Search

This study aimed to examine the impact of reflective teaching practices of university teacher son the academic achievement of students. The research question was, do reflective teaching practices affect the academic achievement of students? The research study is quantitative, predictive non-experimental in nature, and data was collected by survey method. The sample of the study consisted of330 students by using a simple random sampling technique. One questionnaire was used to collect data from students. A tool made validated and made reliable through pilot testing. The data was collected from the respondents. Afterwards, the data was analyzed by using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) version 16. It can be concluded that the use of reflective teaching practices affects the academic achievement of students. Therefore, it can be recommended that university authorities may initiate such programs that involve the teaching faculty to learn more about reflective teaching practices.

This study aims to identify and compare students orientations of motivation for learning English language at tertiary level. The quantitative techniques were used to collect and analyze data. The sample of the study was randomly selected from twelve undergraduate programs four universities. The sample was comprised of 500 students, twenty (20) students,from each program of the above three universities of the sample. The researcher developed a questionnaire comprised of 16 items having students integrative (4 items), instrumental (6 items), resultative (3 items),and intrinsic orientations of motivation (3 items). The collected data were tabulated and analyzed in terms of frequency of responses for each statement of the questionnaire. The mean scores, standard deviation,standard error of mean and ANOVA for comparison.The levels of students integrative, instrumental,resultative and intrinsic orientations of motivation are high for learning English language because of their more inclination to learn English at university level.

Background: Smoking is common and people with mental disorders are no exception. Few studies have looked at the pervasiveness of usage of tobacco and dependence of nicotine in depressed patients in undeveloped states such as Pakistan. Therefore, in this study, the aim was to determine the prevalence of tobacco use, addiction of nicotine and the inspiration to quit smoking in major depressive disorder affected patients. Study Design: A cross-sectional descriptive study. Place and Duration: In the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, LGH Lahore, Pakistan and Psychiatry Alfalah diagnostic centre, Azhar Medical Plaza Timergara for the duration of six months from August 2021 to January 2022. Methods: The study was held amongst patients with diagnosis of depression form the Department of Psychiatry (outpatient and inpatient). A semi-structured form was used to collect data using and for nicotine use; WHO STEPS tool was used. The Nicotine Dependence was assessed by Fagerstrom Test, Smokeless Tobacco by Modified Fagerstrom and Motivation Assessment were used: Willingness to Quit Ladder was pragmatic for users of nicotine. The data was analyzed and compiled using the SPSS version 20.0. Results: The study comprised 110 subjects (mean age: 36.2 ±9.80 years, 50 men and 60 women) diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (mean disease duration: 1.56 ± 2.21 years) were included. 60 of 110 patients (54.5%) used one type or numerous types of tobacco. The patients smoked only tobacco were (n = 38, 63.4%), smokeless tobacco was used by 14 subjects (23.3%) and 13.3% (n = 8) used smokeless and smoked tobacco both. The percentage of smokers of any type of tobacco is greater in men as compared to women (p = 0.029). Among who smokes (n = 38), about fifty percent were heavily addicted 24(63.2%), and 14 (36.8%) were moderately addicted. Almost all (92.8%) of the smoke-less category (n = 14) were highly addicted. Among the combined users, almost all (6/8 = 75%) were heavily addicted to nicotine. A comparatively insignificant proportion (23.3%) of users of nicotine were strongly agreed to stop using any tobacco type. Conclusions: The usage of nicotine prevalence and dependence was supposed to be greater in individuals with depression. In low-resource environments such as Pakistan, the practice of translated and standardized tools of screening can be effectively cast-off to assess the nicotine usage burden in standard practice clinically. Keywords: Nicotine, Depression, Tobacco and Nicotine dependence.

Introduction: The depression and diabetes both are important community health concerns. Depression is a common comorbid disease in diabetic patients. The goal of this analysis was to assess the depression prevalence in diabetic patients and to recognise the numerous influences related with it. Study Design: A cross-sectional study. Place and Duration: In the Psychiatry and Medicine department of Behavioral Sciences, LGH Lahore, Pakistan and Psychiatry Alfalah diagnostic centre, Azhar Medical Plaza Timergara for the duration of six months from July 2021 to December 2021. Methods: The patients with diabetes mellitus who visited the OPD Internal Medicine Department and Psychiatry department were referred for a psychiatric assessment. 140 total patients were studied for 6-month period. Face-to-face interviews were directed to collect the clinical profile and sociodemographic data of the subjects. To classify and describe depression; Patient Health Questionnaire-9 was applied. The percentage, frequency, multivariate regression and test were applied. Results: The total depression prevalence was 30.2% and institute to be higher significantly in women (p = 0.008), subjects on insulin treatment (p = 0.028), diabetes mellitus >15 years (p = 0.049) and patients with uncontrolled blood glucose levels (p = 0.018) even after treatment. A regression analysis found that the type of treatment, blood glucose level, gender, and type of treatment were independent forecasters of depression in patients with DM. The subjects treated with insulin were 4 times additional probable to develop depression (CI: 2.129 - 8.865, OR = 4.344, p

