Impact of Organizational Virtuousness on Workplace Spirituality with the Mediating Role of Perceived Organizational Support

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between organizational virtuousness and workplace spirituality with the mediating role of perceived organizational support. Data was collected from 250 employees working in the telecommunication sector of Pakistan through a questionnaire. Data was analyzed using Hayes’ PROCESS macro (a statistical technique). The study reported a statistically significant relationship between organizational virtuousness and workplace spirituality and also proved perceived organizational support as a partial mediator between these two variables. The findings make an important contribution to the literature available on positive psychology / organizational behavior, especially positive organizational scholarship (POS). The findings also suggest the organizations to adopt practices and procedures that help to create a climate of virtuousness

Prevalence of work related musculoskeletal disorders among physiotherapists of Multan

Background: Work related musculoskeletal disorders are increasing day by day in hospitals and clinics due to high demand activities. These disorders decline the efficiency of therapists and result in social as well as economic losses. These injuries mostly occur due to abnormal postures and poor ergonomics. Aim and objectives: The purpose of this study was to rule out pain which disturbs the daily living of physiotherapists due to work related musculoskeletal disorder. This study also helps physiotherapists to improve their skills, technique, posture, ergonomics and all the other factors that are related to these disorders. Method: Survey was performed among physiotherapists that are performing duties in government hospitals, private clinics and all the other settings in Multan. This study included 100 physiotherapists of Multan. Self-design questionnaire as well as a Nordic questionnaire was used to collect data about WRMSK disorders. Data was gathered and was observed statistically. Results: 89% of physiotherapist were having had work related musculoskeletal disorder & 11% had no complaint, 75% female and 25% male & 23 to 50 years age population data was taken & the study observed that novice practitioner are at the increased risk of developing work-related musculoskeletal disorder & 45% were non specialized and 55% were specialized. The most commonly affected regions were upper back, low back and hip joint respectively. Conclusion: Upper back pain, lower back pain and hip pain were the most common complications among physiotherapists. Manual therapy shows association with the prevalence of MSK disorder

Association of Serum PSA Levels with Histopathological Pattern of Prostate Lesions

Background: Pathological changes that mainly affect prostate gland are prostatitis, benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and cancerous lesions. Digital rectal examination (DRE), Transrectal Ultrasonography (TUS), and prostate specific antigen (PSA) followed by histopathological examination, are routinely used tests for diagnosis of prostate lesions. The aim of the present study is to determine the role of serum PSA levels in differentially diagnosing the different types of prostate lesions.Material and Methods: This retrospective (observational) study was conducted in Ibn-e-Sina Hospital Multan. Data of 2189 patients who were operated from 2007 to 2017 due to prostatic lesions were included in this analysis. Patients with BPH, prostatitis, prostate carcinoma and Prostatic Intraepithelial Neoplasia (PIN) were grouped according to serum PSA levels (ranging from 0 to >100 ng/ml) into five groups. Frequencies and percentages were calculated for different histopathological findings. Association of PSA levels with different histological patterns was determined with chi-square test with P-value < 0.05 taken as significant difference.Results: Mean age of patients was 62.45+10.64 years. On histopathology, BPH was diagnosed in 1676 (76.56%) patients, prostatitis in 133 (6.07%), carcinoma in 378 (17.26%) and PIN in 02 (0.09%) patients, respectively. Serum PSA levels of 4.01-10 ng/ml were found in 1050 (62.64%) BPH patients and in 59 (44.36%) prostatitis patients. Serum PSA levels of 10.01-20 ng/ml were found in only 40 (2.4%) BPH patients, 47 (35.33%) prostatitis patients, 22 (5.82%) carcinoma patients and in 1 (50.0%) PIN patient. Serum PSA levels of 20.01-100 ng/ml were found in 32 (1.9%) BPH patients, 11 (8.27%) prostatitis patients, 302 (79.89%) carcinoma patients, and in 1 (50.0%) PIN patient. Serum PSA levels of >100 ng/ml were absent in patients with BPH and PIN, and present in 1 (0.75%) prostatitis and 54 (14.28%) carcinoma patients.Conclusion: Benign prostatic hyperplasia was the commonest lesion in our patients (76.56%) with serum PSA levels >10 ng/ml reported in all patients with prostate carcinoma and prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN) patients

Deep learning for image-based liver analysis — A comprehensive review focusing on malignant lesions

