WOMEN EMPOWERMENT, MICROFINANCE AND POVERTY NEXUS: AN EMPIRICAL ESTIMATION PERSPECTIVE

Deprivation and poverty are worldwide challenges for poorer countries. Poor people especially women were excluded from financial services until microfinance institutions (MFIs) emerged. During the past few decades microcredit has enjoyed tremendous growth and women continue to be the major beneficiaries. The main objective of this study is to check weather microfinance helped women to attain decent work and strengthen their empowerment or not. This study is based on primary data and respondents were taken from First Microfinance Bank. A sample of 125 respondents was taken through simple random sampling. The study area was Faisalabad.SPSS 22 software was used for analysis. Logit model was applied to get and analyze results. Results showed significant positive relationship between women empowerment and different socio-economic independent variables i.e. income, investment, self-confidence, free movement. All the variables are statistically significant other than education. It is cleared that women enjoy more freedom, self-confidence and learn more skills to enhance their income. By investing in people and empowering individual women and men with education and generation of equal opportunities can create the conditions to allow the poor to break out of the poverty

Survey of Features Extraction and Classification Techniques for Speaker Identification

تكسب تقنيات معالجة الكلام شيوعًا اكثر يومًا بعد يوم لتوفير قدر هائل من الأمان.كما يشيع استخدام الكلام لغرض التوثيق. التعرف على المتكلم هو الطريقة التي يمكن من خلالها فحص المتكلم والتعرف عليه. يختلف نظام التعرف على الكلام عن طريقة التعرف على المتكلم. يشيع استخدام التعرف على المتكلمين في القطاعات والمستشفيات والمختبرات وما إلى ذلك. فوائده أكثر أمانًا وأسهل في التنفيذ وأكثر سهولة في الاستخدام. تعد طريقة تحديد المتكلم واحدة من أكثر التقنيات شيوعًا في المنطقة حيث تعتبر السلامة أمرًا بالغ الأهمية. تقدم هذه المقالة نظرة عامة على الطرق المختلفة التي يمكن استخدامها للتعرف على المتكلمين مثل الترميز الخطي التنبؤي (LPC) ، معاملات الطيف التنبؤية الخطية (LPCC) ، التحويل الحقيقي الفريد المعين (UMRT) ، معاملات Cepstral الحقيقية (RCC) ، "تردد ميل Cepstrum" (MFCC).   بالإضافة إلى مجموعة من المصنفات المختلفة مثل "نموذج الخليط الغاوسي (GMM)"، "تزييف الوقت الديناميكي (DTW)" ، آلة المتجهات الداعمة (SVM) ، الشبكة العصبية (NN) ، "تكميم المتجهات" (VQ). الغرض الأساسي من شرح طرق التعرف على السماعات الشائعة. النتائج التي تم الحصول عليها هي أنه تم اختيار MFCC لكفاءة عالية ومنخفضة التعقيد. و GMM مفيد في تصنيف ذاكرة أقل ونتائج تخطيط واختبار أقل.Speech processing is more common day by day to provide enormous safety. The speech for the purpose of authentication is commonly used. Recognition of the speaker is the method that can check and recognize the speaker. The scheme of speech recognition is distinct from the scheme of speaker recognition. Recognition of speakers is commonly used in sectors, hospitals, laboratories, etc. Its benefits are safer, easier to implement, more user-friendly. Speaker identification method is one of the most commonly used techniques for the region where safety is very crucial. This article presents an overview of various methods that can be used to recognize speakers’ systems, the feature extraction techniques such as Linear Predictive Coding (LPC), Linear Predictive Cepstral Coefficients (LPCC), Unique Mapped Real Transform (UMRT), Real Cepstral Coefficients (RCC), “Mel-frequency Cepstrum” (MFCC), in addition to  various classification techniques such as “Gaussian mixture model (GMM)”, “Dynamic Time Warping (DTW)”, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Neural Network (NN), “Vector Quantization” (VQ). The primary purpose of is to explain the common speaker recognition methods. The obtained results are that, MFCC is chosen for high efficiency and low complexity. and GMM is helpful in classifying less memory and less planning and efficient test results

