Growth and Development of Saraiki Novel

The linguistic developments have always been coincideing with the development of human civilizations. It is, therefore, commonly believed among historians and linguistic scholars that language and its various generes are the museum of any civilization that help understand depth and breadth of its development over time. The historical development of Saraiki language over time also has been reflected into its various geners such as poetry, drama, prose, folklores or nonfiction, and media.  The present study has examined the the historical development of literary genre, novel in modern Saraiki literature and its sociocultural and linguistic implications. The study would help researcg scholars in the area of Saraiki literature and linguistics to gain deeper understanding of historical development of Saraiki novel in relation to other generes and look into its relationship with sociocultural development of people in Saraiki speaking areas

BIM-Based Energy Optimization – Case study of High-Rise Building in Pakistan

The current work analyses the energy performance of a building at the early design and planning stage for sustainability. A multistory facility has been simulated in a virtual (3D) environment using the Building Information Modelling process. Energy analysis was performed using Autodesk Insight360 in terms of kWh/m2 /yr. Sixteen (16) story building, has been assessed at its proposed location, at 8° clockwise w.r.t true North. The study observed an annual consumption of 267 kWh/m2 /yr which was further optimized by adopting different construction innovations. It has been highlighted that using virtual technology at the design stage of buildings can help to achieve an average annual energy saving of more than 50% thus supporting the goal for a sustainable future by accessing energy requirements at the early stage of design inception

Predictors of Occult Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation in Cryptogenic Strokes Detected by Long-Term Noninvasive Cardiac Monitoring

Background and Purpose. Paroxysmal Atrial fibrillation/Flutter (PAF) detection rates in cryptogenic strokes have been variable. We sought to determine the percentage of patients with cryptogenic stroke who had PAF on prolonged non-invasive cardiac monitoring. Methods and Results. Sixty-two consecutive patients with stroke and TIA in a single center with a mean age of 61 (+/− 14) years were analyzed. PAF was detected in 15 (24%) patients. Only one patient reported symptoms of shortness of breath during the episode of PAF while on monitoring, and 71 (97%) of these 73 episodes were asymptomatic. A regression analysis revealed that the presence of PVCs (ventricular premature beats) lasting more than 2 minutes (OR 6.3, 95% CI, 1.11–18.92; P = .042) and strokes (high signal on Diffusion Weighted Imaging) (OR 4.3, 95% CI, 5–36.3; P = .041) predicted PAF. Patients with multiple DWI signals were more likely than solitary signals to have PAF (OR 11.1, 95% CI, 2.5–48.5, P < .01). Conclusion. Occult PAF is common in cryptogenic strokes, and is often asymptomatic. Our data suggests that up to one in five patients with suspected cryptogenic strokes and TIAs have PAF, especially if they have PVCs and multiple high DWI signals on MRI

CODIE: Controlled Data and Interest Evaluation in Vehicular Named Data Networks

[EN] Recently, named data networking (NDN) has been proposed as a promising architecture for future Internet technologies. NDN is an extension to the content-centric network (CCN) and is expected to support various applications in vehicular communications [ vehicular NDN (VNDN)]. VNDN basically relies on naming the content rather than using end-to-end device names. In VNDN, a vehicle broadcasts an "Interest" packet for the required "content," regardless of end-to-end connectivity with servers or other vehicles and known as a "consumer." In response, a vehicle with the content replies to the Interest packet with a "Data" packet and named as a "provider." However, the simple VNDN architecture faces several challenges such as consumer/provider mobility and Interest/Data packet(s) forwarding. In VNDN, for the most part, the Data packet is sent along the reverse path of the related Interest packet. However, there is no extensive simulated reference available in the literature to support this argument. In this paper, therefore, we first analyze the propagation behavior of Interest and Data packets in the vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) environment through extensive simulations. Second, we propose the "CODIE" scheme to control the Data flooding/broadcast storm in the naive VNDN. The main idea is to allow the consumer vehicle to start hop counter in Interest packet. Upon receiving this Interest by any potential provider, a data dissemination limit (DDL) value stores the number of hops and a data packet needs to travel back. Simulation results show that CODIE forwards fewer copies of data packets processed (CDPP) while achieving similar interest satisfaction rate (ISR), as compared with the naive VNDN. In addition, we also found that CODIE also minimizes the overall interest satisfaction delay (ISD), respectively.This work was supported by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, South Korea, under Grant IITP-2015-H8601-15-1002 of the Convergence Information Technology Research Center supervised by the Institute for Information and Communications Technology Promotion. The review of this paper was coordinated by Editors of CVS. (Corresponding author: Dongkyun Kim.)Ahmed, SH.; Bouk, SH.; Yaqub, MA.; Kim, D.; Song, H.; Lloret, J. (2016). CODIE: Controlled Data and Interest Evaluation in Vehicular Named Data Networks. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. 65(6):3954-3963. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2016.2558650S3954396365

Knowledge causes and practice of self-medication during COVID-19: A population-based survey in Pakistan

