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Fortunately, driven by the emerging technologies, a systematic satellite-aerial-terrestrial integrated network has become an ideal choice for future Internet architecture through integrating terrestrial networks and nonterrestrial networks to achieve unified and efficient resource utilizing and network constructing. In the aspect of architecture design, because the UAV is the feasible options for deploying 5G services on demand, the paper entitled "The role of UAVs and mmWave in 5G: recent advances and challenge" by Shah Khalid Khan et al comprehensively surveys the state-of-art techniques in 5G-UAV relay networks, especially focuses on UAV relay architectures, identifies the relevant gaps, and challenges in the deployment of 5G-UAV relay networks. Despite the cellular system, unmanned aerial vehicle networks (UAVs), and satellite communication have made brilliant achievements and promoted great progress of human society, it would still exist diverse challenges in the face of future intelligent connection and global random access for the continuous independent development of terrestrial and nonterrestrial networks. [Extracted from the article]

Objective: To assess the safety of the Mitchelle bank technique for herniotomy in children by comparing its recurrence rate with conventional Ferguson's technique. Study Design: Quasi-experimental study. Place and Duration of Study: Paediatric Surgery Department, Pak Emirates Military Hospital, Rawalpindi Pakistan, from Sep 2018 to Sep 2019. Methodology: Children below the age of 6 years coming to Paediatric Surgery Outpatient Department with inguinal hernia were included in the study. The patients were divided into two groups. Group-I underwent herniotomy by Mitchelle bank technique (MBT-group) while Group-II by Ferguson's technique (FT-group). The demographic characteristics of the studied population, operative time, and intra-operative and post-operative complications were recorded. Results: The mean age of the patients was 25.94 ± 17.06 months in Ferguson's technique-group and 24.76 ± 16.63 months in the Mitchelle bank technique-group. The mean operative time was less in the Mitchelle bank technique-group (13.17 ± 1.47 minutes) as compared to Ferguson's technique-group (16.23 ± 1.51 minutes) (p<0.05). Early complications such as hydrocele, seroma and hematoma were seen in 5 (2.3%), 6 (2.6%) and 3 (1.3%) cases in Ferguson's technique-group, and 15 (6.9%), 8 (3.7%), and 9 (4.1%) cases in the Mitchelle bank technique group, respectively. Late complications such as orchitis, testicular atrophy, and recurrence were seen in 5 (2.3%), 6 (2.6%), 2 (0.9%) in Ferguson's technique group, and 6 (2.6%), 4 (1.8%), and 3 (1.3%) in the Mitchelle bank technique group (p>0.05). Conclusion: Mitchelle bank technique is safe for herniotomy in children with less operative time and no increase in recurrence rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Industrial Internet of Things (I-IoT) is a manifestation of an extensive industrial network that interconnects various sensors and wireless devices to integrate cyber and physical systems. While I-IoT provides a considerable advantage to large-scale industrial enterprises, it is prone to significant security challenges in the form of sophisticated attacks such as Advanced Persistent Threat (APT). APT is a serious security challenge to all kinds of networks, including I-IoT. It is a stealthy threat actor, characteristically a nation-state or state-sponsored group that launches a cyber attack intending to gain unauthorized access to a computer network and remain undetected for a longer period. The latest intrusion detection systems face several challenges in detecting such complex cyber attacks in multifarious networks of I-IoT, where unpredictable and unexpected cyber attacks of such sophistication can lead to catastrophic effects. Therefore, these attacks need to be accurately and promptly detected in I-IoT. This paper presents an intelligent APT detection and classification system to secure I-IoT. After pre-processing, several machine learning algorithms are applied to detect and classify complex APT signatures accurately. The algorithms include Decision Tree, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, Logistic Regression, Gaussian Naive Bayes, Bagging, Extreme Gradient Boosting and Adaboost, which are applied on a publicly available dataset KDDCup99. Moreover, a comparative analysis is conducted among ML algorithms to select the appropriate one for the targeted domain. The experimental results indicate that the Adaboost classifier outperforms the others with 99.9% accuracy with 0.012 s execution time for detecting APT attacks. Furthermore, results are compared with state-of-the-art techniques that depict the superiority of the proposed system. This system can be deployed in mission-critical scenarios in the I-IoT domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was the common observation that area under BT cotton was increasing in the recent past. In order to quantify the impact of BT cotton on the existing cropping pattern, this study was conducted. A sample of 300 respondents comprising of small, medium and large category