Status of Health related Quality of life between HBV and HCV Patients of Pakistan

The aim of the study is to explore the factors those differentiate health related quality of life (HRQOL) among hepatitis B (HBV) and hepatitis C (HCV) patients. Different public and private hospitals of Sargodha district were visited and 120 patients of hepatitis B and C were interviewed. World health related quality of life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire was used to construct HRQOL instrument. Multiple regression analysis was performed to observe the collision of demographic, medical, economic and physical and psychological factors on patients HRQOL. Results showed that HBV patients enjoyed better HRQOL then HCV patients. 86.4% HCV patients faces death threat while, 67.3% HBV faces this threat. 93.5% HBV patients feels depression while, 97.8% HCV patients feels depression. Urban patients HRQOL scores were superior then rural patients in both HCV and HBV case. Moreover, male patients HRQOL scores were better as compared to female patients. Age of the patient, disease severity, use of drug, pain, depression, financial hindrance and threat of death negatively influence the HRQOL of both HBV and HCV patients while, vaccination, income, sleep, opportunity of leisure and better living condition were positively related to HRQOL.Sargodha; HBV; HCV; Pakistan

The roman conquered by delay: reducing the number of preemptions using sleep states

Sleep-states are emerging as a first-class design choice in energy minimization. A side effect of this is that the release behavior of the system is affected and subsequently the preemption relations between tasks. In a first step we have investigated how the behavior in terms of number of preemptions of tasks in the system is changed at runtime, using an existing procrastination approach, which utilizes sleepstates for energy savings purposes. Our solution resulted in substantial savings of preemptions and we expect from even higher yields for alternative energy saving algorithms. This work is intended to form the base of future research, which aims to bound the number of preemptions at analysis time and subsequently how this may be employed in the analysis to reduced the amount of system utilization, which is reserved to account for the preemption delay

Device power management for real-time embedded systems

A large part of power dissipation in a system is generated by I/O devices. Increasingly these devices provide power saving mechanisms to inter alia enhance battery life. While I/O device scheduling has been studied in the past for realtime systems, the use of energy resources by these scheduling algorithms may be improved. These approaches are crafted considering a huge overhead of device transition. The technology enhancement has allowed the hardware vendors to reduce the device transition overhead and energy consumption. We propose an intra-task device scheduling algorithm for real time systems that allows to shut-down devices while ensuring the system schedulability. Our results show an energy gain of up to 90% in the best case when compared to the state-of-the-art

Energy-conscious tasks partitioning onto a heterogeneous multi-core platform

Modern multicore processors for the embedded market are often heterogeneous in nature. One feature often available are multiple sleep states with varying transition cost for entering and leaving said sleep states. This research effort explores the energy efficient task-mapping on such a heterogeneous multicore platform to reduce overall energy consumption of the system. This is performed in the context of a partitioned scheduling approach and a very realistic power model, which improves over some of the simplifying assumptions often made in the state-of-the-art. The developed heuristic consists of two phases, in the first phase, tasks are allocated to minimise their active energy consumption, while the second phase trades off a higher active energy consumption for an increased ability to exploit savings through more efficient sleep states. Extensive simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach

Slow down or race to halt: towards managing complexity of real-time energy management decisions

Existing work in the context of energy management for real-time systems often ignores the substantial cost of making DVFS and sleep state decisions in terms of time and energy and/or assume very simple models. Within this paper we attempt to explore the parameter space for such decisions and possible constraints faced

Barriers to Customer Integration into New Product Development Process: A Case of Apparel Industry in Pakistan

In recent years,multinationals developed close relationship with customers by integrating theminto NPD process which reduced switching and increased satisfaction. While SMEsfaced severe breakdowns due to product failures led by customerdissatisfaction. A reason for this switching is prohibition of customerintegration into NPD process. Within this context, the objective is to identifythose potential reasons which become the source of non-integration. Data forthis study was derived for a survey carried out in 25 SMEs (apparel). Anexploratory factor analysis, correlation analysis, ANOVA and descriptive statswere utilized to discover the potential of various barriers. Out of allbarriers, lack of awareness, trust and compatibility were potential barriersfound positively related with non-integration. Non/less experienced firmsshowed lack of awareness which led them to lack of trust while experiencedfirms lacked flexibility in integrating customers. Locally operating SMEsshowed lack of awareness and trust while firms at regional level were foundmore aware but refused the importance of integration. This study is focusing oncustomer integration into the SMEs sector has many implications forprofessionals and organizations

Role of Micro-Financing in Creation of Self-Employment in Pakistan: A Case Study of District Bahawalpur

Employment problem is one of the key issues in developing countries especially in Pakistan. Self-employment (own business) is integral part of the society, majority of the people of our country is belong to business sector. Micro finance plays role in improving self-employment through business or productive activities. In this study an attempt is made to explore the determinants of self-employment in which micro finance is key determinant. This study used bivariate regression analysis based on primary data of Bahawalpur City and to check the relationship of different socio economic determinants on self-employment. Self-employment is measured by binary number as 01 coding of dummy dependent. As taking loan or not taking loan. Similarly all explanatory variables measured by binary coding shape of 01.The results show that self-employment at remarkably influenced by age, education, sex, family wealth, marital status, technical skill, micro finance and loan purpose. More over at the end it is concluded that microfinance is major independent variable in this research and it has positively and highly significant impact on self-employment,i.e. 200% or 2 times may can increase self-employment if provides loan at easy grounds. Keywords: microfinance, self-employment, bivariate logistic regression

Comparing the schedulers and power saving strategies with SPARTS

We have developed SPARTS, a simulator of a generic embedded real-time device. It is designed to be extensible to accommodate different task properties, scheduling algorithms and/or hardware models for the wide variety of applications. SPARTS was developed to help the community investigate the behaviour of the real-time embedded systems and to quantify the associated constraints/overheads