Assessment of the dietary transfer of pesticides to dairy milk and its effect on human health

The transfer of organophosphate and pyrethroid pesticides in dairy cattle’s milk when fed on agroindustrial by-product diet was assessed in this study. The transfer and accumulation of such pesticide in cattle fat tissue and milk was also assessed and the adverse effect on cattle’s and human health was also studied. For that purpose, about 80 milk and 30 diet samples were collected from various dairy farms. All samples were extracted with acids using "quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe" (QuEChERS) method and analyzed through gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The results show that about 40 and 20% of milk samples had greater content of cypermethrin+chloropyrifos and porfenofos than their maximum residue limits as suggested by World Health Organisation (WHO). Cypermethrin, chloropyrifos and profenofos were present at concentration greater than their maximum residue limits in mixed diet whereas profenofos was completely absent in sugarcane khal and was present in traces in cotton khal but remained within the maximum residue limit. Nonetheless, transfer of residue of parent cypermethrin, chloropyrifos and profenofos to milk was not consistent with diet in all dairy milk samples. This revealed the contention that some other sources such as drinking or inhaling contaminated water or dust are also contributing to pesticide contamination in milk. Cancer potency factor for cypermethrine in children and adults remained within the recommended value. Generally, although pesticides residue in milk was not high enough to cause cancer risk in human, they might cause adverse health effect and delayed toxicity due to their long term accumulation and persistence within cattle’s body. Therefore, there was an urgent need to estimate their contents in dairy cattle milk in order to provide a baseline for the health ministry to make safety regulations.Keywords: Pesticides, contamination, milk, cattle diet, risk assessmentAfrican Journal of Biotechnology, Vol. 13(3), pp. 476-485, 15 January, 201

Body mass index or body fat! which is a better obesity scale for Pakistani population?

Ojective: To compare two methods of classifying obesity based on body mass index and body fat percentage.Methods: The cross-sectional study was conducted from November 2012 to August 2013 at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Karachi. Male and female volunteers between the ages 15-65 years were selected using simple random sampling. They were classified into different groups for body mass index and body fat percentage measured through bioelectrical impedance scale. The subjects were sub-grouped into underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese. SPSS 11 was used for statistical analysis.Results: The mean age of the 828 healthy volunteers was 25.67±10.10 years. A total of 552 (66.6%) subjects had a higher body fatpercentage and were misclassified by body mass index. Only 276 (33.3%) subjects had body fat percentage values corresponding to the body mass index classification. The difference in terms of categorising obesity was highly significant (p\u3c0.001). Both body mass index and body fat percentage showed positive correlation with age (r=0.144; p=0.001) (r=0.261; p=0.001) and weight (r=0.578; p=0.001) (r=0.444; p=0.001) respectively. Moreover body fat percentage showed a significant positive association with gender (r=0.109; p=0.027) whereas BMI did not.Conclusions: Body fat percentage should be incorporated for a better understanding as well as categorising of obesity

Rectangular shaped microstrip patch antenna with multiple slits and slots

This paper presents a complex microstrip patch antenna design for Ku-band satellite communication applications. FR4 and RogerRT6002 have alternatively been used as substrates having dielectric constant of 4.4 and 2.94 respectively. The patch ground and feedlines are made of copper. The proposed antenna is unique in shape with rectangular slots. The performance of the antenna has been analyzed in terms of far field gain. The most significant results were obtained using FR4 substrate, which gave a gain of 7.88 dB, at 11.32 GHz and a reflection coefficient of -10.48 dB. The final microstrip patch antenna design was simulated, built and tested. Simulated and measured S11 frequencies perfectly match at 11.32 GHz with simulated and measured magnitudes of 10.48 dB and -29.64 dB respectively

The frequency of heparin induced thrombocytopenia in patients undergoing elective cardiac bypass surgeries

