Karo Kari : the murder of honour in Sindh Pakistan : an ethnographic study

This paper aims to discuss the wider context, in which honour murders occur, the social structures which contribute to the occurrence and perpetuation of the practice of honour murders. An ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in Jacobabad Sindh, Pakistan. The study found that honour murders were not solely driven by customs and traditions, but also by a feudal culture, male-dominated social structures, the complicit role of state institutions and law enforcement agencies and a web of vested interests. Therefore, honour murders may be prevented by reducing the influence and interference of feudal lords on state institutions, in particular law enforcement agencies, and by promoting education that challenges a patriarchal and feudal mind-set in the community

Effects of growth factors and receptor blockade on gastrointestinal cancer

The advent of recombinant peptide technology offers the potential to use one or several peptides to treat a variety of gastrointestinal conditions. However, although cell culture and animal models have shown proof of concept, we are still at a relatively early stage in translating their use to standard clinical practice. Similarly, peptide and non-peptide antagonists of growth factor receptors show great potential as novel antichemotherapy agents. However, their actual place in clinical practice has yet to be established

A Socio Religious Analysis of Suicides and its Impact on Economic Development

The aim of this paper is to gaining deeper insight into the reasons and consequences of condemned suicidal act from the socio-religious point of view and its impact on the economic development of a society. The condemned act of suicide and problems relating to it, keeping in view the available facts and figures is analysed in view of social and religious beliefs in the known religions of the world. Suicide is a serious public social problem. It is one of the important problems. Different reports on the causes and consequences of suicide have presented an extremely grim picture. It has threatened the life itself. The people resorted to suicides in huge numbers since last decade. Accordingly, the problem of suicide and other related matters may be viewed in terms of the role performance failure of the social & religious systems concerned and the social entities in their environment. Analogously, the problem may be interpreted in terms of the mal-functions of relationships based role on the reciprocity of expectations amongst the interacting social systems.Suicidal, Economics, Socio-religious, Beliefs, Rituals, problems, Reasons, Consequences, Role-Performance, Interaction.

Discovering Big Data Modelling for Educational World

AbstractWith the advancement in internet technology all over the world, the demand for online education is growing. Many educational institutions are offering various types of online courses and e-content. The analytical models from data mining and computer science heuristics help in analysis and visualization of data, predicting student performance, generating recommendations for students as well as teachers, providing feedback to students, identifying related courses, e-content and books, detecting undesirable student behaviours, developing course contents and in planning various other educational activities. Today many educational institutions are using data analytics for improving the services they provide. The data access patterns about students, logged and collected from online educational learning systems could be explored to find informative relationships in the educational world. But a major concern is that the data are exploding, as numbers of students and courses are increasing day by day all over the world. The usage of Big Data platforms and parallel programming models like MapReduce may accelerate the analysis of exploding educational data and computational pattern finding capability. The paper focuses on trial of educational modelling based on Big Data techniques

Dietary intake and factors affecting vitamin D status of Middle Eastern people in the UK

Vitamin D is derived through the action of solar ultraviolet B radiation on skin and from a limited number of natural food sources, fortified foods and supplements. It is well known that vitamin D plays an active role for calcium and phosphorus absorption but there is also growing evidence of an association between vitamin D insufficiency and various chronic diseases. Middle Eastern populations are known to be at risk of vitamin D deficiency due to a diet low in vitamin D and low sunshine exposure. Obesity is also a risk factor since vitamin D is sequestered in body fat. This thesis examined dietary intake of vitamin D, obesity and other risk factors for deficiency in Middle Eastern people in the UK. A questionnaire based survey was undertaken with 242 Middle Eastern respondents. A total of 85% of the sample was estimated to have a vitamin D intake <5 µg/d. Other risk factors for vitamin D insufficiency included covering skin from sunlight (84% females); low use of supplements (18.5%) and being overweight or obese (49% males and 44% females). Vitamin D intake was lowest in those with primary (1.8 µg/d) and secondary school (2.1 µg/d) education compared to higher education (3.6 µg/d). The survey was followed by dietary assessment of 28 Iraqi adults using repeat 24 hour recalls. The results concurred with the survey: mean intake of vitamin D was (3.2±4.4 µg/d) and 78.5% were overweight or obese. Finally, overweight participants were recruited to observe the effect of fat loss on vitamin D status. Serum 25(OH)D concentrations was measured in Middle Eastern (n=12) and Caucasian adults (n=24). Firstly seasonal changes were observed between October and January (with no weight loss). Then participants were advised on weight reduction to observe the effect of fat loss on serum 25(OH)D. Vitamin D deficiency (<25 nmol/l) was observed in 67% of the Middle Eastern group in October increasing to 92% in January. Of the 36 participants, only 17 lost ≥1kg of fat mass between January and April. No difference was found in serum 25(OH)D between those that lost fat mass and those that did not, and no correlation was found between the amount of fat lost and change in 25(OH)D. In the total sample, there was a negative association between serum 25(OH)D and waist circumference and waist-hip ratio, but no correlation was found between 25(OH)D and fat mass, thus indicating a relationship with visceral fat stores rather than total fat mass.Ministry of the Higher Education and scientific research/Ira

The Vehicle Routing Problem with Divisible Deliveries and Pickups

The vehicle routing problem with divisible deliveries and pickups is a new and interesting model within reverse logistics. Each customer may have a pickup and delivery demand that have to be served with capacitated vehicles. The pickup and the delivery quantities may be served, if beneficial, in two separate visits. The model is placed in the context of other delivery and pickup problems and formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming problem. In this paper, we study the savings that can be achieved by allowing the pickup and delivery quantities to be served separately with respect to the case where the quantities have to be served simultaneously. Both exact and heuristic results are analysed in depth for a better understanding of the problem structure and an average estimation of the savings due to the possibility of serving pickup and delivery quantities separately