Peripheral Vascular Disease “A Spectrum”

Background: To observe the spectrum of peripheralvascular disease presenting in a tertiary care hospital.Method: This observational, descriptive study wascarried out in Surgical Unit –I at Holy Family Hospital,Rawalpindi over a period of two years. All the patientspresenting with peripheral vascular disorders excludingacute vascular trauma patients, diabetics and varicoseveins patients were included in the study.Results: A total of 49 patients presented to the hospital.The male to female ratio was 2:1.The average age ofpresentation was 50.2 years. About 35% patients presentedwith occlusive disease, 18% with autoimmune disease and14% with embolism. The less common causes of peripheralvascular disorders included femoral pseudoaneurysms in8% patients and true aneurysms of iliac, popliteal andsubclavian arteries in 12% patients. Bilateral gangrene ofboth lower limbs was seen in 4% patients.Conclusion: Peripheral vascular disease is commonerin males and is mostly seen in the sixth decade of life.Atherosclerotic occlusive disease is the commonest causeof peripheral vascular disease followed by vasculitis,embolisms and aneurysms

Role of Oxidative Stress in various stages of Psoriasis

Background: Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory, immune mediated, provocative and challenging skin condition. It is a non-contagious but debilitating disease and a leading cause of socioeconomic burden on the health system. Objective: To evaluate the role of antioxidant levels, lipid peroxidation status and lipid profile in the etiology and degree of severity of psoriatic illness among psoriasis patients presenting in Dermatology department. Study Design: This study was carried out as a retrospective case control study. Place and duration of Study: It was carried out by the Department of Biochemistry, Basic Medical Sciences Institute (BMSI) in collaboration with Departmnt of Biochemistry, Khyber Medical College, Peshawar and Department of Skin and Venereal disease, Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Centre (JPMC) Karachi. Material and Methods: One hundred and twenty cases (n=130) of already diagnosed psoriasis patients were randommely and fifty healthy matched controls (n=50) of the same age and gender were included from the general population for comparison. Lipid profile including serum total cholesterol, TG, HDL-c and LDL-c levels were measured by enzyme colorimetric analysis on Micro Lab 300 (Merck & Germany). Antioxidant status SOD and lipid peroxidation status MDA were measured by ELISA technique. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software Version 16. In this analysis, a “p” value of less than 0.05 was considered to be significant. Results: The study showed significantly elevated levels of MDA, serum TG, total cholesterol and LDL-c levels in psoriatic patients in comparison with controls, whereas SOD levels and HDL-c levels were found to be significantly lower in psoriatic patients as compared to normal healthy matched controls. Conclusion: The findings of this study support the hypothesis that an imbalance in oxidant-antioxidant system may play a role in the etiology of psoriasis and the degree of severity of its presentation. The study also concluded that dyslipidemia was an observed risk factor for the development of cardiovascular diseases in psoriatic patients.

Prophylaxis of DVT with enoxaparin in patients undergoing total knee replacement

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of the low molecular weight heparin as prophylaxis against thromboembolism following total knee replacement surgery.Methods: Post-operative bilateral lower extremity colour duplex scan was performed on 55 patients subjected to total knew arthroplasty. The scan was performed 7 days after surgery for detection of DVT. All patients were given Enoxaparin 40mg subcutaneous daily for 2 weeks as prophylaxis against DVT.Results: Two patients were diagnosed as DVT by color duplex scanning and both were distal but only one was asymptomatic. Another patient developed pulmonary embolism and died subsequently. The major and minor wound problems were seen in two and six patients respectively; nearly all complications were seen in obese patients.Conclusion: DVT is not a nonexistent entity in our population. Low molecular weight heparins are safe drugs but apparently the bleeding complications are more as compared to Western literature. Larger case control studies are required to determine the true efficacy and safety of LMWH

A Comparison of Sperm Motility Between Fertile and Infertile Males

Background: To determine the sperm motility of proven fertile males and compare this with that of infertile males. Methods: The study design was cross-sectional comparative and was carried out at Islamic International Medical College Rawalpindi and its attached Railway hospital and Islamabad Clinic Serving Infertile Couples Islamabad, from June 2005 to July 2006. Fifty healthy fertile males were selected and their sperm motility was determined with the latest Makler’s chamber, while another 50 infertile males were recruited as controls. The sampling technique used was convenience non-probability. Inclusion criterion for proven fertile males was pregnancy achieved within one year of marriage with successful coituses. In case of infertile males it was failure to achieve pregnancy without the use of assisted reproductive techniques, with no infertility factors in the female partner. The semen samples were obtained at the laboratory after 3 to 4 days of sexual abstinence with clear written and oral instructions given to the subjects before the collection of the sample. Results: The infertile group was found to be statistically older than the proven fertile group i.e. (36.60 versus 31.32 years). Proven fertile group showed significantly higher motility (60.32 ± 10.80%) and progressive motility (14.32 ± 8.31%) than the infertile male group. Conclusion: Sperm motility is useful in in-vivo situation to find males having a greater possibility of infertility problem. More studies with a larger sample size are required to establish a cut-off value in the local population