of the farmers was taken from the districts of Vehari, Multan, Bahawalpur (Cotton zone) and Jhang, TTS, Faisalabad (Central Zone). Data pertained to the two consecutive years i.e. 2008-09 and 2009-10. Empirical results revealed that BT cotton area was increasing firstly at the expense of wheat area and sugarcane area secondly. In cotton zone 8.15% and in the central zone 6.5% wheat area undergone to BT cotton. Similarly, 4.5% area of sugar cane from cotton zone and 1.5% in central zone shifted to BT cotton. Out of the total sampled farmers, 70% wheat growers and 28% sugarcane growers showed their interest to shift some areas from their respective crops to BT cotton. Thus, there were the chances that textile sector will groom but in future, it will create food insecurity problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study was conducted in the Central Punjab for the year 2009-10. The main objective was to find out some strategies to pick up small farmers from their poverty status. For this purpose, a sample of 300 respondents was taken from districts Jhang, Faisalabad and T. T Singh for final data collection. Seven strategies," enhanced level of urea application to cash crops (S1), the enhanced level of DAP to cash crops ($2), enhanced urea to cash crops plus livestock units ($3), addition of hybrid tomato phts livestock units ($4). enhanced DAP plus livestock units ($5) and addition of cut flowers plus livestock units ($6) were practiced through the LP Model. The objective values obtained through LP model with S1 to $3 strategies indicate that these have reduced the poverty gap up to 48%, 34% and 20%, respectively. While $4 and $5 both were successful but $5's impact was greater than $4. Through $6 the gap remained only 3.95 percent. Thus, the strategy of addition of short duration crops like hybrid tomato and productive live stock units were the agri-enterprises and their combination can reduce the small farmer's poverty successfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In vehicular energy networks (VENs) operating in smart health care systems (SHaCarS), reputation of vehicles, i.e., ambulances, plays an important role as all functions depend upon it including message sharing, energy trading, etc. Keeping this in view, this paper presents a reputation management scheme. To ensure that the proposed scheme is secure and transparent, Blockchain (BC) technology is used. In the proposed model, the registration of ambulances is performed through a certificate authority (CA). Later, a pseudo mechanism is designed using Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, which ensures conditional anonymity and traceability. The ambulances are provided with the pseudo identities, which are mapped with the real identities to prevent disputes. Besides, the proposed scheme uses a Shamir secret sharing (SSS) algorithm to enable distributed revocation in BC based VENs operating in SHaCarS. In addition, the ambulances' reputation information is stored in interplanetary file system (IPFS) in an efficient manner. The hashes are generated by IPFS upon data storage, which are then stored in BC. The performance evaluation of the proposed system is done via extensive simulations. The results show 18–20% reduction in computational overhead and 35–40% reduction in storage overhead. The proposed system's robustness is tested by inducing the 51% attack and the replay attack. In addition, the security analysis of the smart contract is performed using Oyente. The results show that the system proposed for reputation management in the underlying work is robust and computationally efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defense compounds containing sulfur, play vital roles in the plant's survival under abiotic and biotic stresses. Cysteine (Cys) is the first organic molecule in the cell containing reduced sulfur and acts as a precursor for many sulfur-containing compounds including Glutathione (GSH). GSH functions to protect the plants against different forms of stresses. In this study, the feedback-insensitive serine acetyltransferase (SAT); a rate-limiting enzyme for Cys biosynthesis from tobacco i.e. NtSAT4 was successfully cloned into three types of overexpression constructs i.e. pBinAR_NtSAT4 (targeted to cytosol), pBinAR-TKTP_NtSAT4 (targeted to plastids) and pBinAR-SHMT_NtSAT4 (targeted to mitochondria). For stable transformation of B. napus floral-dip and tissue culture based approaches were tested using different formulations of phytohormones for calli, shoots and roots induction in a variety of genotypes. While false positive lines were obtained in the result of floral-dip method, the tissue culture based method led to successful regeneration of shoots on Murashige and Skoog (MS) media containing BAP 3 mgL-1 and developed roots in ½ MS media supplemented with IBA 3 mgL-1 in case of OSCAR cultivar. Successful selection of transgenic lines was achieved using selective antibiotic kanamycin 50 mgL-1. NtSAT4 gene integration into the plants genome was confirmed by PCR using the NtSAT4 gene specific primers. The positive transgenic lines were successfully acclimatized to soil and glass house conditions. The developed transgenic lines have the potential