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Due to its antibacterial activity against clinical bacterial pathogens at the time of tissue development, zinc oxide (ZnO) is considered one of the most important metal oxide nanostructured materials. In this study, ZnO nanostructures were prepared using Aloe vera gel juice, which is easy, inexpensive, and ecofriendly. The nanostructures of ZnO were characterized using a variety of analytical techniques, including scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and dynamic light scattering (DLS). As a result of the XRD study, the hexagonal phase of ZnO with the structure of wurtzite has been identified. ZnO material with high heterogeneity morphology has been observed by SEM analysis. As-prepared ZnO nanostructures were tested for their antibacterial activity against the newly discovered pathogen of catfish. A ZnO sample prepared with a high concentration of Aloe vera gel possessed an inhibition zone of 13.21±0.04 mm, whereas a ZnO sample prepared with a low concentration of Aloe vera juice had an inhibition zone of 6.23±0.02 mm and a pure ZnO sample had an inhibition zone of 3.31±0.03 mm. Furthermore, we examined the effectiveness of the ZnO nanostructures on bacterial strains based on the type of nanoparticles applied to the commercial strains. In addition to their modified surface properties, small particle size, and highly toxic effects for the killingof bacterial cell growth, the Aloe vera juice assisted ZnO nanostructures demonstrated excellent antibacterial activity against the catfish pathogens.

Abstract Urban atmospheric pollution is global problem and and have become increasingly critical in big cities around the world. Issue of toxic emissions has gained significant attention in the scientific community as the release of pollutants into the atmosphere rising continuously. Although, the Pakistani government has started the Pakistan Clean Air Program to control ambient air quality however, the desired air quality levels are yet to be reached. Since the process of mapping the dispersion of atmospheric pollutants in urban areas is intricate due to its dependence on multiple factors, such as urban vegetation and weather conditions. Therefore, present research focuses on two essential items: (1) the relationship between urban vegetation and atmospheric variables (temperature, relative humidity (RH), sound intensity (SI), CO, CO2, and particulate matter (PM0.5, PM1.0, and PM2.5) and (2) the effect of seasonal change on concentration and magnitude of atmospheric variables. A geographic Information System (GIS) was utilized to map urban atmospheric variables dispersion in the residential areas of Faisalabad, Pakistan. Pearson correlation and principal component analyses were performed to establish the relationship between urban atmospheric pollutants, urban vegetation, and seasonal variation. The results showed a positive correlation between urban vegetation, metrological factors, and most of the atmospheric pollutants. Furthermore, PM concentration showed a significant correlation with temperature and urban vegetation cover. GIS distribution maps for PM0.5, PM1.0, PM2.5, and CO2 pollutants showed the highest concentration of pollutants in poorly to the moderated vegetated areas. Therefore, it can be concluded that urban vegetation requires a rigorous design, planning, and cost–benefit analysis to maximize its positive environmental effects.

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.

The current work aims to study a new analytical solution method for a family of Kuramoto–Sivashinsky equation (KSE). For this purpose, we implement the q-homotopy analysis method (q-HAM), a method extensively used due to its easy implementation, fast convergence, and presence of convergence-controlling parameters. This method does not require any transformation, linearization, or discretization. The applied method offers a well-convergent series solution. Results are obtained for some fixed values of physically significant parameters involved in the mathematical model. The computed results are compared with the travelling wave solutions and are illustrated graphically and in tabulated form for absolute error estimation. The comparison reveals the q-HAM provides better results than the existing methods.

Allen Cahn (AC) equation is highly nonlinear due to the presence of cubic term and also very stiff; therefore, it is not easy to find its exact analytical solution in the closed form. In the present work, an approximate analytical solution of the AC equation has been investigated. Here, we used the variational iteration method (VIM) to find approximate analytical solution for AC equation. The obtained results are compared with the hyperbolic function solution and traveling wave solution. Results are also compared with the numerical solution obtained by using the finite difference method (FDM). Absolute error analysis tables are used to validate the series solution. A convergent series solution obtained by VIM is found to be in a good agreement with the analytical and numerical solutions.

Montelukast, an approved leukotriene receptor 1 (Cys-LT 1) antagonist with anti-inflammatory properties is used for the treatment of asthma and allergic rhinitis. In the present studies, montelukast was subjected to in vitro inhibitory assays followed by kinetic and in silico investigations. Montelukast demonstrated inhibitory activity against yeast α-glucosidase (IC50 44.31 ± 1.21 μM), jack bean urease (JB urease, IC50 8.72 ± 0.23 μM), human placental alkaline phosphatase (hPAP, IC50 17.53 ± 0.19 μM), bovine intestinal alkaline phosphatase (bIAP, IC50 15.18 ± 0.23 μM) and soybean 15-lipoxygenase (15-LOX, IC50 2.41 ± 0.13 μM). Kinetic studies against α-glucosidase and urease enzymes revealed its competitive mode of inhibition. Molecular expression analysis of montelukast in breast cancer cell line MCF-7 down-regulated AP by a factor of 0.27 (5 μM) compared with the 0.26 value for standard inhibitor levamisole (10 μM). Molecular docking estimated a binding affinity ranging −8.82 to −15.65 kcal/mol for the enzymes. Docking against the DNA dodecamer (ID: 1BNA) observed −9.13 kcal/mol via minor groove binding. MD simulations suggested stable binding between montelukast and the target proteins predicting strong inhibitory potential of the ligand. Montelukast features a chloroquinoline, phenyl ring, a cyclopropane group, a carboxylic group and a sulfur atom all of which collectively enhance its inhibitory potential against the said enzymes. These in vitro and computational investigations demonstrate that it is possible and suggested that the interactions of montelukast with more than one targets presented herein may be linked with the side effects presented by this drug and necessitate additional work. The results altogether suggest montelukast as an important structural scaffold possessing multitargeted features and warrant further investigations in repurposing beyond its traditional pharmacological use.

