Inculcating ethical values in the students through e-Learning platform

with the encompassing speed of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), the world is developing with time; the gap between the have and have not is widening. The greed for materialistic and worldly things is increasing. The trend can be partially contributed to the modern education system, where total emphasis is on domain and technical knowledge. Teaching of moral values is considered as an integral part of the education in Islam. The contents of our formal education syllabi are gradually throwing out material on character development. With the busy schedule of individuals, the role of character development by the family and society is diminishing. The only hope is left with the teacher. In the e-Learning platefrom that hope is also disappearing because of physical absence of teacher. The work will analyze the learning models and role of ethical development. It is also proposing a model using ICTs which can help in the character d

Relay intercropping improves growth and fiber quality of Bt Cotton

The optimal time of wheat harvest is the second fortnight of April, while Bt cotton is sown in March in cotton-based cropping systems of Pakistan. There is a time conflict of four to six weeks between harvesting of wheat and sowing of Bt cotton. Relay-intercropping of cotton in wheat crop near to maturity could help to resolve the conflict. The information regarding the effect of relay-intercropping on growth and quality of cotton is scanty. This two-year study compared the growth and fiber quality of relay-intercropped Bt cotton (sown in early/late March) in standing wheat crop with conventionally-tilled (CT) cotton planted after wheat harvest in late April. The relay-intercropped cotton was sown on ridges/beds in wheat, whereas CT cotton was sown after wheat harvest in late April or sown on fallow land in early or late March at Multan and Vehari sites. The CT Bt cotton grown on fallow land in early March had the best performance as indicated by plant growth and fiber quality. However, the relay-intercropped Bt cotton in bed-sown wheat had better growth and fiber quality than the CT cotton planted after wheat harvest in late April. At both sites, the taller plants and higher biomass production were recorded in relay-intercropped Bt cotton in bed-sown wheat in early March as compared with the CT cotton sown after harvest of flat-sown wheat in late April. Fiber firmness, its uniformity, length and strength were also improved in the relay-intercropped Bt cotton in bed-sown wheat in early March as compared to CT cotton sown after wheat harvest in late April. In conclusion, relay intercropping of Bt cotton in the standing wheat during early March improved plant growth and fiber quality in cotton-wheat cropping system

Anterior Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome With Thrombosed Dorsalis Pedis Artery: A Case Report

Introduction: The aanterior tarsal tunnel syndrome denotes the entrapment of the deep peroneal nerve under the inferior extensor retinaculum. Although various etiological factors have been reported to cause anterior tarsal syndrome, its occurrence with thrombosed dorsalis pedis artery has not been reported in the English literature. Case Presentation: A 40 -year-old male patient was presented with the history of persistent pain along the dorsal surface of right foot, which was aggravated with the activities. Conservative management was tried without much relief. Diagnosis of anterior tarsal tunnel syndrome was made and the patient was planned for surgery. Thrombosed dorsalis pedis artery was found along with two adjacent collateral vessels. Retinaculum was released and nerve was mobilized. Tight compartment got released. Postoperative period was uneventful. No recurrence was seen on follow-up. Conclusion: The anterior tarsal tunnel syndrome is a known disease. A high index of clinical suspicion is required while dealing with the chronic cases. A detailed history to rule out any traumatic event is necessary too. Timely investigations and surgical release give dramatic relief

Medical thoracoscopy- an experience

Background: Medical thoracoscopy is a minimally invasive procedure for diagnosing and treating pleural diseases especially undiagnosed exudative pleural effusion. It is cost effective and safe. The diagnostic yield in undiagnosed pleural effusion is excellent.Methods: This prospective observational study was done in Government Chest Disease hospital of Government Medical College, Srinagar during the period between December 2015 to Dec 2016.Thirty undiagnosed pleural effusion patients after thoracocentesis and who fulfilled inclusion and exclusion criteria’s were included in the study. Medical thoracoscopy using rigid thoracoscope was started for the first time in our hospital and was done in these enrolled patients. Clinical, Thoracoscopic findings and histopathological data of the patients were collected prospectively and analysed.Results: Maximum patients were in the age group of 41-50 years. Most common Thoracoscopic finding was multiple nodules (40%) followed by sago grain infiltration (33.4%). Malignancy was the most common HPE finding of pleural biopsy (46.6%) followed by TB (33.3%). All nodules (13) turned out to be malignant while all sago grain appearance pleura (10) turned out of to be TB. The overall diagnostic yield is 80% as a whole and 96% among patients who had thoracoscopic pleural findings.Conclusions: Medical Thoracoscopy is a safe and easy outpatient procedure and an excellent diagnostic tool for undiagnosed exudative pleural effusion. The diagnostic yield is quite high and complications of procedure are negligible