to overproduce high levels of cysteine and glutathione for enhanced stress tolerance especially against heavy metals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To compare the severity of post-operative pain and incidence of incisional hernia in open cholecystectomy while making rectus sparing and rectus cutting incisions in patients with symptomatic cholelithiasis. Study Design: Randomized controlled trial. Place and Duration of Study: Combined Military Hospital Skardu, three years with effect from May 2012 to May 2015. Material and Methods: Patients meeting the inclusion criteria who underwent elective open cholecystectomy were included in the study. Written informed consent was taken before surgery. Approval of hospital ethics committee was also granted. Patients were divided into two groups "I" and "II" of sixty one patients each. In group "I", patients underwent open cholecystectomy by making rectus sparing subcostal incision. In group "2", patients underwent open cholecystectomy by making rectus cutting subcostal incision. Patients were assessed on 1st, 2nd and 7th postop days for severity of pain using visual analogue score. Patients in both groups were also followed up to look for development of incisional hernia. Results: Severity of post-operative pain is much less in patients undergoing open cholecystectomy by making rectus sparing subcostal incision. However no difference was noted in both techniques in terms of incidence of incisional hernia as no patient in any group developed this morbidity. Conclusion: Use of rectus sparing subcostal incision was found more feasible in open cholecystectomy in terms of severity of postoperative pain as compared to rectus cutting incision. However, both techniques did not reveal any difference in terms of incidence of incisional hernia as no patient in either group developed hernia on six months follow up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of needle assisted laparoscopic repair (NALR) of inguinal hernias in children. Study Design: Cross-sectional analytical study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Pediatric surgery, Pak Emirates Military Hospital, Rawalpindi, from Aug 2017 to Apr 2018. Material and Methods: A total of 50 patients were included in the study. All the patients were diagnosed with inguinal hernias on the basis of history given by parents and clinical examination. All patients underwent NALR of inguinal hernias after preoperative workup and informed written consent. Pneumoperitoneum was created in all cases by open method. Transumblical 3mm port was used for telescope along with a single 3mm port in lower abdomen for grasping forceps. Internal inguinal ring was closed by transfixing it with a loop suture using 22 G spinal needle and 2/0 prolene suture. Operative time and presence of contralateral processus vaginalis was noted. Patients were followed up at four weeks and three months for postoperative complications. Results: Age of the patients ranged from 12 years, Mean ± SD was calculated as 40.36 ± 37.74. Regarding inguinal hernia site, n=17 (34%) have right sided hernia, n=13 (26%) have left sided hernia while bilateral hernia were present in n=20 (40%), 9 patients (18%) were found to have occult patent processus vaginalis peroperatively. Mean operative time ranged from 9 minutes to 25 minutes with Mean ± SD calculated as 15.94 ± 5.30. All operations were completed laparoscopically without need of conversion to open herniotomy. There were no intraoperative complications; No case of matachronous contralateral inguinal herniaor hydrocele formation and wound related complications during follow up at 4 weeks and 3 months. Conclusion: LNAR of inguinal hernias in children is an effective, quick and safe technique which can be easily learnt due to its simplicity to perform. This technique can be employed in both male and female pediatric population with promising results. One main advantage is the ability to pick up the occult patent internal ring which can be repaired in the single stage to prevent the development of metachronous inguinal hernia in the later age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study introduces a novel predictive methodology for diagnosing and predicting gear problems in DC motors. Leveraging AdaBoost with weak classifiers and regressors, the diagnostic aspect categorizes the machine’s current operational state by analyzing time–frequency features extracted from motor current signals. AdaBoost classifiers are employed as weak learners to effectively identify fault severity conditions. Meanwhile, the prognostic aspect utilizes AdaBoost regressors, also acting as weak learners trained on the same features, to predict the machine’s future state and estimate its remaining useful life. A key contribution of this approach is its ability to address the challenge of limited historical data for electrical equipment by optimizing AdaBoost parameters with minimal data. Experimental validation is conducted using a dedicated setup to collect comprehensive data. Through illustrative examples using experimental data, the efficacy of this method in identifying malfunctions and precisely forecasting the remaining lifespan of DC motors is demonstrated.

