Polygamy: Chaos in Relationships of Children

Polygyny occurs when a man is married to multiple partners at one time. It is an act that alters the family structure and has been known to affect the lived experiences of all family members involved. The purpose of the study was to explore the immediate and long-term and lasting effects of polygyny on the interpersonal and social relationships of children from polygamous families. A sample of six participants between the age range of 24 and 30 years, was recruited (3 men and 3 women). The impact of polygyny on the social and interpersonal relations of the participants was explored using semi-structured interviews. The data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The participants described the immediate and long-term effect that polygamy had on their relations with their immediate family, step-family and romantic and social relations. The results of the study indicated that the experience of polygamous households were underlined with negative experiences such as disintegration of the family unit, a sense of deprivation and social, economic and educational constraints. These factors in turn affected the participants’ relationships with their immediate and step families, and marital relationships. It was concluded that polygamy has an adverse impact of the interpersonal relations of individuals and lead to discord and maladjustment in their social and romantic lives

Perspective and Prospects of Commencing New Education Policy (NEP) of Pakistan: A Review of Conference.

This article focuses on four important factors: Assessment, Curriculum and Text Books’ Policy, Teachers for quality education and Education and management, as formulated by Education and Literacy Department of Sindh Government. Open poll discussions and views given by educationists and experts were taken. All the views have been summarized for consideration by all concerned. Chief Minister Sindh, Arbab Ghulam Rahim, Javed Hussain, Education Minister, Hamida Khoro and Education Secretary to Government of Sindh, Ghulam Ali Pasha also shared their opinions on the new Education Policy and Government’s intention to ensure quality education in Sindh Province. The purpose of this article is to review and summarize the views presented in the Education Conference and reach fruitful conclusions. The implications are also made keeping in mind the targets of New Millennium Development Goals (NMDGs).Assessment, Curriculum and Text Book Policy, Education and Management, Literacy

Spectral Smoothing Unveils Phase Transitions in Hierarchical Variational Autoencoders

Variational autoencoders with deep hierarchies of stochastic layers have been known to suffer from the problem of posterior collapse, where the top layers fall back to the prior and become independent of input. We suggest that the hierarchical VAE objective explicitly includes the variance of the function parameterizing the mean and variance of the latent Gaussian distribution which itself is often a high variance function. Building on this we generalize VAE neural networks by incorporating a smoothing parameter motivated by Gaussian analysis to reduce higher frequency components and consequently the variance in parameterizing functions and show that this can help to solve the problem of posterior collapse. We further show that under such smoothing the VAE loss exhibits a phase transition, where the top layer KL divergence sharply drops to zero at a critical value of the smoothing parameter that is similar for the same model across datasets. We validate the phenomenon across model configurations and datasets

Family Types, Authority Structure and Women Workers in Sindh Labor Force: Problems and Prospects

The development of a society is virtually dependent upon the quality of human resources both male and female, the changing pattern of economic and social development of world societies irrespective of their level of development, necessitates and equal advancement of both the social segments. The numerical reality that women constitute about nearly half of the total population of Sindh ideally assigns to them equal participating role in the economic life of the province. However, like other developing countries, women’s role in Sindh as an active worker-producer of goods and services has not been duly recognized by this male dominated society. With the objective of ensuring increased participation of women, clear-cut guidelines about integrating women in the development process and defining their roles are still lacking in Sindh. The present study is a step in the direction of bridging the gap of information about female labor force participation of Sindh in different, activity rates, industry group, occupation group and employment status in 1981 and 1998 population census. The most important conclusion that emerges from this study is that though percentage of women labor force in different, activities, industry group, occupation group and employment status has mostly increased in 1998 as compared to 1981, but being nearly half of the population this increase is still very low.Family, Authority, Problems, Female, Labor Force, Sindh

Low Bias Low Variance Gradient Estimates for Boolean Stochastic Networks

Stochastic neural networks with discrete random variables are an important class of models for their expressiveness and interpretability. Since direct differentiation and backpropagation is not possible, Monte Carlo gradient estimation techniques are a popular alternative. Efficient stochastic gradient estimators, such Straight-Through and Gumbel-Softmax, work well for shallow stochastic models. Their performance, however, suffers with hierarchical, more complex models. We focus on stochastic networks with Boolean latent variables. To analyze such networks, we introduce the framework of harmonic analysis for Boolean functions to derive an analytic formulation for the bias and variance in the Straight-Through estimator. Exploiting these formulations, we propose \emph{FouST}, a low-bias and low-variance gradient estimation algorithm that is just as efficient. Extensive experiments show that FouST performs favorably compared to state-of-the-art biased estimators and is much faster than unbiased ones

