Environmental sustainability targets: the role of green investment, ICT development, and economic growth

Current research investigates the role of green investment, information, and communication technology development growth in the Chinese economy’s carbon emissions from 1985-2015. This study has applied the quantile autoregressive distributed lagged (QARDL) approach and the Granger-causality in the quantiles to examine the causal linkage between the variables of interest. The findings through QARDL estimation confirm that there is an existence of significant reversion to the long-run equilibrium association between the explanatory variables and CO2. More specifically, the outcomes under long-run estimation confirm that GIN and ICT development plays a significant role in combating the issues like higher CO2 in China. At the same time, more economic growth leads to the destruction of the natural environment with higher carbon emissions. However, the square of economic growth shows some fruitful results towards fighting environmental pollution but not in all the quantiles of the study. Besides, the Granger-causality outcomes confirm the presence of a bi-directional association between green investment, ICT development, economic growth, and its square value. Based on the study findings, some policy implications are also provided. Besides, various limitations are also linked with this study. Firstly, the current study only examines the trends in CO2 emission from the context of China, whereas other regional economies are entirely neglected. Secondly, the factors like governmental influence in controlling carbon emission, environmental regulations, and governance mechanisms are entirely neglected in this research. Thirdly, the robust checking of the empirical findings is also missing in this study. Fourthly, economic uncertainty would also contribute to environmental pollution like CO2. Therefore, it is suggested that future studies should focus on these limitations to provide some meaningful suggestions and literature contributions

Psychometric Evaluation of Dietary Habits Questionnaire for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

This research evaluated the psychometric properties of English version of dietary habits questionnaires developed for type 2 diabetic patients. There is scarcity of literature about availability of standardized questionnaires for assessing dietary habits of type 2 diabetics in Saudi Arabia. As dietary habits vary from country to country, therefore, this was an attempt to develop questionnaires that can serve as a baseline. Through intensive literature review, four questionnaires were developed / modified and subsequently tested for psychometric properties. Prior to pilot study, a pre-test was conducted to evaluate the face validity and content validity. The pilot study was conducted from 23 October – 22 November, 2016 to evaluate the questionnaires’ reliability and validity. Systematic random sampling technique was used to collect the data from 132 patients by direct investigation method. Questionnaires assessing diabetes mellitus knowledge (0.891), dietary knowledge (0.869), dietary attitude (0.841) and dietary practices (0.874) had good internal consistency reliability. Factor analysis conducted on dietary attitude questionnaire showed a valid 5 factor solution. Directions of loadings were positive and free from factorial complexity. Relying on the data obtained from type 2 diabetics, these questionnaires can be considered as reliable and valid for the assessment of dietary habits in Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Gulf countries population

Effect of Diet on Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Review

Globally, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is considered as one of the most common diseases. The etiology of T2DM is complex and is associated with irreversible risk factors such as age, genetic, race, and ethnicity and reversible factors such as diet, physical activity and smoking. The objectives of this review are to examine various studies to explore relationship of T2DM with different dietary habits/patterns and practices and its complications. Dietary habits and sedentary lifestyle are the major factors for rapidly rising incidence of DM among developing countries. In type 2 diabetics, recently, elevated HbA1c level has also been considered as one of the leading risk factors for developing microvascular and macrovascular complications. Improvement in the elevated HbA1c level can be achieved through diet management; thus, the patients could be prevented from developing the diabetes complications. Awareness about diabetes complications and consequent improvement in dietary knowledge, attitude, and practices lead to better control of the disease. The stakeholders (health-care providers, health facilities, agencies involved in diabetes care, etc.) should encourage patients to understand the importance of diet which may help in disease management, appropriate self-care and better quality of life

