Mono- and cross-lingual paraphrased text reuse and extrinsic plagiarism detection

Text reuse is the act of borrowing text (either verbatim or paraphrased) from an earlier written text. It could occur within the same language (mono-lingual) or across languages (cross-lingual) where the reused text is in a different language than the original text. Text reuse and its related problem, plagiarism (the unacknowledged reuse of text), are becoming serious issues in many fields and research shows that paraphrased and especially the cross-lingual cases of reuse are much harder to detect. Moreover, the recent rise in readily available multi-lingual content on the Web and social media has increased the problem to an unprecedented scale. To develop, compare, and evaluate automatic methods for mono- and crosslingual text reuse and extrinsic (finding portion(s) of text that is reused from the original text) plagiarism detection, standard evaluation resources are of utmost importance. However, previous efforts on developing such resources have mostly focused on English and some other languages. On the other hand, the Urdu language, which is widely spoken and has a large digital footprint, lacks resources in terms of core language processing tools and corpora. With this consideration in mind, this PhD research focuses on developing standard evaluation corpora, methods, and supporting resources to automatically detect mono-lingual (Urdu) and cross-lingual (English-Urdu) cases of text reuse and extrinsic plagiarism This thesis contributes a mono-lingual (Urdu) text reuse corpus (COUNTER Corpus) that contains real cases of Urdu text reuse at document-level. Another contribution is the development of a mono-lingual (Urdu) extrinsic plagiarism corpus (UPPC Corpus) that contains simulated cases of Urdu paraphrase plagiarism. Evaluation results, by applying a wide range of state-of-the-art mono-lingual methods on both corpora, shows that it is easier to detect verbatim cases than paraphrased ones. Moreover, the performance of these methods decreases considerably on real cases of reuse. A couple of supporting resources are also created to assist methods used in the cross-lingual (English-Urdu) text reuse detection. A large-scale multi-domain English-Urdu parallel corpus (EUPC-20) that contains parallel sentences is mined from the Web and several bi-lingual (English-Urdu) dictionaries are compiled using multiple approaches from different sources. Another major contribution of this study is the development of a large benchmark cross-lingual (English-Urdu) text reuse corpus (TREU Corpus). It contains English to Urdu real cases of text reuse at the document-level. A diversified range of methods are applied on the TREU Corpus to evaluate its usefulness and to show how it can be utilised in the development of automatic methods for measuring cross-lingual (English-Urdu) text reuse. A new cross-lingual method is also proposed that uses bilingual word embeddings to estimate the degree of overlap amongst text documents by computing the maximum weighted cosine similarity between word pairs. The overall low evaluation results indicate that it is a challenging task to detect crosslingual real cases of text reuse, especially when the language pairs have unrelated scripts, i.e., English-Urdu. However, an improvement in the result is observed using a combination of methods used in the experiments. The research work undertaken in this PhD thesis contributes corpora, methods, and supporting resources for the mono- and cross-lingual text reuse and extrinsic plagiarism for a significantly under-resourced Urdu and English-Urdu language pair. It highlights that paraphrased and cross-lingual cross-script real cases of text reuse are harder to detect and are still an open issue. Moreover, it emphasises the need to develop standard evaluation and supporting resources for under-resourced languages to facilitate research in these languages. The resources that have been developed and methods proposed could serve as a framework for future research in other languages and language pairs

Shaping Future Practitioners: Navigating Ethics in the Medical Field

Background: Medical ethics is a set of moral principles and guidelines that dictate the behavior and actions of a medical professional, ultimately having an impact on the decisions they make. It is widely believed that teaching medical ethics ensures students become physicians with good moral compasses who keep their patient's best interests in mind. We aim to assess the degree of knowledge, attitude, and perception of medical students towards medical ethics. Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out amongst the undergraduate students of Jinnah Sindh Medical University (JSMU) in Karachi, Pakistan who are currently pursuing a degree in Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS). 202 students from years 1 to 5 voluntarily participated in this study. A non-probability convenience sampling technique was employed to recruit the participants and this study was carried out from March 2023 to July 2023. The participants were administered a pre-tested, semi-structured questionnaire related to various aspects of medical ethics. The responses of the participants were recorded on a 5-point Likert scale. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (IBM SPSS, Chicago, USA) was used to analyze the data. The Chi-square test was used as a test for significance with significant differences considered at a p-value of 0.05 or less. Results: A total of 202 medical students participated in our study, out of which 128 (63.4%) were female and 74 (36.6%) were male. Their ages ranged from 18 to 25 years old with a mean age of 21.42 ± 1.57. 13.9% of the participants were from the first year, 18.8% were from the second year, 11.9% were from the third year, 42.6% were from the fourth year and 12.9% were from the fifth year of MBBS. Regarding consent in different medical scenarios, participants demonstrated a solid understanding of the importance of informed consent for routine procedures, investigations, and treatments. However, variations were seen in responses concerning consent during emergencies. Most agree that patients have the right to refuse treatment and life-sustaining interventions. Around 49.5% of students were unsure or believed that Euthanasia was legal in Pakistan, indicating a need for improved education on these matters and related ethical guidelines. Conclusion: Medical ethics plays a crucial role in maintaining the integrity of healthcare systems and ensuring patient-centered care. The findings of this study emphasize the importance of a comprehensive medical ethics curriculum and structured clinical experiences in cultivating ethical decision-making skills among medical students