This study reports on a highly miniaturised polarisation selective surface (PSS) for dual-band Wi-Fi and WLAN applications. The proposed unit cell consists of two independently tuneable square loops. The outer loop is split with a gap of 0.2 mm to introduce polarisation selectivity and miniaturisation for lower-frequency band of 2.5 GHz. The inner square loop is inductively loaded with arms to suppress 5.45 GHz frequency band. These configurations have resulted in a unit element size of λ ∘ / 14 at 2.5 GHz, which is not presented before to the best of the authors' knowledge. A wide rejection bandwidth ( − 10 dB ) of more than 600 and 1180 MHz is obtained around 2.5 and 5.45 GHz, respectively. Furthermore, the proposed PSS exhibits an excellent polarisation selective characteristic by generating two stopbands at 2.5 and 5.45 GHz when illuminated by horizontal (TM) incident waves, whereas vertically (TE) polarised incident waves result in the generation of passbands for these two frequencies. Numerical validation through equivalent circuit modelling of the proposed PSS has also been carried out. A finite prototype containing 31 × 33 elements is fabricated and tested. The measured results demonstrated that the PSS has excellent potential for applications that employ polarisation separators and wave generators.

An eight element, compact Ultra Wideband- Multiple Input Multiple Output (UWB-MIMO) antenna capable of providing high data rates for future Fifth Generation (5G) terminal equipments along with the provision of necessary bandwidth for Third Generation (3G) and Fourth Generation (4G) communications that accomplishes band rejection from 4.85 to 6.35 GHz by deploying a Inductor Capacitor (LC) stub on the ground plane is presented. The incorporated stub also provides flexibility to reject any selected band as well as bandwidth control. The orthogonal placement of the printed monopoles permits polarization diversity and provides high isolation. In the proposed eight element UWB-MIMO/diversity antenna, monopole pair 3-4 are 1800 mirrored transform of monopole pair 1-2 which lie on the opposite corners of a planar 50 × 50 mm2 substrate. Four additional monopoles are then placed perpendicularly to the same board leading to a total size of 50 × 50 × 25 mm3 only. The simulated results are validated by comparing the measurements of a fabricated prototype. It was concluded that the design meets the target specifications over the entire bandwidth of 2 to 12 GHz with a reflection coefficient better than -10 dB (except the rejected band), isolation more than 17 dB, low envelope correlation, low gain variation, stable radiation pattern, and strong rejection of the signals in the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) band. Overall, compact and reduced complexity of the proposed eight element architecture, strengthens its practical viability for the diversity applications in future 5G terminal equipments amongst other MIMO antennas designs present in the literature.

This study aimed to determine the effect of peer tutoring (PT) in enhancing students’ writing skills during English textbook taught to the students of Grade XI. The true experimental research pre/post-test design was used. The sample of the study comprised of 70 male and 58 female students containing each 35 male peer tutoring group (PTG) and non-peer tutoring group NPTG as well as each 29 female PTG and NPTG after matched before intervention. MCQs related to writing skills developed as a tool for data collection process. The tool is used in both pre and post-test for PTG and NPTG. The difference in both groups was calculated using statistical analysis. Linear regression predicted the effect size of male PTG 16.376 points higher (r = 0.860) than NPTG as well as female PTG 12.183 points higher (r = 0.813) than NPTG. These results indicated that PT technique enhanced students’ academic achievement.

English is a global language and it plays its role as the second and official language in many countries. Untrained teachers, rote learning, grammar translation method and overcrowded classrooms are the factors which affect the process of language learning in the school sector. The study was designed to analyze reading preferences of literary and language habits of Teacher Educators of RITE colleges and faculty members. The sample of the study comprised 119 faculty members i.e. teachers' educators of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Responses were collected through a questionnaire. It was found that reading material has a positive relationship with the preferences of faculty members and teacher educators. It is suggested that faculty members may be provided with a variety of reading material and sources for their professional grooming of teaching.