Tuberculosis: an experience at government chest disease hospital

Background: This retrospective study was carried out to find the incidence, clinical profiles and treatment outcome of pulmonary and extrapulmonary tuberculosis patients attending the only Chest Disease Hospital in Srinagar.Methods: A retrospective analysis of 613 patients having EPTB and PTB was undertaken from the chest disease hospital of Government Medical College Srinagar. Demographic characteristics, clinical features and treatment outcome were obtained from medical case records of all patients visiting the hospital for a period of two years from May 2016-May 2018.Results: The study comprised of 613 patients, out of which 365% were having pulmonary TB while 35% were having extrapulmonary TB. Majority of patients (44.5%) in TB group were in age group 10-30 while majority of patients (42%) in EPTB group were in age group 51-70. Males were seen more commonly affected. Majority (90%) of patients in EPTB group had pleural effusion. Majority of patients (71%) were smear positive by ZN staining in PTB group. Majority (90%) of PTB patients in smear negative group were BAL negative. In PTB group 8% were treatment failure while in EPTB group 2% were treatment failure. MDR was seen in 4.2% of total tuberculosis patient while XDR was seen in 0.32% of total patients. Out of treatment failure in PTB group MDR was seen in 64% followed by monoresistance to INH in 30% and XDR in 6%. In EPTB group MDR was seen in 100% of treatment failure. All patients with XDR died. Among the MDR patients majority are on treatment while 12% died, another 12% defaulter while 12% completed treatment.Conclusions: Among evaluated tuberculosis patients, maximum had PTB. Pleural tuberculosis was the most common presentation of EPTB. The study shows male preponderance in both groups. Treatment response was excellent with failure rate of 8% in PTB and 2% in EPTB. Most common cause of failure was MDR. XDR was seen in two patients and both of them died

Realization of Integrable Low- Voltage Companding Filters for Portable System Applications