Deep learning-based methods, in particular, convolutional neural networks and fully convolutional networks are now widely used in the medical image analysis domain. The scope of this review focuses on the analysis using deep learning of focal liver lesions, with a special interest in hepatocellular carcinoma and metastatic cancer; and structures like the parenchyma or the vascular system. Here, we address several neural network architectures used for analyzing the anatomical structures and lesions in the liver from various imaging modalities such as computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound. Image analysis tasks like segmentation, object detection and classification for the liver, liver vessels and liver lesions are discussed. Based on the qualitative search, 91 papers were filtered out for the survey, including journal publications and conference proceedings. The papers reviewed in this work are grouped into eight categories based on the methodologies used. By comparing the evaluation metrics, hybrid models performed better for both the liver and the lesion segmentation tasks, ensemble classifiers performed better for the vessel segmentation tasks and combined approach performed better for both the lesion classification and detection tasks. The performance was measured based on the Dice score for the segmentation, and accuracy for the classification and detection tasks, which are the most commonly used metrics.publishedVersio

Adaptive energy efficient circular spinning protocol for dynamic cluster based UWSNs

Under Water Sensor Network (UWSN) is a novel paradigm for exploring marine environments such as offshore and mineral exploration, underwater surveillance, and sea habitat monitoring. However, a good quality underwater communication is difficult to achieve due to different constraints such as limited bandwidth, acoustic propagation issues, delays, battery replacement hitches, etc. In recent works, efficient energy-based designing and overall performance evaluation of the UWSN has become a major consideration. Cluster-based sensor networks have proven to be a successful way to increase the network's load congruency and scalability while lowering the system's total energy consumption. Usually, clustering algorithms work in three phases; cluster setup, data collection, and transmission to sink. In these types of dynamic cluster-based networks, energy consumed in cluster setup has been considered insignificant. Since these network energy consumptions are not part of data communication, we consider it extra energy consumption. In this paper, a new Energy Efficient Circular Spinning (EECS) dynamic clustering algorithm has been proposed to provide an improved cluster setup system and to minimize energy usage in re-clustering or cluster setup. Our proposed EECS mechanism suggests that system performance can improve by reducing the Cluster Head (CH) selection phase or cluster setup phase and can ultimately minimize the energy consumption of networks. It is demonstrated that by reducing the transmission of superfluous control messages during the cluster arrangement stage, approximately 21.5% to28.4% of the total network energy expended can be saved. This paper also compares the extra energy consumption, total network energy consumption, and life of the network in our proposed EECS mechanism to two different mechanisms, (1) Adaptive LEACH for UW, (2) UMOD-LEACH. The optimum value of cluster head has been calculated from energy consumption of different protocols and results show that our proposed EECS can prolong network lifetime by 21.5% and 28.4%from the above-mentioned algorithms consequently. In future, we will extend outwork for multi-hop dynamic cluster base mechanism for UW

Prevalence and characteristics of resistant hypertensive patients in an Asian population

Background: Resistant hypertension is a well-recognized clinical challenge yet there are no reported data on its prevalence in Pakistan. These patients are subjected to a higher risk of developing hypertensive complications. The objective of our study was to evaluate the prevalence and determinants of resistant hypertension in an Asian cohort of hypertensive patients.Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out among hypertensive patients visiting a tertiary care hospital in Karachi from September-December 2015. Patient data and characteristics were recorded using a pre-coded questionnaire. Morisky and Berlin questionnaires were used to assess compliance to medications and determine the risk of developing obstructive sleep apnea, respectively. Pearson\u27s chi-square test was used to analyze statistical differences between hypertensive patients and related factors.Results: A total of 515 patients were included in the study. Overall, 12% of the total patients (n=62) were resistant hypertensives and 25% (n=129) had pseudo-resistant hypertension. Resistant patients were more often females, older and had a higher body mass index (all P\u3c0.001). Use of painkillers and noncompliance to dietary recommendations were found to be significant determinants of resistant hypertension. Prevalence of comorbid conditions, including diabetes (p=0.33), hyperlipidemia (p=0.46), and chronic kidney disease (p=0.23), was not significantly higher in patients with resistant hypertension.Conclusion: Nearly one in ten hypertensive patients had true resistant hypertension, and twenty-five percent of patients had pseudo-resistance. Resistance hypertensions is significantly associated with female gender, older age, obesity, dietary noncompliance and increased use of NSAIDs