Bladder cancers rarely are non-urothelial in origin. We present here, possibly the youngest case of a 35-year-old White female presenting with shortness of breath. She was found to have a malignant pleural effusion with unknown primary, eventually confirmed with genetic testing as metastatic adenocarcinoma of the urinary bladder with brain and lung metastasis. She was scheduled for palliative chemotherapy, however, passed away before it could be started. We highlight this rare case because of its unique presentation. Owing to similarity in receptors between adenocarcinoma and enteric cancer, similar chemotherapy regimens may be used for both. Unfortunately, treatment of metastatic disease remains highly controversial and needs to be studied further if there is an actual survival benefit to this or not.

Purpose: To use clinical audit in improving the outcomes of manual small incision cataract surgery technique Study Design: Clinical audit. Place and Duration: Layton Rehmatullah Benevolent Trust Eye hospital Karachi, from September 2019 to December 2019. Methods: Two hundred patients who had undergone Manual Small Incision Cataract surgery were selected. Cases with traumatic cataract, weak zonules, pseudoexfoliation, and more than 1 diopter difference in keratometric readings, corneal and retinal pathologies were excluded. Surgical complications and visual outcomes were recorded on the 7th postoperative day. Refractive data was recorded from subjective refraction. Data was analyzed by University Hospital Bristol formula. Standards were set using international literature. Deficiencies were noted and technique was modified to improve the outcome. The audit was repeated after 2 months to see whether modifications had improved the outcome. Results: In the first audit, posterior capsular rupture rate was 1%, corrected visual acuity of 6/12 or better was achieved in 85.36% and surgically induced cylinder of less than 2 DC was achieved in 75.60% of the patients. In the second audit all standards were achieved. Posterior capsular rupture did not occur. Corrected visual acuity of 6/12 or better was achieved in 90.50% and induced cylinder of less than 2 DC was achieved in 87.05% of the patients. Conclusion: Clinical audit of the surgical procedures is a good technique in improving the outcomes of manual small incision cataract surgery. Key Words: Cataract extraction, clinical audit, posterior capsular rupture, astigmatism, visual acuity.

Aim and objective The study aims to analyze fasting glucagon in patients with type 2 diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance and correlate it with anthropometric and biochemical parameters in a large proportion of Pakistani people with diabetes. Methodology The participants of the study were categorized into three groups based on oral glucose tolerance test, as per American Diabetes Association guidelines. Group A consisted of normal glucose tolerance subjects (n=30), Group B consisted of subjects with impaired glucose tolerance (n=30), and Group C had full-blown subjects with type 2 diabetes (n=30). Biochemical parameters, such as fasting glucagon, fasting plasma and 2-hour glucose, glycated hemoglobin, and lipid profile, and anthropometric parameters, such as body mass index (BMI), waist and hip circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure, were measured. Results The mean values of fasting glucagon level in Group A, Group B, and Group C were 39.24±4.5, 44.5±8.25, and 49.02±9.15 pg/ml, respectively. Statistically significant difference was not found in fasting glucagon level among these groups (p-value 0.614). Fasting glucagon was positively and independently correlated with 2-hour plasma glucose, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, BMI, hip and waist circumference, and hip-to-waist ratio in Group C. In Group B, fasting glucagon was positively correlated with 2-hour plasma glucose, BMI, and hip circumference, while it was not correlated with fasting plasma glucose in both groups. In Group A, fasting glucagon found positively correlated with systolic blood pressure and hip circumference. Conclusion Our observation suggests that fasting plasma glucose is not concomitant with glucagon levels; however, glucagon suppression, after glucose intake, was dysregulated in type 2 diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance. Moreover, glucagon is associated with central obesity in type 2 diabetic patients. .

Technology Enhanced Formative Assessment (TEFA) is an advanced and evidence-based pedagogical approach for science and mathematics teaching using a classroom response system. Question-driven instruction, dialogical discourse, formative assessment, and meta-level communication are four core principles on which TEFA is built upon. These are implemented through a question cycle in the classroom. Eight weeks duration intervention study was carried out in two urban high schools, one from each stratum (i.e., boys and girls) using a non-equivalent comparison group quasi-experimental design on a sample of 183 participants. The study participants included 42 girls and 47 boys in the experimental group, whereas 54 girls and 40 boys in the control group from the 8th-grade mathematics class. Students' mathematics motivation survey using IMI (i.e., intrinsic motivation inventory) was used to measure students' mathematics learning motivation levels. Two-way ANOVA was conducted to assess the motivation level of the students. Analysis of the results showed that the experimental group motivation level was significantly higher than the control group.