This paper focuses on analyzing the data rate, bit error rate (BER), flickering, and bandwidth of visible light communication (VLC) system. The existing modulation scheme ON-OFF Keying (OOK) is modified and produces the trade-off between these parameters. The modified ON-OFF Keying (MOOK) is proposed, in which the variation in the transmitted pulses is investigated. Therefore, the square and rectangular pulses are used to transmit zero bits and one bit, respectively. The duty cycle of square pulse is increased to improve the flickering performance. Moreover, it utilized the bandwidth and leads the BER performance to deteriorate. The differential MOOK (DMOOK) modulation scheme is also proposed, in which the ON period of square pulse (zero bits) is removed. Therefore, the data rate of DMOOK is increased because the duration of zero-bit pulse is decreased. Similarly, the high bandwidth is utilized, and the BER performance deteriorates. All performance parameters are evaluated on Arduino-based hardware VLC system. We conclude that the BER performance deteriorates by improving flickering performance and data rate of the VLC system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to higher atmospheric greenhouse gasses concentrations, global warming is undoubtedly the most critical environmental issue that needs an immediate solution. Agroforestry has attained worldwide recognition to cope with this global problem due to its greater potential to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide along with other ecosystem services, including food security. However, quantitative information about the biomass and carbon sequestration in poplar-maize agroforestry systems is not available in semi-arid climatic zones in Pakistan. The current study was carried out to evaluate the vegetation biomass and carbon stocks under three poplar-maize agroforestry planting patterns under semi-arid climatic conditions in a subdivision Jaranwala, District Faisalabad, Pakistan. The data was collected in three agroforestry patterns like; A (192 trees ha−1), B (255 trees ha−1), and C (296 trees ha−1). Allometric equations were used to estimate the biomass and carbon stock in plant species. Results showed that the poplar tree carbon stock among three planting patterns was significantly different, with maximum carbon stock of 35.62 t ha−1 in pattern C, and it was 8% and 33.5% greater than the carbon stock of pattern B and pattern A, respectively. The maximum aboveground biomass assimilated by maize crop was (11.95 t ha−1) in pattern B, and it was 10.3% and 3.6% greater than pattern A and pattern C, respectively. The grain yield was highest in pattern A as compared to the other two patterns. Additionally, the maximum soil carbon stock in soil was estimated (22.72 t ha-1) in pattern C, at 0-15 cm depth, while it was 13.42% and 6.61% greater than pattern A and pattern B, respectively. In conclusion, the findings of this study suggested that pattern C with maximum biomass production and carbon stocks is the optimum poplar maize planting pattern in requisites of both financial and environmental benefits in the form of carbon sequestration.

Abstract According to the previous reports, the collagen triple helix repeat containing 1 (CTHRC1) causes tumorigenesis by modulating the tumor microenvironment, however, the evidence is limited to a few human cancer subtypes. In the current study, we analyzed and validated the CTHRC1 expression variations in 24 different human cancer tissues paired with normal tissues using publically available databases. We observed that CTHRC1 was overexpressed in all the 24 major subtypes of human cancers and its overexpression was significantly associated with the reduced overall survival (OS) duration of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSC), kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC), liver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC), Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD), stomach adenocarcinoma (STAD), and Uterine corpus endometrial carcinoma (UCEC). This implies that CTHRC1 plays a significant role in the development and progression of these cancers. We further noticed that CTHRC1 was also overexpressed in HNSC, KIRC, LIHC, LUAD, STAD, and UCEC patients of different clinicopathological features. Pathways enrichment analysis revealed the involvement of CTHRC1 associated genes in seven diverse pathways. We also explored few interesting correlations between CTHRC1 expression and promoter methylation, genetic alterations, CNVs, CD8+ T immune cells infiltration, and tumor purity. In conclusion, CTHRC1 can serve as a shared diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in HNSC, KIRC, LIHC, LUAD, STAD, and UCEC patients of different clinicopathological features.

