Association patterns of Atrial Fibrillation with symptoms of metabolic syndrome

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the common cardiac arrhythmia in which heart beats irregularly usually greater than 100 beats per minutes. AF is well-documented public health problem causing substantial mortality and morbidity. Metabolic syndrome (MS) is a collection of metabolic risk factors like diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, obesity and impaired glucose level that exists in one person. The aim of the present study is to find the relation between AF and MS.Methods: 100 patients of AF were sampled from Punjab Institute of Cardiology, Lahore from December, 2014 to June 2015. These patients were divided into two AF groups, 50 without MS and 50 with MS. 25 healthy subjects were also included for the comparison. Lipid profile was assessed by chemistry analyzer and serum insulin was measured by ELISA.Results: In our population, there was significantly high levels of insulin resistance (IR) and obesity in AF groups (without MS and with MS) as compared with healthy subjects (P<0.05). Highly significant differences was observed in relation with other parameters e.g. hypertension, hypertriglyceridemia, HDL-C among the studied groups (P<0.05). Significant positive correlation was observed between insulin and lipid profile (TC, TG, LDL) while inverse with HDL.Conclusion: The indictors of metabolic syndrome were significantly correlated with AF in the studied subjects, while IR was found significantly higher in MS group.

An ethnomedicinal appraisal of the Kurram Agency, tribal area, Pakistan

631-647The present work was conducted at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in the agency of Kurram (33° 49' 07'' N and 70° 10' 24'' E), an administrative part of the late federally administered tribal area (FATA) of Pakistan. Aim of the study was to document the medicinal flora based on local information, i.e., local classification, part used, drug preparation and dosage. Ethnomedicinal data was obtained through semi structured interviews after obtaining the respondents prior informed consent. During field visits 72 people were interviewed 150 plant species belonging to 131 genera in 86 families were documented. The documented plants were found to be effective for 64 disorders, from simple to complicated health issues. In a quantitative analysis, 31 plant species showed fidelity level ranges from 33-100% and relative frequency of citation from 0.03 to 0.28. Conservation issues related to plant use need to be investigated

Cloud Based Dedicated Application for Multiple Organizations: Cloud Computing for All Organizations

Desktop applications should be run over the cloud environment. This is the slogan of those organization which are familiar with the cloud computing. Organization's members are not only responsible for smooth running of desktop application but also have a burden of successful running of database server, back &amp; recovery devices, time and cost of human efforts. CBCS (Cloud Based Custom Software) is the solution of such issues. Development companies are responsible for development of CBCS of an organization. Although CBCS is a dedicated service to an organization, but existing CBCS can also dedicate to other organization when development companies will follow the CBDAMO (Cloud Based Dedicated Customized Application for Multiple Organization) technique. This is 6-layer technique which provides a smooth way to development companies for reusing the existing CBCS to new CBCS. Key Words: Cloud Computing, CBCS, DBCS, CBDAMO, Development Companie

Selection of Web Services using Service Agent: An optimized way for the selection of Non-functional requirements

Web Services provide a promising results and solution according to the needs and requirements with fast &amp; flexible manners for information sharing among different peoples and businesses. The major key issue in research in Web Services is the selection process which is most difficult &amp; cumbersome because the increasing numbers of services that can not meet or fulfill all the non- functional requirements like performance, efficiency, reliability sensitivity etc. moreover for web services selection for Library System, the author suggests a model to select the searching material only related to books in hard copy form, softcopy form, read only and printable from. The Author suggests an agent for the selection of these books from the web. When any body else who wants to search a specific book from the web, then this service agent will show all the web sites where books will be available.  The agent generates a list of books with their all user's needs and Non-functional requirements. On the basis of these non-functional requirements the user can pick the book according to the document provided by service agent. Keywords: Service Agent, Non-functional requirement, Web service

A Strategy for Classification of “Vaginal vs. Cesarean Section” Delivery: Bivariate Empirical Mode Decomposition of Cardiotocographic Recordings

We propose objective and robust measures for the purpose of classification of “vaginal vs. cesarean section” delivery by investigating temporal dynamics and complex interactions between fetal heart rate (FHR) and maternal uterine contraction (UC) recordings from cardiotocographic (CTG) traces. Multivariate extension of empirical mode decomposition (EMD) yields intrinsic scales embedded in UC-FHR recordings while also retaining inter-channel (UC-FHR) coupling at multiple scales. The mode alignment property of EMD results in the matched signal decomposition, in terms of frequency content, which paves the way for the selection of robust and objective time-frequency features for the problem at hand. Specifically, instantaneous amplitude and instantaneous frequency of multivariate intrinsic mode functions are utilized to construct a class of features which capture nonlinear and nonstationary interactions from UC-FHR recordings. The proposed features are fed to a variety of modern machine learning classifiers (decision tree, support vector machine, AdaBoost) to delineate vaginal and cesarean dynamics. We evaluate the performance of different classifiers on a real world dataset by investigating the following classifying measures: sensitivity, specificity, area under the ROC curve (AUC) and mean squared error (MSE). It is observed that under the application of all proposed 40 features AdaBoost classifier provides the best accuracy of 91.8% sensitivity, 95.5% specificity, 98% AUC, and 5% MSE. To conclude, the utilization of all proposed time-frequency features as input to machine learning classifiers can benefit clinical obstetric practitioners through a robust and automatic approach for the classification of fetus dynamics

