Understanding of Three Dimensional Diagrams

As a policy matter a child should be admitted in class – I after attaining the age of year 5, but in our social setup that is rarely followed. That is why, the students of year – 8 were traced from class II, III and IV of 121 Government Primary /Primary Sections of Government Middle Schools of 15 Tehsils of Five Districts from Southern Punjab. In all, 7212 students were involved in the study. Major objective of the study was to find out the age category at which the students of year 8 understand three dimensional diagrams to minimum and maximum extent. Present age was calculated by subtracting physical age of each student as recorded in the admission register from the date of test administration. It was found that only 1240 (17.18%) of the total students were of year-8, sorted out 1.0% (24) students from class II, 20% (485) of class III, and 30.18% (731) of class IV. A standardized non-verbal test and a perception test were administered to achieve the objectives. After piloting the tool, there were 42 items comprising upon 15 rectangular, 20 hexagonal, and seven diagrams from real daily life. The results highlighted that maximum average scores were found for the age category of 8 year, 2 months and 15 days and minimum average scores in the first category of age for the sampled students. Keywords: 3-D Diagrams, Perception, Primary Education, Understandin

Contributions from Healthcare Facilities to the overall Mass Loading of Pharmaceuticals on Wastewater Treatment Plants

The presence of human pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment is now becoming a well-established fact. The identified problems associated with their presence include the fact that these compounds are biologically active, some of them are toxic in nature, and a number of compounds have potential to foster and maintain drug resistant microorganisms. They are discharged into the aquatic environment from a variety of sources, but mainly by the excretion of incompletely metabolized pharmaceuticals by individuals into the wastewater. This situation makes finding a source-control strategy difficult. However, healthcare facility (hospitals and long-term-care homes) effluents are suspected to have relatively higher concentrations of these compounds, as such facilities use pharmaceuticals in large amounts for diagnostic, cure and research purposes. It is expected that controlling discharges from these facilities may provide a cost-effective solution to reduce the pharmaceutical loads entering the aquatic environment

IT Ethics: Undergraduates’ PerceptionBased on their Awareness

Vide acceptance and use of computer and information technology in universities demanded the researchers and teachers to train their students to use these resources ethically. In the universities of Pakistan, computer and IT related courses have recently been included as compulsory subjects. Therefore, this research aimed to explore the perceptions about ethical use of information technology (IT) by the undergraduate students from four different public and private sector universities. A questionnaire was designed in which different computer and internet related activities were given and students were required to respond in terms of Right, Wrong and Neither Right Nor Wrong. Total 542 students participated in the study and the results were interpreted on the bases of their demographic information. It was concluded that majority of the students were not previously trained and have no knowledge about computer or IT ethics. It was found that female students, students from public sector universities, from different departments of computing and IT and from the disciplines of pure sciences were perceptually more positive regarding the ethical use of IT resources. Minimal differences were found across the responses of students who have IT training certificates and prior knowledge of IT ethics. This suggests that computer ethics awareness training is needed for university students. Keywords: Computer ethics, IT ethics, Undergraduate Students, Education, Sciences vs Social Sciences, Male vs Female, Public-sector vs Private-sector universities.

Effect of Different Types of Mulches on Grain Yield and Yield Components of Wheat (Triticum Aestivum) under Rainfed Condition

The research experiment was carried out at the research area of Soil and Water Conservation Research Institute, Chakwal, Pakistan to estimate the effects of different types of mulches on the growth, development and grain yield of wheat during rabi season 2010-11. Four different types of mulches (hoeing twice 30-40 & 60-70 DAE, straw mulch @ 2.0 ton ha-1, litter mulch @ 1.5 ton ha-1 and gypsum @ 2.5 ton ha-1) were compared with control (no mulch) laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The investigation revealed significant effects of different types of mulches on the germination count m-2, plant height (cm), no. of tillers m-2, spike length (cm), no. of spikelets per spike, biological yield (kg/ha) and grain yield (kg/ha) while there was non-significant difference among the treatments on 1000 grain weight (g). Hence, it was concluded that farmers could apply different mulches particularly gypsum @ 2.5 ton ha-1 to achieve highest grain yield (kg/ha) of wheat under rainfed conditions. Keywords: different mulches, moisture conservation, grain yield, yield components, rainfed, whea

Patients' and healthcare professionals' perspectives on a community-based intervention for schizophrenia in Pakistan: A focus group study.

To explore the perceptions and experiences of schizophrenia from patients, their care givers, health care providers, spiritual and traditional healers to develop a community-based intervention for improving treatment adherence for people with schizophrenia in Pakistan. This qualitative study involved four focus group discussions (FGD) with a total of 26 participants: patients and carers (n = 5), primary care staff (n = 7), medical technicians (n = 8) and traditional and spiritual healers (n = 6). The participants were selected using purposive sampling method. FGDs were audio-recorded and transcribed. A thematic analysis was applied to the data set. The themes identified were (i) Schizophrenia is not merely a biomedical problem: participants believed that poverty and an inferiority complex resulting from social disparity caused schizophrenia and contributed to non-adherence to medications; (ii) Spiritual healing goes hand in hand with the medical treatment: participants regarded spiritual and traditional treatment methods as an inherent part of schizophrenia patients' well-being and rehabilitation; (iii) Services for mental illness: mental health is not covered under primary health in a basic health unit: participants believed that the lack of services, training and necessary medication in primary care are major issues for treating schizophrenia in community; (iv) Barriers to community-based interventions: primary care staff believed that multiple pressures on staff, lack of incentives, non-availability of medication and lack of formal referral pathways resulted in disintegration of dealing with schizophrenia patients in primary care facilities. The study has identified a number of barriers and facilitators to developing and delivering a psychosocial intervention to support people living with schizophrenia in Pakistan. In particular, the importance of involving spiritual and traditional healers was highlighted by our diverse group of stakeholders