Heart disease is a serious worldwide health issue with wide-reaching effects. Since heart disease is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide, early detection is crucial. Emerging technologies like Machine Learning (ML) are currently being actively used by the biomedical, healthcare, and health prediction industries. PaRSEL, a new stacking model is proposed in this research, that combines four classifiers, Passive Aggressive Classifier (PAC), Ridge Classifier (RC), Stochastic Gradient Descent Classifier (SGDC), and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), at the base layer, and LogitBoost is deployed for the final predictions at the meta layer. The imbalanced and irrelevant features in the data increase the complexity of the classification models. The dimensionality reduction and data balancing approaches are considered very important for lowering costs and increasing the accuracy of the model. In PaRSEL, three dimensionality reduction techniques, Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), and Factor Analysis (FA), are used to reduce the dimensionality and select the most relevant features for the diagnosis of heart disease. Furthermore, eight balancing techniques, Proximity Weighted Random Affine Shadowsampling (ProWRAS), Localized Randomized Affine Shadowsampling (LoRAS), Random Over Sampling (ROS), Adaptive Synthetic (ADASYN), Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE), Borderline SMOTE (B-SMOTE), Majority Weighted Minority Oversampling Technique (MWMOTE) and Random Walk Oversampling (RWOS), are used to deal with the imbalanced nature of the dataset. The performance of PaRSEL is compared with the other standalone classifiers using different performance measures like accuracy, F1-score, precision, recall and AUC-ROC score. Our proposed model achieves 97% accuracy, 80% F1-score, precision is greater than 90%, 67% recall, and 98% AUC-ROC score. This shows that PaRSEL outperforms other standalone classifiers in terms of heart disease prediction. Additionally, we deploy SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) on our proposed model. It helps to understand the internal working of the model. It illustrates how much influence a classifier has on the final prediction outcome.

The objective of Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks is to exploit Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) in combination with the Industrial Internet of Things (I-IoT) by using fast attack methods. Machine learning (ML) techniques have shown potential in identifying APT attacks in autonomous and malware detection systems. However, detecting hidden APT attacks in the I-IoT-enabled CPS domain and achieving real-time accuracy in detection present significant challenges for these techniques. To overcome these issues, a new approach is suggested that is based on the Graph Attention Network (GAN), a multi-dimensional algorithm that captures behavioral features along with the relevant information that other methods do not deliver. This approach utilizes masked self-attentional layers to address the limitations of prior Deep Learning (DL) methods that rely on convolutions. Two datasets, the DAPT2020 malware, and Edge I-IoT datasets are used to evaluate the approach, and it attains the highest detection accuracy of 96.97% and 95.97%, with prediction time of 20.56 seconds and 21.65 seconds, respectively. The GAN approach is compared to conventional ML algorithms, and simulation results demonstrate a significant performance improvement over these algorithms in the I-IoT-enabled CPS realm.

In this paper, we provide a solution to the Cahn–Hilliard equation using the q-homotopy analysis method (q-HAM). The q-HAM is a more general, simple and widely used method for solving stiff nonlinear partial differential equations. The Cahn–Hilliard equation is a classical model in material sciences that describe spinodal decomposition and phase separation in two-phase flows. Using the q-HAM, the effect of various parameters of physical interest such as diffusive parameter, thickness parameter, advection and reaction terms on concentration is studied. The comparison of the computed solution with the exact solution is presented for some fixed parameter values to validate the solution obtained using the q-HAM.

Taking everything into account, the information and attention to diabetes was low, while the pervasiveness of these diseases was high among the number of inhabitants in blood benefactors. This examination discovered that monitoring and having higher diabetes related information can affect the predominance of these contaminations. This is especially the situation among diabetes patients, as the individuals who reacted accurately to in any event four of six information proclamations for every contamination were essentially connected with a negative disease status for the diseases, separately. 66.5% respondents didn't think about strategies to diminish diabetes, yet most showed that schooling on lessening diabetes is required. Hence, a legislature driven quest for proficient strategies to battle and announce sugar decrease is required so as to persistently give proper schooling. There is a need to bring issues to light and disperse proper information to patients and everybody to support uplifting perspectives, advance solid practices, and in this way diminish the spread of these diseases. This investigation has significant ramifications for general wellbeing arrangements and supports the requirement for conduct mediation systems to draw in individuals in solid practices, particularly sexual conduct.