The study was designed for critical analysis of research scholar expectations in higher education at UOH. The main objective of the study was to find out research scholars expectations from university and to explore the need of enrolling themselves in higher education and the important objective is to assess the educational background of research scholar. 101 students of M. The Phil program and 15 students of Ph.D. program from the department of (education, agriculture, environmental, mathematics, forestry, management, microbiology) were chosen as the sample of the study. one questionnaire was used for collection of data. A questionnaire was used for collection of data. The questionnaire consisted of 22 items which was further divided into four sections. The first section of the questionnaire consists of the educational background of scholar, the second section consists of personal information about the scholars, the third section consists of the economic status of the scholars and the fourth most important section consist of expectations of the scholar. Open ended questions also included at the end of the questionnaire. Research was descriptive in nature and type was research was survey design the researcher personally collected data from the departments of the University of Haripur through a questionnaire.

5G technology provides users with a significantly better experience and is a key enabler of massive connectivity between people-to-people and people-to-machines as well as machines-to-machines. The low -latency transmission promised by 5G opens up the possibilities for implementing remote healthcare, self -driving cars, and virtual reality/augmented reality. 5G technology includes fully digital beamforming, multiple access technologies, and massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) to deliver higher data rates, higher bandwidth, and lower latency. Antenna along with other microwave systems plays an important role in achieving key features of 5G technology. Unlike a single base station antenna array technology, in 1990, the modern antenna system has evolved from a passive to an active antenna system with integrated radios and digital baseband processing units.

This article reports on a compact, single layer Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) for tri-band GSM shielding applications. The proposed FSS unit cell comprises of three independent elements. The outermost square ring suppresses GSM-900 MHz signals, the innermost annular ring is incorporated in the design to stop GSM-2100 MHz signals and the middle square ring is used to suppress GSM-1800 MHz signals with a −10 dB rejection bandwidth of 600 MHz, 100 MHz, and 250 MHz, respectively. Furthermore, the proposed FSS exhibits a stable frequency response when illuminated by waves at oblique angles of incidence and a polarization insensitive behavior up-to 60°. The proposed FSS unit cell is realized on an FR4 substrate. A finite prototype containing $8 \times 7$ unit cells with an overall size of $270 \times 230\ \text{mm}^{2}$ is also fabricated and tested. A good agreement between the measured and simulated results showed that the proposed FSS can be employed for suppressing unwanted signals in the GSM-900, GSM-1800 and GSM-2100 bands.

This article reports on a compact metamaterial based electromagnetic absorber for Ku band radar applications. The proposed absorber offers −10 dB absorption from 14.29 GHz - 14.73 GHz having a maximum absorption peak at 14.6 GHz. The simulated and experimental results showed stable absorption response. Furthermore, it is experimentally shown that the proposed metamaterial absorber exhibits stable frequency response when illuminated by waves at oblique angles of incidence and polarization insensitive behavior up-to 60°. A good compliance between the measured and simulated results is observed.

This article reports on a novel Coplanar Wave-Guide (CPW) loop feed structure with an isolated circular slot in the middle to excite a higher order mode in the cylindrical Dielectric Resonator Antenna (DRA). The proposed feeding structure is etched on the bottom side of the substrate and it allows the cylindrical DRA to achieve a broader bandwidth and higher gain. For demonstration, the proposed feeding structure with the DRA is optimized at the X-band over the frequency range from 7.88 GHz to 8.78 GHz. The simulation results and experimental validation confirmed that the proposed feeding structure for the DRA can be used for achieving a broader bandwidth, higher gain, and broadside radiation characteristics.

A compact printed monopole patch antenna with finite ground for future Sub 6 GHz 5G wireless communications is presented. The microstrip patch antenna with square slot has compact size of $30\times 34\ \text{mm}^{2}$ . Good impedance match over wide range (3 – 7 GHz band) is achieved by partial ground plane and optimization of stub. The antenna exhibits omni-directional radiation pattern with high gain over the entire band. The proposed antenna is realized on FR4 laminate and good agreement with simulated results indicate that proposed design can be employed in future 5G wireless applications for wireless communication between Internet of Things nodes.