Undoubtedly, today’s integrated electronic systems owe their remarkable performance primarily to the rapid advancements of digital technology since 1970s. The various important advantages of digital circuits are: its abstraction from the physical details of the actual circuit implementation, its comparative insensitiveness to variations in the manufacturing process, and the operating conditions besides allowing functional complexity that would not be possible using analog technology. As a result, digital circuits usually offer a more robust behaviour than their analog counterparts, though often with area, power and speed drawbacks. Due to these and other benefits, analog functionality has increasingly been replaced by digital implementations. In spite of the advantages discussed above, analog components are far from obsolete and continue to be key components of modern electronic systems. There is a definite trend toward persistent and ubiquitous use of analog electronic circuits in day-to-day life. Portable electronic gadgets, wireless communications and the widespread application of RF tags are just a few examples of contemporary developments. While all of these electronic systems are based on digital circuitry, they heavily rely on analog components as interfaces to the real world. In fact, many modern designs combine powerful digital systems and complementary analog components on a single chip for cost and reliability reasons. Unfortunately, the design of such systems-on-chip (SOC) suffers from the vastly different design styles of analog and digital components. While mature synthesis tools are readily available for digital designs, there is hardly any such support for analog designers apart from wellestablished PSPICE-like circuit simulators. Consequently, though the analog part usually occupies only a small fraction of the entire die area of an SOC, but its design often constitutes a major bottleneck within the entire development process. Integrated continuous-time active filters are the class of continuous-time or analog circuits which are used in various applications like channel selection in radios, anti-aliasing before sampling, and hearing aids etc. One of the figures of merit of a filter is the dynamic range; this is the ratio of the largest to the smallest signal that can be applied at the input of the filter while maintaining certain specified performance. The dynamic range required in the filter varies with the application and is decided by the variation in strength of the desired signal as well as that of unwanted signals that are to be rejected by the filter. It is well known that the power dissipation and the capacitor area of an integrated active filter increases in proportion to its dynamic range. This situation is incompatible with the needs of integrated systems, especially battery operated ones. In addition to this fundamental dependence of power dissipation on dynamic range, the design of integrated active filters is further complicated by the reduction of supply voltage of integrated circuits imposed by the scaling down of technologies to attain twin objective of higher speed and lower power consumption in digital circuits. The reduction in power consumption with decreasing supply voltage does not apply to analog circuits. In fact, considerable innovation is required with a reduced supply voltage even to avoid increasing power consumption for a given signal to noise ratio (S/N). These aspects pose a great hurdle to the active filter designer. A technique which has attracted the attention of circuit designers as a possible route to filters with higher dynamic range per unit power consumption is “companding”. Companding (compression-expansion) filters are a very promising subclass of continuous-time analog filters, where the input (linear) signal is initially compressed before it will be handled by the core (non-linear) system. In order to preserve the linear operation of the whole system, the non-linear signal produced by the core system is converted back to a linear output signal by employing an appropriate output stage. The required compression and expansion operations are performed by employing bipolar transistors in active region or MOS transistors in weak inversion; the systems thus derived are known as logarithmic-domain (logdomain) systems. In case MOS transistors operated in saturation region are employed, the derived structures are known as Square-root domain systems. Finally, the third class of companding filters can also be obtained by employing bipolar transistors in active region or MOS transistors in weak inversion; the derived systems are known as Sinh-domain systems. During the last several years, a significant research effort has been already carried out in the area of companding circuits. This is due to the fact that their main advantages are the capability for operation in low-voltage environment and large dynamic range originated from their companding nature, electronic tunability of the frequency characteristics, absence of resistors and the potential for operations in varied frequency regions.Thus, it is obvious that companding filters can be employed for implementing high-performance analog signal processing in diverse frequency ranges. For example, companding filters could be used for realizing subsystems in: xDSL modems, disk drive read channels, biomedical electronics, Bluetooth/ZigBee applications, phaselocked loops, FM stereo demodulator, touch-tone telephone tone decoder and crossover network used in a three-way high-fidelity loudspeaker etc. A number of design methods for companding filters and their building blocks have been introduced in the literature. Most of the proposed filter structures operate either above 1.5V or under symmetrical (1.5V) power supplies. According to data that provides information about the near future of semiconductor technology, International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), in 2013, the supply voltage of digital circuits in 32 nm technology will be 0.5 V. Therefore, the trend for the implementation of analog integrated circuits is the usage of low-voltage building blocks that use a single 0.5-1.5V power supply. Therefore, the present investigation was primarily concerned with the study and design of low voltage and low power Companding filters. The work includes the study about: the building blocks required in implementing low voltage and low power Companding filters; the techniques used to realize low voltage and low power Companding filters and their various areas of application. Various novel low voltage and low power Companding filter designs have been developed and studied for their characteristics to be applied in a particular portable area of application. The developed designs include the N-th order universal Companding filter designs, which have been reported first time in the open literature. Further, an endeavor has been made to design Companding filters with orthogonal tuning of performance parameters so that the designs can be simultaneously used for various features. The salient features of each of the developed circuit are described. Electronic tunability is one of the major features of all of the designs. Use of grounded capacitors and resistorless designs in all the cases makes the designs suitable for IC technology. All the designs operate in a low-voltage and low-power environment essential for portable system applications. Unless specified otherwise, all the investigations on these designs are based on the PSPICE simulations using model parameters of the NR100N bipolar transistors and BSIM 0.35μm/TSMC 0.25μm /TSMC 0.18μm CMOS process MOS transistors. The performance of each circuit has been validated by comparing the characteristics obtained using simulation with the results present in the open literature. The proposed designs could not be realized in silicon due to non-availability of foundry facility at the place of study. An effort has already been started to realize some of the designs in silicon and check their applicability in practical circuits. At the basic level, one of the proposed Companding filter designs was implemented using the commercially available transistor array ICs (LM3046N) and was found to verify the theoretical predictions obtained from the simulation results