Electricity Theft (ET) causes monetary losses for power utilities in the energy sector. It occurs when electricity is consumed without being billed. Several methods are available for automatically detecting ET. Most of these methods evaluate Electricity Consumption (EC) records. However, these methods either have a low Detection Rate (DR) or a high deployment cost with a high False Positive Rate (FPR). Moreover, it is difficult to identify fraudulent consumers based solely on EC records. In addition, owing to data imbalances, such methods prove to be inefficient for classification. To solve the aforementioned problems, we have proposed a combination of various techniques. The first one is the Fastfood Transform, which is used for dimensionality reduction, along with the Time Series Lag Embedded Network (TLENET) neural network, used for classification between honest and dishonest consumers. The second one is the Wavelet Transform used for dimensionality reduction with TLENET, and the third one is the Nyström method used for dimensionality reduction with TLENET. To tackle the risk of high variance that results in overfitting in Deep Learning (DL) models, a Localized Random Affine Shadowsampling (LoRAS) data balancing technique is used. We have employed various data balancing techniques to analyze the performance of our system model. A game theory based approach, SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP), is implemented for explaining the output of our deep model. We have used a real-world dataset, referred as the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC), to perform the simulations. Our model has achieved 94% accuracy, 92% F1-score, 93% Area Under Curve-Receiver Operating Characteristics (AUC-ROC), and 87% Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) with LoRAS, Wavelet Transform, and TLENET. With dimensionality reduction using Fastfood Transform, our model has achieved 93% accuracy, 92% F1-score, 92% AUC-ROC, and 85% MCC. When the Nyström method is employed for dimensionality reduction, our model has achieved 94% accuracy, 92% F1-score, 90% AUC-ROC, and MCC 85%. Extensive experiments indicate that the proposed model outperforms the existing conventional detectors. • Using Fast Food Transform with Time Series Lag Embedded Network (TLENET). • Using Wavelet Transform and Nystroem method with TLENET. • Using LoRAS for tackling the problem of high variance. • Data balancing techniques are applied to solve the class imbalance issue. • A real-world dataset, SGCC, is used to perform simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to higher atmospheric greenhouse gasses concentrations, global warming is undoubtedly the most critical environmental issue that needs an immediate solution. Agroforestry has attained worldwide recognition to cope with this global problem due to its greater potential to sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide along with other ecosystem services, including food security. However, quantitative information about the biomass and carbon sequestration in poplar-maize agroforestry systems is not available in semi-arid climatic zones in Pakistan. The current study was carried out to evaluate the vegetation biomass and carbon stocks under three poplar-maize agroforestry planting patterns under semi-arid climatic conditions in a subdivision Jaranwala, District Faisalabad, Pakistan. The data was collected in three agroforestry patterns like; A (192 trees ha−1), B (255 trees ha−1), and C (296 trees ha−1). Allometric equations were used to estimate the biomass and carbon stock in plant species. Results showed that the poplar tree carbon stock among three planting patterns was significantly different, with maximum carbon stock of 35.62 t ha−1 in pattern C, and it was 8% and 33.5% greater than the carbon stock of pattern B and pattern A, respectively. The maximum aboveground biomass assimilated by maize crop was (11.95 t ha−1) in pattern B, and it was 10.3% and 3.6% greater than pattern A and pattern C, respectively. The grain yield was highest in pattern A as compared to the other two patterns. Additionally, the maximum soil carbon stock in soil was estimated (22.72 t ha-1) in pattern C, at 0-15 cm depth, while it was 13.42% and 6.61% greater than pattern A and pattern B, respectively. In conclusion, the findings of this study suggested that pattern C with maximum biomass production and carbon stocks is the optimum poplar maize planting pattern in requisites of both financial and environmental benefits in the form of carbon sequestration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV) association has effectively been decoded in prostate cancer (PC) worldwide with controverting conclusions. Though the different groups of researchers explored the potential association of HPV with PC using meta-analysis but it still remains controversial due to the major limitations. Therefore, the present study was designed to investigate the potential link of HPV with PC using Bradford Hill criteria. Methodology: Initially using PubMed, we extracted studies that associated HPV to PC. Then, to assess the potential association of HPV with PC, an examination of the available data on HPV in PC, normal/benign samples was conducted using all the major Bradford Hill criteria postulates. Furthermore, to improve the authenticity of the present study, we have also critically evaluated the methodologies of the identified studies to check the possibility of false-negative and false-positive results. Results: After a careful assessment of the previous studies against Bradford Hill criteria postulates, we observed that all the major postulates were not fulfilled, including strength, temporality, consistency, plausibility, biological gradient, experiment, specificity, and analogy. Conclusion: The findings of this systematic review suggest no casual association of HPV with PC.

