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Chrysanthemum morifolium L. cultivators in Pakistan have frequently detected that poor root cuttings of chrysanthemum caused poor anchorage of roots that results in shipping losses of these pot plants. Optimum concentration of appropriate auxins is used to promote effective rooting. Completely randomized design (CRD) is adopted and it consisted of five treatments including control and different concentration of both auxins viz. 1-Naphthalene acetic acid (50 mg/L,100 mg/L) and Indole-3-acetic acid (100 mg/L, 200 mg/L) on tip cuttings of chrysanthemum. In this experiment, 15 pots of 9-inch diameter were used which were filled with silt, leaf mould and well rotten farmyard manure (1:1:1). Three cuttings in each pot and a total of 45 cuttings were planted. Cuttings of each treatment were dipped for 3 minutes in respective solution before planting. Uprooting was done after 60 days of plantation the cuttings. NAA with 100 mg/L proved best treatments that produced maximum root length, number of roots, dry and fresh weights of roots, number of sprouted buds, number of leaves, leaves fresh weight and dry leaves weight as compared to other treatments and control. This data suggested that NAA can be successfully used to increase root and shoot parameters in chrysanthemum propagated by means of tip cuttings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chrysanthemum morifolium L. cultivators in Pakistan have frequently detected that poor root cuttings of chrysanthemum caused poor anchorage of roots that results in shipping losses of these pot plants. Optimum concentration of appropriate auxins is used to promote effective rooting. Completely randomized design (CRD) is adopted and it consisted of five treatments including control and different concentration of both auxins viz. 1-Naphthalene acetic acid (50 mg/L, 100 mg/L) and Indole-3-acetic acid (100 mg/L, 200 mg/L) on tip cuttings of chrysanthemum. In this experiment, 15 pots of 9-inch diameter were used which were filled with silt, leaf mould and well rotten farmyard manure (1:1:1). Three cuttings in each pot and a total of 45 cuttings were planted. Cuttings of each treatment were dipped for 3 minutes in respective solution before planting. Uprooting was done after 60 days of plantation the cuttings. NAA with 100 mg/L proved best treatments that produced maximum root length, number of roots, dry and fresh weights of roots, number of sprouted buds, number of leaves, leaves fresh weight and dry leaves weight as compared to other treatments and control. This data suggested that NAA can be successfully used to increase root and shoot parameters in chrysanthemum propagated by means of tip cuttings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few decades, numerous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of diet modification in preventing and controlling different chronic diseases, bringing increased attention to the creation of nutritional recipes. Currently, the development of recipes is primarily based on personal experience rather than nutritional specifications. To this end, this paper first uses kernel canonical correlation analysis to demonstrate the relationship between nutrients in food and recipes. Based on this relationship, a new recipe expression method is put forward, which objectively reflects differing importance of an ingredient in differing recipes. Then, recipes are composed using an auto-encoder in deep learning, and a fusion model of two auto-encoders is proposed for better concocting recipes. This paper uses two machine learning methods, namely, non-negative matrix factorization and two-step regularized least squares, to form recipes. To tackle overfitting and instability in non-negative matrix factorization during the training of recipe model, we introduce the Frobenius norm to redefine the objective function and add non-smooth sparse matrices. Similar food has similar taste, but their nutrients might differ. This paper also considers nutrients as a kernel matrix of the two-step regularized least squares, which can effectively avoid the occurrence of different food combinations with similar taste. Experimental results show that developing recipes based on nutrients in food is feasible and effective in the context of machine learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate the usefulness of residual cholesteatoma wall as a lining of mastoid cavity in achieving a dry mastoid cavity after a canal wall down (CWD) mastoidectomy. Study Design: Experimental study. Place and Duration of Study: Combined Military Hospital Lahore, from May 2015 to Oct 2016. Methodology: Both adults and children (58 cases) undergoing canal wall down mastoidectomies were included in the study. While removing the cholesteatoma, medial wall of fundus was left intact and wide opening was ensured to leave it saucer shaped. Post operatively all patients were observed to see that when their mastoid cavities become dry and asymptomatic. Results: Out of total 58 patients operated 11 were children and 47 adults. Age range was 11 to 67 years. Thirty patients were males and 28 were females. Following Canal Wall Down mastoidectomies all the mastoid cavities were managed regularly and at the end of four months 27 (47%) cavities became dry. At six months 49 (84%) became dry and one was still wet after one year of surgery. Conclusion: At 12 month follow up, 98% percent of mastoid cavities were dry and asymptomatic with our technique of leaving part of cholesteatoma wall. However longer follow-up and larger sample is required for better outcome assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Personal identification is important both in the living and in the dead an. The aim of medico legal autopsy is to determine personal identification Study design: This descriptive study is based on autopsy record and provides informations regarding various methods of personal identification. Duration of study: From 1st January 2013 to 23rd May 2013. Methodology: This study was conducted in the department of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology of Khyber Medical College, Peshawar. Data was collected from the record of autopsies performed from January 2013 to May 2013.It include all cases referred from urban as well as from rural area police stations of Peshawar district. Results: Out of total 400 autopsies done 26 postmortem (6.5%) were done on dead bodies which were difficult to recognize due to various