Spaceflight and microgravity has a significant impact on the immune, central nervous, bone, and muscle support and cardiovascular systems. However, limited studies are available on the adverse effects of long-term microgravity on the intestinal microbiota, metabolism, and its relationships. In this study, a ground-based simulated microgravity (SMG) mouse model was established to evaluate the impact of long-term microgravity on gut microbiota and metabolome. After 8 weeks of SMG, alterations of the intestinal microbiota and metabolites were detected using 16S rRNA sequencing and untargeted metabolomics. Compared to the control, no significant differences in α-diversity were observed at weeks 2, 4 and 8. Nevertheless, there were clear differences in community structures at different time points. The phylum Verrucomicrobia significantly declined from 2 to 8 weeks of SMG, yet the relative abundance of Actinobacteria and Deferribacteres expanded remarkably at weeks 8. SMG decreased the genus of Allobaculum and increased Bacteroides significantly throughout the period of 8 weeks. Besides, Genus Akkermansia, Gracilibacter, Prevotella, Odoribacter, Rothia, Sporosarcina, Gracilibacter, Clostridium, and Mucispirillum were identified as biomarkers for SMG group. Desulfovibrio_c21_c20, Akkermansia_muciniphila, and Ruminococcus_gnavus dropped at week 2, which tend to recover at week 4, except for Akkermansia_muciniphila. Bacteroides_uniformis and Faecalibacterium_prausnitzii declined significantly, while Ruminococcus_flavefaciens and Mucispirillum_schaedleri elevated at week 8. Furthermore, intestinal metabolome analysis showed that 129 were upregulated and 146 metabolites were downregulated in SMG. Long-term SMG most affected steroid hormone biosynthesis, tryptophan, cysteine, methionine, arginine, proline metabolism, and histidine metabolism. Correlated analysis suggested that the potential beneficial taxa Allobaculum, Akkermansia, and Faecalibacterium were negatively associated with tryptophan, histidine, arginine, and proline metabolism, but positively with steroid hormone biosynthesis. Yet Bacteroides, Lachnospiraceae_Clostridium, Rothia, Bilophila, and Coprococcus were positively correlated with arginine, proline, tryptophan, and histidine metabolism, while negatively associated with steroid hormone biosynthesis. These results suggest that Long-term SMG altered the community of intestinal microbiota, and then further disturbed intestinal metabolites and metabolic pathways, which have great potential to help understand and provide clues for revealing the mechanisms of long-term SMG involved diseases.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder and cholinesterase (ChE) enzymes are considered as crucial targets for the treatment of AD. Herein, a series of heteroaryl substituted imidazole derivatives (5a-5x) was prepared using amino acid catalyzed, one-pot facile synthetic approach. In this context, the catalytic potentials of different amino acids were investigated and 15 mol% of glutamic acid was identified as the most suitable catalyst to obtain the target products in good yields up to 90 %. These structurally exciting heterocyclic hybrids were screened against acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) enzymes. This series displayed moderate to excellent inhibitory potential against AChE with IC50 values > 25 µM and the most active compound was 3-(4-(1-(3,5-dimethylphenyl)-4,5-diphenyl-1H-imidazol-2-yl)-1-phenyl-1H-pyrazol-3-yl)–2H-chromen-2-one (5x) with IC50 value of 25.83 ± 0.25 µM.This inhibitory potential was attributed to hydrophobicity as the major contributory factor. The most potent compound against BChE was 1,3-diphenyl-4-(1,4,5-triphenyl-1H-imidazol-2-yl)-1H-pyrazole (5a) with IC50 value of 0.35 ± 0.02 µM followed by other potent compounds 5p, 5 m, 5x, 5b, 5c, 5e and 5f with IC50 values

Different abiotic stresses induce OsTZF1, a tandem CCCH-type zinc finger domain gene, in rice. Here, we report that transgenic rice plants overexpressing OsTZF1 under own promoter (POsTZF1:OsTZF1-OX [for overexpression]) transferred to soil showed normal growth similar to vector control plants. The POsTZF1:OsTZF1-OX produced normal leaves without any lesion mimic phenotype and exhibited normal seed setting. The POsTZF1:OsTZF1-OX plants showed significantly increased tolerance to salt and drought stresses and enhanced post stress recovery. Microarray analysis revealed a total of 846 genes up-regulated and 360 genes down-regulated in POsTZF1:OsTZF1-OX salt-treated plants. Microarray analysis of POsTZF1:OsTZF1-OX plants showed the regulation of many abiotic stress tolerance genes. These results suggest that OsTZF1-OX under own promoter show abiotic stress tolerance and produces no pleiotropic effect on phenotype of transgenic rice plant.

Chrysin (5,7-dihydroxyflavone) has many pharmacological properties including anti-inflammatory actions. The objective of this study was to evaluate the anti-arthritic activity of chrysin and to compare its effect with the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agent, piroxicam, against complete Freund’s adjuvant (CFA)-induced arthritis in a pre-clinical model in rats. Rheumatoid arthritis was induced by injecting CFA intra-dermally in the sub-plantar region of the left hind paw of rats. Chrysin (50 and 100 mg/kg) and piroxicam (10 mg/kg) were given to rats with established arthritis. The model of arthritis was characterized using an index of arthritis, with hematological, biological, molecular, and histopathological parameters. Treatment with chrysin significantly reduced the arthritis score, inflammatory cells, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and rheumatoid factor. Chrysin also reduced the mRNA levels of tumor necrosis factor, nuclear factor kappa-B, and toll-like recepter-2 and increased anti-inflammatory cytokines interleukin-4 and -10, as well as the hemoglobin levels. Using histopathology and microscopy, chrysin reduced the severity of arthritis in joints, infiltration of inflammatory cells, subcutaneous inflammation, cartilage erosion, bone erosion, and pannus formation. Chrysin showed comparable effects to piroxicam, which is used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. The results showed that chrysin possesses anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects that make it a potential drug for the treatment of arthritis.

