The phenomenon of drug addiction and the role of rehabilitation centers in Balochistan, Pakistan

The phenomenon of drug addiction is prevailing universally, and Pakistan is in alarming situation due this problem. This study is mainly concerned with phenomena of drug addiction and the role of rehabilitation centers in Balochistan, Pakistan. As the study required a detailed understanding about drug abuse and the role of rehabilitation centers in Balochistan in recovery of affected individuals. Background and context of Pakistan and its province, Balochistan is focused because of the problem and the role of rehab centers, at some extend depends on its geography, surrounding, and circumstances. It uses a qualitative approach and demonstrates the phenomenon including the real experiences of affected individuals and the people working in rehabilitation centers. Further, it is focused on finding the experiences and strategies on how to help the individuals come out of this problem. It uses in-depth interviews with five staff members of the rehab centers and nine affected individuals admitted there who were purposively selected from four different rehab centers. The empirical data is coded and created into different meaningful themes and analytically presented under those themes. Moreover, the findings are discussed with reference to the related literature in its scope and theoretical bases of cognitive dissonance theory (CDT), and social learning theory (SLT). The study presents the causes of increasing ratio of drug addiction such as peer groups, unintentional family mistakes and family problems, increasing the sexual capabilities, financial status, educational background, accessibility of drugs, mobilization and mental stress, depression and break ups. It presents the policies and strategies of treatment phases applied by rehab centers like detoxification phase, psychological phase, social phase and spiritual phase. Further, it focuses the type of recovery as long-term and short-term recovery and highlights the ratio and causes of relapse. The study emphasizes the involvement of society, family, and other factors in recovery of the affected individuals and prevention of relapse. It discusses the challenges like socio-cultural barriers, socio-economic, problems, lack of family support, illiteracy, lack of government support, lack of professional staff and unwillingness of the patients. It emphasizes that the rehab centers are doing their best but cannot give satisfactory result without the cooperation of society, family, and government. Female effected individuals are deprived of availing the facilities of rehabilitation centers and get recovered through the help of treatment and professionals due to cultural norms and male dominated society in Pakistan. Recommendations from the study include control of production and supply of drugs, drug awareness programs in educational organizations, psychological sessions with parents and children, balanced family behavior, social awareness about the harms of drugs, extra-curricular activities and sports programs, separate rehab centers for female individuals, finial support from government, hiring of professional staff in rehab centers and conduct further research about this topic

Learning Styles and Employee Creative Behavior; An Exploration Through Cognitive Styles

Cognitive styles are the thinking patterns that greatly influence our day to day activities. People may adopt specific learning styles to the way they want to act. Creativity is an important aspect and a great requirement of now a day’s organization because competition is so enhanced that it is an important aspectto be a part of market. So there is a need to explore what types of learning styles and cognitive styles will help the employees to be creative. The key variables of this study were Cognitive styles (CS), Learning styles (LS) and Employee Creativity (EC). The main purpose was to study cognitive styles as a moderator in relationship of learning styles and employee creativity; and to explore these variables further. Descriptive research design was used and data was collected from 450 employees in different sectors(public and private) through convenient sampling from banks, insurance and telecommunication sectors of Multan. Participants responded to cognitive style inventory (CS; Ancona, Kochan, Scully, Van Maanen, and Westney, 1997), Learning Style Questionnaire (LS; O Brein 1985), and Employee Creativity Questionnaire (EC; Tierney et al. in 1999)in order to study the target variables. Descriptive statistics and reliability of scales was calculated. One way ANOVA, t-test was calculated by using SPSS. To check moderation, Partial least square structural Equation modeling (smart PLS) were used. Cognitive styles had significant moderating effect on learning styles and employee creativity. Limitations and suggestions are discussed

Clinicopathological Study of Patients Presenting with Adnexal Masses

Background: To assess the clinicopathological outcome of women with adnexal masses . Method: In this observational study patients with a diagnosis of adnexal mass, who underwent laparotomy, were included. All the patients were evaluated by a complete history, general abdominal and pelvic examination, followed by ultrasonography. Their preoperative findings are then correlated with surgical findings and histopathological diagnosis. Descriptive statistics are applied and results shown in the form of frequencies and percentages. Result: In 50 patients commonest presenting symptom was pain abdomen followed by mass abdomen. Ultrasound features correlate well with histopathological features. Majority (94.6%) patients had benign adnexal pathology and 5.4% had malignant pathology. Most common neoplasms were surface epithelial tumours followed by dermoid cyst. Conclusion:Demographic detail, ultrasonography and CA-125 are good preoperative indicators of malignant nature or benign nature of adnexal masses. Most common adnexal tumours are surface epithelial tumours followed by dermoid cysts and malignant tumours are common in postmenopausal group

Antibacterial evaluation of three widespread weeds Mazus japonicus, Fumaria indica and Vicia faba from Pakistan

Present study was carried out to explore the antibacterial potential of three weeds Mazus japonicus, Fumaria indica and Vicia sativa grown widely in Pakistan. Different extracts (aqueous, methanolic and petroleum ether) of the respective weeds were prepared and tested against nine bacterial strains using agar well diffusion assay. Bacterial strains included both gram positive (Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus anthracis, Bacillus megaterium, Enterococcus faecium, Enterrococcus faecalis and Enteroccocus sp) and gram negative (Pseudomonas putida, Escherichia coli and Escherichia coli top10) bacteria. Ten different concentrations of each extracts were used. Enterococcus faecalis JH22 and Bacillus megaterium MB141 were the most resistant bacteria while Escherichia coli top10 was found highly susceptible and inhibited by all three extracts of Mazus japonicas and Fumaria indica. Vicia sativa was effective only against Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas putida at limited crude extract concentration while all other strains showed resistance against different extracts of the respective plant. Amongst the plant extracts screened for antibacterial activity, methanolic extracts showed best antibacterial activity whereas aqueous and petroleum ether were found least active. This study significantly supports the usage of these widespread weeds as traditional medicines for various bacterial infections.Â

The Missing Link Between High Performance Work Practices And Perceived Organizational Politics

A vast majority of research characterizes organizational politics as an aversive phenomenon and thus recommends exploring the factors that minimize its intensity. This study primarily endeavored to examine the role of high performance work practices (HPWPs) in controlling organizational politics. The moderating influence of Machiavellian personalities on HPWPs- politics was also evaluated. Through a questionnaire survey, 243 responses were obtained from engineers working in a local industrial area of capital city of Pakistan. The results showed an inverse relationship between HPWPs and perceived organizational politics (POP), and the moderating role of Machiavellianism was substantiated. Practical implications are presented based on the study results

Rumor Detection in Business Reviews Using Supervised Machine Learning

© 2018 IEEE. Currently, a high volume of business data is generating with a high velocity in different forms like unstructured, structured or semi-structured. Due to social media arrival, there is a deluge of business rumors and their manual screening is time-consuming and difficult. In the current social computing era, it is necessary to move towards an automated process for the detection of business rumors. This work aims at developing an automated system for detecting business rumors from online business reviews using supervised machine learning classifiers, namely Logistic Regression, Support Vector Classifier (SVC), Naïve Bayesian (NB), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) to classify the business reviews into rumor and nonrumor. Experimental results show that Naïve Bayesian (NB), achieved efficient results with respect to other classifiers with an accuracy of 72.43 %