The Zimri Project: Running Water and Bathroom Facilities for a Rural Moroccan School

Lack of education in rural communities is one of the most prominent problems facing the developing world. In Islamic countries such as Morocco, girls are pulled out of the school because of concerns by parents due to a lack of privacy when it comes to going to the bathroom. This lack of education for girls is a serious concern for the community, as it will cause it to lag behind the rest of the world and perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Through our project, we developed a plan for bringing running water to the school and to build an enclosed bathroom facility. These recommendations will be proposed to funding institutions for the purpose of obtaining financial resources to conduct the project and make it a realization

Combating Nutrient Deficiency in Pakistan

To quantify the micronutrient deficiencies and their overtime trends, food quantities reported to be consumed in HIES surveys data during 1991-92 and 2011-12 are converted into major and micronutrients using the FAO Food Composition Table for Pakistan. To see the impact of different price and income support policies on micronutrient consumption, nutrient demand elasticities are estimated for 2011-12 for carbohydrates (energy), protein, calcium, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, and Niacin. The Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) is applied to estimate the demand elasticities of the eight food groups which are then converted into nutrient demand elasticities using the transformation of Hunag (1996). On average, per capita consumptions of almost all micronutrients are deficient compared to their respective recommended levels. Our analysis suggest that income support to the poor in Pakistan through programmes like BISP would have been much more effective to eradicate nutrient deficiency, if deficient nutrient(s) are targeted and support is provided to those foods having highest demand elasticity for that nutrient. For example, the promotion of wheat and other cereals are important to eradicate energy deficiency, and promotion of vegetables, fruits, and milk are particularly important in eradicating vitamin A, C and iron deficiencies. These commodities are also high value crops for farmers, thus the price support in these crops will also impact micronutrient consumption through income effect

Improved adaptive semi-unsupervised weighted oversampling (IA-SUWO) using sparsity factor for imbalanced datasets

The imbalanced data problem is common in data mining nowadays due to the skewed nature of data, which impact the classification process negatively in machine learning. For preprocessing, oversampling techniques significantly benefitted the imbalanced domain, in which artificial data is generated in minority class to enhance the number of samples and balance the distribution of samples in both classes. However, existing oversampling techniques encounter through overfitting and over-generalization problems which lessen the classifier performance. Although many clustering based oversampling techniques significantly overcome these problems but most of these techniques are not able to produce the appropriate number of synthetic samples in minority clusters. This study proposed an improved Adaptive Semi-unsupervised Weighted Oversampling (IA-SUWO) technique, using the sparsity factor which determine the sparse minority samples in each minority cluster. This technique consider the sparse minority samples which are far from the decision boundary. These samples also carry the important information for learning of minority class, if these samples are also considered for oversampling, imbalance ratio will be more reduce also it could enhance the learnability of the classifiers. The outcomes of the proposed approach have been compared with existing oversampling techniques such as SMOTE, Borderline-SMOTE, Safe-level SMOTE, and standard A-SUWO technique in terms of accuracy. As aforementioned, the comparative analysis revealed that the proposed oversampling approach performance increased in average by 5% from 85% to 90% than the existing comparative techniques

IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON ISLAMIC AND CONVENTIONAL STOCKS IN INDONESIA: A WAVELET-BASED STUDY

The recent literature shows that COVID-19 has impacted stock markets around the world in many ways. In this paper, we examine the reaction of the Indonesian stock market to COVID-19. We apply the continuous wavelet coherence methodology to daily COVID-19 related deaths and daily conventional and Islamic stock indices inIndonesia. We find that COVID-19 negatively impacts the returns of both indices and enhances their volatility. We find the Islamic stock index to be more volatile as compared to its conventional counterpart during the COVID-19 outbreak

The Efficacy of Ivabradine Alone, Metoprolol Alone and Combination of Ivabradine and Metoprolol in Reducing Heart Rate Among Patients Undergoing Computed Tomography Coronary Angiography

Objectives: to determine the efficacy of Ivabradine alone, Metoprolol alone and Combination of Ivabradine and Metoprolol in reducing heart rate among patients undergoing Computed Tomography Coronary Angiography (CTCA). Methodology: it was a randomized controlled trial comprised of 200 patients. Patients undergoing CTCA having heart rates greater than 80 bpm were divided into three groups. Group A was given Ivabradine and a placebo, Group B received Metoprolol and placebo while Group C was administered with Ivabradine and Metoprolol an hour prior to the scan. The scan was carried under similar situations. Heart rate and variability was recorded before and during the scan. Results: The mean heart rate variability and mean reduction in heart rate of Group A was 3.13±1.01 and 19.02±2.05 respectively. The mean heart rate variability and mean reduction in heart rate of Group B was 4.27±1.08 and 12.11±2.45 respectively. While, the mean heart rate variability and mean reduction in heart rate of Group C was 1.88±0.42 and 25.03±2.74 respectively. Conclusion: Ivabradine is an effective and safe drug for reducing heart rate in patients having CTCA, especially among patients who are unable to tolerate calcium channel blockers and beta blockers owing to their side effects. Keywords: Ivabradine, Metoprolol, Computed tomography coronary angiography, heart rate reduction, heart rate variability