The management of heart failure patients via the implantation of cardiac pacemakers has become a well-known therapy. However, the complications associated with traditional cardiac pacemakers are usually related to finite-battery life, transvenous pacing leads, and subcutaneous device pocket. In this paper, we propose a wearable RF-powered leadless pacing system, which can be implanted directly inside the heart and powered via RF energy, without any batteries or pacing leads. More specifically, we have realized a prototype rectenna-based leadless pacemaker (LP), the implant, which consists of an implantable rectenna, charging and pacing circuits, as well as the pacing electrodes. In addition, a wearable transmit-antenna array was designed, developed, and fabricated for RF energy transmission into the body. In an acute animal study, using ovine models, the proposed LP was implanted at the left ventricular apex by thoracotomy. Using the prototype wearable transmit-antenna array, the prototype LP was powered wirelessly and as a result, leadless pacing was successfully demonstrated in the in vivo ECG results. Besides measuring the efficiency of the rectenna, the computations of specific absorption rate (SAR) are presented and found to be under the IEEE recommended limits. We conclude that a wearable RF-powered leadless pacing system is realizable with the SAR under the safe levels. Thus, the proposed leadless pacing method has the potential to be significantly safer as it completely eliminates the battery, leads, and device pocket and all the associated complications.

This study is intended to examine the correlation between working memory of students and their academic performance in Mathematics. Specifically, it was aimed to determine the degree of relationship between working memory capacity and academic achievement of students in mathematics studying at secondary school. A sample of 800 students studying in grade 10 was randomly selected from forty government and private secondary schools (girls and boys) situated in Hazara division, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Both Urdu and English mediums of instruction schools were included in the sample. The researcher used digits span backwards test (DSBT) to find out the working memory capacity of the students associated with their academic performance in mathematics. This study revealed that girls have outperformed boys very markedly in examination scores of mathematics at secondary level. Contrarily, boys have performed well in working memory capacity than girls at the secondary level. However a very small gender difference is observed in this study. It is also noticed that private secondary schools showed higher performance in examination scores of mathematics and in working memory capacity than government secondary schoolsl.

Twitter being the most popular content sharing platform is giving rise to automated accounts called “bots”. Majority of the users on Twitter are bots. Various machine learning (ML) algorithms are designed to detect bots avoiding the vulnerability constraints of ML-based models. This paper contributes to exploit vulnerabilities of machine learning (ML) algorithms through black-box attack. An adversarial text sequence misclassifies the results of deep learning (DL) classifiers for bot detection. Literature shows that ML models are vulnerable to attacks. The aim of this paper is to compromise the accuracy of ML-based bot detection algorithms by replacing original words in tweets with their synonyms. Our results show 7.2% decrease in the accuracy for bot tweets, therefore classifying bot tweets as legitimate tweets.

In this paper, a single layer Coplanar Waveguide-fed microstrip patch antenna array is presented for biomedical applications. The proposed antenna array is realized on a transparent and flexible Polyethylene Terephthalate substrate. The design has 4 radiating elements with single CPW feed and measures only 280 × 192 mm2. The antenna array resonates at 2.68 GHz and has a peak gain of 10 dBi. A prototype is fabricated using cost effective adhesive copper foils instead of conventional copper or silver nanoparticle ink. The corresponding measured results agree well with the simulated results. The proposed low-profile and cost-efficient transmit antenna array has the potential for wearable applications, including wireless powering of implantable medical devices.

This article reports on a compact, single layer polarizer having angular independent metasurface. The proposed design can efficiently convert cross polarization to co-polarization and vice versa for X – band applications. The unit cell consists of a stretched 8 shaped element printed diagonally on an FR4 substrate having 1.6 mm thickness backed by ground plane. The proposed design converts a linearly polarized incident wave into its orthogonal counterpart after getting reflected from the metasurface polarizer provided that the incident wave is polarized in x or y axis. Two distinct polarization conversion peaks are obtained at 9.9 GHz and 11.2 GHz with overall bandwidth more than 2 GHz. The design also exhibits stable frequency response at oblique angles of incidence up-to 45°. A finite prototype with overall dimensions of 210 × 290 mm2 containing 21 × 15 unit cells is fabricated and tested. A good agreement between the measured and simulated results showed that the proposed design can be employed for linear polarization conversion applications in X band.