Black Tea: Chemical and Pharmacological Appraisal

Medicinal plants are gaining popularity as folk medicine due to future demand to get rid of synthetic health promoting medicines. Nowadays, black tea is gaining interest as the most frequently consumed therapeutic drink after the water. The importance of black tea is due to existence of flavonoids such as (Thearubigins (TRs) and theaflavins (TFs) and catechins) that are the main therapeutic agents and are more bio-direct and stable compounds compared to those exist in other herbal plants alongside some other promising compounds which enhance is credentials as therapeutic drug. Numerous scientific explorations have elucidated the biological worth of these bioactive moieties against plethora of ailments with special reference to metabolic disorder. The mandate of current chapter is to discuss the black tea chemistry for elucidating its pharmacological worth

Expression of M. tuberculosis-induced suppressor of cytokine signaling (SOCS) 1, SOCS3, FoxP3 and secretion of IL-6 associates with differing clinical severity of tuberculosis

Background Appropriate immune activation of T cells and macrophages is central for the control of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infections. IFN-γ stimulated responses are lowered in tuberculosis (TB), while expression of Suppressor of Cytokine Signaling (SOCS) molecules – 1 and 3 and CD4+CD25+FoxP3+T regulatory cells is increased. Here we investigated the association of these molecules in regard to clinical severity of TB. Methods Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were isolated from patients with pulmonary TB (PTB, n = 33), extra-pulmonary TB (ETB, n = 33) and healthy endemic controls (EC, n = 15). Cases were classified as moderately advanced or far advanced PTB, and less severe or severe disseminated ETB. M. tuberculosis -stimulated IFN-γ, SOCS1, SOCS3 and FoxP3 gene expression and secretion of Th1 and Th2 cytokines was measured. Statistical analysis was performed using Mann–Whitney U, Wilcoxon Rank and Kruskal Wallis non-parametric tests. Results In un-stimulated PBMCs, IL-6 (p = 0.018) and IL-10 (p = 0.013) secretion levels were increased in PTB while IL-10 was also increased in ETB (p = 0.003), all in comparison with EC. M. tuberculosis-stimulated IL-6 (p = 0.003) was lowered in ETB as compared with EC. SOCS1 mRNA expression in M. tuberculosis stimulated PBMCs levels in moderately advanced PTB (p = 0.022), far advanced (p = 0.014) PTB, and severe ETB (p = 0.009) were raised as compared with EC. On the other hand, SOCS1 mRNA titers were reduced in less severe ETB, in comparison with severe ETB (p = 0.027) and far advanced PTB (p = 0.016). SOCS3 mRNA accumulation was reduced in far advanced PTB (p = 0.007) and FoxP3 mRNA expression was increased in less severe ETB as compared with EC (p = 0.017). Conclusions The lowered SOCS1 mRNA levels in patients with less severe extra-pulmonary TB as compared to those with more severe ETB and PTB may lead to elevated IFN-γ pathway gene expression in the latter group. As localized ETB has shown to be associated with more effective Th1 immunity and adaptive responses, this suggests a role for SOCS1 in determining disease outcome in extra-pulmonary TB

Effect of early tranexamic acid administration on mortality, hysterectomy, and other morbidities in women with post-partum haemorrhage (WOMAN): an international, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