reasons. Conclusion: Aims of autopsy are to find out the personal identification with respect tp the area he belonged. What happens to the dead and when it happened, did he reacted or not and to find out any associated crime . An autopsy is helpful in establishing personal identity and in finding out the cause of death, the nature of injury whether it is ante mortem or post mortem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Personal identification is important both in the living and in the dead an. The aim of medico legal autopsy is to determine personal identification Study design: This descriptive study is based on autopsy record and provides informations regarding various methods of personal identification. Duration of study: From 1st January 2013 to 23rd May 2013. Methodology: This study was conducted in the department of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology of Khyber Medical College, Peshawar. Data was collected from the record of autopsies performed from January 2013 to May 2013.It include all cases referred from urban as well as from rural area police stations of Peshawar district. Results: Out of total 400 autopsies done 26 postmortem (6.5%) were done on dead bodies which were difficult to recognize due to various reasons. Conclusion: Aims of autopsy are to find out the personal identification with respect to the area he belonged. What happens to the dead and when it happened, did he reacted or not and to find out any associated crime . An autopsy is helpful in establishing personal identity and in finding out the cause of death, the nature of injury whether it is ante mortem or post mortem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: An artifact is a change in the natural state of the dead body which is likely to be misinterpreted at autopsy and these artifacts pose problems in finding out the cause of death, mode of death, manner of death, time since death and whether death occurred at that spot or body thrown at that place after killing. Study design: This descriptive study is based on autopsy record and provides information regarding problems which are likely to create confusion during autopsy of a dead body. Duration of study: From 1st January 2013 to 23rd May 2013. Methodology: This study was conducted in the department of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology of Khyber Medical College, Peshawar. Data was collected from the record of autopsies performed from January 2013 to May 2013.It include all cases referred from urban as well as from rural area police stations of Peshawar district. Results: Out of total 400 autopsies 19 postmortem (5%) were done on dead bodies which created confusion due to therapeutic, agonal or post mortem artifacts. Conclusion: Post mortem artifacts cause confusion in finding out the cause of death, whether the wound is ante mortem or post mortem or a fracture especially of skull is cause of death or is iatrogenic ie. produced during autopsy by the person doing post mortem while opening the cranial cavity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, face recognition (FR) has become an important research topic due to increase in video surveillance. However, the surveillance images may have vague non-frontal faces, especially with the unidentifiable face pose or unconstrained environment such as bad illumination and dark environment. As a result, most FR algorithms would not show good performance when they are applied on these images. On the contrary, it is common at surveillance field that only Single Sample per Person (SSPP) is available for identification. In order to resolve such issues, visible spectrum infrared images were used which can work in entirely dark condition without having any light variations. Furthermore, to effectively improve FR for both the low-quality SSPP and unidentifiable pose problem, an approach to synthesize 3D face modeling and pose variations is proposed in this paper. A 2D frontal face image is used to generate a 3D face model. Then several virtual face test images with different poses are synthesized from this model. A well-known Surveillance Camera’s Face (SCface) database is utilized to evaluate the proposed algorithm by using PCA, LDA, KPCA, KFA, RSLDA, LRPP-GRR, deep KNN and DLIB deep learning. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through simulations, where increase in average recognition rates up to 10%, 27.69%, 14.62%, 25.38%, 57.46%, 57.43, 37.69% and 63.28%, respectively, for SCface database as observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experiment was conducted during 2011-12 at Agronomic Research Institute, Ayub Agricultural Research Institute, Faisalabad, Pakistan to investigate the inheritance pattern of seedling traits under drought condition. Fifty maize inbred lines collected from different sources were screened at seedling stage for water stress tolerance in glasshouse. Data were collected for fresh root and shoot length, fresh root and shoot weight, dry root and shoot weight, root /shoot ratio and relative water content and analysed statistically. All seedling traits were significantly higher (P≤0.05) for drought tolerant genotype (Y-26) than drought sensitive genotypes. One tolerant genotype Y-26 and one susceptible (Y-l 13) inbred lines were selected on the basis of dry root weight, root/shoot ratio, relative water content and used to develop six generations (P1, P2, F1, F2, BC1 and BC2). The generations were evaluated in glasshouse under normal and water stress conditions. Additive and dominance genetic effects were prominent for all seedling traits under normal condition except fresh and dry root weight which had additive genetic effects. Similarly additive and dominance gene action was involved for all seedling traits under water stress condition except fresh root length and fresh and dry root weight, which were under additive genetic control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Trauma is the most common cause of unnatural death and among regional injuries, fractures of skull are the most common injuries causing unnatural death. Most of these fractures are visible on x ray of skull but a fatal hair line fracture of skull involving only inner table of skull especially in the region of posterior cranial fossa may be missed and careful autopsy will help in finding out the cause of death. Study design: This descriptive study is based on autopsy record and provides information regarding fractures of skull. Some fractures are not visible on x