Frequency of Distribution and Relationship of Nail Changes and Oral Mucosal Involvement in Classical Lichen Planus (LP)

Introduction: LP is an itchy dermatosis. It is of different types with classical LP being a common type. It most commonly affects the skin of the limbs, however, it can affect the mucous membranes, genitals and nails as well. Materials and Methods: 100 patients of classical LP presenting in Dermatology OPD of Benazir Bhutto Hospital were enrolled to assess the involvement of nails and oral mucosa in the disease. Statistical Analysis was done using SPSS version 23. Results: Out of 100 patients, 70% were free from any oral mucosal or nail involvement, whereas, 7% had both oral mucosal as well as nail involvement with classical LP. 18% had oral mucosa affected but nails spared and only 5% had nails affected without oral mucous membrane involvement with the diseases. 25% had oral mucosal involvement with reticular pattern being most common type and 12% showed nail changes with longitudinal ridging being the most common. Fisher’s exact test computed a two tailed p value of 0.0093 showing a significant association of nail changes in classical LP with oral mucosal involvement. Conclusion: Classical LP is an itchy condition which most commonly affects the skin, mucous membranes and nails. However, if oral mucous membranes are involved, the risk of having nails affected by the disease is quite significant. The distribution frequency of nail and oral mucosal changes as well as their predominant subtypes associated with classical LP in South Asians is comparable with rest of the world & other types of L

Mayers-Scotten’s 4-M Model: A Qusai-Experimental Study of Pashto-English Morphological Ability

Bilingualism has been a myth for linguists and language policy and planning professionals for decades. Current study observes morphological ability and bilingual profile of L1 and L2 of Pashto mother-tongue children. Bilingual profile of the participants measured through bilingual language profile (BLP) tool. Both L1 and L2 children were tested before and after intervention. Morphological ability was measured through 4 M model. After 4 weeks of intervention, experimental child was able to read and write complex words with bridge morphemes. In contrast, controlled sample was not exposed to the intervention. The participants performed assigned language tasks and their performance-expressions were analyzed. Study confirms that early and late bridge morphemes are acquired and children have intelligibility of the language despite the fact that BLP shows low profile of the mother tongue. Significant effects of mother tongue were recorded in the participants’ performance. Effects of explicit morphological instruction was focused on identifying Pashto orthography and applying morphological ability on word formations. Findings reveal bilingual profile and patterns of morphological ability after didactic practice of intervention. Intervention contributed in developing Pashto orthography that was crucial for reading and writing proficiency. Direct impact on text-based inference and reading comprehension was another milestone of this qusai-experimental research. This model can be used for longitudinal studies

The Lingering Impact of Colonization on Pakistan: Negative or Positive?

The British rule had a lasting Impact on the lives of the Indian people. They exploited the Indian territory for their own interests and left the land in more disorder and confusion than they found it in as (1) their attitude of superiority shattered the confidence of the people, (2) their agrarian revolution did not help improve yield and caused landholdings to become more fragmented, (3) the Indian industry was not protected and many traditional ones were ruined , (4) education was not made easily accessible , (5) construction of railways although improved transportation however was not done keeping the Indian interests but the British interests in mind and (6) the new political system which lacked personal element was not more effective than the old one.&nbsp

Impact of Commodity Concentration and Geographical Concentration upon Export instability in Pakistan

This research study investigates the factors affecting export instability in Pakistan by using time-series data from 1981 to 2017. The determining factors of export instability in this study are commodity concentration index, geographical concentration index, food ratio, export earnings and total export quantity. The study employs Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to investigate the long-run (LR) relationship between export instability and its employed determinants. The empirical evidence reveals that commodity concentration, geographical concentration, food exports and export earnings are the key factors explaining export instability in Pakistan. The study finds the positive relationship between export instability and commodity concentration, while a negative association with geographical concentration. Furthermore, food exports and export earnings are also found to be negatively related to export instability. The study finds that concentration or depend ence on a few exports causes export instability in Pakistan, but this problem would be overcome if Pakistan’s commodity basket for exports become diversified

Efficacy of Microneedling with Dermaroller Alternating with CROSS Peeling with 30% TCA in Management of Acne Induced Scarring

