Communism as Eudaimonia

Karl Marx states in Capital that “man, if not as Aristotle thought a political animal, is at all events a social animal” (Marx, 1992, 444). That Marx draws from Aristotle’s work has been long-recognized, but one could argue that Marx’s very conception of man—what he calls “species-being”—is a derivative of Aristotle’s theory of the good life. This article explores the Aristotelian underpinnings of Marx’s political philosophy and argues that Marx’s theory of species-being and human emancipation supervenes upon Aristotle’s theory of eudaimonia. The consequence of such a rethinking suggests that the Aristotelian good life itself is possible only in the communist society of Marx’s imaginings and, as such, is a state that must be realized—whether by nature or revolution—for human flourishing. Inspired by Aristotle’s assertion that “friendship exists to the extent that what is just exists” (Aristotle, 1991a, 527), this article draws from several of Aristotle’s and Marx’s texts to situate man as an inherently social being, whose need of other men serves both to edify and realize a common end toward which the state is oriented: the life of virtuous activity performed by and in an association of equals

Novel use of fresh frozen plasma in treating hereditary angioedema: A success story from Pakistan

Hereditary angioedema (HAE) due to a C1-esterase inhibitor(C1-INH) deficiency is a rare and potentially life-threatening disorder. It is characterized by an episodic and self-limiting increase in vascular permeability. The condition manifests itself as recurrent attacks of swelling in any part of the body. The angioedema can cause the involvement of the respiratory tract, skin, and gastrointestinal tract. Laryngeal involvement can make the condition life-threatening. It does not respond well to conventional angioedema therapy of steroids, adrenaline, and antihistamines. The targeted therapy for HAE consists of plasma-derived or recombinant C1-INH, ecallantide, and icatibant or bradykinin receptor antagonist. In the absence of these therapies, it becomes difficult to manage this condition effectively. We present a case of hereditary angioedema, who presented with life-threatening laryngeal edema, causing asphyxia, leading to cardiac arrest. Due to a lack of availability of C1-INH concentrate, he was given fresh frozen plasma (FFP). His condition gradually improved, and he was successfully extubated after three days. This is the first time we are reporting a case from Pakistan in which the patient was successfully treated with FFP for an acute attack of hereditary angioedema

Eyes Meet Shape: Differences in Monolinguals and Bilinguals

Monolingual and bilingual children learn words differently due to the different environments they are raised in. This study used 16 monolingual and 16 bilingual children approximately 30-months old. Because of a different linguistic environment, the cues children attend to in the process of language acquisition may differ. Particularly, this study looked at the relative differences between bilingual and monolingual children’s tendency to attend to pragmatic, i.e. social-linguistic cues and object property cues, such as shape, when learning words. Overall, results conclude that monolingual children pay more attention to object property cues compared to bilingual children and suggest that bilingual children relatively pay more attention to pragmatic cues when they are available. Bilingual children are suggested to attend to pragmatic cues to a greater extent relative to monolinguals because of their attention to social context from hearing multiple labels in two languages and because of their flexibility in attending to linguistic cues in general

Bilingual and Monolingual Children Attend to Different Cues When Learning New Words

The way in which children learn language can vary depending on their language environment. Previous work suggests that bilingual children may be more sensitive to pragmatic cues from a speaker when learning new words than monolingual children are. On the other hand, monolingual children may rely more heavily on object properties than bilingual children do. In this study we manipulate these two sources of information within the same paradigm, using eye gaze as a pragmatic cue and similarity along different dimensions as an object cue. In the crucial condition, object and pragmatic cues were inconsistent with each other. Our results showed that in this ambiguous condition monolingual children attend more to object property cues whereas bilingual children attend more to pragmatic cues. Control conditions showed that monolingual children were sensitive to eye gaze and bilingual children were sensitive to similarity by shape; it was only when the cues were inconsistent that children’s preference for one or the other cue was apparent. Our results suggest that children learn to weigh different cues depending on their relative informativeness in their environment

Estimation of Consumption Functions: The Case of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka

The study uses annual data from 1971 to 2013 and appliesKeynesian Consumption Function (KCF) and the PermanentIncome Hypothesis (PIH) in order to estimate consumption functionsof SAARC countries. The empirical results show that in the shortrun, the difference between KCF and PIH under Marginal Propensityto Consume (MPCs) is quite large. This difference, therefore,indicates that in the short run consumers’ consumption decisionare based on current income. However, another point worth notingis that, in the short run smaller values of MPCs under the PIHindicate that consumers are unable to anticipate their future incomein developing countries, like Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistanand Sri Lanka. Moreover, the study also estimates the MPCs underthe PIH in the long run. The results demonstrate that in the long runthe values of MPCs are higher than the MPCs while using PIH,which indicates that in the long run consumers anticipate theirfuture income and accordingly make consumption decisions on thebasis of permanent income