ray but careful autopsy will help in finding out the cause of death. Duration of study: From 1st January 2013 to 23rd May 2013. Methodology: This study was conducted in the department of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology of Khyber Medical College, Peshawar. Data was collected from the record of autopsies performed from January 2013 to May 2013. It included all cases referred from urban as well as rural area police stations of Peshawar district. Results: Out of total 400 autopsies done 297 postmortem (74 %) were done on dead bodies having head injuries with brain damage as the cause of death. Conclusion: Post mortem done carefully can help in finding out a hair line fracture of base of skull by stripping off the duramater of the posterior cranial fossa. Such fractures are usually missed on x ray of the skull, so autopsy is helpful in finding out the cause of death. It also helps to rule out whether fracture of skull is the cause of death or fracture is iatrogenic ie. produced by the person during autopsy while opening the cranial cavity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunt is a common procedure in pediatric neurosurgery that carries a risk of complications at cranial and abdominal sites. We report on the case of a child with shunt infection and malfunction. The peritoneal catheter was tethered within the abdominal cavity, precluding its removal. Subsequently, laparoscopic exploration identified a knot at the distal end of the peritoneal catheter around the omentum. A new VP shunt was inserted after the infection was healed. This type of complication occurs rarely, so there are a limited number of case reports in the literature. This report is complemented by a literature review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Medulloblastoma is one of the most common pediatric brain malignancies. The usual presenting clinical features are related to posterior fossa syndrome or/and hydrocephalus. Cauda equina syndrome is a very rare presentation for this disease.Case Presentation: We describe the case of a three-year-old boy with cauda equina syndrome as the initial presenting clinical feature for medulloblastoma. He was initially diagnosed as having a spinal tumor by magnetic resonance imaging scan. Subsequently, a cranial magnetic resonance imaging scan revealed a posterior fossa tumor with features of dissemination. He had substantial improvement after treatment. This case report is complemented by a literature review related to this unusual presentation.Conclusions: Medulloblastoma primarily presenting with cauda equina syndrome is very rare. However, spinal drop metastasis should be considered in the pediatric age group to avoid suboptimal management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personalized recipe recommender systems help users mine certain dishes they want to find and even really desire, which play a significant role in matching dishes, balancing nutrients, and preventing non-communicable diseases. Generally, customer's preferences or needs vary from person to person, and people are often reluctant to accept recommended food without reasonable explanation, especially when their demands are not explicitly addressed. In this paper, we are devoted to providing recipe suggestions accompanied by rational interpretations generated from images or videos. First, we construct a recipe knowledge graph (RcpKG) through the use of multi-modality and hierarchical thought, which focuses on the underlying demands of users and the consideration of multiple fine-grained factors. On this basis, a novel multi-modal recipe recommendation method via the knowledge graph (RcpMKR) is proposed, which represents nodes in multiple aspects and performs multi-relational graph structure extraction of the RcpKG. It not only takes into account local associations within the graph but also global information, and incorporates user concerns at different levels. Then, we adopt BERT-based multi-modal models and generative adversarial networks to generate interpretations. Additionally, dynamic convolution and random synthetic attention are utilized in our work to discriminate among features. Experimental results show that the proposed method and BERT-based fusion models improve recipe recommendation performance and explanation generation. Specifically, the precision of the RcpMKR method through RcpKG, user concerns and graph convolutional network improves by 7.82%, and the viExpCBTBERT method via 2D&3D convolutional neural networks for developing text interpretations enhances the F1-score by 10% compared with the baseline. • Propose an extendable multi-modal recipe fusion framework based on knowledge graph. • Constructing a recipe knowledge graph based on user preferences. • Use multi-modality to improve recommendation results. • Utilizing deep learning to generate explanations from multimedia data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge graphs (KGs) have recently become increasingly popular due to the broad range of essential applications in various downstream tasks including intelligent search, personalized recommendations, intelligent financial data analytics, etc. During an automated construction of a KG, the knowledge facts from multiple knowledge sources are automatically extracted in the form of triples, and these observed triples are used to derive new unobserved triples for KG completion (also known as link prediction). State-of-the-art link prediction methods are known to be primarily KG embedding models, among which tensor factorization models have recently drawn much attention due to their scalability and expressive feature embeddings, and hence, perform well for link prediction. However, these embedding models consider each KG triple individually and fail to capture the useful information present in the neighborhood of a node. To this end, we propose a novel end-to-end KG embedding learning framework that consists of an encoder of a dual weighted graph convolutional network, and a decoder of a novel fully expressive tensor factorization model. The proposed encoder extends weighted graph convolutional network to generate two rich and high quality embedding vectors for each node by aggregating information from the neighboring nodes. The proposed decoder has a flexible and powerful tensor representation form of the Tensor Train decomposition that takes benefit of the two representations of each node in its embedding space to accurately model the KG triples. We also derive a bound on the size of the embeddings for full expressivity and show that our proposed tensor factorization model is fully expressive. Additionally, we show the relationship of our tensor factorization model to previous tensor factorization models. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed framework that consistently marks performance gains over several previous models on recent standard link prediction datasets. • Embedding models perform the link prediction task on the basis of individual triples. • Gathering neighborhood information leads to richer node embeddings. • A GCN based model is used to produce two embedding vectors of each node. • A novel tensor factorization model predicts missing entities to derive new triples. • The results prove that richer node embeddings lead to significant performance gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An 82 years old patient with background history of severe COPD, heart failure, multiple co-morbidities and poor quality of life was admitted with pneumonia and subsequently developed acute respiratory distress. There was an obvious conflict of opinion among her family members regarding decision making in her case. The patient time and again insisted against being resuscitated if she ever became seriously ill. However, she did not appoint a proxy decision maker or give an advance directive. This created an ethical dilemma, resulting a clash among the family members as well as her treating physicians concerning the withholding of active treatment and DNR orders in case of cardiorespiratory arrest. In the end the clinicians took lead and, with effective communication with the patient and the family members, made a final decision of withholding treatment in respect of the patient's dignity and autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iron(II) complexes of hexaphenyl(1,2,5-thia/selenadiazolo)porphyrazines have been prepared as bis(pyridine) adducts [Py2Fe(XN2)PAPh6] (X=S, Se) from the corresponding MgII complexes obtained by template co-cyclotetramerization of diphenylfumarodinitrile with 1,2,5-thia/selenadiazolo-3,4-dicarbonitriles, and the unusual direct replacement of Se by S in the reaction of [Py2Fe(SeN2)PAPh6] with H2S has been observed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Background: Medico-legal autopsy is a valuable source of information about death whether it is natural or unnatural and if un-natural then what is the cause, mode, manner of death, the time since dead or any associated crime with the death. Study design: This descriptive study is based on autopsy record and provides information regarding cause of death, age, sex of the person and whether from rural or urban area. Duration of study: From 1st January 2013 to 23rd May 2013. Methodology: This study was conducted in the department of Forensic Medicine & Toxicology of Khyber Medical College, Peshawar. Data was collected from the record of autopsies performed from January 2013 to May 2013. It includes all autopsy cases referred from urban as well as from rural area police stations of Peshawar district. Results: Out of total 400 autopsies 71% deaths were due to firearm injuries, 10 % due to road traffic accidents, 6% due to bomb blast injuries, 4.5% due to poisoning and 4% due to asphyxia. In all these victim of un-natural deaths 90% were male, 67% were from rural areas and 35% were of age group of 20 to 30 years. Conclusion: Situation of unnatural deaths in Peshawar is alarming and seeks attention of policy makers. All preventable causes of death can be controlled by providing better education including religious education, by improving social justice and socioeconomic conditions of people and by increasing psychiatric treatment facilities in our hospitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To find the frequency of hepatocellular carcinoma in cirrhotic patients of our population. Design: Prospective observational study. Setting: Medical A Unit Hayat Abad Medical Complex Peshawar. Period: 1st January 2010 to 31st July 2011. Material & methods: All patients were screened for presence of Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by performing Alpha fetoprotein and ultra sound (U/S) abdomen. Contrast enhanced computed tomography scan (CT) of abdomen was done in selective cases. European Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (EASLD) Noninvasive criteria (limited to patients with underlying cirrhosis) was used for diagnosis of HCC i.e. Two coincident imaging techniques that identify a focal lesion more than 2 cm showing arterial hypervascularization or one imaging modality that identifies a focal lesion more than 2 cm in diameter showing arterial hypervascularization and serum AFP levels greater than 400 ng/Ml. Results: A total of 370 patients cirrhotic patients were enrolled in this study. Thirty nine patients (10.5%) were diagnosed as having HCC. Male patients were 30 (77%) and 9(23%) were female. Mean age was 49.2% (range 18 to 72 years). Abdominal discomfort was predominant symptom present in 94% patients, followed by anorexia present in 90% patients, abdominal distension in 76%, weight loss in 62%, jaundice was present in 46% patients, altered mental status was notice in 36% patients and history of upper gastrointestinal (GI) bleed and malena was extracted from 26% patients. Ultrasound abdomen and CT abdomen showed unifocal lesion in 48.7% patients, multifocal lesion in 30.7% patients and massive lesion in 20.5% patients. Alpha fetoprotein ranged from 45ng/dl to 630ng/dl. Hepatitis C (HCV) was the commonest cause present in 51% patients, Hepatitis B (HBV) in 15.3% patients and HBV and HCV co-infection in 10.25% patients, history of alcoholism was revealed in 5% patients and in 2.5% patients alcoholism was present along with HCV and HBV each, while in 10% cases the cause of cirrhosis remained unknown. Conclusions: Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common primary hepatic tumor and one of the most common cancers worldwide. It is concluded that HCC is more common in males compared to female cirrhotic patients. Hepatitis C followed by HBV are the leading causes of HCC related cirrhosis in local Population of Khyber pakhtoonkhwa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: One of the aims of medico legal autopsy is to find out personal identity in addition to mode, manner & cause of death in any sudden suspicious unnatural death. The present study is about unnatural deaths due to bomb blast injuries. Place of