Today the big challenge for NEWS organization to well organize the news and well categorize the news in automatically no need the data entry people to enter and select the category and then based on the category and its sub-category they will be manually selected and enter the details and then after this the analysis will later on used for different aspects. The news is almost every second used in different sources of media in soft and hard. We use the both sources of the Pakistan News in dual languages English and Urdu both and process them and prepare them for machine learning and based on the Machine learning trained data we build a very effective and efficient model that can predict the title category of the news and category of description of the news. We use different machine learning algorithms and different features extraction finally we build the model using the machine learning algorithm with 89% accuracy with logistic regression.

‘Assessment drives learning’ is a famous adage attributed to the great medical educationist Professor George E Miller (1919-98). Assessment has a deep impact on student behavior and the learning strategies they adopt. Hence, the covert but powerful potential of assessment to mold student behavior needs to be exploited in a stra-tegic way. Today’s student is tech-savvy and feels more comfortable while using computer for educational purposes. Although, computers are being used in teaching and learning extensively, however, their use in examination, as yet, is limited. Modern education has to combine with modern technology to come up with best results. Computer based testing (CBT) is an emerging technology that is slowly replacing the traditional paper and pen-based testing due to its mul- tiple advantages and the COVID-19 pandemichas fost-ered this phenomenon. Computer based testing refers to presenting assessment material to students through computers instead of paper and pen. It offers a unique opportunity to link obser-vation and interpretation using multimedia-based questions which require complex analytical reasoning and critical thinking skills.

YouTube ranking are the most impressive topic for researchers and the researcher try to get the qualitative content of the YouTube video without watching the video if the user is new its most important for us to enable the user to find the best video as per quality of the content for this purpose we proposed as model which gives us the classification of the comments with its class and also predict the how much the fake comments are written in the comments section to help the video content to ranked on the YouTube. This qualitative work helps the research after the preprocessing the comments and filter the fake comments and then find the qualitative comments from the video feedback section. Our proposed model help the user to classify his comments about the skin care videos the skin care means skin care and treatment and if there is some fake comments and fake ideas are putted in the video or comments this will classify and help the user about the video with pure qualitative analysis of the video with comments and this helps us to truly rank the video and the user will get benefits truly. With the help of Machine learning algorithms and feature engineering we meet the target and after this we received the 0.94 F1 score.

Effective resource allocation has always been one of the serious challenges in wireless communication. A considerable number of machine type communication (MTC) devices in 5G with variable quality of service (QoS) aggravates this challenge even further. Existing Resource allocation schemes in MTC are usually considering signal to noise ratio (SNR), which provides preference to MTC devices based on distance rather than their QoS requirements. This paper proposes a resource allocation scheme with dynamic priorities for MTC devices with multiple radio access technologies (RATs). The proposed resource allocation scheme has two main parts namely medium access and resource allocation. The medium access leverages the broadcast nature of wireless signal and MTC devices' wait time to assign priorities using capillary band in a secure and integral way. At resource allocation, SNR, total induced transmission delay, and transmission-awaiting MTC devices are used to assign resources in the cellular band. The rumination of two-staged dynamic priorities in the proposed scheduling scheme brings significant performance improvements in outage and success probabilities. Compared to SNR-based schemes, the proposed mechanism performs well by expressively improving the outage and success probability by 20% and 30%, respectively.

Undescended testis is a very common presentation in male paediatric population but testis at ectopic sites is a very rare pathology. One of the ectopic sites is perineum and it accounts for only 1% of all cases of undescended testis. We report a case of an 11yr old boy who presented with an empty left hemiscrotum and detailed examination revealed a soft tissue mass on the corresponding side in the perineum. Surgical exploration was carried out during which it was revealed that mass was actually testis at ectopic site with adequate length of the spermatic cord. Testis was mobilized and fixed in the ipsilateral hemiscrotum.

Objective: Through experiments to testify a candidate novel miRNA previously discovered by us is a real miRNA and involved in cartilage development. Design: The miR-novel and the newly hairpin miRNA transcribed sequence (pre-miR-novel) was verified as a genuinely existing miRNA by northern blotting. The predicted secondary structure, sequence alignment and targets of pre-miR-novel were performed by “RNAstructure 5.3” program, LASTN2.8.0+/miRbase22 program and RNA hybird program, respective. GO/KEGG pathway analysis also were performed. The miR-novel expression in cartilage tissue during development was detected by RT-qPCR and dot blotting. The chondrocyte differentiation model was established to examine whether miR-novel is involved in cartilage development. The regulation of PRMT3 expression by novel miRNA was determined with the luciferase reporter gene assay and Western blotting after novel miRNA mimic or inhibitor transfection. Results: It’s potential role in specifically regulating rodent cartilage development and associated cellular processes. Furthermore, the expression of protein arginine N-methyltransferase 3 (PRMT3), as a predicted target of the novel miRNA, was found consistently downregulated at rat cartilage during developmental stages and RCJ3.1C5.18 (C5.18) cells during the proliferating and hypertrophic phases of the cartilage development, where the miR-novel expression was significantly up-regulated. Both the dual-luciferase reporter gene assay and the up- or down-regulation of miR-novel suggest that the later can specifically bind with the Prmt3 3′-UTR. Conclusion: Overall, this study provides the first comprehensive evidence that a genuine cartilage-specific novel miRNA directly targets PRMT3 and may regulate multitudinous cellular processes and signal transduction during cartilage development.