OBJECTIVE: To determine the frequency of Heparin Induced Thrombocytopenia (HIT) in patients undergoing elective cardiac bypass surgeries and to observe the platelets evolution post surgically in these patients. METHOD: A prospective study was designed and 100 unselected consecutive patients undergoing elective cardiac bypass surgery were enrolled and evaluated. The clinical and laboratory details were noted before and after surgery. Their platelet counts were observed from day 0 (prior to surgery) to day 5 post operatively. Particle gel immunoassay was used to demonstrate the presence of antibodies against heparin-platelet factor 4 complexes. RESULTS: There were 86 males and 14 females with median age of 59 and 53.5 years respectively. Marked platelet count variation was detected during post operative period in all patients (n=100) ranging from 23 +/- SD 186.73 to 389 +/- 84.12 X 109/L. However, 20 patients showed \u3e50% drop on day 5 and seven of these also showed seroconversion. The clinical scoring for HIT was found to have a good negative predictive value. Thromboembolic complications were not observed in any of our patients. CONCLUSIONS: HIT is prevalent to a significant extent in patients after cardiac surgery in our clinical setting though it mostly remains undetected and is an under-diagnosed entity

Problems Faced by Rice Growing Farmers and Their Behavior to the Government Policies:; A Case from Pakistan

Importance of rice in agricultural crops cannot be ignored as it is the staple food for more than fifty percent population of the world and a big source to cope with the food security issues of the world. Considering the importance of rice the year 2004 was declared as the international year of rice by FAO .Rice is cultivated over one hundred countries in the world. During 2011-2012, rice production in the world was 718.345 million tons and it was cultivated over an area of 163.463 million hectares.  In Pakistan, rice also enjoys a prominent status among cereal crops as in terms of area it is the third largest crop of Pakistan. In 2011-2012 rice was cultivated on 2.571 million hectares with production of 6.16 million tones and the average yield remained 2396 kg/ha. In the year 2012-2013, Per capita rice consumption in Pakistan is 15.30 kg/year. Since rice is not a staple food in Pakistan so every year a considerable quantity of rice produce is exported to earn foreign exchange. This present study was conducted in 2013 in two tehsils; namely Daska and Pasroor of Sialkot district of Punjab province of Pakistan. The main purpose of the study was to inquire the problems faced by rice farmers at different stages of rice cultivation i.e. rice production, rice crop protection and rice marketing stages. Out of the four tehsils of districts Sialkot, two tehsils were purposely selected due to the excessive cultivation of rice in these areas. Out of each tehsil, ten villages were randomly selected and out of each village, six farmers were randomly selected. Hence a sample of 120 farmers was selected. The selected farmers were interviewed and data were collected and analyzed. In terms of production related problems the findings showed that farmers perceived high price of fertilizer, shortage of canal water, high price of agricultural input, high rent charges of agricultural machinery, lack of consultancy facilities and lack of credit/finance as the major problems during the rice crop production stage. In terms of rice crop protection related problems, costly pesticides/weedicide and ineffective fungicide were identified by the farmers and in terms of marketing related problems of rice crop, unsatisfactory price offered of the produce, poor transportation, storage issues and lack of knowledge about market prices were identified by the farmers. The farmers also showed great dissatisfaction over the initiatives taken by government authorities to resolve the problems faced by them Keywords: Rice farmer’s problems; production related issues; crop protection related issues; marketing related issues; dissatisfaction level on government policies

Continuous user authentication featuring keystroke dynamics based on robust recurrent confidence model and ensemble learning approach

User authentication is considered to be an important aspect of any cybersecurity program. However, one-time validation of user’s identity is not strong to provide resilient security throughout the user session. In this aspect, continuous monitoring of session is necessary to ensure that only legitimate user is accessing the system resources for entire session. In this paper, a true continuous user authentication system featuring keystroke dynamics behavioural biometric modality has been proposed and implemented. A novel method of authenticating the user on each action has been presented which decides the legitimacy of current user based on the confidence in the genuineness of each action. The 2-phase methodology, consisting of ensemble learning and robust recurrent confidence model(R-RCM), has been designed which employs a novel perception of two thresholds i.e., alert and final threshold. Proposed methodology classifies each action based on the probability score of ensemble classifier which is afterwards used along with hyperparameters of R-RCM to compute the current confidence in the genuineness of user. System decides if user can continue using the system or not based on new confidence value and final threshold. However, it tends to lock out imposter user more quickly if it reaches the alert threshold. Moreover, system has been validated with two different experimental settings and results are reported in terms of mean average number of genuine actions (ANGA) and average number of imposter actions(ANIA), whereby achieving the lowest mean ANIA with experimental setting II