The Impact of Migration on Rural Poverty: The Case Study of District Faisalabad, Pakistan

Internal-migration is the process of displacement of people within a country, mostly for better employment. Pakistan is among those South-Asian countries who have high rate of internal-migration. Poverty is considered to be an important factor in this context. This study estimates the rural-household poverty in Pakistan's Faisalabad District and the impact of internal-migration on rural-household poverty. By using stratified random sampling technique, 180 respondents were selected and interviewed. Propensity Score Matching method was used to examine the causal effect of internal-migration on household-poverty level. Results reveal that the ATT estimates of 0.18 for poverty reduction which shows that the household participation in the internal-migration decreases the probability of poverty by 0.18 points, suggesting that internal-migration has a significant impact on poverty reduction among the rural-households. The study suggests the policy makers to focus on rural development and enhance labor productivity, so that internal-migration is discouraged, which will ultimately reduce poverty. Keywords: Internal-Migration, Rural-Poverty, Pakistan JEL Classifications: I320, J11, D310, D1

Adaptive power control aware depth routing in underwater sensor networks

Underwater acoustic sensor network (UASN) refers to a procedure that promotes a broad spectrum of aquatic applications. UASNs can be practically applied in seismic checking, ocean mine identification, resource exploration, pollution checking, and disaster avoidance. UASN confronts many difficulties and issues, such as low bandwidth, node movements, propagation delay, 3D arrangement, energy limitation, and high-cost production and arrangement costs caused by antagonistic underwater situations. Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) are considered a major issue being encountered in energy management because of the limited battery power of their nodes. Moreover, the harsh underwater environment requires vendors to design and deploy energy-hungry devices to fulfil the communication requirements and maintain an acceptable quality of service. Moreover, increased transmission power levels result in higher channel interference, thereby increasing packet loss. Considering the facts mentioned above, this research presents a controlled transmission power-based sparsity-aware energy-efficient clustering in UWSNs. The contributions of this technique is threefold. First, it uses the adaptive power control mechanism to utilize the sensor nodes’ battery and reduce channel interference effectively. Second, thresholds are defined to ensure successful communication. Third, clustering can be implemented in dense areas to decrease the repetitive transmission that ultimately affects the energy consumption of nodes and interference significantly. Additionally, mobile sinks are deployed to gather information locally to achieve the previously mentioned benefits. The suggested protocol is meticulously examined through extensive simulations and is validated through comparison with other advanced UWSN strategies. Findings show that the suggested protocol outperforms other procedures in terms of network lifetime and packet delivery ratio

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Effects of antiplatelet therapy after stroke due to intracerebral haemorrhage (RESTART): a randomised, open-label trial

Background: Antiplatelet therapy reduces the risk of major vascular events for people with occlusive vascular disease, although it might increase the risk of intracranial haemorrhage. Patients surviving the commonest subtype of intracranial haemorrhage, intracerebral haemorrhage, are at risk of both haemorrhagic and occlusive vascular events, but whether antiplatelet therapy can be used safely is unclear. We aimed to estimate the relative and absolute effects of antiplatelet therapy on recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage and whether this risk might exceed any reduction of occlusive vascular events. Methods: The REstart or STop Antithrombotics Randomised Trial (RESTART) was a prospective, randomised, open-label, blinded endpoint, parallel-group trial at 122 hospitals in the UK. We recruited adults (≥18 years) who were taking antithrombotic (antiplatelet or anticoagulant) therapy for the prevention of occlusive vascular disease when they developed intracerebral haemorrhage, discontinued antithrombotic therapy, and survived for 24 h. Computerised randomisation incorporating minimisation allocated participants (1:1) to start or avoid antiplatelet therapy. We followed participants for the primary outcome (recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage) for up to 5 years. We analysed data from all randomised participants using Cox proportional hazards regression, adjusted for minimisation covariates. This trial is registered with ISRCTN (number ISRCTN71907627). Findings: Between May 22, 2013, and May 31, 2018, 537 participants were recruited a median of 76 days (IQR 29–146) after intracerebral haemorrhage onset: 268 were assigned to start and 269 (one withdrew) to avoid antiplatelet therapy. Participants were followed for a median of 2·0 years (IQR [1·0– 3·0]; completeness 99·3%). 12 (4%) of 268 participants allocated to antiplatelet therapy had recurrence of intracerebral haemorrhage compared with 23 (9%) of 268 participants allocated to avoid antiplatelet therapy (adjusted hazard ratio 0·51 [95% CI 0·25–1·03]; p=0·060). 18 (7%) participants allocated to antiplatelet therapy experienced major haemorrhagic events compared with 25 (9%) participants allocated to avoid antiplatelet therapy (0·71 [0·39–1·30]; p=0·27), and 39 [15%] participants allocated to antiplatelet therapy had major occlusive vascular events compared with 38 [14%] allocated to avoid antiplatelet therapy (1·02 [0·65–1·60]; p=0·92). Interpretation: These results exclude all but a very modest increase in the risk of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage with antiplatelet therapy for patients on antithrombotic therapy for the prevention of occlusive vascular disease when they developed intracerebral haemorrhage. The risk of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage is probably too small to exceed the established benefits of antiplatelet therapy for secondary prevention

