Impact of External Communication on Internal Brand Management Outcomes Using Employees as a Second Audience: A Comparative Analysis of Manufacturing and Service Sectors of Pakistan

This study investigated the effect of External Brand Communications on internal brand management practices using brand commitment and brand understanding as factors determining the phenomenon and subsequently analyzing the effect of both internal and external factors on brand citizenship behavior. A sample size of 300 respondents was selected from manufacturing and service oriented companies and the effects were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. It was found that there is significant and positive influence of brand understanding in determination of brand citizenship behavior and reflected mediating role of external communication congruence. Furthermore, it has also found that internal brand management practices are more evident in case of manufacturing firm i.e. a reputed Biscuits Manufacturing Company as compare to financial firm i.e. a renowned Private Limited Bank. It reveals necessity of work required in case of Private Limited Bank to work on external communication practices and integrate it with internal brand management practices to increase its role in determination of employee behavior and their role in propagating brand image as second audience

Designing dual inhibitors for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease as well as Type 2 diabetes mellitus via pharmacoinformatics approach: A step towards better medication for diabetes-associated neurological disorder

Purpose: To design dual inhibitors against Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) via pharmacoinformatics approach.Methods: Dual Drug Candidates (DDC) were designed and explored for their molecular interaction with several AD and T2DM targets. Pterostilbene, a natural anti-T2DM compound was coupled with different cholinesterase inhibitors to design DDC. Orisis Datawarrior online property calculator  tools, Autock 4.2 and Hex 5.1 were used to investigate the potency of all DDC relative to positive controls.Results: The study found that DDC2 (pterostilbene - methylene linker -octa hydro amino phenothiazine), DDC3 (pterostilbene - ethylene linker - N-phthalimide) and DDC5 (pterostilbene - carbonyl linker - 2-methyl-4-aminoquinoline) were the most promising out of all the DDCs. DDC2 showed strong molecular interaction with most of the AD and T2DM targets, including acetylcholinesterase, butrylcholinesterase, β-secretase, receptor for advanced glycation end products and ATP sensitive potassium channel, dipeptidyl peptidase IV and sodium glucose transport protien 2. The findings also revealed the amyloid anti-aggregation potential of DDC.Conclusion: The results show that DDC3 and DDC5 significantly interfer with the primary nucleation process of β amyloid. Thus, DDC2, DDC3 and DDC5 have strong anti-T2DM and anti-AD potential. Keywords: Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus, Alzheimer’s disease, Dual drug candidate, Amyloid-beta, Pterostilben

A Machine Learning in Binary and Multiclassification Results on Imbalanced Heart Disease Data Stream

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Adsorption of paracetamol on activated charcoal in the presence of dextropropoxyphene hydrochloride, N-acetylcysteine and sorbitol

Paracetamol, an over the counter analgesic and antipyretic drug, causes hepatic and renal tubular necrosis at higher doses ingested accidentally, or intentionally. The situation worsens clinically upon the ingestion of product containing paracetamol and dextropropoxyphene. In paracetamol poisoning, activated charcoal is used to adsorb the drug from the gastrointestinal tract, sorbitol to remove charcoaldrug complexes and N-acetylcysteine to reduce the drug and its metabolites from systemic circulation. Activated charcoal being non-specific adsorbent may adsorb other chemical moieties from the intestine as well as antidotes. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the adsorption of paracetamol on activated charcoal in presence of dextropropoxyphene hydrochloride, N-acetylcysteine and sorbitol. Paracetamol was combined separately with dextropropoxyphene hydrochloride, N-acetylcysteine and sorbitol. These mixtures were combined with varying amounts of activated charcoal to evaluate the in vitro adsorption of paracetamol using Langmuir Isotherm. Paracetamol adsorption was 96.6 % at charcoal-drug ratio (6:1) while only 2 % higher in 8:1 and 2.9 % in 10:1. The binding constant (K2), maximum adsorption capacity per gram of activated charcoal for paracetamol alone and in presence of dextropropoxyphene hydrochloride, N-acetylcysteine and sorbitol was found to be 366, 339, 313 and 355 mg/g, respectively. The results of the present study indicate that except sorbitol other investigated substances significantly reduce the adsorption of paracetamol on activated charcoal, which may be compensated by increasing the concentration of activated charcoal.Colegio de Farmacéuticos de la Provincia de Buenos Aire

PCA-Based Advanced Local Octa-Directional Pattern (ALODP-PCA): A Texture Feature Descriptor for Image Retrieval

This paper presents a novel feature descriptor termed principal component analysis (PCA)-based Advanced Local Octa-Directional Pattern (ALODP-PCA) for content-based image retrieval. The conventional approaches compare each pixel of an image with certain neighboring pixels providing discrete image information. The descriptor proposed in this work utilizes the local intensity of pixels in all eight directions of its neighborhood. The local octa-directional pattern results in two patterns, i.e., magnitude and directional, and each is quantized into a 40-bin histogram. A joint histogram is created by concatenating directional and magnitude histograms. To measure similarities between images, the Manhattan distance is used. Moreover, to maintain the computational cost, PCA is applied, which reduces the dimensionality. The proposed methodology is tested on a subset of a Multi-PIE face dataset. The dataset contains almost 800,000 images of over 300 people. These images carries different poses and have a wide range of facial expressions. Results were compared with state-of-the-art local patterns, namely, the local tri-directional pattern (LTriDP), local tetra directional pattern (LTetDP), and local ternary pattern (LTP). The results of the proposed model supersede the work of previously defined work in terms of precision, accuracy, and recall

EFFECTS OF HOLMICH PROTOCOL AND MYOFASCIAL RELEASE TECHNIQUE ON GROIN PAIN IN TENNIS PLAYERS

Introduction: Tennis with a normal 17.9 million players is one of the most renowned games with a colossal addition in young tennis players as of late. The prevalence of groin injury increases rapidly in tennis players due to demand of rapid change in direction. Material & Methods: Once ethical approval was taken from Institutional review Board (REC/Letter-00722), a Randomized Clinical Trial (RCT) was conducted on 22 players through nonprobability purposive sampling in Pakistan Tennis Federation, Islamabad. Players were randomly divided into two groups by sealed and envelop method. Group A received Holmich protocol while group B received myofascial release technique. Other than demographics, functional tests like hip range of motion, visual analogue scale, t-test, Edgren sidestep test and triple hop test were conducted to assess the techniques given to groups. Data was analysed using SPSS 21. Trial is registered in US clinical trial registry (NCT04642300). Results: The results of the study show that there was no significant difference between Myofascial release technique and holmich protocol in athletes with groin pain (P value˃0.05). Mean age of the tennis players was 23.14±4.5 in years. Pre and post comparison of both interventions shows significant effect in Range of motion, Pain, Agility and hop test. (P value˂0.01). Conclusion: From the results it can be seen that there was no significance between the two techniques. So in conclusion both techniques can be used to treat groin pain and get successful results

Effect of once-a-day milk feeding on behavior and growth performance of pre-weaning calves

Objective The objectives of the present study were to evaluate the effects of once-a-day milk feeding on growth performance and routine behavior of preweaning dairy calves. Methods At 22nd day of age, twenty-four Holstein calves were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups (n = 12/treatment) based on milk feeding frequency (MF): i) 3 L of milk feeding two times a day; ii) 6 L of milk feeding once a day. The milk feeding amount was reduced to half for all calves between 56 and 60 days of age and weaning was done at 60 days of age. To determine the increase in weight and structural measurements, each calf was weighed and measured at 3 weeks of age and then at weaning. The daily behavioral activity of each calf was assessed from the 22nd day of age till weaning (60th day of age) through Nederlandsche Apparatenfabriek (NEDAP) software providing real-time data through a logger fitted on the calf’s foot. Results There was no interaction (p≥0.17) between MF and sex of the calves for routine behavioral parameters, body weight and structural measurements. Similarly, there was no effect of MF on routine behavioral parameters, body weight and structural measurements. However, the sex of the calves affected body weight gain in calves. Male calves had 27% greater total body weight and average daily gain than female calves. There was no effect of the sex of the calves on behavioral measurements. Collectively, in the current study, no negative effects of a once-a-day milk feeding regimen were found on routine behavioral and growth parameters of preweaning calves in group housing. Conclusion Once-a-day milk feeding can be safely adopted in preweaning calves from 22nd day of age

An Unbiased Lipid Phenotyping Approach To Study the Genetic Determinants of Lipids and Their Association with Coronary Heart Disease Risk Factors.

Direct infusion high-resolution mass spectrometry (DIHRMS) is a novel, high-throughput approach to rapidly and accurately profile hundreds of lipids in human serum without prior chromatography, facilitating in-depth lipid phenotyping for large epidemiological studies to reveal the detailed associations of individual lipids with coronary heart disease (CHD) risk factors. Intact lipid profiling by DIHRMS was performed on 5662 serum samples from healthy participants in the Pakistan Risk of Myocardial Infarction Study (PROMIS). We developed a novel semi-targeted peak-picking algorithm to detect mass-to-charge ratios in positive and negative ionization modes. We analyzed lipid partial correlations, assessed the association of lipid principal components with established CHD risk factors and genetic variants, and examined differences between lipids for a common genetic polymorphism. The DIHRMS method provided information on 360 lipids (including fatty acyls, glycerolipids, glycerophospholipids, sphingolipids, and sterol lipids), with a median coefficient of variation of 11.6% (range: 5.4-51.9). The lipids were highly correlated and exhibited a range of associations with clinical chemistry biomarkers and lifestyle factors. This platform can provide many novel insights into the effects of physiology and lifestyle on lipid metabolism, genetic determinants of lipids, and the relationship between individual lipids and CHD risk factors

Targeting NF-κB signaling cascades of glioblastoma by a natural benzophenone, garcinol, via in vitro and molecular docking approaches

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is regarded as the most aggressive form of brain tumor delineated by high cellular heterogeneity; it is resistant to conventional therapeutic regimens. In this study, the anti-cancer potential of garcinol, a naturally derived benzophenone, was assessed against GBM. During the analysis, we observed a reduction in the viability of rat glioblastoma C6 cells at a concentration of 30 µM of the extract (p < 0.001). Exposure to garcinol also induced nuclear fragmentation and condensation, as evidenced by DAPI-stained photomicrographs of C6 cells. The dissipation of mitochondrial membrane potential in a dose-dependent fashion was linked to the activation of caspases. Furthermore, it was observed that garcinol mediated the inhibition of NF-κB (p < 0.001) and decreased the expression of genes associated with cell survival (Bcl-XL, Bcl-2, and survivin) and proliferation (cyclin D1). Moreover, garcinol showed interaction with NF-κB through some important amino acid residues, such as Pro275, Trp258, Glu225, and Gly259 during molecular docking analysis. Comparative analysis with positive control (temozolomide) was also performed. We found that garcinol induced apoptotic cell death via inhibiting NF-κB activity in C6 cells, thus implicating it as a plausible therapeutic agent for GBM