Statistical modeling for prediction of diabetes in Malaysians

Type II Diabetes Mellitus is one of the silent killer diseases worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, 347 million people are suffering from diabetes throughout the world. To overcome the sharp rise in the disease, various diagnostic or prediction models were developed through various techniques such as artificial intelligence, classification and clustering, pattern recognition and statistical methods. The study led to the related open issues of identifying the need of a relation between the major factors that lead to the development of diabetes. This is possible by investigating the links found between the independent and dependant variables in the dataset. This paper investigates the effect of binary logistic regression applied on a dataset. The results show that the most effective method was the enter method which gave a prediction accuracy of almost 93%

Supervised treatment in outpatients for schizophrenia plus (STOPS+): protocol for a cluster randomised trial of a community-based intervention to improve treatment adherence and reduce the treatment gap for schizophrenia in Pakistan

Introduction There is a significant treatment gap, with only a few community-based services for people with schizophrenia in low-income and middle-income countries. Poor treatment adherence in schizophrenia is associated with poorer health outcomes, suicide attempts and death. We previously reported the effectiveness of supervised treatment in outpatients for schizophrenia (STOPS) for improving treatment adherence in patients with schizophrenia. However, STOPS was evaluated in a tertiary care setting with no primary care involvement, limiting its generalisability to the wider at-risk population. We aim to evaluate the effectiveness of STOPS+ in scaling up the primary care treatment of schizophrenia to a real-world setting. Methods and analysis The effectiveness of the STOPS+ intervention in improving the level of functioning and medication adherence in patients with schizophrenia in Pakistan will be evaluated using a cluster randomised controlled trial design. We aim to recruit 526 participants from 24 primary healthcare centres randomly allocated in 1:1 ratio to STOPS+ intervention and enhanced treatment as usual arms. Participants will be followed-up for 12 months postrecruitment. The sample size is estimated for two outcomes (1) the primary clinical outcome is level of functioning, measured using the Global Assessment of Functioning scale and (2) the primary process outcome is adherence to treatment regimen measured using a validated measure. An intention-to-treat approach will be used for the primary analysis. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval has been obtained from Keele University Ethical Review Panel (ref: MH-190017) and Khyber Medical University Ethical Review Board (ref: DIR-KMU-EB/ST/000648). The results of the STOPS+ trial will be reported in peer-reviewed journals and academic conferences and disseminated to local stakeholders and policymakers

Management of Cervical Neurofibroma Type

Objective: To determine the clinical presentation and postoperative outcome of cervical neurofibroma type 1.Study design: Retrospective study.Place and Duration of Study: Hayatabad Medical Complex Hospital Peshawar Khyber pakhtoonkhawa from 1st February 1999 to 31st July 2011.Material and Methods: A total 41 patients with symptomatic cervical spine neurofibromas who underwent surgical decompression and tumor resection were included in this study. Both gender (male and female) and patients in the age range of 20 – 70 years were included in this study. These patients were operated through posterior approach of the cervical spine and then followed for six months for postoperative outcome .The patients’ demographic details and clinical manifestation were entered into a semi structured proforma. Data was analyzed through statistical program SPSS version 11.Results: Out of 41 patients, there were 22 (53.6%) males and 19 (46.3%) females. The age of patients ranged from 20 to 70 years. In this study the overall mean age was 39.2 years. Majority of patients 19 (46.3%) were in the age range of 31 – 40 years. Most common clinical presentation of patient were quadrapresis in 23 (56.1%) pain neck 9 (22%) paraparesis 9 (22%) patients. Postoperatively most of the patients recovered from their preoperative symptoms.Conclusions: Quadraparesis and pain neck were the common clinical presentation of cervical cord neurofibroma type 1. Surgical outcome of cevical neurofibroma type 1 is good

Patients’ and healthcare professionals’ perspectives on a community-based intervention for schizophrenia in Pakistan: A focus group study

Objective: To explore the perceptions and experiences of schizophrenia from patients, their care givers, health care providers, spiritual and traditional healers to develop a community-based intervention for improving treatment adherence for people with schizophrenia in Pakistan. Methods: This qualitative study involved four focus group discussions (FGD) with a total of 26 participants: patients and carers (n = 5), primary care staff (n = 7), medical technicians (n = 8) and traditional and spiritual healers (n = 6). The participants were selected using purposive sampling method. FGDs were audio-recorded and transcribed. A thematic analysis was applied to the data set. Results: The themes identified were (i) Schizophrenia is not merely a biomedical problem: participants believed that poverty and an inferiority complex resulting from social disparity caused schizophrenia and contributed to non-adherence to medications; (ii) Spiritual healing goes hand in hand with the medical treatment: participants regarded spiritual and traditional treatment methods as an inherent part of schizophrenia patients’ well-being and rehabilitation; (iii) Services for mental illness: mental health is not covered under primary health in a basic health unit: participants believed that the lack of services, training and necessary medication in primary care are major issues for treating schizophrenia in community; (iv) Barriers to community-based interventions: primary care staff believed that multiple pressures on staff, lack of incentives, non-availability of medication and lack of formal referral pathways resulted in disintegration of dealing with schizophrenia patients in primary care facilities. Conclusion: The study has identified a number of barriers and facilitators to developing and delivering a psychosocial intervention to support people living with schizophrenia in Pakistan. In particular, the importance of involving spiritual and traditional healers was highlighted by our diverse group of stakeholders