Mob Programming – A Promising Innovation in the Agile Toolkit

Mob programming is a new agile practice that is attracting the attention of software community. This paper presents an overview of mob programming, its benefits and risks identified by its proponents and early adopters and suggests areas for future academic research that could help establish its efficacy and theoretical rationale. The paper also presents the results of text analysis done on the extant literature on the subject

Study protocol of DIVERGE, the first genetic epidemiological study of major depressive disorder in Pakistan

INTRODUCTION: Globally, 80% of the burdenof major depressive disorder (MDD) pertains to low- and middle-income countries. Research into genetic and environmental risk factors has the potential to uncover disease mechanisms that may contribute to better diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, yet has so far been largely limited to participants with European ancestry from high-income countries. The DIVERGE study was established to help overcome this gap and investigate genetic and environmental risk factors for MDD in Pakistan. METHODS: DIVERGE aims to enrol 9000 cases and 4000 controls in hospitals across the country. Here, we provide the rationale for DIVERGE, describe the study protocol and characterise the sample using data from the first 500cases. Exploratory data analysis is performed to describe demographics, socioeconomic status, environmental risk factors, family history of mental illness and psychopathology. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Many participants had severe depression with 74% of patients who experienced multiple depressive episodes. It was a common practice to seek help for mental health struggles from faith healers and religious leaders. Socioeconomic variables reflected the local context with a large proportion of women not having access to any education and the majority of participants reporting no savings. CONCLUSION: DIVERGE is a carefully designed case-control study of MDD in Pakistan that captures diverse risk factors. As the largest genetic study in Pakistan, DIVERGE helps address the severe underrepresentation of people from South Asian countries in genetic as well as psychiatric research

Study protocol of DIVERGE, the first genetic epidemiological study of major depressive disorder in Pakistan.

INTRODUCTION: Globally, 80% of the burdenof major depressive disorder (MDD) pertains to low- and middle-income countries. Research into genetic and environmental risk factors has the potential to uncover disease mechanisms that may contribute to better diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, yet has so far been largely limited to participants with European ancestry from high-income countries. The DIVERGE study was established to help overcome this gap and investigate genetic and environmental risk factors for MDD in Pakistan. METHODS: DIVERGE aims to enrol 9000 cases and 4000 controls in hospitals across the country. Here, we provide the rationale for DIVERGE, describe the study protocol and characterise the sample using data from the first 500 cases. Exploratory data analysis is performed to describe demographics, socioeconomic status, environmental risk factors, family history of mental illness and psychopathology. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Many participants had severe depression with 74% of patients who experienced multiple depressive episodes. It was a common practice to seek help for mental health struggles from faith healers and religious leaders. Socioeconomic variables reflected the local context with a large proportion of women not having access to any education and the majority of participants reporting no savings. CONCLUSION: DIVERGE is a carefully designed case-control study of MDD in Pakistan that captures diverse risk factors. As the largest genetic study in Pakistan, DIVERGE helps address the severe underrepresentation of people from South Asian countries in genetic as well as psychiatric research

Design of optimum reference temperature profiles for energy saving control of indoor temperature in a building

This paper presents a technique for designing optimum reference temperature profiles for energy-efficient control of indoor air temperature in buildings. Arbitrarily chosen reference temperature profiles are often fraught with undesirable consequences, such as thermal discomfort for a building’s occupants or high consumption of fuels and electricity. An optimized reference temperature profile, on the other hand, attempts to seek a desired trade-off between the level of discomfort and amount of energy consumed. Also, the use of such optimized temperature profiles for adaptive control of indoor building temperature is discussed in details and some simulation results are presented

Investigating the Predictors and Outcomes of Entrepreneurial Bricolage

Entrepreneurial leaders have the ability to influence business model innovation and entrepreneurial bricolage. Introducing alternative ideas and behaviors in an enterprise nowadays often linked to innovation. Companies are eager to take advantage of or benefit from new goods or services or technological marketing channels in this context. Due to the recognition of leadership as an important driver of business innovation, a perceptual framework has been established in order to study the consequences of entrepreneurial leadership on the desire to build business model innovation in organizations, with business acting as a mediating moderating function on entrepreneurial bricolage and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. To explore the conceptual model of the study, five hypotheses have been proposed. A self-managed survey was conceived to acquire cross-sectional responses from 325 people working in the Punjab, Pakistan manufacturing industry. The results demonstrated that, when entrepreneurial self-efficacy is high, the link between entrepreneurial leadership and business model innovation models is stronger. As a result, this is a one-of-a-kind cross-sectional study that investigates the mediating-moderating process of business bricolage and entrepreneurial self-efficacy in Pakistan's manufacturing industry. The study contributes to existing research while also assisting legislators in taking action to govern workplace self-efficacy and encouraging leaders to use entrepreneurial bricolage techniques and business model innovation