Comparing twice versus four times daily insulin in mothers with gestational diabetes in Pakistan and its implications

Background: Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a common medical problem associated with maternal and fetal complications. Good glycaemic control is the cornerstone of treatment. Objective: Compare outcomes between four times (4x) and twice daily (2x) regimens. The morning dose of the 2x regimen contained two thirds of the total insulin comprising one third human regular insulin and two thirds human intermediate insulin; equal amounts in the evening. Methods: 480 women at > 30 weeks with GDM with failure to control blood glucose randomly assigned to either regimen. Results: Mean time to control of blood glucose significantly less and glycaemic control significantly increased with 4x regimen. Operative deliveries, extent of neonatal hypoglycaemia, babies with low Agpar scores and those with hyperbilirubinaemia significantly higher in 2x daily regimen. Conclusion: 4x daily regime associated with improved fetal and maternal outcomes. Consequently should increasingly be used in Pakistan, assisted by lower acquisition cost

Quantifying Relevance of Mobile Digital Evidence as They Relate to Case Types: A Survey and a Guide for Best Practices

In this work, a survey was conducted to help quantify the relevance of nineteen types of evidence (such as SMS) to seven types of digital investigations associated with mobile devices (MD) (such as child pornography). 97 % of the respondents agreed that every type of digital evidence has a different level of relevance to further or solve a particular investigation. From 55 serious participants, a data set of 5,772 responses regarding the relevance of nineteen types of digital evidence for all the seven types of digital investigations was obtained. The results showed that (i) SMS belongs to the most relevant type of digital evidence for all the seven types of investigations, (ii) MMS belongs to the most relevant type of digital evidence for all the types of digital investigations except espionage and eavesdropping where it is the second most relevant type of digital evidence, (iii) Phonebook and Contacts is the most relevant type of digital evidence for all types of digital investigations except child pornography, (iv) Audio Calls is the most relevant type of digital evidence for all types of digital investigations except credit card fraud and child pornography and (v) Standalone Files are the least relevant type of digital evidence for most of the digital investigations. The size of the response data set was fairly reasonable to analyze and then define; by generalization, relevance based best practices for mobile device forensics, which can supplement any forensics process model, including digital triage. For the reliability of these best practices, the impact of responses from the participants with more than five years of experience was analyzed by using one hundred and thirty three (133) instances of One-Way ANOVA tests. The results of this research can help investigators concentrate on the relevant types of digital evidence when investigating a specific case, consequently saving time and effort

Testing Framework for Mobile Device Forensics Tools

The proliferation of mobile communication and computing devices, in particular smart mobile phones, is almost paralleled with the increasing number of mobile device forensics tools in the market. Each mobile forensics tool vendor, on one hand claims to have a tool that is best in terms of performance, while on the other hand each tool vendor seems to be using different standards for testing their tools and thereby defining what support means differently. To overcome this problem, a testing framework based on a series of tests ranging from basic forensics tasks such as file system reconstruction up to more complex ones countering antiforensic techniques is proposed. The framework, which is an extension of an existing effort done in 2010, prescribes a method to clearly circumscribe the term support into precise levels. It also gives an idea of the standard to be developed and accepted by the forensic community that will make it easier for forensics investigators to quickly select the most appropriate tool for a particular mobile device

A Method and a Case Study for the Selection of the Best Available Tool for Mobile Device Forensics Using Decision Analysis

The omnipresence of mobile devices (or small scale digital devices - SSDD) and more importantly the utility of their associated applications for our daily activities, which range from financial transactions to learning, and from entertainment to distributed social presence, create an abundance of digital evidence for each individual. Some of the evidence may be a result of illegal activities that need to be identified, understood and eventually prevented in the future. There are numerous tools for acquiring and analyzing digital evidence extracted from mobile devices. The diversity of SSDDs, types of evidence generated and the number of tools used to uncover them posit a rather complex and challenging problem of selecting the best available tool for the extraction and the subsequent analysis of the evidence gathered from a specific digital device. Failing to select the best tool may easily lead to incomplete and or improper extraction, which eventually may violate the integrity of the digital evidence and diminish its probative value. Moreover, the compromised evidence may result in erroneous analysis, incorrect interpretation, and wrong conclusions which may eventually compromise the right of a fair trial. Hence, a digital forensics investigator has to deal with the complex decision problem from the very start of the investigative process called preparatory phase. The problem could be addressed and possibly solved by using multi criteria decision analysis. The performance of the tool for extracting a specific type of digital evidence, and the relevance of that type of digital evidence to the investigative problem are the two central factors for selecting the best available tool, which we advocate in our work. In this paper we explain the method used and showcase a case study by evaluating two tools using two mobile devices to demonstrate the utility of our proposed approach. The results indicated that XRY (Alt1) dominates UFED (Alt2) for most of the cases after balancing the requirements for both performance and relevance