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.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of needle assisted laparoscopic repair (NALR) of inguinal hernias inchildren. 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.

Named data networking (NDN) is one of the future networking architectures that communicates content using names, instead of the node addresses. It uses a very simple pull-based communication mechanism to retrieve content by sending an Interest message, and the node that has the required content or producer node replies with the data message. In wireless networks, the interest is flooded in the network to find the data provider node. The directional diffusion method is used to pull further content from the provider node. Due to broadcast nature and without node addresses, interest flooding causes network congestion and wastes network resources, especially bandwidth and battery power. These resources have prime importance in the case of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because all WSN nodes operate on battery and have limited bandwidth. In this paper, we propose an interest broadcast suppression scheme that considers interest holding time using the distance between forwarder and receiver of the interest, energy, angle, and distance from the beeline between consumer and the spatial region, to avoid broadcasting of unnecessary copies of Interest. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme mitigates the interest broadcast and conserves battery power of the wireless nodes compared with the state-of-the-art scheme in the domain.

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.

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 Background: Continuous use of commercial herbicides is posing a severe threat to environment and creating herbicide resistant weeds. Allelopathy offers a promising alternative to commercial herbicides for sustainable weed management. The farmers are highly concerned with maximum yield as well as cost of the weed control techniques. Objective: To investigate economic and weed control efficiency of allelopathic crop water leachates mixed with lower rates of herbicide. Methods: Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.), sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) crop leachates (18 L ha-1 each) tank mixed with lower doses (25, 33 and 50% of recommended dose) of S-metolachlor+atrazine were sprayed as pre-emergence for horse purslane (Trianthema portulacastrum L.) management in maize (Zea mays L.). Label dose (1,080 g a.i. ha-1) of herbicide (S-metolachlor+atrazine) and a weedy check treatment were also maintained. Results: The results showed that rapeseed+sunflower+sorghum allelopathic leachates mixed with half dose (540 g a.i. ha-1) of S-metolachlor+atrazine was effective against horse purslane and increased maize yield (grain) by 45% and 5% as compared with control and label dose of herbicide, respectively. Likewise, economic analysis showed that the same treatment was most economical with 40% and 9% higher net benefits than control and label dose of herbicide, respectively and 2407% marginal rate of return. It also gave an additional benefit of US$ 24.07 for investment of every US$1. Conclusions: By using this technique, herbicides use can be minimized by 50% for sustainable weed management without compromising maize yield and net benefits.

Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has become significantly important in online communities, which are influential sources of instant information on the internet. This study examines the eWOM input attributes linked to consumers’ information adoption behavior in the context of information-related interaction. This study uses a structural equation modeling approach by choosing participants from Fujian and Guangdong provinces of China. The results reveal that eWOM input attributes studied positively influence information-related interactions. An individual’s perception of value enhances the performance of products or services, which is an essential predictor of information adoption. Furthermore, information usefulness and related interactions are key eWOM message characteristics affecting information adoption on the internet. This study contributes to the eWOM input attributes and message characteristics literature by exploring information-related interaction as a new mediator to consumers’ online information adoption. The authors provide suggestions for marketers and firms to dynamically develop strategies in response to consumers’ concerns while making a purchase online.

Two series of new N-aryl derivatives (9a-j; 10a-j) of 2-(4-ethyl-5-(3-chlorophenyl)-4H-1,2,4-triazol-3-ylthio)acetamide and 2-(4-phenyl-5-(3-chlorophenyl)-4H-1,2,4-triazol-3-ylthio)acetamide were synthesized by the successive conversions of 3-chlorobenzoic acid (a) into its respective ester (1) hydrazide (2), and into N-substituted 1,2,4-triazole (5, 6) via 3 and 4, respectively. The target compounds (9a-j; 10a-j) were obtained by the reaction of N-substituted 1,2,4-triazole (5, 6) with various electrophiles (8a-j), in N,N-dimethyl formamide (DMF) and sodium hydride (NaH). The synthesized analogues were characterized by using FTIR, 1H, 13C NMR spectroscopy, EIMS and HREIMS spectrometry. All the synthesized compounds, 9a-j and 10a-j, were evaluated for their inhibitory potential against acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinestrase (BChE), where these compounds showed moderate to good activities against the tested enzymes. Compounds 9j and 10f displayed potent inhibitory potential (IC50 5.41 ± 0.24 & 13.57 ± 0.31 μM, respectively) against AChE while compound 9j exhibited potent inhibitory activity (IC50 7.52 ± 0.18 μM) against BChE. Other compounds showed good to moderate inhibitory activities against the said enzymes in the range of IC50 14.29–43.94 μM for AChE and IC50 21.59–41.54 μM for BChE. To rationalize the binding site interactions, docking studies were carried out. All docked compounds were found to bind in the active site with similar binding orientation and favorable binding interactions with the surrounding amino acids.