E-teaching of Arabic to non-native speakers in pandemic

The article discusses modern media used during teaching Arabic to non-native speakers, especially e-learning which has become required in the new world, especially in the spread of infectious diseases. This situation urges the teaching system to switch to E-learning, which helps in studies, particularly during the lockdown period in the pandemic. It benefits the teaching by modern technologies and media in transmitting the language to learners. Learning Arabic has increased in recent times, and learners as a modern generation are using modern technologies to learn. This research on E-teaching of Arabic to non-native speakers in a pandemic is urgent, especially in the pandemic era. It must use media in teaching, especially in teaching Arabic. With the emergence of the Corona pandemic that has spread throughout the world, the demand raises high. The results were as following: use of media in education makes teaching more effective and integrated, give effective results, raises the competence of the teacher and the recipient of the language, increases attention and excitement among students, and develops the ability to teach with communication, and the media facilitate the education process even in the spread of diseases and does not interrupt the chain of education between the learner and the teacher. We arrived with results that the necessity of acquaintance with modern methods and technical means and using them will give fruitful results

The dormancy of empowerment: An analytical study of various impediments to women’s education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan

Education is a key to empower women, control their lives and a source to overcome the oppressive customs and traditions which are resisting their educational participation.The present study describes the socio-cultural, economic and religious impediments to women’s education in Malakand Division, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan. The data was collected from 320 respondents categorized in different segments with proportional allocation method of stratified random sampling technique using questionnaire as a tool of data collection.The data has been analyzed by applying Chi-square test, correlation technique and processed in the form of tables and bar-charts, while discussions have been made on the basis of findings and results.The results show that socio-cultural, economic, religious and political constraints exist in women’s education, which has adversely affected the developmental process.The study suggests that proper policy making, implementation, availability of educational institutions etc.would promisingly increase women’s education in Pakhtun society

Domain-Specific Fusion Of Objective Video Quality Metrics

Video processing algorithms like video upscaling, denoising, and compression are now increasingly optimized for perceptual quality metrics instead of signal distortion. This means that they may score well for metrics like video multi-method assessment fusion (VMAF), but this may be because of metric overfitting. This imposes the need for costly subjective quality assessments that cannot scale to large datasets and large parameter explorations. We propose a methodology that fuses multiple quality metrics based on small scale subjective testing in order to unlock their use at scale for specific application domains of interest. This is achieved by employing pseudo-random sampling of the resolution, quality range and test video content available, which is initially guided by quality metrics in order to cover the quality range useful to each application. The selected samples then undergo a subjective test, such as ITU-T P.910 absolute categorical rating, with the results of the test postprocessed and used as the means to derive the best combination of multiple objective metrics using support vector regression. We showcase the benefits of this approach in two applications: video encoding with and without perceptual preprocessing, and deep video denoising & upscaling of compressed content. For both applications, the derived fusion of metrics allows for a more robust alignment to mean opinion scores than a perceptually-uninformed combination of the original metrics themselves. The dataset and code is available at https://github.com/isize-tech/VideoQualityFusion

Application of Genetic Algorithm Technique for Machining Parameters Optimization in Drilling of Stainless Steel

Abstract This work is aimed at developing relations between the pertinent variables that affect drilling process of stainless steel using artificial neural network. The experiments were conducted on vertical CNC machining centre. The parameters used were spindle speed and feed rate. The effect of machining parameters on entry burr height, exit burr height and surface roughness was experimentally evaluated for different spindle speeds and feed rates. A model was established between the drilling parameters and experimentally obtained data using ANN. The predicted values and measured values are fairly close, which indicates that the developed model can be effectively used to predict the burr height and surface roughness in drilling of stainless steel. Genetic algorithm (GA) technique was used in this work to identify the optimized drilling parameters. Confirmation test was conducted with the optimized parameters and it was found that confirmation test results were similar to that of GA-predicted output values

Numerical investigation of semiempirical relations representing the local Nusselt number magnitude of a pin fin heat sink

Heat transfer augmentation study using air jet impingement has recently attained great interest toward electronic packaging systems and material processing industries. The present study aims at developing a nondimensional semiempirical relation, which represents the cooling rate (Nu) in terms of different geometric and impinging parameters. The spacing of the fin (S/dp) and the fin heights (H/dp) are the geometric parameters, while the impinging Reynolds number (Re) and nozzle‐target spacing (Z/d) are the impinging parameters. During the plot of the Nusselt profile, three vital secondary peaks are observed due to local turbulence of air over the heat sink. To incorporate this nonlinear behavior of the Nusselt profile in developing nondimensional empirical relations, the Nusselt profiles are divided into different regions of secondary rise and fall. Four different sets of the semiempirical relation using regression analysis are proposed for Z/d ≤ 6, H/dp ≤ 4.8 with S/dp ≤ 1.58, S/dp > 1.58 and for Z/d > 6, H/dp > 4.8 with S/dp ≤ 1.58, S/dp > 1.58. These empirical relations benefit the evaluation of the cooling rate (Nu) without any experimentation or simulation

1,3-Bis(1-phenyl­eth­yl)imidazolidine-2-thione

The complete molecule of the title compound, C19H22N2S, is generated by crystallographic twofold symmetry with the C=S group lying on the rotation axis. The imidazolidine ring adopts a flattened twist conformation. The dihedral angle between the asymmetric part of the imidazolidine-2-thione fragment and the benzene ring is 89.49 (17)°