An ethnomedicinal appraisal of the Kurram Agency, tribal area, Pakistan

The present work was conducted at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in the agency of Kurram (33° 49' 07'' N and70° 10' 24'' E), an administrative part of the late federally administered tribal area (FATA) of Pakistan. Aim of the study wasto document the medicinal flora based on local information, i.e., local classification, part used, drug preparation and dosage.Ethnomedicinal data was obtained through semi structured interviews after obtaining the respondents prior informedconsent. During field visits 72 people were interviewed 150 plant species belonging to 131 genera in 86 families weredocumented. The documented plants were found to be effective for 64 disorders, from simple to complicated health issues.In a quantitative analysis, 31 plant species showed fidelity level ranges from 33-100% and relative frequency of citationfrom 0.03 to 0.28. Conservation issues related to plant use need to be investigated

Estimation of Different Biochemical Intensities in Drinking Water from Eastern Region of Lahore City

Background: Lahore is city of over 8 million population with consumption of over 350 million gallons of fresh water per day. The present study was undertaken to determine the suitability of ground water from different areas of Mughalpura Lahore which is being used for drinking purposes.Methods: The ionic concentration of TDS (total dissolved solids), TSS (total suspended solids), calcium, magnesium, sulphate, chloride, carbonate, bicarbonate and alkalinity in the collected water samples was determined. The concentration of heavy metals like Cu, Cr, Zn, Cd, As, Pb and Fe was estimated by applying American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) methods. The EC (electrical conductivity), pH, BOD (biological oxygen demand) and COD (chemical oxygen demand) values of the water were also measured. Data was statistically analyzed through analysis of variance technique.Results: Increasing concentrations of heavy metals like Cu, Cr, Zn, Cd, As, Pb, Fe and TDS, TSS, calcium, magnesium, sulphate, chloride, carbonate, bicarbonate and alkalinity were obtained. The observed values of EC, BOD and COD were also high in range. Only the pH value obtained was in the range of WHO standards.Conclusion: It was concluded from correlation among various chemical components in water like Ca+2, Mg+2, HCO3- and SO4-2 that this water is not safe for drinking according to WHO standards. The correlation among alkalinity, pH, Ca+2, Cl-, EC, HCO3-, SO4-2, TH and TSS further suggested that the samples with higher amount of these components must not be used for drinking purposes by animals and human

Reactive GTS Allocation Protocol for Sporadic Events Using the IEEE 802.15.4

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) find applications in the industrial automation where periodic and sporadic events occur. The combined propagation of information generated by periodic and sporadic events from a sensor node to an actuator node is challenging due to random nature of sporadic events, particularly, if the deadlines are hard. The IEEE 802.15.4 standard provides the basis for a real-time communication mechanism between neighboring nodes of the WSN at the media access control layer. However, the standard does not address such communications over multiple hops. To support the industrial applications with such requirements, this work proposes a novel online control protocol that exploits the basis provided by the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The proposed control protocol ensures that a given offline sporadic schedule can be adapted online in a timely manner such that the static periodic schedule has not been disturbed and the IEEE 802.15.4 standard compliance remains intact. The proposed protocol is simulated in OPNET. The simulation results are analyzed and presented in this paper to prove the correctness of the proposed protocol regarding the efficient real-time sporadic event delivery along with the periodic event propagation

Non-Timber Forest Products Collection Affects Education of Children in Forest Proximate Communities in Northeastern Pakistan

Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are crucial in driving the economy of communities living inside or around forests. The scarcity of business and employment opportunities often push the forest proximate communities to tap a range of NTFPs for earning their livelihoods. In many forest-based communities around the world, children are actively involved in NTFPs collection, which is likely to affect the socioeconomic paradigms of these children. We aim to investigate how the NTFP collection venture affects the education of the children involved in the forest proximate communities of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Pakistan. A stratified sampling followed by a series of focus group discussions and one-to-one interviews were carried out to collect information on collection behaviour, patterns, income generation, and other socioeconomic variables. We used a binary logistic regression model to explain children’s state of attending schools using a range of socioeconomic variables. The empirical evidence showed that 42% of the NTFP-collecting children were not going to school, and nearly two-thirds were working in unfavourable working environments. The regression model showed that the role and behaviour of contractors, along with factors like household conditions, were important factors in employing children for long working hours. The study has implications for reforming policies regarding the nexus of income generation and education in the forest-based communities