E-commerce offers an opportunity on web renounced in internet marketing, and the consumers’ communication behavior has changed, which has taken the place of word of mouth (WOM). This study investigated consumers’ motivational involvement in electronic word of mouth for online information adoption mediated by writers, motivations. Using a sample of 390 active Chinese internet users, it revealed that social tie and perceived risk are essential factors that influence consumers’ behavior, occur unpleasant consequences, and the possibility of uncertainties during the decision making process. Online retailers should emphasize perceived risk mitigation enable to provide a quick response on the websites. Practitioners need to understand consumer behavior in the online shopping system for the expansion of the online marketplace to product varieties, online advertising, retail strategies, and market segmentation. Organizations should train their service provides to timely response, concentrate on monitoring the aspects of consumers’ reviews, on creating choices among groups and individuals, which can improve the organization’s business performance.

Objective: To present an experience of the first 50 cases of appendectomy performed via laparoscopy assisted open technique. Study Design: Descriptive case series. Place and Duration of Study: This study was carried out at Pediatric Surgery department, Pak Emirates Military Hospital Rawalpindi, from Jan 2016 to Apr 2018. Material and Methods: Fifty patients (

In this paper, an approximate analytical solution of the bistable Allen–Cahn equation is given. The Allen–Cahn equation is a mathematical model to study the phase separation process in binary alloys and emerged as a convection-diffusion equation in fluid dynamics or reaction-diffusion equation in material sciences. A phase transition occurs at the interface when one material changes its composition or structure. The homotopy perturbation method and homotopy analysis method are used for finding the approximate solution. These methods don't need the use of any transformation, discretization, unrealistic restriction and assumption. The error estimates are computed by comparing with a numerical method, and a good agreement is observed.

Modern vehicles equipped with a large number of electronic components, sensors, actuators, and extensive connectivity, are the classical example of cyber-physical systems (CPS). Communication as an integral part of the CPS has enabled and offered many value-added services for vehicular networks. The communication mechanism helps to share contents with all vehicular network nodes and the surrounding environment, e.g., vehicles, traffic lights, and smart road signs, to efficiently take informed and smart decisions. Thus, it opens the doors to many security threats and vulnerabilities. Traditional TCP/IP-based communication paradigm focuses on securing the communication channel instead of the contents that travel through the network. Nevertheless, for content-centered application, content security is more important than communication channel security. To this end, named data networking (NDN) is one of the future Internet architectures that puts the contents at the center of communication and offers embedded content security. In this paper, we first identify the cyberattacks and security challenges faced by the vehicular CPS (VCPS). Next, we propose the NDN-based cyber-resilient, the layered and modular architecture for VCPS. The architecture includes the NDN's forwarding daemon, threat aversion, detection, and resilience components. A detailed discussion about the functionality of each component is also presented. Furthermore, we discuss the future challenges faced by the integration of NDN with VCPS to realize NDN-based VCPS.

Hydrocephalus is a very common presentation especially in paediatric population that can be multifactorial like infections, genetic disorders or spina bifida leading to increased intracranial pressure. In order to decrease this pressure, ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunt is a very commonly performed neurosurgical procedure. This procedure is associated with many complications like infection, blockage, over/under drainage or CSF pseudocyst formation but we report a patient who presented with extrusion of VP shunt from the urethral meatus which is a very rare complication of this procedure. Later on the same patient presented with migration of VP shunt in left hemithorax causing massive pleural effusion.

Samples of aquamarine collected from pegmatite rocks in Shigar mines, Skardu valley were investigated by powder X-ray diffraction method. Qualitative phase analyses of the samples showed the presence of aquamarine as major phase with quartz, talc and magnesite as minor phases. Lattice parameters were determined by employing CuKα radiations in step-scan mode using a computer program ‘Powder’. The lattice parameters of the Shigar specimens (with CuKα wavelength = 0.15418 nm) are a = 9.214 ± 0.002 (Å), c = 9.202 ± 0.002 (Å) compared to NBS (National Bureau of Standards) beryl data a = 9.215 Å, c =9.192Å. The deviations in the unit cell dimensions (especially the increase in a) of the samples are attributed to the presence of additional components (Cr, Fe, Na and Mg) detected by X-ray fluorescence method.

Heat stress during reproductive and grain filling phases adversely affects the growth of cereals through reduction in grain’s number and size. However, exogenous application of antioxidants, plant growth regulators and osmoprotectants may be helpful to minimize these heat induced yield losses in cereals. This two year study was conducted to evaluate the role of exogenous application of ascorbic acid (AsA), salicylic acid (SA) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) applied through seed priming or foliar spray on biochemical, physiological, morphological and yield related traits, grain yield and quality of late spring sown hybrid maize. The experiment was conducted in the spring season of 2007 and 2008. We observed that application of AsA, SA and H2O2 applied through seed priming or foliar spray improved the physiological, biochemical, morphological and yield related traits, grain yield and grain quality of late spring sown maize in both years. In both years, we observed higher superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and peroxidase (POD) activity in the plants where AsA, SA and H2O2were applied through seed priming or foliar spray than control. Membrane stability index (MSI), relative water contents (RWC), chlorophyll contents, grain yield and grain oil contents were also improved by exogenous application of AsA, SA and H2O2 in both years. Seed priming of AsA, SA and H2O2was equally effective as the foliar application. In conclusion, seed priming with AsA, SA and H2O2 may be opted to lessen the heat induced yield losses in late sown spring hybrid maize. Heat tolerance induced by ASA, SA and H2O2 may be attributed to increase in antioxidant activities and MSI which maintained RWC and chlorophyll contents in maize resulting in better grain yield in heat stress conditions.

