A Distributed Approach for Networked Flying Platform Association with Small Cells in 5G+ Networks

The densification of small-cell base stations in a 5G architecture is a promising approach to enhance the coverage area and facilitate the ever increasing capacity demand of end users. However, the bottleneck is an intelligent management of a backhaul/fronthaul network for these small-cell base stations. This involves efficient association and placement of the backhaul hubs that connects these small-cells with the core network. Terrestrial hubs suffer from an inefficient non line of sight link limitations and unavailability of a proper infrastructure in an urban area. Seeing the popularity of flying platforms, we employ here an idea of using networked flying platform (NFP) such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), drones, unmanned balloons flying at different altitudes, as aerial backhaul hubs. The association problem of these NFP-hubs and small-cell base stations is formulated considering backhaul link and NFP related limitations such as maximum number of supported links and bandwidth. Then, this paper presents an efficient and distributed solution of the designed problem, which performs a greedy search in order to maximize the sum rate of the overall network. A favorable performance is observed via a numerical comparison of our proposed method with optimal exhaustive search algorithm in terms of sum rate and run-time speed.Comment: Submitted to IEEE GLOBECOM 2017, 7 pages and 4 figure

Awareness of stroke risk factors, signs and treatment in a Pakistani population

OBJECTIVE: To assess the level of awareness in the general public on risk factors, symptomatology and immediate treatment of stroke.METHOD: A cross sectional study was conducted in a sample of subjects visiting a tertiary care university hospital by means of a self-designed questionnaire. The study period extended between May and June, 2007.RESULTS: A total of 398 individuals were surveyed. Hypertension (69.1%) and stress (55.8%) were identified as two major risk factors for stroke. Among them 50.8% identified Brain as the principal organ involved in stroke out of which 78.2% of the response came from people whose level of education was intermediate-and-above. Around 13% of the study respondents did not know of any risk factor for stroke, while 11.6% of the study respondents didn\u27t know about the alarming signs of stroke. The most frequent response (26.16%) to immediate management of stroke was to take the individual to Emergency Department/hospital. In all 56% reported that basic information about stroke was given to them by friend/relative.CONCLUSIONS: The overall awareness of the study population regarding stroke was shown to be inadequate by this study. Knowledge was significantly greater in participants of younger age and a higher level of education

The constant threat of terrorism: stress levels and coping strategies amongst university students of Karachi

OBJECTIVES: To assess the levels of stress in the face of terrorism and the adopted coping strategies, amongst the student population of universities in Karachi . METHODS: A descriptive, cross sectional study was conducted on undergraduate students from four universities of Karachi. Self-administered questionnaires were filled out by 291 students. Pearson Chi-Square test was used to assess associations between stress levels and different variables at a level of significance of 0.05% . RESULTS: A total of 65.8% of the students had mild stress levels, 91.5% of university students were exposed to terrorism through television, while only 26.5% students reported personal exposure to terrorism. 67.4% students were forbidden by their parents to go out (p = 0.002). Most of those who had self exposure to an attack were the ones whose parents forbade them from going out (p = 0.00). Most commonly used coping strategy was increased faith in religion. Irritability was the most common stress symptom . CONCLUSION: A majority of students studying in universities of Karachi had mild stress levels due to the constant threat of terrorism whereas a minority had severe stress levels. Possible reasons for resilience and only mild stress levels could be the history of Karachi\u27s internal conflicts and its prolonged duration of being exposed to terrorism. These students who are positive for stress need to be targeted for counseling either through the media or through their universities. More extensive research is needed in this area

Operative management of unstable thoracolumbar burst fractures

Operative management of unstable burst vertebral fractures is challenging and debatable. This study of such cases was conducted at the Aga Khan Hospital, Karachi from January 1998 to April 2003. All surgically managed spine injuries were reviewed from case notes and operative records. Clinical outcome was assessed by Hanover spine score and correction of kyphosis was measured for radiological assessment. The results were analyzed by Wilcoxon sign rank test for two related samples and p-value \u3c 0.05 was considered significant. Ten patients were identified by inclusion criteria. There was statistically significant difference between mean pre-and postoperative Hanover spine score (p=0.008). Likewise, there was significant difference between mean immediate postoperative and final follow-up kyphosis. (p=0.006). Critical assessment of neurologic and structural extent of injury, proper pre-operative planning and surgical expertise can optimize the outcome of patient

Responsive design elements in traditional streets: a case study of Abbottabad, Pakistan

