Titanium Cage Fixation in Thoracic and Thoraco-lumbar Anterior Inter-body Fusion

nner by inter body fusion. Study Design:  Prospective Study. Material and Method:  The study was conducted at the department of neurosurgery Lahore general hospital Lahore. Results:  Thirty cases were included during period two years. All cases operated for decompression, fusion and instrumentation, cages of titanium mesh were used. Neurological status of the patients assessed before and after operation. Twenty eight (93.3%) cases improved neurologically. Two (6.7%) did not improved. There were three infected cases which were treated and improved in the long run. Conclusion:  By using anterior interbody fusion (AIF) with cage we can mobilize the patient early. Improvement of the neurological status is excellent. Per operative infection rate is very low. Deformity can be corrected with more accuracy. Key Words:  Anterior cervical corpectomy, anterior dorsal inter body fusion, anterior, posterior and lateral, computed tommography, magnetic resonance imaging

Determinants of Marital Fertility in Pakistan: An Application of the "Synthesis Framework"

The fertility phase of the demographic transition has increasingly been viewed as a movement from high to low levels of fertility, and as a shift from natural fertility to deliberately controlled fertility. In an attempt to gain more insight into this process, the present study, in the context of Pakistan, is based on intensive National Population, Labour Force, and Migration Survey data covering 10,000 households. It aims to focus on the determinants of fertility in Pakistan, specifically the determinants of the adoption of deliberate fertility regulations. The role of socio-economic modernisation and cultural factors in the determination of the potential family size and the adoption of deliberate fertility control through a knowledge of fertility regulations have also been explored. The 'Synthesis Framework' of fertility determination, applied to Sri Lanka and Colombia by Easterlin and Crimmins (1982), and with its recent modifications by Ahmed (1987), is the main vehicle for the study.

Accounting Discretion, Loan Loss Provision in Financial Distress: Evidence from Commercial Banks

This study explores the association between earning management practices and financial distress in commercial banks. Earning management is measured through discretionary loan loss provisions and non-discretionary loan loss provisions. Modified Altman’s Z-score has been used as a proxy for financial distress. Panel regression with fixed and random effect has been employed for empirical analysis. The study finds a significant positive association between DLLP, NDLLP and financial distress in terms of the Altman Z-score. In the case of NDLLP, liquidity reduces the probability of financial distress. Whereas, a bank’s SIZE, LEVG and AQ enhance the likelihood of financial distress. The robustness tests were applied to find the association between NDLLP and FD using logistic regression to validate baseline estimates results of the random effect model. The findings of this study have implications for the policymakers, regulators and internal stakeholders to devise effective regulatory measures for well-informed investment decisions

Congenital Heart Diseases in Neonates

Background: To determine the frequency of congenital heart diseases in neonates Methods: In this descriptive study, echocardiography was performed in all 459 suspected cases of congenital heart diseases. Results: In 162 confirmed cases, the frequency of congenital heart disease was 2.86%. Male outnumbered female (100vs 62). Acyanotic lesions were more common than cyanotic lesions (127vs 35). Ventricular Septal Defect was the most common acyanotic lesion while Transposition of Greater Arteries was the most common cyanotic lesion Conclusion: Congenital heart diseases, being one of the commonest problem in newborns, requires early diagnosis, so that the affected child can get maximum medical support and benefi

Investor’s Dilemma: Fundamentals or Biasness in Investment Decision

In the present world Investment decision is most important phenomena. Investment is current sacrifice for future benefits, So while making investment decisions we have to keep different things in mind. Investment decisions are influenced not only by their fundamentals but also depend on different factors. One factor is the biasness of any investor to their investment, biasness depends on the cognition and emotions, because some investors use them as heuristic for the investment decision instead of fundamentals. Keeping this in view, this paper shows how cognitive biasness (i.e. Representativeness, Adjustment and Anchoring, Leniency) effects the investment decisions over the fundamentals. This study also show different types of investors which depicts significant relation of Representativeness, Adjustment and Anchoring, Leniency with investment decisions over fundamentals, and explain under which biasness an investor become more optimistic and moderate for investment decisions. While considering Representativeness biasness over fundamentals investor become more optimistic, In Adjustment and Anchoring biasness investor show moderate behavior about investment decision, and In Leniency biasness investor also take investment decision over optimistically