Background Post-partum haemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal death worldwide. Early administration of tranexamic acid reduces deaths due to bleeding in trauma patients. We aimed to assess the effects of early administration of tranexamic acid on death, hysterectomy, and other relevant outcomes in women with post-partum haemorrhage. Methods In this randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, we recruited women aged 16 years and older with a clinical diagnosis of post-partum haemorrhage after a vaginal birth or caesarean section from 193 hospitals in 21 countries. We randomly assigned women to receive either 1 g intravenous tranexamic acid or matching placebo in addition to usual care. If bleeding continued after 30 min, or stopped and restarted within 24 h of the first dose, a second dose of 1 g of tranexamic acid or placebo could be given. Patients were assigned by selection of a numbered treatment pack from a box containing eight numbered packs that were identical apart from the pack number. Participants, care givers, and those assessing outcomes were masked to allocation. We originally planned to enrol 15 000 women with a composite primary endpoint of death from all-causes or hysterectomy within 42 days of giving birth. However, during the trial it became apparent that the decision to conduct a hysterectomy was often made at the same time as randomisation. Although tranexamic acid could influence the risk of death in these cases, it could not affect the risk of hysterectomy. We therefore increased the sample size from 15 000 to 20 000 women in order to estimate the effect of tranexamic acid on the risk of death from post-partum haemorrhage. All analyses were done on an intention-to-treat basis. This trial is registered with ISRCTN76912190 (Dec 8, 2008); ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT00872469; and PACTR201007000192283. Findings Between March, 2010, and April, 2016, 20 060 women were enrolled and randomly assigned to receive tranexamic acid (n=10 051) or placebo (n=10 009), of whom 10 036 and 9985, respectively, were included in the analysis. Death due to bleeding was significantly reduced in women given tranexamic acid (155 [1·5%] of 10 036 patients vs 191 [1·9%] of 9985 in the placebo group, risk ratio [RR] 0·81, 95% CI 0·65–1·00; p=0·045), especially in women given treatment within 3 h of giving birth (89 [1·2%] in the tranexamic acid group vs 127 [1·7%] in the placebo group, RR 0·69, 95% CI 0·52–0·91; p=0·008). All other causes of death did not differ significantly by group. Hysterectomy was not reduced with tranexamic acid (358 [3·6%] patients in the tranexamic acid group vs 351 [3·5%] in the placebo group, RR 1·02, 95% CI 0·88–1·07; p=0·84). The composite primary endpoint of death from all causes or hysterectomy was not reduced with tranexamic acid (534 [5·3%] deaths or hysterectomies in the tranexamic acid group vs 546 [5·5%] in the placebo group, RR 0·97, 95% CI 0·87-1·09; p=0·65). Adverse events (including thromboembolic events) did not differ significantly in the tranexamic acid versus placebo group. Interpretation Tranexamic acid reduces death due to bleeding in women with post-partum haemorrhage with no adverse effects. When used as a treatment for postpartum haemorrhage, tranexamic acid should be given as soon as possible after bleeding onset. Funding London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Pfizer, UK Department of Health, Wellcome Trust, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Cross-modality guided Image Enhancement

The quality of medical images is a crucial factor that affects the performance of several image analysis tasks. Low contrast and noise are among the widely investigated distortions in medical image enhancement problems. In this thesis, the approaches to improve the contrast of medical images and reduce the noise have been proposed by particularly investigating how the cross-modal guidance from another medical image impacts the enhancement. We are particularly interested in enhancing Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) which are widely used in both diagnosis and therapy planning. The first section of the thesis focuses on contrast enhancement and the second section focuses ondenoising. This dissertation presents our research work supported by six original publications (including five published papers and one accepted for publication). First, in the context of cross-modality guided contrast enhancement, two traditional global enhancement approaches are proposed to improve the contrast of CT images of the human liver using corresponding MR images. The first approach uses context-aware two-dimensional histogram specification (HS) and morphological operations. The objective of this scheme is to improve the visibility of the organ’s anatomy to facilitate the tasks of surgeons and radiologists. The second uses 2D-HS followed by an optimization scheme to minimize the artifacts associated with histogram-based methods and simultaneously preserves the structure of the image during enhancement. In this approach, the enhanced images are analyzed from two perspectives (contrast enhancement and improvement in tumor segmentation). Both techniques have been validated on multi-modal data acquired from a hospital in Norway. Furthermore, an acceleration scheme was proposed by parallelizing the steps involved in the proposed CE approach which drastically reduced the execution time of the algorithm. The third method uses deep learning to improve the contrast of medical images using guidance from multi-modal MR images. Cycle-GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) was applied for this purpose where the corresponding high-contrast image from another modality was used as ground truth as opposed to using manually enhanced ground truth/ referenceimage. Secondly, noise is another artifact that affects the visual quality of medical images. It not only hampers the visibility of structures for clinicians who inspect these images to thoroughly understand the organ’s morphology; but it also affects the subsequent image analysis tasks. It is therefore imperative to remove noise and improve the perceptual quality of medical images. Different kinds of noise contaminate medical images. In this thesis, we proposed a method to denoise T1- weighted (T1-w) MR images contaminated with Rician noise. We exploited the complementarity-aware information in better perceptual quality multi-modal medical images for denoising purpose. In particular, the role of deep learning approach was investigated in this regard. The features from dual images were combined in a hierarchical manner to extract rich features, which are later combined in a systematic way as opposed to simple feature concatenation. The performance was validated on two public datasets both from a qualitative and quantitative perspective. Moreover, the comparison was done with single image denoising schemes on varying levels of noise