Analysis of Hand Segmentation in the Wild

A large number of works in egocentric vision have concentrated on action and object recognition. Detection and segmentation of hands in first-person videos, however, has less been explored. For many applications in this domain, it is necessary to accurately segment not only hands of the camera wearer but also the hands of others with whom he is interacting. Here, we take an in-depth look at the hand segmentation problem. In the quest for robust hand segmentation methods, we evaluated the performance of the state of the art semantic segmentation methods, off the shelf and fine-tuned, on existing datasets. We fine-tune RefineNet, a leading semantic segmentation method, for hand segmentation and find that it does much better than the best contenders. Existing hand segmentation datasets are collected in the laboratory settings. To overcome this limitation, we contribute by collecting two new datasets: a) EgoYouTubeHands including egocentric videos containing hands in the wild, and b) HandOverFace to analyze the performance of our models in presence of similar appearance occlusions. We further explore whether conditional random fields can help refine generated hand segmentations. To demonstrate the benefit of accurate hand maps, we train a CNN for hand-based activity recognition and achieve higher accuracy when a CNN was trained using hand maps produced by the fine-tuned RefineNet. Finally, we annotate a subset of the EgoHands dataset for fine-grained action recognition and show that an accuracy of 58.6% can be achieved by just looking at a single hand pose which is much better than the chance level (12.5%).Comment: Accepted at CVPR 201

The MyHealthRecord System in General Practices: Steps Towards Adoption Sustainability

Digital health systems such as MyHealthRecord (MyHR) are aimed at enabling the accessibility of health records whenever and wherever, assisting users in making more informed decisions about patient care. This research explored MyHR adoption (Victoria) and user views/experiences in general practice organisations (GPO). Although adoption of MyHR in GPO was encouraged in July 2016, system use was limited, adapting ad hoc procedures mostly to satisfy funding criteria. This paper brings recommendations for GPO and policy makers, referring to lessons from GP computerisation. The adoption triangle theory was contextualised, encapsulating three main themes: (1) To understand and identify ‘needs’ of GPOs/patients, promoting cultural shift among GPOs and the community; (2) ‘Enhance support’ to address these needs, including three themes related to users and GPO engagements, and a formal change-management approach; (3) ‘Review incentive’ to increase system education and interaction, hence increasing the likelihood of adoption sustainability

Sharing the Pain between Workers and Management: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic and 9/11 Attacks

We examine the rhetoric in ESG literature that managers “share the pain” of employees who are laid off or whose benefits are cut by committing to reduce CEO pay or by enacting other positive worker friendly actions during the Covid crisis. Using the exogenous shock of the COVID pandemic and a unique database, we examine more than 4,062 positive and negative actions targeted at workers taken by the S&P 1500 firms in 2020 in response to the pandemic. Our findings indicate that economic considerations such as exposure to the pandemic and poor stock performance prior to the pandemic are the primary determinants of management’s decision to share the pain of employees. Stakeholder concerns, proxied by higher employee-related corporate social responsibility scores, lower pay disparity between the CEO and the median employee, or a signatory to the Business Roundtable Statement, are not associated with managers’ sharing of the pain. Evidence of such pain sharing from another unexpected crisis from the past –the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks – is remarkably similar. Sharing the pain is not associated with future stock returns performance. Finally, we show that the median CEO’s wealth increased nearly 18-fold relative to the CEO pay cut for firms that enforced CEO pay cuts and laid off employees during the Covid crisis. The paper adds to growing evidence that U.S. firms do not appear to “walk the talk” of concerns for stakeholders

The Role of Management in Increasing Students’ Satisfaction: Investigating Culture, Price and Reputation of Universities of Pakistan

Title: this research paper investigates the role of university management in increasing students’ satisfaction by checking the role of culture, price and reputation of universities of Pakistan. Management qualities of a university plays an important role in the development of students’ satisfaction, and directly or indirectly influences their satisfaction level. It is argued that university management should focus on culture development and lowering down tution price to increase satisfaction level and reputation of the university. This study made use of 5-point Likert scale questionnaire to find out the management quality factors. A total of 150 students from different universities were investigated through this questionnaire. SPSS 21 software was used for the investigation through regression and correlation analysis. Convenience sampling method was used, due to lack of time and resources for approaching the respondents. Only the university respondents were inquired to find out their satisfaction level. The results obtained were segmented into six hypothesis. Five hypothesis were accepted. It was found that students were not satisfied with management quality and culture of their universities. While correlation between management quality and students’ satisfaction was found positive. The students are not happy with service timing and its quality provided by the university management. The relationship between university reputation and management quality through correlation was found to be negative. Tution fee of the investigated universities is very high, which is also a reason students’ do not like service quality even after paying high fees

Comparing various chelation therapies in thalassemia patients

Objective: To compare various chelationtherapies used for thalassemia on basis of efficacy.Materials and Methods: The study included 80 patients of thalassemia which were divided in two groups, each comprising of 40 patients. Group 1 was administered orally with deferiprone, whereas, group 2 was injected with deferoxamine.Results: The patients had an average age of of 20.3 ± 4.3 years. Out of 80 patients, 54 (67.5%) were male and 26 (32.5%) were females. The average ferritin was found to be 2645 ± 1260 for all patients, whereas it was 2545 ± 1232 for group 1 and 2822 ± 1235 for group 2. No significant difference was observed for ferritin level in both the groups (p value=0.232). The complications noted for patients included 18.2% IGT, 7.8% DM and 28.7% hypothyroidism for all thalassemia patients.Conclusion: Both therapies showed equal efficiency in control of iron load in thalassemia patients.Key Words: Beta-thalassemia, iron chelators, Deferiprone, Deferoxamin