Concurrent Lateral Condyle Mass Fracture With Olecranon Fracture: A Case Report and Brief Review of Literature

Introduction: There is very limited literature describing the association of lateral condyle mass (LCM) fracture of the distal humerus associated concurrently with olecranon fracture. Herein, a case is reported of a displaced LCM fracture with displaced olecranon fracture, due to complex trauma while getting out of a vehicle, which was managed by open reduction and internal fixation. Case Presentation: A 4.5- year- old boy suffered severe pain and swelling around his right elbow due to trauma which he suffered while trying to get out of a vehicle which was in motion. Plain radiographs of the anteroposterior, lateral, and oblique views showed a displaced lateral mass fracture associated with a displaced olecranon fracture. Open reduction and internal fixation was carried out and near normal function was achieved. Conclusions: In view of the paucity of literature and rare incidence of this injury, this case report highlights the need to be aware of other injuries which can occur in association with LCM fractures in children

Qualitative and quantitative ethnobotanical evaluation of plant resources of Kiwai,Kaghan valley, district Mansehra, Pakistan

Local plants of an area are highly valuable for people of that locality. Plant resources are actually part and parcel of traditions and culture of inhabitants due to their consumption in daily life. Aim of the present study was to explore the culturally significant floral diversity of a remote area with special reference to medicinal plants and quantification of local wisdom through statistical indices. Study was carried out in mountainous region of Kiwai included in Kaghan valley, district Mansehra, northern Pakistan. Questionnaire method was adopted and semi-structured interviews were also conducted for data collection.  Two hundred informants were interviewed to report the ethnobotanical knowledge of targeted plants. Relative frequency citation (RFCs), Consensus Index (CI%) and Use Value (UVi) were calculated for results. Study reports 110 plants belonging to 98 genera and 53 families. Asteraceae was found dominant family with 10 plant species. Angiosperms (59%) were abundant in the study area followed by Gymnosperm (5%) and Pteridophytes (2%). Herbs (59%) were recorded abundant followed by trees (31%) and shrubs (10%). The most used parts were leaves (30%), stem (13%) and whole plant (11%). Common fever was the most cited disease by locals. RFC and CI% was highest for Bergenia ciliata and Silybum marianum. Use value of Pinus roxburghii was high with 0.045 value. Study area shows rich ethno-floral diversity. Peoples are not only using plants for medicinal purposes but also for a number of uses such as for construction, as fruit, vegetable, furniture and fodder

Qualitative and quantitative ethnobotanical evaluation of plant resources of Kiwai, Kaghan valley, district Mansehra, Pakistan

141-153Local plants of an area are highly valuable for people of that locality. Plant resources are actually part and parcel of traditions and culture of inhabitants due to their consumption in daily life. Aim of the present study was to explore the culturally significant floral diversity of a remote area with special reference to medicinal plants and quantification of local wisdom through statistical indices. The study was carried out in mountainous region of Kiwai located in Kaghan valley, district Mansehra, northern Pakistan. Questionnaire method was adopted and semi-structured interviews were also conducted for data collection. Two hundred informants were interviewed to report the ethnobotanical knowledge of targeted plants. Relative frequency citation (RFCs), consensus index (CI%) and use value (UVi) were calculated for results. Study reports 110 plants belonging to 98 genera and 53 families. Asteraceae was the dominant family with 10 plant species. Angiosperms (59%) were abundant in the study area followed by Gymnosperm (5%) and Pteridophytes (2%). Herbs (59%) were recorded abundant followed by trees (31%) and shrubs (10%). The most used parts were leaves (30%), stem (13%) and whole plant (11%). Common fever was the most cited disease by locals. RFC and CI% was highest for Bergenia ciliata and Silybum marianum. Use value of Pinus roxburghii was high with 0.045 value. Study area shows rich ethno-floral diversity. Peoples are not only using plants for medicinal purposes but also for a number of uses such as construction, fruit, vegetable, furniture and fodder