Background: Self-medication (SM) is a public health issue upsurge day by day and its side effects accelerate the burden on healthcare, pharmacists, and the economy. The demand for self-prescribed medicines during the COVID-19 pandemic was found to be on the rise globally.Methods: The survey was conducted during June-August 2021 to analyses knowledge, causes, and practices of self-medication in Pakistan. The Chi-square test was used to examine the relationships between the categorical variable: The Pearson Correlation coefficient determined the relationship between quantitative variables. Age, gender, marital status, education, profession, field, knowledge, causes and practice of SM were variables included in survey.Result: 203 responses were received in the online survey and results from demographic factors were 104 (51.7%) male, 114(56.7%) single, 20-30 years (42.3%) age group, 44.8% were MS/M. Phil, 31.3% were teacher and 74.1% respondents belongs to the bioscience field. 20.4% considered it good practice while 42.3% responded to it as an acceptable practice. Quarantine was the most significant factor for SM during COVID-19 (68.7%). Discrimination after infection (37.8%) was also of higher priority and SM practiced under the influence of friends and social media, emergency illness, distance to hospitals (19.9%), and prescribed by medical personnel in a health facility (31.3%) followed by own self (22.9%), 19.9% by a friend, and 15.4% by pharmacist. 52.7% used self-prescribed antibiotics with the appearance of symptoms of fever, chills, and tiredness (37.30%). Conclusion: This population-based survey suggested that legislation, awareness campaigns, media, community, and government should play their part to fight misinformation about alleged COVID-19 preventive medicines on different platforms

Interest Broadcast Suppression Scheme for Named Data Wireless Sensor Networks

Named data networking (NDN) is one of the future networking architectures that communicates content using names, instead of the node addresses. It uses a very simple pull-based communication mechanism to retrieve content by sending an Interest message, and the node that has the required content or producer node replies with the data message. In wireless networks, the interest is flooded in the network to find the data provider node. The directional diffusion method is used to pull further content from the provider node. Due to broadcast nature and without node addresses, interest flooding causes network congestion and wastes network resources, especially bandwidth and battery power. These resources have prime importance in the case of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because all WSN nodes operate on battery and have limited bandwidth. In this paper, we propose an interest broadcast suppression scheme that considers interest holding time using the distance between forwarder and receiver of the interest, energy, angle, and distance from the beeline between consumer and the spatial region, to avoid broadcasting of unnecessary copies of Interest. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme mitigates the interest broadcast and conserves battery power of the wireless nodes compared with the state-of-the-art scheme in the domain. © 2019 IEEE.1

Family planning knowledge, attitudes, and practices among married men and women in rural areas of Pakistan: Findings from a qualitative need assessment study

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative assessment aimed at exploring knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding family planning and factors that influence the need for and use of modern contraceptives. A descriptive exploratory study was conducted with married women and men aged between 15 and 40. Overall, 24 focus group discussions were conducted with male and female participants in three provinces of Pakistan. The findings reveal that the majority knew about some modern contraceptive methods, but the overall contraceptive use was very low. Knowledge and use of any contraceptive method were particularly low. Reasons for not using family planning and modern contraception included incomplete family size, negative perceptions, in-laws\u27 disapproval, religious concerns, side-effects, and lack of access to quality services. The majority preferred private facilities over the government health facilities as the later were cited as derided. The study concluded the need for qualified female healthcare providers, especially for long term family planning services at health facilities instead of camps arranged occasionally. Addressing issues around access, affordability, availability, and sociocultural barriers about modern contraception as well as involving men will help to meet the needs and ensure that the women and couples fulfill their childbearing and reproductive health goals

Determinants of method switching among social franchise clients who discontinued the use of intrauterine contraceptive device

Introduction: Women who do not switch to alternatemethods after contraceptive discontinuation, for reasons other than the desire to get pregnant or not needing it, are at obvious risk for unplanned pregnancies or unwanted births. This paper examines the factors that influence women to switch from Intrauterine Contraceptive Device (IUCD) to other methods instead of terminating contraceptive usage altogether. Methods: The data used for this study comes from a larger cross-sectional survey conducted in nine (9) randomly selected districts of Sindh and Punjab provinces of Pakistan, during January 2011. Using Stata 11.2, we analyzed data on 333 women, who reported the removal of IUCDs due to reasons other than the desire to get pregnant. Results: We found that 39.9% of the women do not switch to another method of contraception within one month after IUCD discontinuation. Use of contraception before IUCD insertion increases the odds for method switching by 2.26 times after removal. Similarly, postremoval follow-up by community health worker doubles (OR = 2.0) the chances of method switching. Compared with women who received free IUCD service (via voucher scheme), the method switching is 2.01 times higher among women who had paid for IUCD insertion. Conclusion: To increase the likelihood of method switching among IUCD discontinuers this study emphasizes the need for postremoval client counseling, follow-up by healthcare provider, improved choices to a wider range of contraceptives for poor clients, and user satisfaction

Research on Efficient Data Forwarding in Vehicular Networks

[No abstract available]1