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Objective: To compare the safety and efficacy of Improvised S2Q manual vacuum aspiration and Pipelle sampling as a diagnostic procedure for the evaluation of women presenting with abnormal uterine bleeding. Study Design: Quasi-experimental study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Combined Military Hospital, Lahore Pakistan, from Oct 2021 to Aug 2022. Methodology: A total of 148 females over 35 years of age with abnormal uterine bleeding, who needed endometrial sampling, were divided into two groups of 74 participants each. Group-A underwent endometrial sampling by Improvised S2Q manual vacuum aspiration, while Group-B underwent endometrial sampling by Pipelle sampler. Results: Mean age of patients was 47.36±8.34 years in Group-A and 48.20±8.96 years in Group-B, while the mean BMI was 30.59±4.67 kg/m2 and 27.39±2.50 kg/m2 in Groups A and B, respectively. The volume of specimen obtained was found to be higher in the Improvised S2Q manual vacuum aspiration-Group as compared to the pipeline sampling-Group. The operating time in the Improvised S2Q manual vacuum aspiration-Group was 3.37±0.49 minutes, while in the pipeline sampling-Group, it was 3.20±0.55 minutes. No difference was found in the two procedures for side effects (tachycardia, pain/cramps) and complications (significant blood loss, perforation, infection), added analgesia or histopathology report. Conclusion: Improvised S2Q manual vacuum aspiration can be used as an alternative low-cost procedure for endometrial sampling in women with abnormal uterine bleeding. Keywords: Biopsy, Curettage, Endometrium, Manual vacuum aspiration, Pipeline sampling.

Objective: To assess the vulnerability of atherosclerotic plaque in coronary arteries of individuals dying of ischemic heart disease. Study Design: Cross sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Histopathology department, Combined Military Hospital Lahore, from Nov 2016 to Nov 2017. Methodology: A total of 43 cases were taken in the study. The Autopsy specimens from the bodies of people dying suddenly of ischemic heart disease were taken into the study. Tissues showing autolytic changes and patients dying with coronary artery disease after corrective procedure like stenting and bypass were excluded. Results: Out of 43 cases, 35 (81.4%) cases were positive for cluster of differentiation 68 (CD 68), 34 (79%) cases were positive for cluster of differentiation 105 (CD 105) & 36 (83.6) cases were positive for nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-Kb). Conclusion: People who had died of ischemic heart disease have more vulnerable plaque in their coronary arteries as compared to the people who had died of non-ischemic cause. Early recognition of the un-ruptured plaque is important for the treatment strategies.

This study quantifies the Environment Kuznets curve's validity against two different environment proxies, the ecological footprint and carbon emissions for selected seventeen Western Asia and North African countries over the period 1980 to 2017. The study employs the Interactive Fixed Effect (IFE) and Dynamic Common Correlated Effect (D-CCE) to quantify the long-run association among variables in a multiplicative framework. The empirical outcomes indicate that the inverted U-shaped hypothesis is not valid for carbon emission; however, it holds for ecological footprint. The results show that energy intensity and financial development are environment-friendly indicators. Likewise, biomass energy consumption exposes a negative and statistically significant influence on proxies of environmental degradation. Causality findings reveal bidirectional causal links between economic development and its square to emission, biomass energy consumption, and financial development; also, bidirectional causality has been observed from energy intensity to biomass energy in the first model. Moreover, for the second model, causality has been seen from biomass energy consumption, economic development, and its square to ecological footprint, keeping the same two-way relationship among explanatory variables as in the first model. Policymakers should focus on the policy options to increase energy efficiency to get a clean environment.

In this study, the dependence between Bitcoin (BTC) and economic policy uncertainty (EPU) of USA and China is estimated by applying the latest methodology of quantile cross-spectral dependence. Daily data comprising a total of 1947 observations and covering the period of 1 October 2013 to 31 January 2019 are used in this study. The findings indicate that a positive return interdependence between BTC and EPU is high in the short term, and this dependence decreases as investment horizons increase from weekly to yearly. The information on the time-varying and time–frequency structure of interdependence is also extracted by applying wavelet coherence analysis. The estimated results of wavelet coherence suggest that the correlation between BTC and EPU is positive during a short-term investment horizon. Finally, the frequency domain Breitung and Candelon causality test is applied, and results show the evidence of insignificant causality between Bitcoin and EPU. Overall, the findings highlight the diversification benefits of Bitcoin during the period of uncertainty.

This study presents experimental and numerical investigation for three-dimensional heat transfer characteristics in a turbine blade. An experimental setup was installed with a turbine cascade of five-blade channels. Blade heat transfer measurements were performed for the middle channel under uniform heat flux boundary conditions. Heat was supplied to the blades using twenty-nine electric heating strips cemented vertically on the outer surface of the blades. Distributions of heat transfer coefficient were obtained at three levels through blade height by measuring surface temperature distribution using thermocouples. To understand heat transfer characteristics, surface static pressure distributions on blade surface were also measured. Numerical investigation was performed as well to extend the investigation to locations other than those measured experimentally. Three-dimensional nonisothermal, turbulent flow was obtained by solving Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations and energy equation. The shear stress transport model was employed to represent turbulent flow. It was found through this study that secondary flow generated by flow deflection increases heat transfer coefficient on the blade suction surface. Separation lines with high heat transfer coefficients were predicted numerically with good agreement with the experimental measurements.