Wireless communications and networking have been continually evolving to improve and be a part of our lifestyle. This uninterrupted development is due to many research projects and practices that are being carried out to improve the quality of services and applications supported by networking technologies. Initially, the plethora of computer networks research was designed to allow users to share the thoughts and facts using textual data through addressing devices. Meanwhile, we have witnessed that users play the role of both producers and consumers at the same time. These new emerging requirements gave birth to Cloud Computing (CC), Data Centric Networking (DCN), and other advancements in IEEE standards. Moreover, researchers also intended to redesign the networking architectures and protocols with the focus on content rather than the host. The resulting new architectures are Information Centric Networks (ICN) with various extensions like Content Centric Networks (CCN), Named Data Networks (NDN), Data-Oriented Network Architecture, etc.

Empowerment of wheat genotypes by application of growth regulators, compatible solutes and plant extracts under water restriction is an important strategy for getting sustainable yield. Field trail was performed at the research area of the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Ghazi University, Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan. Three wheat cultivars Aas-2011, Faisalabad- 2008 and Triple dwarf-1 were subjected to drought stress (skipping the irrigation at grain filling stage). The wheat genotypes were subjected to treatments viz., T1 i.e. All normal irrigation without application of abscisic acid (ABA), salicylic acid (SA), moringa (MLE) and mulberry leaf water extract (MBLE), T2­ i.e. skipping the irrigation at grain filling stage and application of 2µM ABA, T3 i.e. skipping the irrigation at grain filling stage and application of 10 m mol SA, T4 i.e. skipping the irrigation at grain filling stage and application of 15% MLE and T5 i.e. skipping the irrigation at grain filling stage and application of 10% MBLE. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Complete Block Design with factorial arrangement and repeated three times. From this study it is concluded that Aas-2011 shown best result under drought condition by applying growth regulators and plant water extracts. rs and plant water extracts.

Smart cities have been envisioned during the last decade. Moreover, various projects have been initiated to bring this concept into reality. Smart city is basically an emergence of the existing and new Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to make our living standard more safe and digitized. Wireless communications, such as sensors, actuators, intelligent transportation systems, and smart grids, have played a vital role in the dissemination of information under the given circumstances. Similarly, it is hard to declare any city as a smart city without taking benefits from wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, with new requirements and delay sensitive applications, the existing WSN requires significant alterations at several layers. In this paper, a new time division multiple access (TDMA)-based medium access control (MAC) protocol, called bitmap-assisted efficient and scalable TDMA-based MAC (BEST-MAC), is proposed for adaptive traffic in hierarchical WSNs that can be deployed in the smart cities. BEST-MAC is specifically designed to improve the quality control of such smart cities applications, where diverse traffic is required and loss or delay in data traffic is unacceptable. The main contributions of BEST-MAC include: 1) it uses small size time slots; 2) the number of those time slots is more than the number of member nodes; 3) knapsack algorithm is used to schedule time slots; and 4) short node address (1 B) is proposed to identify the member nodes. First two contributions of BEST-MAC handle adaptive traffic loads of all members in an efficient manner. The knapsack algorithm not only reduces the job completion time of a node but also minimizes the average packet delay with better link utilization. The short node address reduces the control overhead that improves the energy efficiency. The simulation results verify that the proposed BEST-MAC transmits more data with less delay and energy consumption compared with the existing MAC protocols.

The optical anomalies, surface and lamellar textures of a birefringent grossular garnet crystal from the Jeffrey mine Canada have been investigated by optical polarizing microscope, electron-probe micro-analyzer (EPMA) and infrared spectrometer from the stand point of crystal growth. This grossular shows one-to-one correlation between surface features and its internal textures. The average chemical composition measured by EPMA is Grs97.4Alm1.2Sps1.2Pyr0.1 as a near-end-member grossular. The surface features correspond to the internal textures observed under crossed polarizers. Two growth hillocks with regular growth steps elongated parallel to [001] vertical direction of the (110) face, produce sectoral twins. Such growth steps indicate the orthorhombic symmetry of the crystal correlated with the growth direction. Some irregular or curved growth steps appearing as lamellae in (110) thin section are parallel to the sides of (110) face but inclined to the [001] growth direction; this suggests the monoclinic symmetry. The crystal is optically biaxial (+) and its 2Vx angle being close to 90° could not be measured. Infrared spectroscopy data revealed the presence of [(OH)4] group substitution at [SiO4], the tetrahedral site. Optical birefringence of the grossular is about 0.002. Back-scattered electron imaging could not detect any zonation and compositional differences of the lamellar texture.