IEEE 802.15.4 standard is specifically designed for a low-rate and low-processing Internet of things (IoT) applications and offers guaranteed time slots. A beacon-enabled IEEE 802.15.4 consists of a superframe structure that comprises of the contention access period and contention-free period. During contention-free period, nodes transfer their data using guaranteed time slots without any collision. The coordinator node receives data transmission requests in one cycle and allocates guaranteed time slots to the nodes in the next cycle. This allocation process may cause large delay that may not be acceptable for few applications. In this work, a novel superframe structure is proposed that significantly reduces guaranteed time slots allocation delay for the nodes with data requests. The proposed superframe structure comprises of two contention access periods and one contention-free period, where contention-free period precedes both contention access periods with reduced slot size. In addition, the knapsack algorithm is modified for better guaranteed time slots allocation by allowing more guaranteed time slots requesting nodes to send their data as compared to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The simulation and analytical results show that the proposed superframe structure reduces the network delay by up to 80%, increases contention-free period utilization up to 50%, and allocates guaranteed time slots up to 16 nodes in a single superframe duration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large number of services and heterogeneity of the objects have made Internet of Things (IoT) a complex paradigm. It is necessary to placate the requirements of quality of service metrics for IoT model of urban development. Rapid delivery and continuation of services to the customers without delay, is first and foremost requisite. Applications of IoT, require service centered IoT model which should be stable, scalable, energy efficient and re-configurable. This paper, proposes a service oriented cross layer solution for IoT–QoS architecture. In the three layer model, QoS module at the application layer exploits the optimization by exhausting the acquaintance of each component. Network layer deals with the issues of transmission of packets in energy efficient manner where stability plays a crucial role for the heterogeneous objects. Resources are allocated and reallocated to the requested services in optimal way at sensing layer. The proposed IoT–QoS model for urban development applications is capable of optimizing the traditional methods and encases the network lifetime by minimizing the energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The linguistic developments have always been coincideing with the development of human civilizations. It is, therefore, commonly believed among historians and linguistic scholars that language and its various generes are the museum of any civilization that help understand depth and breadth of its development over time. The historical development of Saraiki language over time also has been reflected into its various geners such as poetry, drama, prose, folklores or nonfiction, and media. The present study has examined the the historical development of literary genre, novel in modern Saraiki literature and its sociocultural and linguistic implications. The study would help researcg scholars in the area of Saraiki literature and linguistics to gain deeper understanding of historical development of Saraiki novel in relation to other generes and look into its relationship with sociocultural development of people in Saraiki speaking areas.