Hyperlipidemia Patterns in Newly Diagnosed Young Diabetic Patients

Objective: To analyze hyperlipidemia patterns among newly diagnosed young diabetic patients. Study Design: A descriptive cross-sectional study Place and Duration: Study was conducted in DHQ Teaching Hospital, DG Khan, Bahawal Victoria hospital, Bahawalpur, and Sheikh Zayd Hospital, Rahim Yar Khan from July 2017 to July 2018.Methodology: All the patients were young and newly diagnosed with Diabetes Mellitus. Data collection was done via non probability consecutive sampling included patients’ demographics, past medical history, co-morbidities, and lab findings were assessed. SPSS version 24 was used to analyze data. P value ≤ 0.05 was taken as significant.Results: Eighty patients were included in this study. Diabetic nephropathy, diabetic retinopathy, macrovascular complications, hyperglycemic hyperosmolar non-ketotic coma history, family history and hypertension were noted in n=12 (15%), n=6 (7.5%), n=9 (11.3%), n=1 (1.3%), n=34 (42.5%) and n=11 (13.8%) respectively. The mean hyperlipidemia, hypertriglyceridemia, of the patients was 4.54±0.52 mmol/L, 2.59±1.13 mmol/L, 1.39±0.80 mmol/L, 1.03±0.59 mmol/L respectively. Conclusion: the study has shown that the prevalence of increased levels of triglycerides is more than increased LDL cholesterol levels among these patients. As it has been established that hypertriglyceridemia is a known risk factor for causing cardiovascular disorders among diabetic patients, it should be addressed and managed accordingly at the onset of diabetes. Keywords: Hyperlipidemia, Diabetes Mellitus, low density lipoproteins, high density lipoproteins, insulin.

Baseline and On-Treatment High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol and the Risk of Cancer in Randomized Controlled Trials of Lipid-Altering Therapy

ObjectivesWe sought to examine the relationship between high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels and the risk of the development of cancer in large randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of lipid-altering interventions.BackgroundEpidemiologic data demonstrate an inverse relationship between serum total cholesterol levels and incident cancer. We recently reported that lower levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol are associated with a significantly higher risk of incident cancer in a meta-analysis of large RCTs of statin therapy. However, little is known about the relationship between HDL-C levels and cancer risk.MethodsA systematic MEDLINE search identified lipid intervention RCTs with ≥1,000 person-years of follow-up, providing baseline HDL-C levels and rates of incident cancer. Using random-effects meta-regressions, we evaluated the relationship between baseline HDL-C and incident cancer in each RCT arm.ResultsA total of 24 eligible RCTs were identified (28 pharmacologic intervention arms and 23 control arms), with 625,477 person-years of follow-up and 8,185 incident cancers. There was a significant inverse association between baseline HDL-C levels and the rate of incident cancer (p = 0.018). The inverse association persisted after adjusting for baseline low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, age, body mass index (BMI), diabetes, sex, and smoking status, such that for every 10-mg/dl increment in HDL-C, there was a 36% (95% confidence interval: 24% to 47%) relatively lower rate of the development of cancer (p < 0.001).ConclusionsThere is a significant inverse association between HDL-C and the risk of incident cancer that is independent of LDL-C, age, BMI, diabetes, sex, and smoking

Food insecurity of rice in Pakistan

The study of Food Insecurity of rice in Pakistan was to evaluate the impact of insecurity of rice on people of Pakistan.In Pakistan the rice stands for a situation where at one side there is rice available but on the other side the people don’t have enough accessibility of rice.The study will focus on qualitative research as this research phenomenon is comparatively new in Pakistan. Such study is rare so it is difficult to collect the data regarding the progress of Food Insecurity in Pakistan on rice. The research is based on the potential of rice and products in Pakistan related to the agriculture institutions, private representatives and government’s representatives. One of the biggest findings of this research was the gaps between realities and polices.The implementation from research will help government authorities, policy makers, market committees, traders, brokers, and exporters to understand the overall dynamics and mechanism of rice sector in Pakistan