Working and Nonworking Women’s descriptions and experiences of their roles in Society

In a society both, men and women play a pivotal role and their roles may be defined based on their cultural values and societal norms. Understanding and conformity with these roles may be expected by both the genders. However, to limit the scope, this study aimed to explore working and nonworking women’s descriptions and experiences of their roles in society. A descriptive exploratory research design was used. After approval from ethics review committee, Aga Khan University, the data was gathered from women in three communities representing the low, middle and upper socioeconomic strata, in Karachi, Pakistan. The participants were selected by critical case sampling. The sampling was terminated once the saturation was achieved. The in-depth interviews were conducted by using the interview guide. Thirty-five women participated in the study. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. The findings showed that the participants identified three main roles of women in a society. These roles are familial, financial supporter, and socio-political roles. Women’s experiences and feelings related to these roles had an impact on their quality of life

Feature Level Fusion of Face and Fingerprint Biometrics

The aim of this paper is to study the fusion at feature extraction level for face and fingerprint biometrics. The proposed approach is based on the fusion of the two traits by extracting independent feature pointsets from the two modalities, and making the two pointsets compatible for concatenation. Moreover, to handle the problem of curse of dimensionality, the feature pointsets are properly reduced in dimension. Different feature reduction techniques are implemented, prior and after the feature pointsets fusion, and the results are duly recorded. The fused feature pointset for the database and the query face and fingerprint images are matched using techniques based on either the point pattern matching, or the Delaunay triangulation. Comparative experiments are conducted on chimeric and real databases, to assess the actual advantage of the fusion performed at the feature extraction level, in comparison to the matching score level.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, conferenc

Case study describing access to palliative care in Pakistan

Around the world, cancer is a leading cause of death and the burden of cancer is expected to increase in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), where 82% of the world’s population resides. In these countries, which include Pakistan, aspects of the culture and traditions, inaccessibility to diagnostic and treatment facilities impede access to palliative care. In many cases, people do not reach treatment facilities until they are at the stage when the person is at the end-of-life and is dying. This paints the picture of cancer as a deadly disease and as soon as it is diagnosed nothing can be done but to mourn. Little is understood about people’s experiences accessing palliative care in Pakistan. This study followed Yin’s methodology of case study research to describe how people accessed palliative care through Bait-ul-Sukoon Cancer Hospital and Hospice, the research setting (and bounded case) selected for this study. Theoretical propositions that guided the research were derived from the literature and my professional experience. Data collection occurred through unstructured observations, interviews of patients, family members and the health care provider, physical artifacts, and through my reflections. Four patients, three family members, and five healthcare providers were interviewed. Data analysis occurred simultaneously with data gathering and involved a reflexive analysis of the data. This study was guided by the theoretical propositions, the study objectives, and research questions that were derived from these propositions. Through this analysis process, two main themes were developed with subthemes to describe the case. I was also attentive to identity the rival cases, data that is contrary to the propositions. As the analysis progressed, linkages between the data were noted to see where the data were converging and diverging. The findings have described the suffering of people due in a large part to the late diagnosis of cancer. However, late diagnosis is also related to cultural beliefs, the social stigma of having cancer, the financial (and social) burden of seeking treatment, lack of education about cancer prevention and detection, healthcare system inadequacies and corruption, and healthcare providers’ knowledge deficits. Poverty underlies most of the suffering and is largely the reason for late diagnosis. Participants suggested that policy-level change was needed to meet palliative care needs, and enhance early diagnosis. Policy level change for poverty alleviation would improve the determinants causing obstructions in accessing palliative care and improve access to pain and symptom management. This research underscores that at present, military and defense funds are the focus of the budget priorities in Pakistan. This deprives the population of fulfilling the need for social development and the health of the people in the country, which ultimately ruins the health and quality of life of the individuals. As a result, individuals feel emotionally distressed at the prospects of little or no betterment of their lives, their children’s lives, and the generations that follow. These findings highlight the need for policy change by involving the stakeholders from social sectors, health, and education at the country level and through collaboration with the World Health Organization. Dissemination of these research findings, focusing on a public health approach and providing universal health coverage to all, is critically important for improving access to palliative care in Pakistan. This study identifies a clear need to educate healthcare providers about palliative care. Therefore, it is recommended that in LMICs palliative care should be included in medical and nursing curricula. The findings of this study suggest that nurses should work within the scope of their practice. This is also needed for their own safety and the safety of their patients. This requires close monitoring and supervision by the statutory bodies like the Pakistan Nursing Council. There are implications for policy change to provide universal access to health and to achieve sustainable development goals. Corruption is identified as one of the major hurdles in accessing health that must be controlled to start with and then be eradicated

Robust multi-modal and multi-unit feature level fusion of face and iris biometrics