The streets play an important role due to urbanisation in Pakistan by providing the open spaces to the communities to interact with each other.  This research examines how streets in Pakistani cities serve as public gathering places that encourage social interaction. Traditional street designs include social parameters such as interaction, congregating, and celebrating various occasions. This is one of their most fundamental characteristics of traditional streets. It seeks to comprehend the multiple scales of urban experience that can be used to observe, analyze, and categorize streets. A qualitative research methodology is used based on in-depth observations of the spatial and social factors that mould the streets and give them their dynamic urban qualities. The paper concludes that Pakistani cities have distinctive characteristics that reflect their cultural and traditional diversity and that the streets ought to transform to accommodate these characteristics and the local climate. According to the paper, which uses Abbottabad as a case study, streets should be designed at the micro-level, considering the sociocultural and experiential opportunities for users, including local community and visitors, as well as the practical requirements of connectivity and communication

Polarization enhanced two-photon excited fluorescence contrast by shaped laser pulses using a deformable phase plate

We utilize spatially and temporally tailored laser pulses for polarization enhanced two-photon excited fluorescence contrasts of dyes. The shaped laser pulses are produced by first passing through a temporal pulse shaper and then through a two-dimensional spatial pulse shaper with deformable phase plates. Different spatial beam profiles are presented that demonstrate the potential of the spatial pulse shaper. Particularly, a polarization enhanced fluorescence contrast between two dyes is reported by utilizing specific phase shaping in perpendicular polarization directions. The tailored laser pulses are further modified by the deformable phase plate, and a polarization increased depth-dependent contrast is achieved. This spatial shaping for all polarization directions demonstrates the advantage of deformable phase plate spatial shapers compared to liquid crystals, where only one polarization direction can spatially be modified. The described polarization contrast method allows for three-dimensional scanning of probes and provides perspectives for biophotonic applications

Representation of Women in Mann O Salwa: A Case Study through Feminist Stylistic Analysis

This descriptive study makes an attempt to analyze Mann o Salwa from the perspective of feminist stylistics to investigate how Pakistani female author represents women in her novel Mann o Salwa by utilizing analysis of transitivity choices. This paper argues that the prevailing image of women in Pakistani society and literature is passive, negative, distorted, submissive, and dependent. This research aims to explore whether female authors have succeeded in abolishing the unenthusiastic negative and passive image of women in Pakistani society or their writings are also socially influenced because it is commonly believed that it is always a male author who portrays negative and distorted image of women, in this paper the researcher has tried explore whether female authors present a positive image of women or not. Analysis of mental and material process of female protagonists has proved to be useful in answering the question of negativity and passivity of women. The result revealed that female authors’ writings to some extent are socially influenced. They partially portray them passive and dependent on man. Their actions are actually the reaction of men’s action on them as they are equally exploited by men and other women in society. They are oppressed as well as oppressors. Being a feminist research this study enhances the awareness of the society. Most of the women in the novel are portrayed negative and oppressors.

Textbook Evaluation of English for Academic Purposes by British Council

The present study evaluates the course book English for Academic Purposes recommended by British Council in Pakistan. It is a collaborated effort of British Council and Higher Education Commission of Pakistan to enhance the English language skills of Pakistani students. The researcher has evaluated the effectiveness of this book that is it fulfilling the theoretical needs of International standards? Bloom’s taxonomy (1956) of Learning Domains is used because it is most appropriate for the evaluation the textbooks. The researcher has evaluated the course book on different levels e.g. cognitive, affective and psycho-motor with the help of Blooms taxonomy. This is a qualitative research basically though the frequencies of the certain words (verbs) are also find out. The researcher has used find out that which areas of learning process are focused and which are ignored in the textbook. The research is important as it will find out the strapping as well as frail areas of the course book and this information may be helpful for the improvement of the course book. Moreover this research has opened new horizons for further studies in the field of textbook evaluation

The Challenges Experienced during Data Collection on Pensioners’ Time Use in Bahawalpur Division, Pakistan

Collecting data is a crucial part of the research process. In this article we highlight the problems and challenges we encountered while collecting data for the time use of pensioners in Pakistan, a developing country. We faced some anticipated as well as unanticipated problems and challenges while conducting interviews with pensioners for our research. The unforeseen challenges included inappropriate conduct of data providers with a female researcher, lack of funds, time management issues, a decline in response, and security issues in the field. We end the article with the recommendations to overcome those challenges and hence improving the data collection procedure and providing guidelines for societal data collection not only in rural Punjab, Pakistan, but indeed for those working in any underdeveloped and rural society

Low-Cost Fault Tolerant Methodology for Real Time MPSoC Based Embedded System

We are proposing a design methodology for a fault tolerant homogeneous MPSoC having additional design objectives that include low hardware overhead and performance. We have implemented three different FT methodologies on MPSoCs and compared them against the defined constraints. The comparison of these FT methodologies is carried out by modelling their architectures in VHDL-RTL, on Spartan 3 FPGA. The results obtained through simulations helped us to identify the most relevant scheme in terms of the given design constraints