Cyber Warfare as an Instrument of Hybrid Warfare: A Case Study of Pakistan

This research paper analyses the employment of cyber warfare as a tool of hybrid warfare by focusing on the case study of Pakistan. The changing domains of war in hybrid regimes complemented by the ambiguity of cyber warfare, becomes a real destructive instrument of power. Pakistan is a developing country and the cyber space of Pakistan has numerous vulnerabilities which are exploited by our adversaries time and again. Cyber space is closely linked with hybrid warfare and it is employed by both state and non-state actors as an effective instrument of hybrid warfare. The paper begins by the challenging task of defining and briefly analysing the terms such as cyberspace, cyber warfare and hybrid warfare. The research argues how cyber warfare is being linked with hybrid warfare in contemporary times. Subsequently, it attempts to analyse the existing cyberspace of Pakistan to identify its cyber vulnerabilities and how those vulnerabilities have been exploited to undermine the national security of Pakistan through cyber warfare in a hybrid domain. Additionally, the paper highlights the major findings to underpin the requirements of guarding cyber space and concludes by underpinning the need to protect the cyber space from exploitations by multiple actors.&nbsp

A novel binary chaotic genetic algorithm for feature selection and its utility in affective computing and healthcare

© 2020, Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature. Genetic algorithm (GA) is a nature-inspired algorithm to produce best possible solution by selecting the fittest individual from a pool of possible solutions. Like most of the optimization techniques, the GA can also stuck in the local optima, producing a suboptimal solution. This work presents a novel metaheuristic optimizer named as the binary chaotic genetic algorithm (BCGA) to improve the GA performance. The chaotic maps are applied to the initial population, and the reproduction operations follow. To demonstrate its utility, the proposed BCGA is applied to a feature selection task from an affective database, namely AMIGOS (A Dataset for Affect, Personality and Mood Research on Individuals and Groups) and two healthcare datasets having large feature space. Performance of the BCGA is compared with the traditional GA and two state-of-the-art feature selection methods. The comparison is made based on classification accuracy and the number of selected features. Experimental results suggest promising capability of BCGA to find the optimal subset of features that achieves better fitness values. The obtained results also suggest that the chaotic maps, especially sinusoidal chaotic map, perform better as compared to other maps in enhancing the performance of raw GA. The proposed approach obtains, on average, a fitness value twice as better than the one achieved through the raw GA in the identification of the seven classes of emotions

Computerized Tomographic Based Study of Thoracic Spine Morphology in Relevance to Pedicle Screw Fixation in Pakistani Population

Objective: To study the thoracic spine anatomy for accurate placement of pedicle screws using computerized tomography. Material and Methods: CT scans of 200 patients were included in our study. T1 to T12 vertebrae morphology was studied for each patient. Following measurements were taken, 1: Transverse pedicle width, 2 = Depth of anterior cortex along pedicle axis, 3 = Transverse pedicle angle, 4 = canal dimensions, 5 = vertebral body height anterior and posterior, 6 = mid vertebral body width. Results:  Transverse pedicle width decreased from T1 (4.06 ± 0.50 mm) to T4 (3.72 ± 0.17 mm) and then gradually increases to T12 (6.08 ± 0.60 mm). Depth of the anterior vertebral cortex remained constant from T1 to T4 and gradually increases up to T12. Transverse pedicle angle remained constant from T1 to T4 with a maximum at T4 (23.39 ± 3.15 mm) and then gradually decreased to T12 (3.99 ± 2.16 mm). Anteroposterior (AP) canal dimensions were minimum at T7 (17.03 ± 1.01 mm) and maximum at T2 (21.2 ± 1.07 mm). Interpedicular (IPD) canal dimensions were minimum at T6 (19.18 ± 1.6 mm) and maximum at T3 (23.18 ± 1.2 mm). Anterior vertebral body height was minimum at T1 (16.9 ± 1.34 mm) and maximum at T12 (27.14 ± 1.34mm). Posterior vertebral body height was minimum at T1 (18.8 ± 1.13 mm) and maximum at T12 (29.76 ± 1.43 mm). Conclusion:  A detailed anatomy of the thoracic spine is essential for surgical planning to decrease postoperative complications

Efficacy of Balloon Kyphoplasty in Compression Fractures of the Thoracolumbar Spine