A robust variable-structure LQI controller for under-Actuated systems via flexible online adaptation of performance-index weights

This article presents flexible online adaptation strategies for the performance-index weights to constitute a variable structure Linear-Quadratic-Integral (LQI) controller for an underactuated rotary pendulum system. The proposed control procedure undertakes to improve the controller s adaptability, allowing it to flexibly manipulate the control stiffness which aids in efficiently rejecting the bounded exogenous disturbances while preserving the system s closed-loop stability and economizing the overall control energy expenditure. The proposed scheme is realized by augmenting the ubiquitous LQI controller with an innovative online weight adaptation law that adaptively modulates the state-weighting factors of the internal performance index. The weight adaptation law is formulated as a pre-calibrated function of dissipative terms, anti-dissipative terms, and model-reference tracking terms to achieve the desired flexibility in the controller design. The adjusted state weighting factors are used by the Riccati equation to yield the time-varying state-compensator gains

Variations in information flow patterns following intracranial hypertensive events in traumatic brain injured patients

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An experimental study on axial behaviour of recycled plastic aggregate concrete columns

Plastic production and the resultant plastic waste is increasingly challenging due to population growth and urbanization. This study focuses on plastic reuse as an aggregate in concrete to explore the recycling avenue in the construction industry. In addition, the work focused on the mechanical properties of eco-friendly concrete that uses plastic waste as a partial substitution for coarse aggregate. From this method the negative impact of plastic waste on the environment not only reduced, but it also helps avoid exploitation of natural resources for natural aggregate production. Several past works have explored the use of plastic as an aggregate in concrete; however, most works were focussed on the material level behavior. In this study, compressive behaviour of reinforced concrete columns consisting of recycled plastic aggregate concrete and exposed to axial loads is investigated. This paper provides the axial loading test results of 5 columns consisting of Recycled Plastic Aggregate Concrete (RPAC). The replacement rate in the M40 grade concrete is kept at 12%. Compressive performance of RPAC columns such as strain, failure mode, reinforcement along longitudinal direction and ties spacing are analysed. The results clearly show the potential of recycled plastic aggregates for use in columns with structural performance equivalent to that of conventional aggregate concrete

Investigating the Syntactic Features in the Novel My Feudal Lord by Tehmina Durrani

The study entitled “Investigating the Syntactic Features in the Novel My Feudal Lord” aims at describing syntactic devices used in the novel “My Feudal Lord”. This study was conducted using a textual analysis method. This research is based on a mixed research method as it involves qualitative collection of data and then the data is analyzed quantitatively to find out the dominant feature among all syntactic features. For this purpose, the researcher has used the software SPSS to perform descriptive statistics tests on syntactic features. The theoretical framework for this research is I.R. Galperin’s book “Stylistics”. Part five “Syntactical Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices” (Galperin, 1977) of this book is taken as a model for this research. For this purpose, the researcher has selected nine samples of 10 pages each from the pdf file of the book “My Feudal Lord” available on the internet. The novel “My Feudal Lord” used eight types of syntactic features i.e. inversion, parallelism, aposiopesis, ellipsis, repetition, asyndeton, polysyndeton, and rhetorical question. These features performed some major functions in the novel. The syntactical devices most frequently used by the writers of the novel “My Feudal Lord” is a parallelism with a mean value of 29.33 and inversion (13.22) and the least frequently used devices are asyndeton (0.78) and aposiopesis (0.33). By using parallelism, the novelist draws the reader’s attention to focus on the content of the novel.  Keywords: Stylistics, Syntax, Mixed Research&nbsp