Poor Performance of Health and Population Welfare Programmes in Sindh: Case Studies in Governance Failure

Over the past few years, the issue of what is meant by “good governance” has generated increasing attention and debate both at the national and international level [Streeten (1997)]. The role of state and how that role is to be exercised is appearing high on the agenda of politicians, policy-makers and academicians in the developing world. Governance has been defined by the World Bank as “the manner in which power is exercised in the management of the country’s economic and social resources” [World Bank (1994)]. The somewhat narrow scope of this definition has been broadened in recent years to “the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs” [Commission on Global Governance (995)] The Human Development Report [UNDP (1999)] goes beyond these definitions and gives a much more radical notion of good governance, underpinning the importance of peoples’ participation in shaping their own governance and development. This type of governance has been labeled as “humane governance”. A review of existing literature thus shows that governance has been interpreted to have different elements such as management of economic and social resources for development, formulation and implementation of policies, discharging of functions, accommodation of diverse interests towards cooperative action and above all, accountability to people and ownership by the people of the governance process. In view of the above, one may ask what constitutes good governance for the health sector? Management of resources pertains to the concept of efficiency, a term appearing with increasing frequency in global literature on health care reforms; policy formulation and discharging of functions allude to the objective of effectiveness which itself has a wide scope encompassing relevance, quality and availability of health care; while “humane governance” brings in the notion of community participation and accountability with regards to decision-making and delivery of health care.

Issues in Pakistan's Health Sector

The health sector in Pakistan is riddled with numerous problems, constraints and contradictions. There is the problem of a lack of health facilities in rural areas, of unemployed doctors despite the acute shortage of trained medical personnel in the country, of 'brain drain' of medical graduates, of the inability of medical graduates to work in simple rural settings and their dependence on “sophisticated” technology of pharmaceutical companies enriching themselves at the expense of the common man, and of a lack of potable water and adequate sewerage in slums and rural areas. The list can be expanded but the stark fact is that most of the people have little or no access to adequate health facilities and are faced with a high incidence of disease

Contested identities and the Muslim Qaum in northern India : c. 1860-1900

Using primarily published sources in Urdu from the second-half of the nineteenth century, my thesis presents evidence with regard to north Indian Muslims, which questions the idea of a homogenous, centralising, entity, at times called the Muslim community, qaum, ummah or nation. Using a large number of second-tier publicists' writings in Urdu, the thesis argues that the self-perceptions and representations of many Muslims, were far more local, parochial, disparate, multiple, and highly contested. The idea of a homogenous, levelling, sense of collective identity, or an imagined community, seem wanting in this period. This line of evidence and argumentation, also has important implications for locating the moment of separatism and identity formation amongst north Indian Muslims, and argues that this happened much later than has previously been imagined. Based on this, the thesis also argues against an anachronistic or teleological strain of historiography with regard to north Indian Muslims of this period. The main medium through which these arguments are debated, is through the Urdu print world, where a large number of new sources have been presented which underscore this difference, more than this uniformity. Whether it was in religious debates, debates around the attempt to unify - as part of a qaum - or around the reasons for Muslims to be at a point of zillat - utter humiliation - the literature points to multiple and diverse interpretations, causes and solutions. Moreover, the question of who a Muslim was', was always bitterly contested by those who claimed to be Muslims themselves. The thesis also examines the forum of the munäzara, and how pre-print forms of public engagement helped in emphasising individual identity, authority and reputation. The interplay between oral representation and the subsequent written accounts after the event, also raise questions about the fixity of print'. and about sources for historians. Using this new print material, the thesis engages broadly, with notions related to the imagined community and the public sphere, arguing that in a colonial context, much of the theory based on the European experience, needs to be rethought, for the nature and development of the public sphere/s and of the formation of communities, may have been somewhat different in this context

Revisiting νμ(νˉμ)\nu_\mu(\bar\nu_\mu) and νe(νˉe)\nu_e(\bar\nu_e) Induced Quasielastic Scattering from Nuclei in Sub-GeV Energy Region

We present the results of charged current quasielastic(CCQE) scattering cross sections from free as well as bound nucleons like in $^{12}C$, $^{16}O$, $^{40}Ar$ and $^{208}Pb$ nuclear targets in $E_\nu(_{\bar\nu})~\le~$1 GeV energy region. The results are obtained using local Fermi gas model with and without RPA effect. The differences those may arise in the electron and muon production cross sections due to the different lepton mass, uncertainties in the axial dipole mass $M_A$ and pseudoscalar form factor, and due to the inclusion of second class currents have been highlighted for neutrino/antineutrino induced processes.Comment: Published in Journal of the Physical Society of Japan (NuInt-2015

Complexes of Some Group(IV) Metal Halides with 5-Aminoindazole

The synthesis and characterisation of Sn(IV) halides, Ge(IV), Ti(IV) and Zr(IV) chloride complexes of the type MX4 : Li_ 2 with 5-aminoindazole has been made. The possible structure of these complexes has been proposed on the basis of elemental analysis and infrared spectroscopy. The IR spectra suggest unidentate behaviour of the ligand involving pyrrole nitrogen in all the cases except the tin(IV) bromide complex, where the ligand exhibits its bidentate nature, involving the pyridyl nitrogen. An octahedral geometry has been proposed for all the complexes. In the case of MX4 :\u27L type complexes, except for SnBr4 : L, an octahedral halogen bridged structure has been proposed