Vehicle make and model recognition using bag of expressions

This article belongs to the Section Intelligent SensorsVehicle make and model recognition (VMMR) is a key task for automated vehicular surveillance (AVS) and various intelligent transport system (ITS) applications. In this paper, we propose and study the suitability of the bag of expressions (BoE) approach for VMMR-based applications. The method includes neighborhood information in addition to visual words. BoE improves the existing power of a bag of words (BOW) approach, including occlusion handling, scale invariance and view independence. The proposed approach extracts features using a combination of different keypoint detectors and a Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) descriptor. An optimized dictionary of expressions is formed using visual words acquired through k-means clustering. The histogram of expressions is created by computing the occurrences of each expression in the image. For classification, multiclass linear support vector machines (SVM) are trained over the BoE-based features representation. The approach has been evaluated by applying cross-validation tests on the publicly available National Taiwan Ocean University-Make and Model Recognition (NTOU-MMR) dataset, and experimental results show that it outperforms recent approaches for VMMR. With multiclass linear SVM classification, promising average accuracy and processing speed are obtained using a combination of keypoint detectors with HOG-based BoE description, making it applicable to real-time VMMR systems.Muhammad Haroon Yousaf received funding from the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan for Swarm Robotics Lab under the National Centre for Robotics and Automation (NCRA). The authors also acknowledge support from the Directorate of ASR& TD, University of Engineering and Technology Taxila, Pakistan

Nyereségmenedzsment és pénzügyi nehézségek kialakulásának valószínűsége a bankoknál – Bizonyítékok a pakisztáni kereskedelmi bankoktól

A tanulmány a pénzügyi nehézségek (financial distress, FD) és a diszkrecionális elhatárolások alkalmazása közti kapcsolatot hivatott vizsgálni, húsz, a Pakisztáni Értéktőzsdén (Pakistan Stock Exchange, PSX) jegyzett pakisztáni kereskedelmi bank nyereségmenedzsment-gyakorlata alapján. A tanulmány a 2010–2015-ös évek adatait használja fel. A pénzügyi nehézségek felmérésére Altman-féle Z-mutató került alkalmazásra. A Z-mutató értékét a bankok veszélyeztetett és nem veszélyeztetett csoportokba való kategorizálására is alkalmazzák. Emellett a nyereségmenedzsment nem diszkrecionális (non-discretionary accruals, NDA) és diszkrecionális elhatárolások (discretionary accruals, DA) szerint került kategorizálásra. A változók közti kapcsolat tanulmányozására logisztikai megközelítés került alkalmazásra. A megállapítások mutatják, hogy a bankok nem diszkrecionális és diszkrecionális elhatárolások útján kezelik pénzügyi nehézségeiket. Jelen kutatási tanulmány hasznos betekintést kínál a befektetők, könyvvizsgálók és szabályozó hatóságok számára, mivel azonosítja a vezetés által a szigorú szabályozások ellenére alkalmazott intézkedéseket

Climatic Events and Natural Disasters of 21st Century: A Perspective of Pakistan

In recent years, the frequent occurrence of natural calamities in the world has gained much attention due to infrastructure and life losses. Increase in global temperature has threatened the earth’s climate, causing unpredictable and extreme weather events more often. These events were both short-term as well as long-term. In spite of insufficient monitoring coverage of inner areas and high altitudes, an intensification of average yearly temperature has been observed after the 20th century in many regions of Asia. Pakistan has faced a number of natural disasters including severe floods, devastating earthquakes, disturbing droughts, distressing smog, extreme temperature and torrential rainfall patterns. These calamities have affected people economically, socially, physically and mentally by posing a threat to earth, its species and their livelihood. This paper was aimed to document the natural calamities in Pakistan since the beginning of 21st century till date. The country is facing the problem of intense and longer summers and has witnessed two intense heat waves. Moreover, in some areas, extensive droughts are threatening crops, freshwater supply and wildlife. In recent years, the problem of smog has emerged in Pakistan, especially in Punjab. The problem is getting worse in every coming year due to overpopulation, cities expansion, increased emission of greenhouse gases, open burning of crop residues and extreme reliance on fossil fuels for energy purpose. So far in this century, Pakistan has faced 3 droughts, 2 heat waves, 10 severe floods, 27 major earthquakes, 2 consecutive sessions of severe smog and extreme high and low temperature events. Some of the deadliest events were; 2005 Kashmir earthquake claiming 87,350 human lives and 2010 flood impacting nearly 20 million people with 1,781 causalities. Change in climate is posing a severe threat to species, livelihood of the human beings and the earth. Global warming is causing warming of oceans and consequently rise in sea level. Climate change affects average as well as extreme temperatures hence increasing the probability climate-related disasters. Thus, global warming is causing a chain of catastrophic events that make the problem even more complex to understand

Are Growth Led Financing Decisions Causing Insolvency in Listed Firms of Pakistan?

We examine the relationship between growth opportunities and insolvency risk in a mediating framework through financing decisions for 330 listed firms on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) This study covers a data period of five years ranging from 2013 to 2017. Financing decisions used in this study involve capital structure decision and debt maturity decision. We applied robust clustered panel OLS regression to the data and found a negative relationship between growth opportunities and insolvency risk in all samples consisting of overall, large and small firms. Growth opportunities have a negative impact on the capital structure, but debt maturity was influenced positively. Financing decisions influenced the insolvency risk positively. We used Baron and Kenny’s (1986) approach to detect the intervening effects of financing decisions. Further, Sobel’s test used to check the significance of mediation. Partial mediation was found for the debt maturity ratio in the large and overall sample of firms. However, the capital structure did not mediate the relationship between growth opportunities and insolvency risk in this study