Malnutrition in dialysis population is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Nutritional assessment is a neglected area in hemodialysis (HD) patients in developing countries. The aim of the study was to find out whether any traditional parameters have statistically significant correlation with malnutrition. All 58 end-stage renal disease patients on maintenance HD in our dialysis unit were enrolled in this cross-sectional study. The nutritional status was assessed by a predesigned questionnaire including subjective global assessment (SGA). Anthropometric measurements, peripheral neuropathy, and pertinent laboratory parameters were checked. The duration of HD ranged between three months to 10 years (mean 4 ± 1.5 years). Of these 49 patients, 26 (53%) were males with a median age 45 (25–76) years. Fifteen patients (31%) were well nourished and 34 (69%) were undernourished including nine (19%) patients classified as severely malnourished according to SGA. Malnutrition appeared more prevalent in males, however, statistically not significant (P = 0.063). On univariate and multivariate analysis, no significance was found across well-nourished and malnourished patients in terms of age, body mass index, calorie count, duration and frequency of dialysis, dry weight, interdialytic weight loss or gain in the past six months, body fat percentage, serum albumin, blood pressure, intradialytic hypotension, urea reduction ration, Kt/Vurea, peripheral neuropathy, and comorbidities. Psychosocial factors were identified in 24 (49%) patients with 19 (79%) having some degrees of malnutrition, but the finding did not reach the statistical significance. Surprisingly, the traditional factors studied in previous trials have not shown any significant association to malnutrition in our study based on the statistical analysis.

Objective: To compare the urethroplasty with and without stent for hypospadias in terms of frequency of postoperative urethrocutaneous fistula formation. Study Design: Randomized controlled trial. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Pediatric Surgery, Pak Emirates Military Hospital Rawalpindi, from Jan 2015 to Dec 2017. Patients and Methods: A total of 260 patients with diagnosis of hypospadias were selected from outpatient department after confirming their diagnosis by taking a detailed history and performing thorough clinical examination. Patients were divided randomly into two groups, group A and group B via lottery method. In group A, urethroplasty was done by using a stent while in group B, urethroplasty was done without a stent although stent was used in this group as a template preoperatively to form a neo urethra and then removed after 24 hours. The 6-8 FR nasogastric tube was used as stent. The follow up was after 2, 6 and 12 weeks to see the fistula formation in both types of procedures. All the data was recorded on the specially designed proforma attached as annexure A. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 22. Results: The overall incidence of urethrocutaneous fistula was 21 (8%) out of the total study population. In group- A there were 18 (13%) cases who developed fistula and in group-B 3 (2%) cases developed fistula. There was significantly higher no of cases in group-A, who developed fistula as compared to group-B, p-value = 0.001. Conclusion: Stents are routinely used in many centres after urethroplasty for hypospadias repair leading to higher incidence of urethrocutaneous fistula. If urethroplasty is done meticulously, stentless surgery may produce fewer fistulas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brassica napus is one of the most important sources of vegetable oil in the world. Efficient and reproducible protocols were developed for Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of B. napus in the current study. Synthetic chitinase (NIC) gene encoding antimicrobial protein in plasmid pEKH was transformed to Abasyn-95 cultivar of B. napus to produce transgenic plants. The role of a number of factors such as different ratios of growth regulators, various concentrations of growth hormones and chemicals, which can directly or indirectly influence the process of transformation, was evaluated. Hypocotyls and cotyledons from in vitro grown seedlings were used as explants for transformation. Culturing of the explants on solidified MS plates supplemented with different hormone ratios and concentrations showed that the media supplemented with 2 mg L-1 2, 4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2, 4-D), 0.5 mg L-1benzylaminopurine (BAP) and 0.1 mg L-1naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) is the best combination among all tested conditions for callus induction. Maximum shooting was observed on MS medium containing 0.5 mg L-1 BAP and 2 mg L-1 2, 4-D. The transgenic nature of the calli and regenerated shoots was confirmed by PCR analysis viaNIC gene specific primers using their isolated genomic DNA as template. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate predictions of stock markets are important for investors and other stakeholders of the equity markets to formulate profitable investment strategies. The improved accuracy of a prediction model even with a slight margin can translate into considerable monetary returns. However, the stock markets' prediction is regarded as an intricate research problem for the noise, complexity and volatility of the stocks' data. In recent years, the deep learning models have been successful in providing robust forecasts for sequential data. We propose a novel deep learning-based hybrid classification model by combining peephole LSTM with temporal attention layer (TAL) to accurately predict the direction of stock markets. The daily data of four world indices including those of U.S., U.K., China and India, from 2005 to 2022, are examined. We present a comprehensive evaluation with preliminary data analysis, feature extraction and hyperparameters' optimization for the problem of stock market prediction. TAL is introduced post peephole LSTM to select the relevant information with respect to time and enhance the performance of the proposed model. The prediction performance of the proposed model is compared with that of the benchmark models CNN, LSTM, SVM and RF using evaluation metrics of accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, AUC-ROC, PR-AUC and MCC. The experimental results show the superior performance of our proposed model achieving better scores than the benchmark models for most evaluation metrics and for all datasets. The accuracy of the proposed model is 96% and 88% for U.K. and Chinese stock markets respectively and it is 85% for both U.S. and Indian markets. Hence, the stock markets of U.K. and China are found to be more predictable than those of U.S. and India. Significant findings of our work include that the attention layer enables peephole LSTM to better identify the long-term dependencies and temporal patterns in the stock markets' data. Profitable and timely trading strategies can be formulated based on our proposed prediction model., Competing Interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Abdulaziz Aldegheishem reports financial support was provided by 10.13039/501100002383King Saud University., (© 2024 The Author(s).)