Study: Study was conducted in the department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology of Khyber Medical College, Peshawar. Methodology: This descriptive study consists of total 400 autopsies performed on all referred cases from the police station of rural as well as urban areas of Peshawar district during the period from 1st January 2013 to 23rd May 2013. Results: It was found out from the results that 25 out of total 400 unnatural deaths (6%) were due to bomb blast injuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: One of the aims of medico legal autopsy is to find out mode, manner and cause of death in any suspected unnatural death. The present study provides information that poisoning was found as the cause of unnatural death. Place of Study: Study was conducted in the department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology of Khyber Medical College, Peshawar. Methodology: This descriptive study consist of total 400 autopsies performed on all referred cases from the rural as well as from urban areas of Peshawar district during the period from 1st January 2013 to 23rd May 2013. Results: It was found out from the results that out of 400 cases 18 unnatural deaths (4.5%) were due to poisoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: One of the aims of medico legal autopsy is to find out mode, manner and cause of death in any sudden suspicious death .The present study is about unnatural deaths in which after autopsy no definite cause of death was determined and it was difficult to comment whether death is natural or unnatural. Place of Study: Study was conducted in the department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology of Khyber Medical college, Peshawar. Methodology: This descriptive study consist of total 400 autopsies performed on all referred cases from the police station of rural as well as urban areas of Peshawar district during the period from 1st January 2013 to 23rd May 2013. Results: It was found out from the results that in 16 out of 400 autopsies performed (4% cases) the cause of death was not determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power sector plays a crucial role in the development of a country. Rise in population and industrial expansion in developing countries are reason to burdenize the central grid. Pakistan is a country in its developing stages. About 58% of its total energy generation is contributed by fossil fuel based conventional plants for which the fuel costs plenteous amount. In these circumstances it is indispensable to exploit naturally available renewable resources for electricity generation. This study proposes a hybrid hydro-kinetic/Photovoltaic/Biomass system integrated with grid to serve electricity in a residential area of district Kotli in AJK Pakistan. By evaluating available resources and total load demand data of residential consumers, a system design is modelled in HOMER to get techno-economic and optimal design analysis of the purposed system. Using several configurations and combinations of available energy generation systems and then by comparing their results, the most optimum system design is achieved in terms of initial cost, operating cost, cost per unit and net present cost of the system. To further refine the results, the effect of variations of different parameters like load demand, water flow speed and solar irradiance on system is investigated by performing sensitivity analysis on the system. Final results demonstrate that the purposed system is cost-effective and efficient to meet the load demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To determine the spectrum and outcome of intra-abdominal tumors in children less than five years admitted in the critical care unit of a tertiary care center of Pakistan. Methodology: This retrospective study included children less than five years with malignant abdominal mass admitted in the pediatric critical care unit of the tertiary care center of Pakistan from July 2015 to June 2019. Undiagnosed patients or with relapsed or benign abdominal tumors managed in an outpatient or admitted in the critical care for post-operative care only were excluded from the study. Data was entered and analyzed by using SPSS version 21.0. Result: Total 55 patients were included with 69% boys and median age three years (IQR - 2 years). Abdominal distention was the commonest complain (100%). Only 42% children survived (n=23/55). High grade mature Bcell Non Hodgkin Lymphoma was the most common (45%) diagnosis. Advance Stage III/IV was seen in 94%. Combined multiple site metastasis was most common (45.4%). Sepsis (OR-5.30, 95% CI-1.24-22.65, p-0.024), inotropic use (OR-9.00, 95% CI-1.33-60.92, p-0.024) and malnutrition (OR-4.85, 95% CI-1.08-21.63, p-0.039) were identified as the most significant prognostic factors related to high mortality. Conclusion: B-cell Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma was the most common histopathological diagnosis, while sepsis was the commonest reason for admission in critical care unit. Majority presented with advanced stages (stage III/IV) with poor outcome(58% mortality). Sepsis, malnutrition and need of inotropes were found to be the independent risk factors contributing to this high mortality. We recommend for early recognition of abdominal distention as an important sign of cancer with prompt referral to pediatric oncology unit which would definitely decrease the upfront critical care requirement and improve survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, globalization has highlighted the importance of having machines that can truly provide customized communication for different languages. Majority of the research in the field focus on developing technologies for widely used languages such as English. In this study, we apply HMM-based speech synthesis (HTS) technology for Indonesian language. The proposed hybrid HTS-based framework, PFHTS-IDSS, uses phoneme and full-context lab to synthesize Indonesian with higher accuracy. First, we identify a list of Indonesian phonemes according to the initial-final structure of Chinese language. Based on this, we add zero-initials that match the Indonesian acoustic performance and HTS, which can make the synthesized speech natural and smooth. Second, we consider Indonesian phonemes as synthetic units to synthesize speech through the triphone and full-context lab. In addition, we design context properties of the full-context lab and the corresponding question set to train