Interpersonal Problems in Arranged and Love Marriages

Marriage is often considered to be the cornerstone of a healthy social structure. The stronger the quality of a marriage, the healthier the social structure of society. The present research investigated the interpersonal problems among arranged and love marriages. The sample of this study comprised 100 couples who had married for love, and 100 couples whose marriage had been arranged by their families. The age range of participants was 20 to 40 years (Mean = 28, SD = 5.2). Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-32 (Horowitz, Alden, Wiggins, & Pincus, 2000) was administered to assess the nature of interpersonal problems experienced by the sample. The findings of present study revealed that the couples whose marriage was arranged by their families were more domineering and vindictive, compared to couples who had married for love.. However, couples in love marriages were more socially inhibited, non-assertive and intrusive when compared to arranged marriage couples. This research has important implications for social psychologists, marital counsellors and families

Calcifying fibrous pseudotumor in association with hyaline vascular type castleman\u27s disease.

Calcifying fibrous pseudotumor is a recently described rare entity. It is considered as sclerosing end stage of inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor. An association with hyaline vascular type Castleman\u27s disease has also been described. We report a case of a 13-year-old boy who presented with pain in epigastrium. Computed tomography scan of abdomen revealed a circumscribed mass arising from the gastric wall along the greater curvature. Histology revealed a tumor composed of spindle cells present within the dense hyalinized collagenous tissue. Lymphoplasmacytic infiltrate was seen along with lymphoid follicles, dystrophic and ossifying calcification. Tumor cells were focally positive for alpha smooth muscle actin and negative for anaplastic lymphoma kinase protein

RELATIONSHIP OF UPPER AND LOWER BODY MUSCULAR STRENGTH WITH CARDIO-RESPIRATORY ENDURANCE AMONG SCHOOL GOING CHILDREN

The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between upper and lower body muscular strength as well as cardio-respiratory endurance among school going children 11 to 15 years of age. A sample of 1750 boys was drawn from the targeted population. Children were tested on handgrip (HG) to measure the strength of upper body muscles, on Standing Broad Jump (SBJ) to measure the strength of lower body muscles, used Beep Test (BT) for cardio-respiratory endurance and height and weight to determine Body Mass Index (BMI). Multiple regression analysis depicted association of lower body muscular strength (SBJ) with upper body muscular strength (HG) and cardio-respiratory endurance (BT) (R 2= 0.011 and 0.10 respectively). The analysis reflected the significant relationship, though weak, between lower body strength (SBJ) and upper body strength (HG) and cardiorespiratory endurance (BT). Hence lower body muscular strength can be considered useful indicator for muscular strength and cardio-respiratory endurance among school going children

Improved SAS codes for life table analysis of arthropod populations.

Abstract: Fertility life table (FLT) analysis of arthropod populations can capture chronicle sub lethal effects not detected by acute survival assays (MARINHO-PRADO, 2011; NASCIMENTO et al., 1998; NARDO et al (2001) LIU et al, 2005; LUMBIERRES et al, 2004). Inference on FLT parameters requires the use of computational methods to estimate the variance of demographic summary measures derived from information of survival and fertility of the arthropod populations under study. Jackknife-based software available for life table analysis (HULTING et al, 1990 ; MAIA et al, 2000) were developed for analyzing qualitative treatments, but such approach is frequently misused for contrasting levels of quantitative factors (GANJISAFFAR et al., 2011; PAKYARI et al., 2011; RAZMJOU et al. 2011). We present herein an extension of SAS codes already available for analysis of qualitative treatments (lifetable.sas, MAIA et al, 2000) now including methods for analysis of quantitative factors via jackknife-based regression analysis

Clinical, pathological and molecular factors predicting Axillary Node involvement in primary Breast Cancer in Pakistani women

Background: Axillary lymph node involvement in primary breast cancer is one of its most important prognostic features. Thus any factors that may predict axillary lymph node involvement in this setting could be potentially helpful in treatment planning and other interventions. Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate clinical, pathological and immuno-histochemical markers in univariate and multivariate analysis, which may be helpful predictors of axillary lymph node involvement in breast cancer. Method: A retrospective analysis of 555 cases. Of these 58% had axillary nodal positivity and 42% were negative. Conclusion: Factors of no significance included patient’s age, height, weight, age of first pregnancy, parity, marital status, menopausal status, family history of breast cancer, side of tumor. In univariate analysis the age of menarche, duration of symptoms, tumor size, site in outer quadrant, S phase and skin and nipple involvement all predicted axillary nodal involvement. The length of breast-feeding, increased intraductal component and increased PCNA were inversely proportional to nodal involvement. In multiple regression analysis however only size of the tumor, involvement of the skin and nipple and disease in the outer quadrant of breast were the factors, which assumed significanc