Objective:  To study the Efficacy of Balloon Kyphoplasty in compression fractures of the thoracolumbar spine. Material and Methods:  This study was conducted on 95 patients with thoracolumbar wedge fractures from 2017 to 2022. Complete neurological examination and CT and MRI scans of the spine of all patients were done. All patients have been treated with a balloon kyphoplasty procedure. Data was collected on VAS score, SF-36 score, kyphotic angle and percentage of vertebral body destruction both preoperatively and post-operatively. Statistical analysis was done by using paired sample t-test. Results:  The mean age was 57 years. Males were 58.9% and females 41.0%. Osteoporosis was the cause of fracture in 90.5% and trauma in 9.4% of patients. VAS improved from 7.42 ± 1.24 to post-procedure 3.24 ± 1.51, P < 0.0001. SF-36 improved from 35.31 ± 17.4 to post-procedure 49.23 ± 19.2, P < 0.0001. Kyphosis angle restoration from 18.42 ± 7.41 to post-procedure 10.61 ± 6.32, P value < 0.0001. Percentage loss of vertebral height from 32.91% to postoperatively 17.64% (SD-17.2 and P < 0.0001). 10.5% of patients developed cement leakage and there is no leakage in 89.4%. The adjacent level fracture occurred in 4 patients. Conclusion:  Balloon Kyphoplasty is an effective procedure for thoracolumbar wedge fractures. It improves pain, activities of daily living, kyphosis angle improvement, and restoration of vertebral height

Agronomic biofortification of fodder sorghum with zinc under different levels of nitrogen

Zinc (Zn) deficient soil prevails throughout the world and it has become the bottleneck in achieving production potential and quality of crops. The negligible use of micronutrients along with irregular use of macronutrients is practised for fodder production in Pakistan. Varying levels of zinc (0, 5, 10 and 15 kg ha-1) and nitrogen (0, 60, 120 and 180 kg ha-1) were evaluated for their effect on yield, quality and zinc uptake on fodder sorghum (variety Hegari) in a field experiment for two consecutive years (2014 and 2015). Data were analysed by using Fishers’ analysis of variance (at p<0.05) and response surface methodology (RSM). Correlation between different parameters was also studied. Application of zinc and nitrogen improved the plant height, leaf area plant-1, green fodder yield, dry matter yield, crude protein percentage and zinc content of plant but decreased the neutral detergent fiber, acid detergent fiber and ash percentage. Values for different parameters recorded at second and third levels of zinc and nitrogen were remained at par with each other. Application of 10 kg ha-1 zinc and 120 kg ha-1 nitrogen showed an average increase of 7.3 and 18.6% in green fodder yield while 12.1 and 15.8% in dry matter yield, respectively. Similarly 6.1 and 7.5% increase in crude protein was noted over control. Correlation between NDF and ADF was negative with rest of the studied parameters. In conclusion, Zn2 and N2 gave the best results in term of yield and quality of fodder sorghum

Depression and anxiety in glaucoma patients using mono drug therapy vs polydrug therapy

Objective: To evaluate the frequency of depression, anxiety, and stress scores among glaucoma patients and assess factors attributing to severe scores. Methodology: This Analytical, Cross-sectional study was conducted at the Armed Forces Institute of Ophthalmology from June 2020 to July 2021. Data was collected through nonprobability consecutive sampling. Individuals with diagnosed primary open-angle glaucoma were selected irrespective of age and gender. Dass-21 (self-assessment scale) was used in Urdu to document patient scores for anxiety, depression, and stress. Results: The frequency of males (n=204, 54%) and females (n=173, 45.8%) in the two groups was almost the same (p=0.164). The mean age in the mono-drug group (mean= 48.81±10.58 years) was slightly lower than the polydrug group (mean=53.67±11.16years) (p=0.000018). Overall depression score of the sample fell in the severe category (score=21-27), with individuals showing more depression scores in the poly group (n=99, 26%) than in the mono drug group (n=76, 20%) (p=0.000002). Individuals on polydrug therapy showed severe scores for depression, anxiety, and stress. Conclusion: Among the glaucoma patient, those on polydrug therapy have higher incidences of anxiety among young patients and depression among older patients. This not only causes poor compliance to treatment but also increases the risk of progression of glaucoma hence augmenting the crippling effects of the disease. Keywords: Depression, anxiety, DASS-21, Glaucom