Flying Ad hoc Network (FANET) is a new resource-constrained breed and instantiation of Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) employing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as communicating nodes. These latter follow a predefined path called ’mission’ to provide a wide range of applications/services. Without loss of generality, the services and applications offered by the FANET are based on data/content delivery in various forms such as, but not limited to, pictures, video, status, warnings, and so on. Therefore, a content-centric communication mechanism such as Information Centric Networking (ICN) is essential for FANET. ICN addresses the problems of classical TCP/IP-based Internet. To this end, Content-centric networking (CCN), and Named Data Networking (NDN) are two of the most famous and widely-adapted implementations of ICN due to their intrinsic security mechanism and Interest/Data-based communication. To ensure data security, a signature on the contents is appended to each response/data packet in transit. However, trusted communication is of paramount importance and currently lacks in NDN-driven communication. To fill the gaps, in this paper, we propose a novel trust-aware Monitor-based communication architecture for Flying Named Data Networking (FNDN). We first select the monitors based on their trust and stability, which then become responsible for the interest packets dissemination to avoid broadcast storm problem. Once the interest reaches data producer, the data comes back to the requester through the shortest and most trusted path (which is also the same path through which the interest packet arrived at the producer). Simultaneously, the intermediate UAVs choose whether to check the data authenticity or not, following their subjective belief on its producer’s behavior and thus-forth reducing the computation complexity and delay. Simulation results show that our proposal can sustain the vanilla NDN security levels exceeding the 80% dishonesty detection ratio while reducing the generated end-to-end delay to less than 1 s in the worst case and reducing the average consumed energy by more than two times.

We propose two routing protocols for Terrestrial Wireless Sensor Networks (TWSNs): Hybrid Energy Efficient Reactive (HEER) and Multihop Hybrid Energy Efficient Reactive (MHEER) routing protocol. The main purpose of designing these protocols is to improve the network lifetime and particularly the stability period of the underlying network. In MHEER, the node with the maximum energy in a region becomes cluster head (CH) of that region for that particular round (or cycle) of time and the number of the CHs in each round remains the same. Our techniques outperform the well-known existing routing protocols: LEACH, TEEN, and DEEC in terms of stability period and network lifetime. We also calculate the confidence interval of all our results which helps us to visualize the possible deviation of our graphs from the mean value. We also implement sink mobility on HEER and MHEER. We refer to them as HEER-SM and MHEER-SM. Simulation results show that HEER-SM and MHEER-SM yield better network lifetime and stability region as compared to the counterpart techniques. We have also carried out simulations with 500 and 1000 nodes in the same field dimensions besides 100 nodes. Simulations prove that the proposed schemes show the same behavior with 500 and 1000 nodes; that is, HEER and MHEER are scalable as well.

Beacon or safety messages are broadcasted in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) to disseminate network state or emergency incident information to other vehicles in the network. The freshness of information depends upon the frequent transmission of beacons. Similarly, to increase the awareness area or communicating with the distant nodes, beacons are disseminated with a high transmission power. However, increasing the beacon transmission power or rate has a negative effect on information communication efficiency because of the finite bandwidth of the wireless link. Therefore, different schemes have been proposed to individually control beacon's transmission power, transmission rate, or contention window at the MAC layer, or any combination of those, to achieve quality beacon communication in VANETs. The latter case is called hybrid adaptive beaconing schemes. In literature, there are many hybrid adaptive beaconing schemes that control multiple communication parameters to efficiently broadcast beacon messages in VANETs. In this paper, we explicitly survey and summarized various aspects of those schemes. The open and challenging issues are also highlighted in this paper.

Underwater Acoustic Sensor Network (UASN) comes with intrinsic constraints because it is deployed in the aquatic environment and uses the acoustic signals to communicate. The examples of those constraints are long propagation delay, very limited bandwidth, high energy cost for transmission, very high signal attenuation, costly deployment and battery replacement, and so forth. Therefore, the routing schemes for UASN must take into account those characteristics to achieve energy fairness, avoid energy holes, and improve the network lifetime. The depth based forwarding schemes in literature use node’s depth information to forward data towards the sink. They minimize the data packet duplication by employing the holding time strategy. However, to avoid void holes in the network, they use two hop node proximity information. In this paper, we propose the Energy and Depth variance-based Opportunistic Void avoidance (EDOVE) scheme to gain energy balancing and void avoidance in the network. EDOVE considers not only the depth parameter, but also the normalized residual energy of the one-hop nodes and the normalized depth variance of the second hop neighbors. Hence, it avoids the void regions as well as balances the network energy and increases the network lifetime. The simulation results show that the EDOVE gains more than 15 % packet delivery ratio, propagates 50 % less copies of data packet, consumes less energy, and has more lifetime than the state of the art forwarding schemes.

Industrial Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (IUASNs) come with intrinsic challenges like long propagation delay, small bandwidth, large energy consumption, three-dimensional deployment, and high deployment and battery replacement cost. Any routing strategy proposed for IUASN must take into account these constraints. The vector based forwarding schemes in literature forward data packets to sink using holding time and location information of the sender, forwarder, and sink nodes. Holding time suppresses data broadcasts; however, it fails to keep energy and delay fairness in the network. To achieve this, we propose an Energy Scaled and Expanded Vector-Based Forwarding (ESEVBF) scheme. ESEVBF uses the residual energy of the node to scale and vector pipeline distance ratio to expand the holding time. Resulting scaled and expanded holding time of all forwarding nodes has a significant difference to avoid multiple forwarding, which reduces energy consumption and energy balancing in the network. If a node has a minimum holding time among its neighbors, it shrinks the holding time and quickly forwards the data packets upstream. The performance of ESEVBF is analyzed through in network scenario with and without node mobility to ensure its effectiveness. Simulation results show that ESEVBF has low energy consumption, reduces forwarded data copies, and less end-to-end delay.