Effects of antiplatelet therapy after stroke due to intracerebral haemorrhage (RESTART): a randomised, open-label trial

Background: Antiplatelet therapy reduces the risk of major vascular events for people with occlusive vascular disease, although it might increase the risk of intracranial haemorrhage. Patients surviving the commonest subtype of intracranial haemorrhage, intracerebral haemorrhage, are at risk of both haemorrhagic and occlusive vascular events, but whether antiplatelet therapy can be used safely is unclear. We aimed to estimate the relative and absolute effects of antiplatelet therapy on recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage and whether this risk might exceed any reduction of occlusive vascular events. Methods: The REstart or STop Antithrombotics Randomised Trial (RESTART) was a prospective, randomised, open-label, blinded endpoint, parallel-group trial at 122 hospitals in the UK. We recruited adults (≥18 years) who were taking antithrombotic (antiplatelet or anticoagulant) therapy for the prevention of occlusive vascular disease when they developed intracerebral haemorrhage, discontinued antithrombotic therapy, and survived for 24 h. Computerised randomisation incorporating minimisation allocated participants (1:1) to start or avoid antiplatelet therapy. We followed participants for the primary outcome (recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage) for up to 5 years. We analysed data from all randomised participants using Cox proportional hazards regression, adjusted for minimisation covariates. This trial is registered with ISRCTN (number ISRCTN71907627). Findings: Between May 22, 2013, and May 31, 2018, 537 participants were recruited a median of 76 days (IQR 29–146) after intracerebral haemorrhage onset: 268 were assigned to start and 269 (one withdrew) to avoid antiplatelet therapy. Participants were followed for a median of 2·0 years (IQR [1·0– 3·0]; completeness 99·3%). 12 (4%) of 268 participants allocated to antiplatelet therapy had recurrence of intracerebral haemorrhage compared with 23 (9%) of 268 participants allocated to avoid antiplatelet therapy (adjusted hazard ratio 0·51 [95% CI 0·25–1·03]; p=0·060). 18 (7%) participants allocated to antiplatelet therapy experienced major haemorrhagic events compared with 25 (9%) participants allocated to avoid antiplatelet therapy (0·71 [0·39–1·30]; p=0·27), and 39 [15%] participants allocated to antiplatelet therapy had major occlusive vascular events compared with 38 [14%] allocated to avoid antiplatelet therapy (1·02 [0·65–1·60]; p=0·92). Interpretation: These results exclude all but a very modest increase in the risk of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage with antiplatelet therapy for patients on antithrombotic therapy for the prevention of occlusive vascular disease when they developed intracerebral haemorrhage. The risk of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage is probably too small to exceed the established benefits of antiplatelet therapy for secondary prevention

Outcomes from elective colorectal cancer surgery during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

This study aimed to describe the change in surgical practice and the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on mortality after surgical resection of colorectal cancer during the initial phases of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic