Systematic Risk Factors and Stock Return Volatility

This study analyzes the transmission of systematic risk exhaling from macroeconomic fundamentals to volatility of stock market by using auto regressive generalized auto regressive conditional heteroskedastic (AR-GARCH) and vector auto regressive (VAR) models. Systematic risk factors used in this study are industrial production, real interest rate, inflation, money supply and exchange rate from 2000-2014. Results indicate that there exists relationship among the volatility of macroeconomic factors and that of stock returns in Pakistan. The relationship among the volatility of macroeconomic variables and that of stock returns is bidirectional; both affect each other in different dynamics

GENETIC DIVERSITY IN ACCESSIONS OF INDIAN TURMERIC (CURCUMA LONGA L.) USING RAPD MARKERS

Objective: The present investigation was undertaken for identification and assessment of eight accessions of Curcuma longa collected from all ecological zones in India by random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers.Methods: DNA was isolated using modified cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) method. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was performed according to the method based on Williams et al. and data analysis was done using Alpha Imager EC software.Results: Eleven out of twenty primers screened were informative and produced 150 amplification products among which 132 products (88%) were found to be polymorphic. The percentage polymorphism of all 08 accessions ranged from 44.44% to 100%. A total of 150 amplification products were scored with an average frequency of 13.63 bands per primer. Most of the RAPD markers studied showed a different level of genetic polymorphism. The data of 150 RAPD bands were used to generate Jaccard's similarity coefficients and to construct a dendrogram by means of UPGMA.Conclusion: Results shows that C. longa undergoes genetic variation due to a wide range of ecological conditions within distribution area of its population in India. This investigation as an understanding of the level and partitioning of genetic variation within the accessions and would provide an important input into determining efficient management strategies and will help to breeders for turmeric improvement program

An overview of artificial nutrition in apiculture

Artificial nutrition in apiculture is a long-term subject of discussion and investigation. The maintenance and boosting of bee colonies in apiculture depends on synthetic food around the globe to overcome the suppressing factors, including dearth periods. The information on types of food components and their combinations used is haphazard and hardly helpful in determining the advancements in the artificial feeding of bees. This study aimed to extract the available information on artificial feeding on honeybees and arrange it most scientifically. The information in the form of research or review articles available on every platform, viz., soft portals, printed journals, books and scientific proceedings, were collected and analyzed to produce a comprehensive and informative review article on the artificial nutrients in apiculture. Compilation of the available information revealed that artificial feeding of bees depends on food components and their combinations. Based on this, it can be suggested that nectar and pollen are basic foods of honey bees, and based on this, the food components were further categorized as nectar supplements and pollen supplements. These supplements were fed to bees as natural nutrients and food components. The natural nutrients include proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, yeasts, antibiotics, amino acids, enzymes, antioxidants, etc. Meanwhile, under natural food components, cereal grains, pulses, beans, fruits, vegetables, medicinal plants, spices, condiments, and some non-traditional/ miscellaneous kinds of stuff have been included in the bee diets. On the other hand, many diet categories have been prepared using the abovementioned nutrients and food components in various forms and proportions. In general, the pollen and nectar, the main food of bees, have been supplemented under different diet combinations. These diet combinations used pollen and nectar substitutes or combined with other nutrition, drugs, antibiotics, etc. The present investigation provides an updated overview of the food categories and their combinations used in the artificial feeding of bees to date. These findings can help explore new food items and their effective diet combinations

Pregnancy outcome after first trimester vaginal bleeding

Background: First trimester vaginal bleeding is one of the most common complications in pregnancy threatening its proper development and successful outcome.Methods: A case-control study was conducted from October 2016 to April 2018 in the department of obstetrics and gynecology SKIMS.200 cases with vaginal bleeding in first trimester were taken for study. Out of the cases, number of patients who had abortion, ectopic, molar pregnancy or continued their pregnancy beyond 20 weeks was noted. Those who continued their pregnancy were compared with 130 controls for complications developing later in pregnancy.Results: There was significantly higher incidence of PIH (15.4% of cases, 6.9% of controls, p value = 0.005) and abruption (7.7% and 1.5% among cases and controls respectively with p-value of 0.034) among cases than controls. Mean gestational age at delivery in cases was 35.6±3.63 weeks while in controls it was 38.5±1.94 weeks (p value <0.001). Mean birth-weight of the neonates in cases was 2.16±0.78 kgs while in controls was 3.05±0.53 kgs (p value <0.001). IUGR occurred in 9.2% of cases and 3.1% of controls (p value 0.039). There was significantly higher neonatal ICU admission rate in cases than controls (p value 0.019).Conclusions: Patients with first trimester vaginal bleeding are at increased risk for spontaneous loss and adverse pregnancy outcome

Image segmentation methods and edge detection: An application to knee joint articular cartilage edge detection

Image segmentation is the process of partitioning a digital image into multiple segments and regions for further processing. Edge detection methods are widely used in the area of image processing for feature detection and extraction. In this paper we use human’s Knee MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging) images of patients and applied various image segmentation and edge detection methods for knee cartilage visualization. Also this paper focuses on providing an overview of important concepts, methods and algorithms commonly used for image segmentation and edge detection with focus on knee joint articular cartilage image segmentation and visualizatio

Mucosal genomics implicate lymphocyte activation and lipid metabolism in refractory environmental enteric dysfunction

Background & aims: Environmental enteric dysfunction (EED) limits the Sustainable Development Goals of improved childhood growth and survival. We applied mucosal genomics to advance our understanding of EED.Methods: The Study of Environmental Enteropathy and Malnutrition (SEEM) followed 416 children from birth to 24 months in a rural district in Pakistan. Biomarkers were measured at 9 months and tested for association with growth at 24 months. The duodenal methylome and transcriptome was determined in 52 undernourished SEEM participants and 42 North American controls and celiac disease patients.Results: After accounting for growth at study entry, circulating IGF-1 and ferritin predicted linear growth, whereas leptin correlated with future weight gain. The EED transcriptome exhibited suppression of antioxidant, detoxification, and lipid metabolism genes, and induction of anti-microbial response, interferon, and lymphocyte activation genes. Relative to celiac disease, suppression of antioxidant and detoxification genes and induction of anti-microbial response genes were EED-specific. At the epigenetic level, EED showed hyper-methylation of epithelial metabolism and barrier function genes, and hypo-methylation of immune response and cell proliferation genes. Duodenal co-expression modules showed association between lymphocyte proliferation and epithelial metabolic genes and histologic severity, fecal energy loss, and wasting (weight-for-length/height Z\u3c-2.0). Leptin was associated with expression of epithelial carbohydrate metabolism and stem cell renewal genes. Immune response genes were attenuated by giardia colonization.Conclusions: Children with reduced circulating IGF-1 are more likely to experience stunting. Leptin and a gene signature for lymphocyte activation and dysregulated lipid metabolism are implicated in wasting, suggesting new approaches for EED refractory to nutritional intervention

EFFECTS OF BACKPACK ON GAIT PARAMETERS IN HEALTHY YOUNG INDIVIDUALS USING GAITRITE® SYSTEM

OBJECTIVE: To find out changes induced in normal gait parameters due to backpack. METHODS: Thirty university healthy female students participated in this study through convenient sampling technique after taking consent. Participants were asked to walk twice on GAITRite® mat first without carrying backpack and then with a 3kg back pack over single shoulder. GAITRite® System version 4.7.7 was used. The individuals presented with fractures, any type of pain, orthopedic problems, neurological or musculoskeletal disorders, cerebral palsy, myelodysplasia or arthritis and congenital or spinal deformities were excluded. RESULTS: The mean age, height and weight of participants were 21.37±1.18 years, 1.62±.043 meters and 45.56±5.04 kilogram respectively. Gait was evaluated and there was decrease in the velocity on wearing the backpack on single shoulder in contrast with velocity when no backpack was worn over either left or right shoulder from 109.13±10.89 to 105.79±10.85 (p=0.001), stance parameter of gait had no significant difference when subjects worn the backpack over one shoulder in comparison when walked without carrying the backpack 61.5±1.42 to 61.36±1.53 (p=0.288). No significant changes were recorded in left double limb support and right double limb support, before and after wearing backpack 23.09±2.5 to 22.91±2.79 (p=0.489) and 22.98±2.42 to 22.69±2.78 (p=0.348) respectively. Same is the case in left single limb support and right single limb support 38.34±1.37 to 38.44±1.53 (p=0.565) and 38.68±1.59 to 38.83±1.53 (p=0.493). CONCLUSION: The study concluded that wearing backpack over one shoulder causes significant changes in velocity while no changes observed in single and double limb support

Advancing the State-of-the-Art in Hardware Trojans Detection

Over the past decade, Hardware Trojans (HTs) research community has made significant progress towards developing effective countermeasures for various types of HTs, yet these countermeasures are shown to be circumvented by sophisticated HTs designed subsequently. Therefore, instead of guaranteeing a certain (low) false negative rate for a small \textit{constant} set of publicly known HTs, a rigorous security framework of HTs should provide an effective algorithm to detect any HT from an \textit{exponentially large} class (exponential in number of wires in IP core) of HTs with negligible false negative rate. In this work, we present HaTCh, the first rigorous algorithm of HT detection within the paradigm of pre-silicon logic testing based tools. HaTCh detects any HT from $H_D$, a huge class of deterministic HTs which is orders of magnitude larger than the small subclass (e.g. TrustHub) considered in the current literature. We prove that HaTCh offers negligible false negative rate and controllable false positive rate for the class $H_D$. Given certain global characteristics regarding the stealthiness of the HT within $H_D$, the computational complexity of HaTCh for practical HTs scales polynomially with the number of wires in the IP core. We implement and test HaTCh on TrustHub and other sophisticated HTs

Ferula asafoetida Linn. is effective for early functional recovery following mechanically induced insult to the sciatic nerve of a mouse model

Purpose: To evaluate the effect of Ferula asafoetida (oleo gum resin powder) on sensory and motor functions retrieval on an induced sciatic nerve injury in a mouse model.Methods: A mechanical crush was inserted in the sciatic nerve of all the experimental mice after acclimatization. The mice were allocated to four groups; one normal chow group (control, n = 7) and three Ferula asafoetida chow groups (each n = 7) of different doses (50, 100 and 200 mg/kg). Muscle grip strength, muscle mass, and sciatic functional index were measured to evaluate the motor function regain, while sensory function regain was assessed by hot plate test. Oxidative stress and glycemic levels were measured by biochemical assays.Results: The findings of this study indicate that Ferula asafoetida 200 mg/kg has a highly significant (p≤ 0.001) ameliorating effect in terms of improved grip strength (77.7 ± 5.4 % for 200 mg/kg vs. 46 ± 5.1 % for control), reversal of SFI towards normal ( -34 ± 8.1 for 200 mg/kg group vs. –61 ± 6.1 for control), decrease in paw withdrawal latency (7.10 ± 0.06 s for 200 mg/kg group vs. 15 ± 0.5 s for control) on day 12 post-injury, as well as restoration of skeletal muscle mass towards normal. Interestingly, F. asafoetida chow 50 mg/kg and 100 mg/kg groups also impacted significant (p &lt; 0.01) improvement in the ameliorative effect. However, the differences among all treatment groups in ameliorating recovery were not significant (p &gt; 0.05). Moreover, comparatively improved (p &lt; 0.0001) total antioxidant capacity along with reduced total oxidant status (p = 0.01) in the Ferula asafoetida chow (200 mg/kg) group, indicate the antioxidative effect of this plant. Furthermore, the treated mice (200 mg/kg) also expressedan improved glycemic level (p = 0.0005).Conclusion: Ferula asafoetida supplementation helps to accelerate both sensory and motor function retrieval following sciatic nerve injury. This&nbsp; improvement is thought to be correlated with the antioxidant capacity of the plant. However, further investigations are required to identify the therapeutic principles responsible for the observed actions. Keywords: Sciatic nerve injury, Ferula asafoetida, Function recovery, Oxidative stress, Biochemical analysi