Complexes of Some Group(IV) Metal Halides with 5-Aminoindazole

The synthesis and characterisation of Sn(IV) halides, Ge(IV), Ti(IV) and Zr(IV) chloride complexes of the type MX4 : Li_ 2 with 5-aminoindazole has been made. The possible structure of these complexes has been proposed on the basis of elemental analysis and infrared spectroscopy. The IR spectra suggest unidentate behaviour of the ligand involving pyrrole nitrogen in all the cases except the tin(IV) bromide complex, where the ligand exhibits its bidentate nature, involving the pyridyl nitrogen. An octahedral geometry has been proposed for all the complexes. In the case of MX4 :\u27L type complexes, except for SnBr4 : L, an octahedral halogen bridged structure has been proposed

INVESTIGATION OF CCN1 ROLE(S) IN MANTLE CELL LYMPHOMA (MCL)

Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL) is a comparatively rare non-Hodgkin`s lymphoma which is characterised by the overexpression of cyclin D1. Many patients present with or progress to advanced stage disease within three years. Disease progression involves down regulation of cyclin D1. Moreover, MCL is broadly considered as an incurable disease with median survival of patients being 3-4 years. CCN1, a matricellular protein involved in stem cell signalling within the haematopoietic microenvironment is highly expressed in early stage MCL cells and down-regulated in advanced stage disease. We have used the human MCL cell lines REC1<G519<JVM2 as a model for disease aggression. We have investigated the role(s) of CCN1, cyclin D1 and cyclin dependent kinase inhibitors in MCL progression. CCN1 dysregulation is identified in MCL progression whereby the magnitude of CCN1 expression in human MCL cells is REC1˃G519˃JVM2 cells by RQ-PCR, depicting a decrease in CCN1 expression with disease progression. Further investigation of CCN1 protein expression by western blotting showed that whilst expression of full–length CCN1 (42kDa) barely altered through the cell lines, expression of the truncated form (20kDa) was high in REC1 cells (OD:1.0) reduced in G519 cells (OD:0.5) and barely detected in JVM2 cells depicting decreased with disease progression. We have then demonstrated that cyclin D1 and cyclin dependent kinase inhibitors (p21CIP1and p27KIP1) are also involved in disease progression using the above MCL cell line model. Cyclin D1 was highly expressed in REC1 cells (OD: 1.0), reduced to one fifth in G519 cells (OD: 0.2) and not detected by western blotting in JVM2 cells. p27KIP1 followed a similar profile of expression as cyclin D1. Conversely, p21CIP1 was absent in the REC1 cells and showed increasing expression in G519 and JVM2 cells. Subcellular localization detected p21CIP1/ p27KIP1 primarily within the cytoplasm and absent from the nucleus, consistent with altered roles in treatment resistance. Mitochondrial detection of p21 in the JVM2 cell line supports an additional anti-apoptotic role. CCN1 likely plays a key role in B cell development; dysregulation of CCN1 may support MCL progression with p21CIP1 and p27kIP1 forming molecular signatures associated with progressive disease. REC1 cells and JVM2 cells were genetically modified using lentivirus to identify the potential pathways associated with CCN1. CCN1 knockdown was performed in REC1 cells (REC1 KD) and CCN1 overexpression in JVM2 cells (CCN1 OE). Proteomics analysis of JVM2 OE and REC1 KD revealed interesting results showing regulation of 44 proteins. 19 proteins regulated by CCN1 that simultaneously downregulated in the CCN1 KD model and up-regulated in CCN1 OE model. 25 proteins modulated by CCN1 that simultaneously up-regulated in CCN1 KD model and down-regulated in CCN1 OE model. Our results suggest novel roles for CCN1. Whilst CCN1 roles are substantial in solid tumour research, CCN1 role(s) within the haematopoietic compartment are less well defined or investigated. CCN1 may have potential role(s) as a novel pro-inflammation regulator by modulating macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) and within regulation of haematopoiesis via pre-B cell colony enhancing factor (PBEF1). CCN1 was shown to modulate calcium ion signalling by targeting intracellular calcium receptor protein Calmodulin 3 (CALM 3). CCN1 altered Apolipoprotein M (ApoM) and Talin 1 (TLN1) expression and could potentiate new targets to supplement treatment for MCL. However, these novel pathways would need further investigation to identify the role(s) of CCN1 in B cell development and within the bone marrow microenvironment where regulation of haematopoiesis ensues.Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Researc

Nucleon and nuclear structure functions with non-perturbative and higher order perturbative QCD effects

We have studied the nucleon structure functions $F_{iN}^{EM} (x,Q^2);~i=1,2$, by including contributions due to the higher order perturbative QCD effect up to NNLO and the non-perturbative effects due to the kinematical and dynamical higher twist (HT) effects. The numerical results for $F_{iN}^{EM}(x,Q^2)$ are obtained using Martin, Motylinski, Harland-Lang, Thorne (MMHT) 2014 NLO and NNLO nucleon parton distribution functions (PDFs). The dynamical HT correction has been included following the renormalon approach as well as the phenomenological approach and the kinematical HT effect is incorporated using the works of Schienbein et al. These nucleon structure functions have been used as an input to calculate the nuclear structure functions $F_{iA}^{EM} (x,Q^2)$. In a nucleus, the nuclear corrections arise because of the Fermi motion, binding energy, nucleon correlations, mesonic contribution, shadowing and antishadowing effects. These nuclear corrections are taken into account in the numerical calculations to obtain the nuclear structure functions $F_{iA}^{EM} (x,Q^2)$, for the various nuclear targets like $^{12}C$, $^{27}Al$, $^{56}Fe$, $^{64}Cu$, $^{118}Sn$, $^{197}Au$ and $^{208}Pb$ which are of experimental interest. The effect of isoscalarity correction for nonisoscalar nuclear targets has also been studied. The results for the $F_{iA}^{EM} (x,Q^2)$ are compared with nCTEQ nuclear PDFs parameterization as well as with the experimental results from JLab, SLAC and NMC in the kinematic region of $0.1 \le x \le 0.8$ for several nuclei.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1705.0990