the acoustic model, which can eliminate machine sounds. Experimental results suggest that the accuracy of phoneme segmentation (PSA) and the naturalness of speech synthesis (SSN) are significantly improved via PFHTS-IDSS. Especially, the PSA of selecting phonemes as synthetic units reaches 88.3% and the corresponding SSN based on full-context lab is 4.1. The results demonstrated by PFHTS-IDSS presented in this paper may be used in multilingual free interactive system to promote better communication in terms of voice navigation, intelligent speaker and question-answering system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and objective: Leukemia is one of the fatal diseases and their morbidity and mortality rates increases day by day all over the world. This piece of research study was designed in order to find out the prevalence of different types of leukemia in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan during January 2015 to December 2016. Material and Method: The retrospective research study was carried out at Institute of Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine (IRNUM) Peshawar. A data of 400 admitted patients of leukemia were evaluated. Result: It was observed that acute leukemia (80%) was more prevalent than chronic leukemia (20%). Amongst types of leukemia, Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL) 49.5% (n=198) was more prevalent than Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML) 31.25% (n=125), Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) 10% (n=40) and Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) 9.25% (n=37) was less prevalent in this study. It was also found that leukemia was more prevalent in male patients 64.5% (n=258) as compared to females 35.5% (n=142) and male to female ratio was 1.8:1. Most of the patients were under the age of 20 years. Conclusion: Acute leukemia was more prevalent than chronic leukemia during this study in this part of the country and needs to be address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The purpose of developing 'Sepsis Guidelines for Pakistan' (SGP) is to provide clinicians practicing in local hospitals with a framework to aid timely recognition and management of adult patients in sepsis by adopting evidence-based recommendations of Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) tailored to available resources. These recommendations are not meant to replace the SSC Guidelines. Methodology: SGP is an initiative of Pakistan Society of Critical Care Medicine (PSCCM). Four key decision points to be addressed in the guidelines were identified by a thirteen member multidisciplinary committee i.e., grading the hospitals in the country, recognition of sepsis and associated organ dysfunction, essential interventions to manage sepsis, and general measures for provision of a comprehensive care to patients in sepsis according to the level of education and training of healthcare providers and facilities and resources available in different levels of hospitals. The draft was presented at the 3rd Sepsis Symposium held on 13th September, 2014 in Karachi. The final document was approved by a panel of experts from across the country, representatives of relevant societies and Global Sepsis Alliance (GSA). Recommendations: Hospitals are divided into basic, intermediate and tertiary depending on the availability of diagnostic facilities and training of the medical personnel. Modified definitions of sepsis, severe sepsis, and septic shock are used given the lack of facilities to diagnose sepsis according to international definitions and criteria in Pakistan. Essential interventions include fluid resuscitation, vasopressors to support the circulation, maintaining oxygen saturation ≥ 90% with oxygen, non-invasive ventilation or mechanical ventilation with lung protective strategies, prompt administration of antibiotics as recommended by the Medical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases Society of Pakistan (MMIDSP) and early source control. It is recommended to avoid starvation, keep an upper blood glucose ≤180 mg/dL, use daily pharmacoprophylaxis against venous thromboembolism (VTE), use stress ulcer prophylaxis, target haemoglobin of 7-9 g/dl in the absence of ischaemic heart disease, avoid sodium bicarbonate therapy as long as pH > 7.20, avoid fresh frozen plasma in the absence of bleeding, transfuse platelets if indicated, not use intravenous immunoglobulins and avoid neuromuscular blocking agents (NMBAs) in the absence of ARDS, target specific titration endpoints when continuous or intermittent sedation is required in mechanically ventilated patients and use continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) to facilitate management of fluid balance in hemodynamically unstable septic patients in tertiary care centers. In addition a comprehensive, meticulous and multidisciplinary general care is required to improve outcome of sepsis by reinforcing hand hygiene and other infection control measures, adequate monitoring and documentation tailored to the available resources. Goals of care and prognosis should be discussed with patients and families early and either shifting the patient to a hospital with better facilities or limiting or withdrawing therapy in case of poor prognosis should be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• In terms of complex relationships and multi-relational circle structures, we demonstrate that they are ubiquitous and inevitable. • The measures selected for baseline methods are not optimal by comparison experiments, and we develop two models based on matrix factorization, called sMFE and tMFE to improve embedding results. • We first use the complete incidence matrix to construct ComInE model, which contain the most comprehensive topological properties of graphs. • Use entity weights calculated by PageRank to extend TransE and apply them in Deep Learning, which reduce the cost of adding extra information while ensuring the performance. • A convolutional neural network with three hidden layers based on node weights, CNNe, is proposed for knowledge embedding. Knowledge graph (KG) has increasingly been seen as a significant resource in financial applications (e.g. , risk control, auditing and anti-fraud). However, there are few prior studies that focus on multi-relational circles, extracting additional information under the completed KG and selecting similarity measures for knowledge representation. In this paper, we introduce multi-relational