio (AR) bandwidth. This step led to a 2.73% improvement on the lower band and an impact of 6.5% on the upper band while on the other side a significant improvement was witnessed in the AR bandwidth in both frequency bands. A prototype was designed and fabricated in order to validate its operations. The measurement outcomes of the proposed antennas authenticated wideband impedance bandwidths of 6.4% and 25.26%, and 3-dB axial ratios (AR) of 21.26% and 27.82% respectively. The prototype is a decent candidate for a global positioning system (GPS) and wireless local area network (WLAN).This project has received funding from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska- Curie Grant 801538

Formulation, characterization and optimization of nebivolol-loaded sustained release lipospheres

Purpose: To formulate, characterize and optimize nebivolol-loaded sustained release lipospheres (LPs) using beeswax (BW) as the drug carrier.Methods: Nebivolol-loaded LPs were formulated using solvent evaporation technique (SET) and characterized. The impact of independent variables on responses such as percentage yield (PY), entrapment efficiency (EE) and drug release after 12 h (DR12) was assessed using central composite design (CCD). Numerical and graphical optimization techniques were also used to evaluate outcomes of the measured responses.Results: Twenty micron-sized (20 - 100 μm), smooth spherical LPs with good rheological properties were produced. The yield ranged from 33 (F10) to 81 % (F6), while EE ranged from 32 (F4 and F9) to 69 % (F6). The results of rheological evaluation revealed angle of repose &gt; 24 o, Hausner’s ratio &gt; 1.5, and Carr’s index ranging from 13 to 19 %. Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) revealed nebivolol and BW compatibility, and the absence of possible interactions between formulation components. Duration of nebivolol release was strongly associated with BW concentration and formulation F15 showed minimum drug release (46%). Drug release was significantly higher in formulations with similar BW concentrations and low Tween-20 (T-20) concentrations (F1 and F11) than in formulations with high T-20 concentrations (F2, p &lt; 0.05). The zeta potential of deflocculated LPs ranged from +15 to +35 mV. Nebivolol release (46 - 85 %) at pH 6.8 was significantly affected by BW concentration and it followed zero order model.Conclusion: The results obtained in this study have shown that BW is a suitable material for producing an effective sustained release formulation. The mechanism of drug release in nebivolol- loaded LPs is diffusion accompanied by erosion.Keywords: Lipospheres, Nebivolol, Beeswax, Formulation, Central composite desig

Current challenges of digital health interventions in Pakistan: Mixed methods analysis

Background: Digital health is well-positioned in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) to revolutionize health care due, in part, to increasing mobile phone access and internet connectivity. This paper evaluates the underlying factors that can potentially facilitate or hinder the progress of digital health in Pakistan.Objective: The objective of this study is to identify the current digital health projects and studies being carried out in Pakistan, as well as the key stakeholders involved in these initiatives. We aim to follow a mixed-methods strategy and to evaluate these projects and studies through a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis to identify the internal and external factors that can potentially facilitate or hinder the progress of digital health in Pakistan.Methods: This study aims to evaluate digital health projects carried out in the last 5 years in Pakistan with mixed methods. The qualitative and quantitative data obtained from field surveys were categorized according to the World Health Organization\u27s (WHO) recommended building blocks for health systems research, and the data were analyzed using a SWOT analysis strategy.Results: Of the digital health projects carried out in the last 5 years in Pakistan, 51 are studied. Of these projects, 46% (23/51) used technology for conducting research, 30% (15/51) used technology for implementation, and 12% (6/51) used technology for app development. The health domains targeted were general health (23/51, 46%), immunization (13/51, 26%), and diagnostics (5/51, 10%). Smartphones and devices were used in 55% (28/51) of the interventions, and 59% (30/51) of projects included plans for scaling up. Artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) was used in 31% (16/51) of projects, and 74% (38/51) of interventions were being evaluated. The barriers faced by developers during the implementation phase included the populations\u27 inability to use the technology or mobile phones in 21% (11/51) of projects, costs in 16% (8/51) of projects, and privacy concerns in 12% (6/51) of projects.Conclusions: We conclude that while digital health has a promising future in Pakistan, it is still in its infancy at the time of this study. However, due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there is an increase in demand for digital health and implementation of health outcomes following global social distancing protocols, especially in LMICs. Hence, there is a need for active involvement by public and private organizations to regulate, mobilize, and expand the digital health sector for the improvement of health care systems in countries

Towards Robust Diagnosis of COVID-19 using Vision Self-attention Transformer

The outbreak of COVID-19, since its appearance, has affected about 200 countries and endangered millions of lives. COVID-19 is extremely contagious disease, and it can quickly incapacitate the healthcare systems if infected cases are not handled timely. Several Conventional Neural Networks (CNN) based techniques have been developed to diagnose the COVID-19. These techniques require a large, labelled dataset to train the algorithm fully, but there are not too many labelled datasets. To mitigate this problem and facilitate the diagnosis of COVID-19, we developed a self-attention transformer-based approach having self-attention mechanism using CT slices. The architecture of transformer can exploit the ample unlabelled datasets using pre-training. The paper aims to compare the performances of self-attention transformer-based approach with CNN and Ensemble classifiers for diagnosis of COVID-19 using binary Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and multi-class Hybrid-learning for UnbiaSed predicTion of COVID-19 (HUST-19) CT scan dataset. To perform this comparison, we have tested Deep learning-based classifiers and ensemble classifiers with proposed approach using CT scan images. Proposed approach is more effective in detection of COVID-19 with an accuracy of 99.7% on multi-class HUST-19, whereas 98% on binary class SARS-CoV-2 dataset. Cross corpus evaluation achieves accuracy of 93% by training the model with Hust19 dataset and testing using Brazilian COVID datase

Knowledge and attitudes about health research amongst a group of Pakistani medical students

Background Health research training is an important part of medical education. This study was conducted to assess the level of knowledge and attitudes regarding health research in a group of Pakistani medical students at Aga Khan University, Karachi. Methods It was a cross-sectional pilot study conducted among a group of Pakistani medical students. Through stratified random sampling, a pre-tested, structured and validated questionnaire was administered to 220 medical students. Knowledge and attitudes were recorded on a scale (graduated in percentages). Results Mean scores of students were 49.0% on knowledge scale and 53.7% on attitude scale. Both knowledge and attitudes improved significantly with increasing years of study in medical college [Regression coefficient 4.10 (p-value; 0.019) and 6.67 (p-value; \u3c 0.001) for knowledge and attitudes, respectively]. Conclusion Medical students demonstrate moderate level of knowledge and attitude towards health research. Intensive training in this regard is associated with significant improvement in knowledge and attitudes of students towards health research