Level of Inhibition in Trained Secondary School Teachers: Evidence from Pakistan

The study found that the inhibition amongst trained secondary school teachers in using learned teaching methodologies is caused due to the lack of content knowledge, insufficient support from the administration, scarce continuous professional development opportunities, unsupportive environment, large class size, in-efficiency to integrate technology, inadequate post-training support and lack of motivation. The study also concluded that teaching inhibition is not possible to be controlled by virtue of teacher’s training skills only. This study recommends that trained teachers be permitted to experiment within their permissible limits to try new teaching methodologies under supervised conditions and reflect upon them intermittently. Continuous support of the school administration is the key to successfully implementing the newly-acquired pedagogic and scholastic skills for an educational institution to improve its teacher education programme

The Impact of Organizational Support for Career Development and Supervisory Support on Employee Performance: An Empirical Study from Pakistani Academic Sector

Many organizations are turning to human resource development to increase their employees’ knowledge, skills, and capabilities so that they can survive. This thrust has raised up career development programs to become an integral part of many organizations’ strategic plans. This research study is focused upon identifying the need and exploring the level of its intensity for career development of employees and its essential relationship with the success of an organization. It is a comparative study whereby the difference in attitude of the organization as a whole towards career development of the individuals has been studied. This study considers the difference in the significance and commitment attached to the individuals’ career development and its integration into the Human Resource Processes and procedures by organizations following different types of management styles. This study analyzes the supportive role of learning organization towards the individuals’ careers while itself moving towards the final stage of development. The organizational support for career development and supervisory support are independent variables and employees’ performance is dependent variable. Keywords: Organizational support, Employee career developmen

The Effect of Monetary and Non-Monetary Rewards on Employee Engagement and Firm Performance

This research explores the concept of employee engagement and how employee engagement can be strengthened by offering monetary and non-monetary rewards to employees. The objective of this research was to assess the relationship between employee engagement and high firm performance. For testing hypothesis data were collected through questionnaires from 250 respondents. Hierarchical linear regression was used to estimate the effect of rewards on firm performance mediated through employee engagement. Results disclosed the fact that monetary and non-monetary rewards can increase the level of employee engagement and high level of employee engagement is an important cause for high firm performance. Keywords: Employee Engagement, Monetary Rewards, Non-Monetary Rewards, Perceived Organizational Performance

Treatment Options for Cancer Patients Suffering from Oral Mucositis

More than 75% of those receiving chemotherapy will experience oral mucositis, which is a major problem for both patients and carers. Lesions form in the digestive tract when chemotherapy drugs attack the rapidly dividing cells there. Tissue alterations might range from being completely painless to so severe as to cause bleeding, prevent oral intake, and need narcotic pain medications. Chemotherapy treatment is often postponed when oral mucositis is present. To better clearly categorise the symptoms linked with this condition, many assessment scores have been devised. Very few pharmaceutical therapies for oral mucositis, either to prevent its onset or to alleviate its symptoms, have been approved. Given the advancements in other areas of supportive care for chemotherapy patients, research into oral mucositis should be prioritised. This review will provide the management of oral mucositis in patients with cancer

Left knee prosthesis-related Mycobacterium goodii infection

Non-tuberculous mycobacteria are increasingly being recognized as important human pathogens. We present the case of a 44-year-old non-diabetic male who underwent left total knee arthroplasty for degenerative arthritis after trauma. He developed left knee swelling and progressively worsening pain over the next 4 weeks. He was referred for treatment using whirlpool baths and developed a blister at the surgical incision site. Repeated aspirations of the left knee failed to show any growth of organism on routine cultures. He finally underwent explantation of the left knee prosthesis with antimicrobial spacer placement 4 months later. Cultures of three different intra-operative specimens turned positive for Mycobacterium goodii. This infection was successfully treated with combination oral antimicrobials for 6 months. The patient underwent revision left knee arthroplasty subsequently and was symptom-free until his last follow-up visit 1 year later. This patient highlights the importance of testing for mycobacteria in prosthesis-related infections with previously negative routine bacterial cultures