Objective: To study the effect of combination of two therapies i.e. Microneedling with Dermaroller alternating with Chemical Reconstruction Skin Scar (CROSS) peeling with 30% TCA in management of acne induced scarring.Patients and Methods: This experimental study was conducted in the department of Dermatology, Benazir Bhutto Hospital, Rawalpindi from March 2017 to December 2017. A total of 20 patients underwent microneedling with dermaroller at week=0 (baseline) and were subjected to CROSS peeling with 30% TCA on follow up after 2 weeks. Four sessions of each procedure were repeated at 2 weeks’ interval. Photographs were taken at baseline and 4 weeks after the end of therapy (week=18). The baseline and final photographs were assessed for acne scar grading as per Goodman and Baron qualitative scale by two dermatologists who were blinded to the whole study.Results: Out of 20 patients, 16 (80%) of the patients had grade IV acne scarring and 4 (20%) had grade III scarring at baseline (week=0). On assessment at 4 weeks after the end of therapy (week=18), 16 patients who were having grade IV acne 6 (37.5%) improved to grade III, and 10 (62.5%) improved to grade II. Out of 4 patients who were initially having grade III at week=0, all 4 (100%) improved to grade II by week=18. A Wilcoxon signed rank test showed highly significant improvement in the grading of scarring (z=-3.92, p=0.00008).Conclusion: The combination therapy of microneedling with dermaroller, alternating with CROSS peeling with 30% TCA was highly effective in treating all types of atrophic acne scarring

The dynamic influence of inbound tourism and film and drama industry in promoting environmental sustainability in China: new evidence from bootstrap ARDL approach

The ongoing climate changes have created various challenges for each industry to achieve sustainable environmental goals. Like other extensively growing industries, China’s film and drama industry and inbound tourism are also responsible for contributing effectively toward a sustainable environment. Despite its significant importance, there is a dearth of empirical evidence that analyses these industry’s environmental performance. Thus, this study fills the gap by applying the novel bootstrap ARDL approach and found that Inbound Tourism and Film and Drama industry increased environmental performance (reducing ecological footprint) in China. These results imply that entertainment industries and inbound tourism increased social awareness and encouraged environmental protection in societies and industries. Manifestly, the coefficient’s magnitude of the Film and Drama industry is relatively lower due to a smaller share of the overall economy. However, it shows significant potential for sustainability by creating awareness about sustainable practices and corporate social responsibility, leading to higher environmental performance. Moreover, a feedback effect (two-way causality) exists between Film and Drama industry, Inbound Tourism, and environmental performance. These results offer valuable policy recommendations

Flow-Based Rules Generation for Intrusion Detection System using Machine Learning Approach

Rapid increase in internet users also brought new ways of privacy and security exploitation. Intrusion is one of such attacks in which an authorized user can access system resources and is major concern for cyber security community. Although AV and firewall companies work hard to cope with this kind of attacks and generate signatures for such exploits but still, they are lagging behind badly in this race. This research proposes an approach to ease the task of rules generationby making use of machine learning for this purpose. We used 17 network features to train a random forest classifier and this trained classifier is then translated into rules which can easily be integrated with most commonly used firewalls like snort and suricata etc. This work targets five kind of attacks: brute force, denial of service, HTTP DoS, infiltrate from inside and SSH brute force. Separate rules are generated for each kind of attack. As not every generated rule contributes toward detection that's why an evaluation mechanism is also used which selects the best rule on the basis of precision and f-measure values. Generated rules for some attacks have 100% precision with detection rate of more than 99% which represents effectiveness of this approach on traditional firewalls. As our proposed system translates trained classifier model into set of rules for firewalls so it is not only effective for rules generation but also give machine learning characteristics to traditional firewall to some extent.&nbsp

South Asian Universities: Effect of Personality Traits on Procrastination of Students at University Level

This study examined the effect of personality traits on procrastination of university students. All the students enrolled in public and private universities of the Punjab were population of the study. Sample was comprised of 500 students which were selected through convenient sampling technique. Due to Covid-19 convenient sampling technique was used. Two instruments were used to measure personality traits and procrastination. Big Five Inventory was used to measure personality traits and 20-item Procrastination Scale was used to measure procrastination. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data. It was found that sample data fit the hypothetical model well. Randomly selected large sample is recommended to further probe the cause-effect relationship of variables understud

Gender-based study of paired monophthongs: a sociophonetics approach

This study investigates gender-based phonological variations in the acoustic production of paired monophthongs among Pahari native speakers of Pakistani English (PakE). It addresses the research questions concerning how male and female speakers differ in the acoustic characteristics of English monophthongs within the PakE context. The study builds upon the theoretical frameworks of acoustic phonetics and sociophonetics, combining them to analyse vowel acoustics while considering sociocultural influences precisely. Ten participants, evenly divided between males and females, provided speech samples for specific monophthong pairs. A standardised list of 10 monosyllabic words in pairs was used as stimuli. The analysis of collected speech samples employed Praat software for formant and duration measurements, facilitated by R Software for graphical representation. Results indicate that male speakers exhibit higher F1 and F2 values in several monophthong pairs, while female speakers tend to have longer durations. These gender-related phonological distinctions contribute to understanding PakE's phonological landscape, bridging the gap between language, gender, and social identity. The study has implications for pronunciation teaching and speech technology in PakE, offering a nuanced exploration of the sociophonetic dynamics at play. Future research can delve further into sociolinguistic factors influencing these phonological distinctions and their social motivations. This research enhances the academic understanding of PakE's phonological complexity and practical applications in language pedagogy and speech technology