Multi-biometrics has recently emerged as a mean of more robust and effcient personal verification and identification. Exploiting information from multiple sources at various levels i.e., feature, score, rank or decision, the false acceptance and rejection rates can be considerably reduced. Among all, feature level fusion is relatively an understudied problem. This paper addresses the feature level fusion for multi-modal and multi-unit sources of information. For multi-modal fusion the face and iris biometric traits are considered, while the multi-unit fusion is applied to merge the data from the left and right iris images. The proposed approach computes the SIFT features from both biometric sources, either multi- modal or multi-unit. For each source, the extracted SIFT features are selected via spatial sampling. Then these selected features are finally concatenated together into a single feature super-vector using serial fusion. This concatenated feature vector is used to perform classification. Experimental results from face and iris standard biometric databases are presented. The reported results clearly show the performance improvements in classification obtained by applying feature level fusion for both multi-modal and multi-unit biometrics in comparison to uni-modal classification and score level fusion

Harassment: A challenge at workplace

Health care professionals are deeply involved in caring for the human life and during this process, they come in a close contact with the care recipients. This, at times, positions the health care professionals in a vulnerable situation including workplace harassment which is an offensive verbal or physical act and comprises of an unwanted behavior or advancement or demand for sexual and other favors. This conduct creates an intimidating, unfriendly, and offensive work environment (Sigal, 2006). Consequently, it impacts on care providers\u27 performance, quality care and their retention in the system. Hence, it is important that the health care personnel should be provided with a safe and secured environment and their respect, dignity and honor should be maintained. Additionally, in-case of any mishaps, the perpetrator should be dealt accordingly

International climate policy leadership after COP23: the EU must resume its leading role, but cannot do so alone

The net outcome of the Bonn climate talks (23rd Conference of the Parties, COP23) in November was lukewarm at best. Many technical issues were brought forward and the political risks caused by the US announcement to pull out of the Paris Agreement were kept at bay. Yet, leadership to fill the void left by the US was lacking. Germany, who was co-hosting with the Fiji Islands, could not table ambitious solutions as in November 2017 it only had a caretaker government in place. The Fiji Presidency brought attention to adaptation, agriculture, finance and the loss and damage debates, but could not succeed to the full extent, mainly due to conflicts on finance. The performance by China was disappointing as it did not follow up on its ambitions to lead. With a view to 2018, the EU once again claimed a leadership role on the international climate agenda, though not unilaterally. During the Bonn UNFCCC negotiations, however, the EU disappointed many of its partners as it did not deliver as a constructive negotiator and bridge builder. Rather, it pushed for some of the technical issues. Given the urgency to forge a rulebook for the Paris Agreement implementation and in light of progressing climate change, the EU and its Member States need to demonstrate instrumental and directional leadership in the run-up to the next COP in Katowice, Poland in 2018. (author's abstract

Teachers’ and Parents’ perspective as how the Social Environment of immediate vicinity can affect the academic learning of a Child 4-6 years age group

In the process of human development environment plays a pivotal role. At the age of 4 -6 years, children\u27s immediate vicinity expands from home to school and in his social environment parents and teachers play a vital role. Therefore, in this study which was conducted in Phander district Ghizer, Northern areas; of Pakistan, employing descriptive research design five parents and five school teachers were enrolled. Participants shared their definition and understanding about social environment and immediate vicinity and its effects on academic learning. This research is part of Advanced Diploma in Human Development: Early Child Development Programme, Aga Khan University. Thus clearance was obtained from the University\u27s Ethics Review Committee. After approval of schools’ administration teachers were contacted and individual consent was obtained from all the study participants (n=10). Due to specific geographical area and population, its results cannot be generalized but it may provide some guidelines for future studies of similar nature

After the Katowice climate summit: building blocks for the EU climate agenda

In Katowice, Poland, the 24th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP24) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) took place in December 2018. The parties adopted a rulebook for the implementation of the Paris Agreement, which was an urgent and necessary step to operationalise the climate regime that is taking effect from 2020 onwards. The COP also addressed short-term climate ambitions by finishing the Talanoa Dialogue, a platform dialogue including stakeholders from civil society for sounding out mitigation potential before 2020. The European Union (EU) and its member states are among the few global actors remain­ing with the means and determination to follow up on supporting the international climate agenda. Thus, in preparation of the 2019 September climate summit convened by the UN Secretary-General (UNSG), António Guterres, the EU will have to demonstrate its willingness to reduce emissions by upgrading short- and long-term targets and to support poor countries, politically and financially. The vulnerable developing countries rely on the EU and its member states as leaders and partners for the national implementation of the rulebook’s technicalities. Not least, the EU has to focus on deepening cooperation with emerging countries and on raising awareness for climate change across policy fields. (Autorenkatalog