Thermal stress induces a wide array of morphological and physiological changes in potato affecting its development and economic yield. Response to thermal stress in plants is mostly regulated by heat shock factors (hsfs). The current study aimed at improving heat tolerance by transforming potato plant with heat shock factor, HsfA1d, using Agrobacterium. Gateway cloning strategy was adopted for isolation of HsfA1d from Arabidopsis thaliana and cloning into plant expression vector. The target gene was introduced into potato by infecting internodal explants with Agrobacterium strain GV3101 carrying pGWB402Ω-HsfA1d construct. Upon exposure to heat stress, the wild-type plants turned yellowish, whereas no phenotypic effect on transgenic plants was observed. Expression of HsfA1d in transgenic plants was increased by 5.8-fold under thermal stress compared to room temperature. Transgenic plants exhibited 6-fold increase in the expression of downstream HSP70 under thermal stress compared to wild-type plants. Both chlorophyll a and b were significantly decreased in wild-type plants while no such decrease was recorded in transgenic plants under thermal stress. Heat stress was found to have no significant effect on carotenoid pigments of both wild-type and transgenic plants. Significantly lower electrolyte leakage from transgenic plants was witnessed compared to wild type upon exposure to thermal stress. Transgenic plants accumulated significantly higher proline content compared to wild-type plants under heat stress. It is concluded that HsfA1d plays a vital role in plant thermotolerance and hence can be effectively used to enhance the resistance of crop plants against heat stress.

Objective: To compare the technical aspects of Wilms' tumour (WT) surgery in patients with and without pre-operative chemotherapy., Design: Quasi-experimental., Place and Duration of Study: Military Hospital (MH) and Combined Military Hospital (CMH), Rawalpindi, from January 1999 to December 2004., Patients and Methods: Patients of WT, presenting between January 1999 and December 2001, were treated, using the NWTSG protocol, with primary surgery (group I). Between January 2001 and December 2004, WT patients were treated according to SIOP protocol, with pre-operative chemotherapy followed by surgery (group II). Volume reduction with chemotherapy, duration of surgery, rupture of tumour, extent of excision, adherence and damage to surrounding structures, blood loss, complications, stay in hospital and event-free survival (EFS) were compared in the two groups., Results: Out of 22 patients in group I, 19 (86.4%) underwent primary surgery. Of the 23 patients in group II, 21 (91.3%) received pre-operative chemotherapy followed by surgery. Average volume reduction in this group was 54% with chemotherapy. Difference in duration of surgery and blood loss was significantly low in group II (p=0.003 and p < 0.001, respectively). In group I, rupture (6 vs 2), adherence (14 vs 10) and damage to surrounding structures (5 vs 2) were more. Complete macroscopic excision was possible in 90.5% of WT in group II as compared to 73.7% in group I. Immediate postoperative complications and length of hospital stay were similar in both groups. There was no difference in EFS., Conclusion: Pre-operative chemotherapy makes it technically easier and safer to operate, without jeopardizing the final outcome.