Congenital factor VII deficiency in children at tertiary health care facility in Pakistan

This study presents the demographics, clinical spectrum, and outcome of patients with congenital factor VII (FVII) deficiency at a tertiary care center over a period of 12 years. Of the 49 patients, 27 (55%) patients were males. Consanguinity was found in 92% of the patients. The median age of symptom onset was 2.4 (interquartile range [IQR]: 1.1-6.5) years with a median age of 5.8 (IQR: 3.1-10) years at diagnosis. Life-threatening complications like intracranial bleeding (ICB) and intra-abdominal bleeding (IAB) were observed in 8 (16.4%) patients. We found that 11 (55%) of the 20 patients with FVII coagulant activity (FVIIc) 5% were affected by severe symptoms. Age (P = .042; odds ratio 6.46). Overall, 4 (8.2%) died as a consequence of ICB (3 patients) and IAB (1 patient)

Investigation of 1-alkanols in organised solutions

Conductometric behaviour of 1-alkanols (C5-C10) in organised solutions of sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS) is investigated. Interaction of each alkanol with anionic surfactant is reflected in terms of association constants, Kc. It is observed that self-assembly of SDBS is induced by the alkanol addition. The depression in critical micelle concentration (CMC) of SDBS caused by each alkanol is translated to partition coefficient, Kc by using interaction coefficient. The dimensionless partition coefficient, Kx is utilized to highlight the energy efficiency of the solubilization process. The results indicate that even longer chain alkanols prefer interfacial area for their residence. The relative solubility of each alkanol is enhanced with increasing SDBS concentration. Such basic information could be vital for development of nano-scale assemblies for specific delivery of water soluble drugs.KEY WORDS: SDBS, Alcohols, Partition coefficient, Relative solubility, Conductometry Bull. Chem. Soc. Ethiop. 2011, 25(3), 469-474

Reasons to Remedies: Framing of Terrorist Attacks in Major Urdu and English Newspapers of Pakistan

Twenty first century has witnessed a new kind of war, “War on Terror”. Pakistan joined this war after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and became a front line state in this war. Resultantly, Pakistan had to end its support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban did not accept that policy shift and in reaction began attacking almost every place and segment of society right from military to politicians, mosques to parks, and hospitals to schools. The relationship between media and terrorism is indispensable because terrorists need media coverage and publicity, and media needs shocking and sensational news stories. Given this backdrop, this study intends to investigate two research questions. First, “What reasons of terrorist attacks were discussed in the editorials of major Urdu and English newspaper of Pakistan?” and second, “What solutions were suggested in the major Urdu and English newspaper of Pakistan?” Two newspapers, daily Dawn (English Newspaper) and daily Jang (Urdu Newspaper) have been selected for this study. Content analysis has been used as methodology and editorials published during 2001 to 2016 constitute the population for this research study. The results show that shift in foreign policy of Pakistan towards Afghanistan was discussed as a major reason of terrorist attacks and similarly, as solution, review of foreign policy of Pakistan towards Afghanistan was discussed in highest number of editorials.&nbsp

Vitamin D Deficiency in Rawalpindi –Islamabad Region

To assess vitamin – D deficiency in Northern Pakistan in order to provide inputs towards developing effective preventive and remedial strategies.Methods:A total of five thousand six hundred and ninety three (n=5693) adult patients of both genders were screened for serum Vitamin D-3 levels over the period of six years.Results:Mean serum Vitamin D3 levels among males and females were in insufficient range and showed no significant difference (P>0.05). In study population 56.5% (n=3216) of patients were Vitamin D-3 deficient (<20 ng/ml), 18.2% (n=1037) showed insufficient levels (20-30 ng/ml) and 25.3% showed sufficient levels (>30 ng/ml). Significant difference was observed on gender stratification with female population showed higher percentage of deficient levels (79.7%) versus males (20.3%) (p<0.05). Age based stratification also showed significant difference with age groups younger than 50 years showed higher percentage of deficient levels than in patients older than 50 years (P<0.05). Conclusion: There is a high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in population of Rawalpindi and Islamabad region