The Relevance of UN Program for Women Empowerment in an Eastern Muslim Society

Today, more than two decades down the road, the key areas of UN program for women empowerment are needed to be evaluated in the light of indigenous realities of eastern societies. This study examined the salient features of the said program vis a vis the general condition of status of women in an eastern and  Muslim society like Pakistan, especially in its local socio-economic context. This paper argues that there is a fundamental difference in the theoretical and ideological framework between the UN program and the facts in eastern societies for identification of the problems and suggested solutions related to the status of women. It looked into whether the program is able to deliver goods in eastern societies the way it has in the western societies or not. The objective of the study was to analyze the program with respect to its relevance with general belief system and practices in Eastern  societies. Secondly it demassified the monolithic notion of global issues regarding the status of women to see which parts are relevant in the local context in Pakistan. Keywords: Women empowerment, feminism, UN agenda, women rights, status of wome

Driver Fatigue Detection using Mean Intensity, SVM, and SIFT

Driver fatigue is one of the major causes of accidents. This has increased the need for driver fatigue detection mechanism in the vehicles to reduce human and vehicle loss during accidents. In the proposed scheme, we capture videos from a camera mounted inside the vehicle. From the captured video, we localize the eyes using Viola-Jones algorithm. Once the eyes have been localized, they are classified as open or closed using three different techniques namely mean intensity, SVM, and SIFT. If eyes are found closed for a considerable amount of time, it indicates fatigue and consequently an alarm is generated to alert the driver. Our experiments show that SIFT outperforms both mean intensity and SVM, achieving an average accuracy of 97.45% on a dataset of five videos, each having a length of two minutes

Antioxidant activity influenced by in vivo and in vitro mutagenesis in sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.)

The antioxidant potential (1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPHº)-scavenging activity) of in vitro regenerated and induced mutant sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) was investigated. Efficient callus induction and shoot regeneration were induced in bud explants when incubated on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with different plant growth regulators (PGRs). Best callogenesis was observed on MS-medium supplemented with 3 mg L-1 2,4 dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4 D) and on ½ MS medium with 2 mg L-1 2,4 D after 30-days of culture. Almost 85% shoot organogenesis was observed on MS-medium supplemented with 2 mg L-1 6-benzyladenine (BA) and 0.5 mg L-1 gibberellic acid (GA3) within 30 days. Optimum percentage rooting (89%), were obtained for 2 mg L-1 of BA alone. Mother plant setts were irradiated with 60Co mutagen source. Assay of antioxidant activity of in vitro and in vivo grown tissues was evaluated as gross parameter of medicinal efficacy. Significantly higher antioxidant activity (60%) in in vitro regenerated sugarcane was observed as compared to induced mutant (57%) and mother plant (53%).Key words: Saccharum officinarum, in vitro regeneration, induced mutation, antioxidant

Antidiabetic activity of extracts of Pistachia khinjuk on alloxan monohydrate induced diabetic mice

Diabetes is spreading all over the world day by day. There are many ways to treat diabetes mellitus which mainly includes synthetic drugs, homeopathic medicine or Unani medicine etc. These Medicines have many side effects. Natural products; which include herbs, shrubs and large plants, cure diabetes mellitus and prove excellent hypoglycemic activity. These herbal medicines have no reported side effects. Many species of family Anacardiaceae show hypoglycemic activity and used from centuries to cure diabetes. Various pistachio species show hypoglycemic activity and have a very long history of herbal remedies. The present study evaluates the hypoglycemic effect of methanolic extract of Pistachia khinjuk. Six groups of Swiss albino mice were made for extract (80:20 Methanol: water) of Pistachia khinjuk and each group contains six albino mice. All the mice were injected alloxan monohydrate except normal group of wax and extract. Group 1 was treated as normal group and receives no treatment, group 2 receive 5mg/kg of glibenclamide after alloxan monohydrate induction, group 3 receive no treatment after alloxan monohydrate induction, group 4 and 5 receive 500 and 250mg/kg of Pistachia khinjuk extract, while group 6 receives 500mg/kg Pistachia khinjuk wax after alloxan monohydrate treatment. All the mice for extract (Pistachia khinjuk) of group 4, 5 and 6 show hypoglycemic activity and decreases blood glucose level. There may be many factors behind this activity which needs more research on it by isolating and analyzing specific secondary metabolites which causes this effect. The methanolic extract due to phenolic constituents proves to be excellent antidiabetic medicine

