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Education sector has witnessed several changes in the recent past. These changes have forced private universities into fierce competition with each other to get more students enrolled. This competition has resulted in the adoption of marketing practices by private universities similar to commercial brands. To get competitive gain, universities must observe and examine the students’ feedback on their own social media sites along with the social media sites of their competitors. This study presents a novel framework which integrates numerous analytical approaches including statistical analysis, sentiment analysis, and text mining to accomplish a competitive analysis of social media sites of the universities. These techniques enable local universities to utilize social media for the identification of the most-discussed topics by students as well as based on the most unfavorable comments received, major areas for improvement. A comprehensive case study was conducted utilizing the proposed framework for competitive analysis of few top ranked international universities as well as local private universities in Lahore Pakistan. Experimental results show that diversity of shared content, frequency of posts, and schedule of updates, are the key areas for improvement for the local universities. Based on the competitive intelligence gained several recommendations are included in this paper that would enable local universities generally and Riphah international university (RIU) Lahore specifically to promote their brand and increase their attractiveness for potential students using social media and launch successful marketing campaigns targeting a large number of audiences at significantly reduced cost resulting in an increased number of enrolments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the present study was to determine the choice of direct restorative material for restorations of teeth among dentists in the city of Lahore. It was a descriptive case series study. It was non-probability convenience sampling. Thirty registered dental surgeons with more than three years of clinical experience were selected randomly. The selection was carried out from a list of dentists in Lahore who were interested to participate in the survey. They were asked to take the informed consent from the patients to register 100 consecutive direct restorations on a Proforma. The results of the present study revealed that the sample group comprised of 1313 males and 1687 females, and male to female ratio was 0.8:1. Percentage of new restorations was 90.1% while replacement restorations were 9.9%. It was concluded that the Amalgam (58.9%) was the most frequently used restorative material. This was followed by resin composite (25.6%), Glassionomers/ cermet (13.4%) and compomer [2.1%] in the city of Lahore. Therefore it is recommended to develop rules to prevent mercury contamination in environment by good waste management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the present study was to determine the clinical reasons leading to the decision of dental restoration placement and replacement. It was a descriptive case series study and was carried out from October 2010 to July, 2011 Sampling: Non-probability convenience sampling. From the city of Lahore, 30 dental clinics were selected randomly, after dividing the metropolis into six administrative zones with 5 dentists from each zone. All the thirty dentists from six zones were asked to register 100 consecutive direct restorations. The standard criteria proposed by Wilson et al8 was used to record the reasons for placement and replacement of the restorations. The response from the private practitioners for data collection was 70%. The remaining data was collected from the department of Operative Dentistry, Lahore Medical & Dental College, Lahore. The results of the present study revealed that the primary caries was the major reason (84.3%) for the placement of the initial restoration and secondary caries accounted for the majority (7.1%) of the replacement restoration in the Lahore city. It was concluded that the major reason for restoration placement and replacement was caries therefore there is a need for finding the factors that are responsible for high caries incidence in Lahore and efforts should be made to prevent the caries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]