Failure Detection in Deep Neural Networks for Medical Imaging

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have started to find their role in the modern healthcare system. DNNs are being developed for diagnosis, prognosis, treatment planning, and outcome prediction for various diseases. With the increasing number of applications of DNNs in modern healthcare, their trustworthiness and reliability are becoming increasingly important. An essential aspect of trustworthiness is detecting the performance degradation and failure of deployed DNNs in medical settings. The softmax output values produced by DNNs are not a calibrated measure of model confidence. Softmax probability numbers are generally higher than the actual model confidence. The model confidence-accuracy gap further increases for wrong predictions and noisy inputs. We employ recently proposed Bayesian deep neural networks (BDNNs) to learn uncertainty in the model parameters. These models simultaneously output the predictions and a measure of confidence in the predictions. By testing these models under various noisy conditions, we show that the (learned) predictive confidence is well calibrated. We use these reliable confidence values for monitoring performance degradation and failure detection in DNNs. We propose two different failure detection methods. In the first method, we define a fixed threshold value based on the behavior of the predictive confidence with changing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the test dataset. The second method learns the threshold value with a neural network. The proposed failure detection mechanisms seamlessly abstain from making decisions when the confidence of the BDNN is below the defined threshold and hold the decision for manual review. Resultantly, the accuracy of the models improves on the unseen test samples. We tested our proposed approach on three medical imaging datasets: PathMNIST, DermaMNIST, and OrganAMNIST, under different levels and types of noise. An increase in the noise of the test images increases the number of abstained samples. BDNNs are inherently robust and show more than 10% accuracy improvement with the proposed failure detection methods. The increased number of abstained samples or an abrupt increase in the predictive variance indicates model performance degradation or possible failure. Our work has the potential to improve the trustworthiness of DNNs and enhance user confidence in the model predictions

The Challenges Faced By Dental Students in Studying Oral Pathology Online During Covid-19: A Cross-Sectional Study

OBJECTIVES The way of practising and teaching dentistry has changed significantly worldwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact on dental education should not be neglected. Therefore, sharing experiences about online teaching from in-person education is essential to a better learning process during this period. This study aimed to assess the challenges faced by dental students in studying oral pathology online during covid-19: a cross-sectional study. METHODOLOGY It was a descriptive cross-sectional study in the Department of oral pathology at Altamash Institute of dental medicine to assess the challenges students faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 110 participants were approached, and among them, 105 participants responded. Of 105 participants, 78% were females, and 22% were males. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 23.RESULTSAlmost 93.3% of the students felt in-person lectures are more effective than online lectures. Fourth-year students showed higher satisfaction with the number of online tutorial / practical classes taken to provide an in-depth view of the subject than 3rd year students (8.8% vs 91.2%, p=0.045). Fourth-year students showed significantly higher satisfaction with several online theory classes to provide an in-depth view of the subject than 3rd year students (p=0.045). CONCLUSION The present study concluded that most students prefer in person classes over virtual learning and face a lack of online interaction with the faculty.

Predictors of mortality in hospitalized patients with influenza: A five-year experience from a tertiary care centre in Pakistan

Influenza outbreaks are associated with significant morbidity. Our aim was to determine the factors associated with increased mortality in hospitalized patients admitted with diagnosis of influenza, at a tertiary care center in Pakistan. This study included all adult patients with an influenza infection, confirmed by realtime reverse-transcriptase polymerase-chain-reaction (RT-PCR) at Aga Khan University Hospital Pakistan. In our study, 112 patients with laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infection were admittedat our hospital from the 1st of January 2013 to the 31st of December 2018. Eighty-nine patients (79.46%) were managed in ward or special care units and 23 patients (20.5%) received treatment in intensive care unit (ICU). The overall mortality in our study was 15/112 (13.4%) with the mortality rate of ICU patients being 47.8% while the mortality rate of patients treated in special care units and wards was only 4.5%. The mean age of patients with influenza infection was 58.1 years (±16.6). Influenza virus type A was found in 87 patients (77.6%), while influenza type B was present in only 25 (22.4%) patients. Out of the 15 non-survivors, 14 had influenza A. Only 17 patients (15.2%) were found to have positive culture of respiratory specimen, out of which 3 were non-survivors and 14 were survivors. Our analysis identified septic shock (odds ratio 45.24; 95%, confidence interval 6.20-330; p\u3c0.001), renal failure (odds ratio 10.88; 95%, confidence interval 1.61-73.52; p=0.01) and ICU stay (odds ratio 17.22; 95%, confidence interval 2.68-110.5; p=0.003) as independent risk factors associated with in-hospital mortality

Effect of Vitamin-D supplementation in adults presenting with chronic lower back pain

Background: Chronic pain in the lower back of adults is a common problem and mostly associated with Vitamin D deficiency. Along with standard treatment, vitamin D supplementation can help in early and better relief from back pain. Objective: To assess the effectiveness of vitamin D supplementation in patients with chronic lower back pain. Study Design & Methods: This Quasi-experimental trial was conducted at Department of Orthopaedics, Benazir Bhutto Hospital for 6 months. The patients aged between 15 to 55 years with chronic low back pain were included and pain score was noted by using a visual analogue scale (VAS). Patients were prescribed with oral vitamin D3 with a dose of 50,000 IU weekly for eight weeks (induction phase) and oral vitamin D3 with a dose of 50,000 IU once monthly for 6 months (maintenance phase). Outcome parameters included pain measured by VAS, functional disability by modified Oswestry disability questionnaire scores, and Vitamin-D3 levels at baseline,2, 3 and 6 months post-supplementation. Results: Mean age of patients was 44.21± 11.92 years.There were 337 (56.2%) male patients while 263 (43.8%) female patients. Baseline mean vitamin-D levels were 13.32 ± 6.10 ng/mL and increased to 37.18 ± 11.72 post supplementation (P < 0.0001). There was a significant decrease in the pain score after 2nd, 3rd& 6th months (61.7 ± 4.8, 45.2 ± 4.6 & 36.9 ± 7.9, respectively) than 81.2 ± 2.4 before supplementation (P < 0.001). The modified Oswestry disability score also showed significant improvement after 2nd, 3rd& 6thmonths (35.5 ± 11.4, 30.2 ± 9.4 & 25.8 ± 10.6, respectively) as compared to baseline 46.4 ± 13.2 (P < 0.001). About 418 (69.7%) patients attained normal levels after 6 months. Conclusion: Prescription of Vitamin D in addition to standard therapy for chronic lower back pain can be beneficial in getting relief from pain and improving the functional ability of the patient