Death Anxiety among Hospitalized Patients: A Gender Based Comparison

Objectives: Present research purpose is to investigate and compare the level of death anxiety among male and female hospitalized patients in Balochistan. Place and duration: the research was conducted in various hospital of district Quetta and Makuran Division, Balochistan and took 6 months for completion. Sample and methods: Total sample for the study encompassed 50 hospitalized patients that includes male [n= 27, M (SD) = 51.41 (6.541)] and female [n=23, M (SD) = 49.04(6.630)] admitted in various hospitals of Balochistan. Measure:  Informed Consent Form and Death Anxiety Scales (Donald Templer, 1970) was utilized for any level of death anxiety.   Analysis: For assessing and comparing death anxiety among two gender groups. Descriptive analysis and independent sample t- test was conducted. Results:   Results indicate substantial death anxiety among hospitalized patients of Balochistan, but there were non- significant differences among male and female on the levels of death anxiety

Phylogenetic and chronological analysis of proteins causing Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases

It is evident that Neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's) have many similarities at cellular and molecular level as they carry parallel mechanisms including protein aggregation and inclusion body formation caused by protein mis-folding. The main objective of this study was to have detailed insight on variation and resemblance among these proteins. One hundred and four protein sequences, both directly and indirectly involved in disease mechanism to perform phylogenetic analysis revealing insight on evolutionary relationship among these proteins, were selected. The percentage of replicate trees, in which the associated taxa clustered together in the bootstrap test, was 1000 replicates. Various statistical tests were performed for the confirmation of results e.g., Tajma's Neutrality Test showed D gt 6, nucleotide diversity π gt 0.6 and ps value as greater than 1. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the protein sequences of neurodegenerative diseases had high sequence similarity and identity to each other as depicted by the evolutionary tree. It showed the similar mechanism of evolving from each other and had similar mechanism of generating mis-folding leading towards symptoms of disease

Prediction of plant promoters based on hexamers and random triplet pair analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>With an increasing number of plant genome sequences, it has become important to develop a robust computational method for detecting plant promoters. Although a wide variety of programs are currently available, prediction accuracy of these still requires further improvement. The limitations of these methods can be addressed by selecting appropriate features for distinguishing promoters and non-promoters.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In this study, we proposed two feature selection approaches based on hexamer sequences: the Frequency Distribution Analyzed Feature Selection Algorithm (FDAFSA) and the Random Triplet Pair Feature Selecting Genetic Algorithm (RTPFSGA). In FDAFSA, adjacent triplet-pairs (hexamer sequences) were selected based on the difference in the frequency of hexamers between promoters and non-promoters. In RTPFSGA, random triplet-pairs (RTPs) were selected by exploiting a genetic algorithm that distinguishes frequencies of non-adjacent triplet pairs between promoters and non-promoters. Then, a support vector machine (SVM), a nonlinear machine-learning algorithm, was used to classify promoters and non-promoters by combining these two feature selection approaches. We referred to this novel algorithm as PromoBot.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Promoter sequences were collected from the PlantProm database. Non-promoter sequences were collected from plant mRNA, rRNA, and tRNA of PlantGDB and plant miRNA of miRBase. Then, in order to validate the proposed algorithm, we applied a 5-fold cross validation test. Training data sets were used to select features based on FDAFSA and RTPFSGA, and these features were used to train the SVM. We achieved 89% sensitivity and 86% specificity.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We compared our PromoBot algorithm to five other algorithms. It was found that the sensitivity and specificity of PromoBot performed well (or even better) with the algorithms tested. These results show that the two proposed feature selection methods based on hexamer frequencies and random triplet-pair could be successfully incorporated into a supervised machine learning method in promoter classification problem. As such, we expect that PromoBot can be used to help identify new plant promoters. Source codes and analysis results of this work could be provided upon request.</p