FACTORS INFLUENCING DESTINATION IMAGE THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE PRE-PURCHASE PERIOD OF TOURISM IN PAKISTAN

Due to the technological advancements, people start depending on social media for various matters. As social media provides a tool for developing an image of the destination, it became an essential component in the process of decision-making regarding traveling. This study aims to investigate the influence of user-generated content (UGC), Information Quality (IQ) and Tourist’s Motivation (TM) on destination image through social media in the pre-trip period of tourism in Pakistan. The empirical analysis was conducted by using the survey method through online Google forms. Data was collected from social media (Facebook) users who were the members of the Facebook tourism groups in Pakistan. The findings of the study revealed that UGC does not significantly affect the destination image in the pre-purchase period. Whereas, information quality and tourist’s motivation significantly affect the destination image of Pakistani tourists. The research concludes that tourist’s motivation before experiencing tourism and the information they have exposed to plays a significant role in developing a destination image in the tourism market. Furthermore, this research contributes to the tourism sector of Pakistan by providing information regarding factors developing destination image. This information may help in developing a positive image of the destinations in Pakistan. Also, this study contributes by providing the tourism sector an understanding of the tourist’s behaviors in the pre-purchase period of traveling in Pakistan

FACTORS INFLUENCING DESTINATION IMAGE THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE PRE-PURCHASE PERIOD OF TOURISM IN PAKISTAN

Due to the technological advancements, people start depending on social media for various matters. As social media provides a tool for developing an image of the destination, it became an essential component in the process of decision-making regarding traveling. This study aims to investigate the influence of user-generated content (UGC), Information Quality (IQ) and Tourist’s Motivation (TM) on destination image through social media in the pre-trip period of tourism in Pakistan. The empirical analysis was conducted by using the survey method through online Google forms. Data was collected from social media (Facebook) users who were the members of the Facebook tourism groups in Pakistan. The findings of the study revealed that UGC does not significantly affect the destination image in the pre-purchase period. Whereas, information quality and tourist’s motivation significantly affect the destination image of Pakistani tourists. The research concludes that tourist’s motivation before experiencing tourism and the information they have exposed to plays a significant role in developing a destination image in the tourism market. Furthermore, this research contributes to the tourism sector of Pakistan by providing information regarding factors developing destination image. This information may help in developing a positive image of the destinations in Pakistan. Also, this study contributes by providing the tourism sector an understanding of the tourist’s behaviors in the pre-purchase period of traveling in Pakistan

Impact of COVID Pandemic on the Mental Well-Being of Orthopaedic Patients – A Single Centre Study

Objectives: To assess the frequency of psychiatric diseases in orthopaedic patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.   Material and methods: This study was conducted from 20th April 2020 to 20th September 2020 at the Department of Orthopaedics, Benazir Bhutto Hospital, Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Patients aged 18 years and above and belonging to either gender with Orthopaedic injuries were included. Gender, age, injury mechanism, associated trauma, site of fracture, use of tobacco and mental health disorder was recorded. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 23.   Results: The study included 210 patients with Orthopaedic injuries. Mean age of patients in the study was 40.45±12.54 years. Falls were the most common mechanism of injury (50.4%) followed by motorcycle accidents (22.8%) and motor vehicle accidents (16.7%). 70.47% patients with Orthopaedic injuries were diagnosed with a mental health problem. There were notably higher rates of depression (33.1%) and anxiety (24.3%).   Conclusion: There was a high frequency of psychiatric illnesses in Orthopaedic patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.   Keywords: COVID-19, mental well-being, orthopaedic injuries, psychiatric illness

A Simple Assay to Screen Antimicrobial Compounds Potentiating the Activity of Current Antibiotics

Antibiotic resistance continues to pose a significant problem in the management of bacterial infections, despite advances in antimicrobial chemotherapy and supportive care. Here, we suggest a simple, inexpensive, and easy-to-perform assay to screen antimicrobial compounds from natural products or synthetic chemical libraries for their potential to work in tandem with the available antibiotics against multiple drug-resistant bacteria. The aqueous extract of Juglans regia tree bark was tested against representative multiple drug-resistant bacteria in the aforementioned assay to determine whether it potentiates the activity of selected antibiotics. The aqueous extract of J. regia bark was added to Mueller-Hinton agar, followed by a lawn of multiple drug-resistant bacteria, Salmonella typhi or enteropathogenic E. coli. Next, filter paper discs impregnated with different classes of antibiotics were placed on the agar surface. Bacteria incubated with extract or antibiotics alone were used as controls. The results showed a significant increase (\u3e30%) in the zone of inhibition around the aztreonam, cefuroxime, and ampicillin discs compared with bacteria incubated with the antibiotics/extract alone. In conclusion, our assay is able to detect either synergistic or additive action of J. regia extract against multiple drug-resistant bacteria when tested with a range of antibiotic