circles and propose a novel embedding model, which considers entity weights calculated by PageRank algorithm to improve TransE method. In order to extract additional information, we use entity weights to convert embeddings into an on-map mining problem, and propose a model called CNNe based on entity weights and a convolutional neural network with three hidden layers, which converts vectors of entities, entity weights and relationships into matrices to perform link prediction in the same way as image processing. With the help of ten different similarity measures, it is demonstrated that the choice of distance measure greatly effect the results of the translation embedding models. Moreover, we propose two embedding methods, sMFE and tMFE, to enhance the results using matrix factorization. The complete incidence matrix is first applied to knowledge embedding, which contains the most comprehensive topological properties of the graph. Experimental results on standard benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed models are effective. In particular, CNNe achieves a mean rank of 166 less than the baseline method and an improvement of 2.1% on the proportion of correct entities ranked in the top ten on YAGO3-10 dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • SERS is applied for the differentiation of colistin resistant and susceptible E.coli strains and silver nanoparticles act as SERS substrate. • SERS spectral characteristics associated with resistant development are identified by comparison of colistin resistant and susceptible strain. • PCA and PLS-DA are useful for discrimination of all six E.coli strains. • PCA gives qualitative differentiation of all strains and PLS-DA distinguished the colistin resistant and susceptible strains with 100% accuracy and 100% specificity. The emergence of drug-resistant bacteria is a precarious global health concern. In this study, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is used to characterize colistin-resistant and susceptible E. coli strains based on their distinguished SERS spectral features for the development of rapid and cost-effective detection and differentiation methods. For this purpose, three colistin-resistant and three colistin susceptible E. coli strains were analyzed by comparing their SERS spectral signatures. Moreover, multivariate data analysis techniques including Principal component analysis (PCA) and Partial Least Squares-Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) were used to examine the SERS spectral data of colistin-resistant and susceptible strains. PCA technique was employed for differentiating colistin susceptible and resistant E.coli strains due to alteration in biochemical compositions of the bacterial cell. PLS-DA is employed on SERS spectral data sets for discrimination of these resistant and susceptible E. coli strains with 100% specificity, 100% accuracy, 99.8% sensitivity, and 86% area under receiver operating characteristics (AUROC) curve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] We report production of biosurfactant, its identification, and characterization. [•] The biosurfactant was used with pectinase in scouring of cotton fabric. [•] The treated fabric was characterized for various physico-chemical and textile properties. [•] Alkaline scouring deteriorates fabric and bioscouring gently removes hydrophobics. [•] Biosurfactant plus pectinase formulations are biocompatible and green alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the most common entrapment neuropathy. The symptoms of CTS include pain, paraesthesia and hypoesthesia in the hand, in the area innervated by the median nerve, and often occurs or worsens during the night or early morning, waking the patient up. Physical examination and nerve conduction studies are used to diagnose this condition. Early diagnosis and treatment of CTS are important because any delay can cause irreversible median nerve damage. Objective: To highlight the role of physical examination and nerve conduction study in the diagnosis of CTS. Setting: Kuwait teaching Hospital Peshawar. Period: June 2008 to June 2010. Methods: Fifty patients of carpal tunnel syndrome were studied. All patients who reported numbness and/or tingling in the median nerve distribution in the hands at least twice weekly during the preceding four weeks were enrolled to undergo clinical examination and nerve conduction tests. Following the clinical examination the symptomatic persons underwent bilateral nerve conduction tests. Results: Out of these twelve patients were males and thirty eight were females with a ratio of 1:3.1. The age range was between 20 to 60 years. CTS was bilateral in 22 patients (44%), right-sided in 23(46%) patients and left-sided in 5(10%) patients. Conclusions: In addition to the clinical presentation, electrophysiology has been proposed as the standard of care for diagnosing CTS with a recommendation that it should be performed in all cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chloroiron(lll) complex of 2,8,12,18-tetrabutyl-3,7,13,17-tetramethyl-5,10-diazaporphyrin, [(Cl)FeMBDAP], was prepared and studied by X-ray crystallography and by solution ¹H NMR and UV-vis measurements. tn the crystal structure of hemisolvate [(Cl)FeMBDAP] × 0.5CHCI3, two nonequivalent [(Cl)FeMBDAP] units containing Fe1 and Fe2 are arranged in π-dimers whh considerable overlap on their concave sides. Axial chloride bonded to Fe2 is solvated by hydrogen bonding with CHCI3. Parameters ot the coordination pyramid have typical values for the spin-mixed (S = 3/2 ÷ 5/2) FeIII complexes in the case ot Fe1 and are characteristic tor the pure intermediate-spin state tor Fe2 (displacement from the (NPyr)4 planes - 0.385 and 0.290 Å and the average NPyr-Fe bond lengths-1.992 and 1.954 Å tor Fe1 and Fe2, respectively). Effective magnetic moments in CHCI3 and CH2CI2 capable of specific solvation ot chloride by hydrogen bonding (4.S-4.6μB at 298 K) are indicative about mixed intermediate/high-spin state S = 3/2 ÷ 5/2, wth the S = 3/2 contribution increasing upon lowering of the temperature (4.02 μB in CD2CI2 at 193 K). In nonsolvating CCI4, C6D6, and THF-d8, the μeff values are consistent with the predominantiy high-spin state at ambient temperatare (5.5-5.75μB at 298 K) and almost pure S 5/2 state at low temperatare (ca. 5.9μB in THF-d8 below 270K). Downfield isotropic shifts from 35 to 50 ppm are observed for α-alkyl protons and upfield shifts from -5 to -15 ppm for meso-CH protons, which is