PUBLIC PERCEPTION REGARDING ACCEPTABILITY PROBLEMS IN UTILIZATION OF MATERNAL HEALTH SERVICES IN PAKHTOON SOCIETY WITH REFERENCE TO DIR LOWER

The study was conducted in Dir lower with specialreference to public perception regarding hurdles in utilization ofmaternal health services. The sample size of the study was 186respondents, who were selected randomly. The data wasanalyzed through simple percentage and frequencies, while tosee association between independent variable acceptabilityproblems with dependent variable maternal health. Womenconfronted acceptability issue in availing maternal healthservices like; women are not encouraged to visit maternal healthcenter, people fear of disclosing of privacy, discouragement ofLady health workers, strict purdah system, unable to decide childbirth, child birth by traditional birth attendant and lack ofeducation about antenatal and post-natal care, duringpregnancy, childbirth and after birth. Due to cultural norms likepurdah, women are not permitted to utilize maternal health careduring pregnancy due to fear of disclosure of privacy, theyperform domestic, Lady health workers are not encouraged tofacilitate women during pregnancy, inability to decide childbirth and preferring child birth at home by traditional birthattendant are the problems in shape of acceptability. Massmedia, religious, political leaders, civil society should createawareness regarding maternal health issues to overcome thedegraded maternal health situation

PUBLIC PERCEPTION REGARDING ACCEPTABILITY PROBLEMS IN UTILIZATION OF MATERNAL HEALTH SERVICES IN PAKHTOON SOCIETY WITH REFERENCE TO DIR LOWER

The study was conducted in Dir lower with specialreference to public perception regarding hurdles in utilization ofmaternal health services. The sample size of the study was 186respondents, who were selected randomly. The data wasanalyzed through simple percentage and frequencies, while tosee association between independent variable acceptabilityproblems with dependent variable maternal health. Womenconfronted acceptability issue in availing maternal healthservices like; women are not encouraged to visit maternal healthcenter, people fear of disclosing of privacy, discouragement ofLady health workers, strict purdah system, unable to decide childbirth, child birth by traditional birth attendant and lack ofeducation about antenatal and post-natal care, duringpregnancy, childbirth and after birth. Due to cultural norms likepurdah, women are not permitted to utilize maternal health careduring pregnancy due to fear of disclosure of privacy, theyperform domestic, Lady health workers are not encouraged tofacilitate women during pregnancy, inability to decide childbirth and preferring child birth at home by traditional birthattendant are the problems in shape of acceptability. Massmedia, religious, political leaders, civil society should createawareness regarding maternal health issues to overcome thedegraded maternal health situation

Prevalence of LBP in male factory workers of Nishat Mills limited, Sheikhupura, Pakistan

Low back pain is common problem in factory worker. However there is a lack of evidence related to work related to LBP in factory workers in Pakistan. This study is conducted to identify the prevalence of Low back pain in factory workers and identify the need for awareness in workers about the working postures and safety measures in Nishat mills limited, Sheikhupura. A survey was conducted with sample size of 170 subjects, collected through non probability sampling technique. Nordic questionnaire (part 1) was used with addition of some questions related to research topic. Self-reported questionnaire Performa was filled. Study population included only male workers aged between 20-45 years with career duration of one or more than one year and working duration of 8 hours. Statistical analysis was done by using SPSS 17.00. According to results 75 out of 170 workers reported low back trouble. The intensity of the low back ache varied from mild to severe. 21 (28%) workers reported mild category of pain, 40 (53.3%) had moderate pain and 14 (18.7%) were having severe pain. Majority (77.3%) workers felt pain for 1-7days during last 12 months. The results showed that there is statistically significant (p&lt;0.05) association between Low back pain and type of work. The workers who do job related to Weight lifting were suffering more frequently from backache comparatively to the workers of manufacturing department. No statistically significant (p&gt;0.05) association between Low back pain and working Posture was found. It was concluded from the study that prevalence of LBP was higher in weight lifting workers. And low back pain was also prevalent in those workers who are engaged with static work like in prolong standing; LBP founds to affect their work activity and reduces the work efficiency