Heavy-light meson decay constants from NRQCD: an analysis of the 1/M corrections

We present {\it preliminary} results for the decay constants of heavy-light mesons using NRQCD heavy and tadpole improved Clover light quarks. A comparison is made with data obtained using Wilson light quarks. We present an analysis of the 1/M corrections to the decay constants in the static limit and compare with the predictions of HQET.Comment: Contribution to Lattice 95, 4 pages uuencoded compressed postscript fil

Optimization of callus induction and regeneration system for Pakistani wheat cultivars Kohsar and Khyber-87

Wheat is a member of family Poaceae. It is the major staple food of Pakistan. The present study was done to improve the regeneration of two commercially grown wheat varieties Kohsar and Khyber-87.Mature embryos were used as explants. Five different concentrations of 2,4-D; 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5 and 4 mg/L were used for callus induction. For regeneration, initially different concentrations (0.1 to 0.2) of IAA(indole-3-acetic acid) and BAP (6-benzylaminopurine) were experimented. The best combination of these hormones that is, 0.1 mg/L IAA and 0.5 mg/L BAP were further subjected to experimentation along with different concentrations of kinetin; 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 and 1 mg/L. Maximum calli of Kohsar (83.3%) was obtained at 3 mg/L 2,4-D whereas for Khyber-87 maximum callus induction (71.70%) was obtained at 3.5 mg/l 2,4-D. The maximum regeneration of both Kohsar and Khyber-87 (80.5 and 62.2%, respectively) were obtained at the combinations of 0.1 mg/L IAA, 0.5 mg/L BAP and 0.5 mg/L kinetin

Outcome of adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia receiving the MRC UKALL XII protocol: a tertiary care centre experience

Introduction:Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) is a heterogeneous group of lymphoid neoplasm resulting from the proliferation of malignant lymphoid cells. We aimed to study the outcome of adult Patients with ALL receiving the Medical Research Council UKALL XII protocol. Methods: This was a retrospective study conducted at Aga Khan University Hospital from January 2001 to December 2008. The medical records of all adult Patients were reviewed and analysed for clinical, morphological and immunological features at presentation and impact on treatment outcomes. Multivariate analysis and survival studies were performed using Kaplan-Meier statistics. Results: The total number of Patients was 54, with a male to female ratio of 3.4:1 and a median age of 28 years. Common presenting symptoms were fever (n is 49) and bleeding (n is 14). 38 Patients had haemoglobin less than 10 gms/dl, 21 had white blood cell (WBC) count of 50 x 10E9/L or more, and 35 had lactate dehyrogenase more than 1,000 IU. Morphologically, FAB-L2 was the commonest subtype, with 38 Patients with B-ALL and eight with T-ALL. Multivariate analysis showed that age above 30 years, male gender, WBC count above 50 x 10E9/L and T-ALL subtype were independent risk factors for poor survival. 46 (85 percent) Patients achieved complete remission. The median survival was 12.3 months. At the end of five years, 16 Patients were alive, two were alive with disease and 14 were in complete remission. Conclusion: Overall survival and relapse rates in our study were comparable to those reported internationally

A Context-aware and Intelligent Framework for the Secure Mission Critical Systems

Recent technological advancements in pervasive systems have shown the poten-tial to address challenges in the military domain. Research developments in mili-tary-based mission-critical systems have refined a lot as in autopilot, sensing true target behavior, battle damage conditions, acquiring and manipulating command control information. However, the application of pervasive systems in the military domain is still evolving. In this paper, an intelligent framework has been pro-posed for mission-critical systems to incorporate advanced heterogeneous com-munication protocols; service-oriented layered structure and context-aware infor-mation manipulation. The proposed framework addresses the limitation of “time-space” constraints in Mission-critical systems that have been improved signifi-cantly. This improvement is courtesy to enhancing situation-aware tactical capa-bilities such as localization, decision significance, strategic span, strategic inten-tions, resource coordination and profiling concerning the situation. A comprehen-sive use case model has been presented for a typical battle-field scenario followed by a comparison of the proposed framework with existing techniques. It is evi-dent from experiments and analyses that the proposed framework provides more effective and seamless interaction with contextual resources to improve tactical capabilities. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: A Context-aware and Intelligent Framework for the Secure Mission Critical Systems, which has been published in final form in Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Version

Vestibular schwannomas: Clinical presentation, management and outcome

Objective: To review the demographic trends clinical spectrum, diagnosis, management and outcome of patients with vestibular Schwannoma and to identify areas where improvements are needed.Methods: All patients with vestibular schwannoma admitted to the Aga Khan University Hospital over the past 11 years were reviewed retrospectively.Results: The age range of majority of 22 patients analyzed, was 41-50 years (23%). Hearing loss was the most common presenting symptom (96%). Other clinical features included cranial nerve palsies (59%) and headache (55%). Fifty percent had signs of raised intracranial pressure. Neuroimaging revealed Stage IV b (tumor distorting the brainstem and compressing the 4th ventricle) in 50% cases. Neurosurgical intervention was carried out in 86%; mainly using the retrosigmoid approach. Postoperative complications included facial nerve palsy in 13 (65%) and hydrocephalus in 5 (25%) patients. Hearing determined clinically was preserved in three patients (14%). One patient died during the inpatient stay.Conclusion: Presentation of these patients is late and the outcome is poor

FANET: Smart city mobility off to a flying start with self‐organized drone‐based networks

Due to recent advancements in smart city traffic and transport monitoring industry 4.0 applications. Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANETs) ability to cover geographically large areas, makes it a suitable technology to address the challenges faced during remote areas traffic monitoring. The implementation of drone based FANETs have several advantages in remote traffic monitoring, including free air-to-air drone assisted communication zone and smart surveillance and security. The drone-based FANETs can be deployed within minutes without requiring physical infrastructure, making it suitable for mission critical applications in several areas of interests. Here a drone-based FANETs application for smart city remote traffic monitoring is presented while addressing several challenges including coverage of larger geographical area and data communication links between FANETs nodes. A FANET-inspired enhanced ACO algorithm that easily coped with drone assisted technology of FANETs is proposed to cover the large areas. Simulation results are presented to compare the proposed technique against different network lifetime and number of received packets. The presented results show that the proposed technique perform better compared to other state-of-the-art techniques