characteristic for the presence of the intermediate-spin state. The splithng of signals of the diastereotopic α-CH2 protons is increased with growth of the S = 3/2 state contribution from 1.5 to 4 ppm in nonsolvating to 11 ppm in specificaty solvating solvents at 298 K and furtherto 31 ppm at 193K (in CD2CI2). In the presence of DMSO addition and in methanol solution, the single CH2 signal is observed at 25-28 ppm, and the meso-CH resonance is also shifted downfield to ca. 30 ppm, indicating the formation of aix-coordinated complexes [(DMSO)2FeMBDAP]+ and [(MeOH)2FeMBDAP]+, the latter having the the μeff value of 4.92 μB at 291 K is a spin-mixed species. The electron spin resonance spectra recorded at 77K indicates that in frozen glasses in CD2CI2 and ThF molecules in the high-spin state (g˔ ∼ 6) and the predominantly intarmediata-spin state (g˔ ∼ 4.2-4.3) coexist together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The synthesis of biodiesel from Jatropha curcas by transesterification is kinetically controlled. It depends on the molar ratio, reaction time, and temperature, as well as the catalyst nature and quantity. The aim of this study was to explore the transesterification of low-cost, inedible J. curcas seed oil utilizing both homogenous (potassium hydroxide; KOH) and heterogenous (calcium oxide; CaO) catalysis. In this effort, two steps were used. First, free fatty acids in J. curcas oil were reduced from 12.4 to less than 1 wt.% with sulfuric acid-catalyzed pretreatment. Transesterification subsequently converted the oil to biodiesel. The yield of fatty acid methyl esters was optimized by varying the reaction time, catalyst load, and methanol-to-oil molar ratio. A maximum yield of 96% was obtained from CaO nanoparticles at a reaction time of 5.5 h with 4 wt.% of the catalyst and an 18:1 methanol-to-oil molar ratio. The optimum conditions for KOH were a molar ratio of methanol to oil of 9:1, 5 wt.% of the catalyst, and a reaction time of 3.5 h, and this returned a yield of 92%. The fuel properties of the optimized biodiesel were within the limits specified in ASTM D6751, the American biodiesel standard. In addition, the 5% blends in petroleum diesel were within the ranges prescribed in ASTM D975, the American diesel fuel standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A melanoma detection framework Mask-DenseNet+ is proposed based on the Mask-RCNN. It combines Mask R-CNN networks to add mask processing operations, introduces integrated learning ideas, and adjusts and improves the original DenseNet network structure. • Mask-DenseNet+ is compared with some ablation experiments. • The accuracy of our proposed method reaches 90.61%, the sensitivity reaches 78.00%, and the specificity reaches 93.43%. • The method is feasible and effective, and achieves the preliminary goal of melanoma detection. It is greatly improved the detection accuracy and reached the level of visual diagnosis of doctors. Melanoma is a type of malignant skin cancer with high mortality, and its incidence is increasing rapidly in recent years. At present, the best treatment is surgical resection after early diagnosis. However, due to the high visual similarity between melanoma and benign melanocytic nevus, coupled with the scarcity and imbalance of data, traditional methods are difficult to achieve good recognition and detection results. Similarly, many machine learning methods have been applied to the task of skin disease detection and classification. However, the accuracy and sensitivity of the experiments are still not satisfactory. Therefore, this paper proposed a method to identify melanoma more efficiently and accurately. We implemented a Mixed Skin Lesion Picture Generate method based on Mask R-CNN (MSLP-MR) to solve the problem of data imbalance. Besides, we designed a melanoma detection framework of Mask-DenseNet+ based on MSLP-MR. This method used Mask R-CNN to introduce the method of mask segmentation, and combined with the idea of ensemble learning to integrate multiple classifiers for weighted prediction. Compared with the ablation experiments, the accuracy, sensitivity and AUC of the proposed network classification are improved by 2.56%, 29.33% and 0.0345. The experimental results on the ISIC dataset shown that the accuracy of the algorithm is 90.61%, the sensitivity reaches 78.00%, which is higher than the original methods; the specificity reaches 93.43%; and the AUC reaches 0.9502. The method is feasible and effective, and achieves the preliminary goal of melanoma detection. It is greatly improved the detection accuracy and reached the level of visual diagnosis of doctors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stabilized un-doped Zinc Telluride (ZnTe) thin films were grown on glass substrates under vacuum using a closed space sublimation (CSS) technique. A dilute copper nitrate solution (0.1/100 mL) was prepared for copper doping, known as an ion exchange process, in the matrix of the ZnTe thin film. The reproducible polycrystalline cubic structure of undoped and the Cu doped ZnTe thin films with preferred orientation (111) was confirmed by X-rays diffraction (XRD) technique. Lattice parameter analyses verified the expansion of unit cell volume after incorporation of Cu species into ZnTe thin films samples. The micrographs of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to measure the variation in crystal sizes of samples. The energy dispersive X-rays were used to validate the elemental composition of undoped and Cu-doped ZnTe thin films. The bandgap energy 2.24 eV of the ZnTe thin film decreased after doping Cu to 2.20 eV and may be due to the introduction of acceptors states near to valance band. Optical studies showed that refractive index was measured from 2.18 to 3.24, whereas thicknesses varied between 220 nm to 320 nm for un-doped and Cu doped ZnTe thin film, respectively, using the Swanepoel model. The oxidation states of Zn+2, Te+2, and Cu+1 through high resolution X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses was observed. The resistivity of thin films changed from ~107 Ω·cm or undoped ZnTe to ~1 Ω·cm for Cu-doped ZnTe thin film, whereas p-type carrier concentration increased from 4 × 109 cm−2 to 1.4 × 1011 cm−2, respectively. These results predicted that Cu-doped ZnTe thin film can be used as an ideal, efficient, and stable intermediate layer between metallic and absorber back contact for the heterojunction thin film solar cell technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]