IN VITRO THROMBIN DOSE RESPONSE ON MADIN DARBY CANINE KIDNEY CELL MONOLAYER

RASHID AMIN,IMRAN SHAKIR,ISHRAT SULTANA,박성하,RAFAQAT HUSSAIN 성균관대학교(자연과학캠퍼스) 성균나노과학기술원 2011 NANO Vol.6 No.4

Epithelial cells are known to play an important role in sustaining the airway barrier that may be impaired in certain inflammatory conditions. Recently, the use of thrombin has been reported to open the airway of patients with asthma as well as enhance the permeability of endothelial cell monolayers. We designed an in vitro model of Madin Darby Canine Kidney (MDCK) cells and the physiological functions of this model were evaluated by measuring the transepithelial resistance (TER). The epithelial cytoskeletal organization was observed by staining with Bisbenzimide and Rodamine-Phalloidin (BBZ-Phalloidin) and confirmed by fluorescence microscopy. Measurements of the TER generated values up to 2020 Ω/cm2. A dose response of thrombin was observed, showing the permeability changes in the MDCK monolayer and subsequent recovery. A relationship between TER values and cytoskeletal organization was also observed and discussed.

A Novel Homozygous Variant of SETX Causes Ataxia with Oculomotor Apraxia Type 2

Huma Tariq,Rashid Imran,Sadaf Naz 대한신경과학회 2018 Journal of Clinical Neurology Vol.14 No.4

Background and Purpose Autosomal recessive cerebellar ataxias constitute a highly heterogeneous group of neurodegenerative disorders. This study was carried out to determine the clinical and genetic causes of ataxia in two families from Pakistan. Methods Detailed clinical investigations were carried out on probands in two consanguineous families. Magnetic resonance imaging was performed. Exome sequencing data were examined for likely pathogenic variants. Candidate variants were checked for cosegregation with the phenotype using Sanger sequencing. Public databases including ExAC, GnomAD, dbSNP, and the 1,000 Genome Project as well as ethnically matched controls were checked to determine the frequencies of the alleles. Conservation of missense variants was ensured by aligning orthologous protein sequences from diverse vertebrate species. Results Reverse phenotyping identified spinocerebellar ataxia, autosomal recessive 1 [OMIM 606002, also referred to as ataxia oculomotor apraxia type 2 (AOA2)] and ataxia telangiectasia (OMIM 208900) in the two families. A novel homozygous missense mutation c.202 C>T (p. Arg68Cys) was identified within senataxin, SETX in the DNA of both patients in one of the families with AOA2. The patients in the second family were homozygous for a known variant in ataxia-telangiectasia mutated (ATM) gene: c.7327 C>T (p.Arg2443Ter). Both variants were absent from 100 ethnically matched control chromosomes and were either absent or present at very low frequencies in the public databases. Conclusions This report extends the allelic heterogeneity of SETX mutations causing AOA2 and also presents an asymptomatic patient with a pathogenic ATM variant.

Modeling and simulation of planar SOFC to study the electrochemical properties

Jawad Hussain,Rashid Ali,Majid Niaz Akhtar,Mujtaba Hussain Jaffery,Imran Shakir,Rizwan Raza 한국물리학회 2020 Current Applied Physics Vol.20 No.5

In this paper, modeling and simulations are carried out using COMSOL Multiphysics. A three-dimensional model is developed for a planar intermediate temperature (IT) solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). A parametric study has been carried out to analyze the performance of SOFC. Simulations reveal some promising features and enhanced performance of SOFC. It is shown that the maximum value of power (4–3.3) kW/m2 still remains higher with significant rise of temperature (600 °C–1000 °C), nearly 0.15 kW/m2 is the very small loss of power per 100 °C rise of temperature. Results have shown that the electrolytic current density is (6700–5500) A/m2 for peak value of power (4–3.3) kW/m2 with increase of temperature (600 °C–1000 °C). For model validation we have plotted a comparison of average current density.

Novel Optimizer AdamW+ implementation in LSTM Model for DGA Detection

Awais Javed,Adnan Rashdi,Imran Rashid,Faisal Amir International Journal of Computer ScienceNetwork S 2023 International journal of computer science and netw Vol.23 No.11

This work take deeper analysis of Adaptive Moment Estimation (Adam) and Adam with Weight Decay (AdamW) implementation in real world text classification problem (DGA Malware Detection). AdamW is introduced by decoupling weight decay from L2 regularization and implemented as improved optimizer. This work introduces a novel implementation of AdamW variant as AdamW+ by further simplifying weight decay implementation in AdamW. DGA malware detection LSTM models results for Adam, AdamW and AdamW+ are evaluated on various DGA families/ groups as multiclass text classification. Proposed AdamW+ optimizer results has shown improvement in all standard performance metrics over Adam and AdamW. Analysis of outcome has shown that novel optimizer has outperformed both Adam and AdamW text classification based problems.

The Impact of Education on Business Opportunities for Women Entrepreneurs in Public & Private Television Advertisements in Pakistan

Rani Gul,Sumaira Zakir,Imran Ali,Hafsa Karim,Rashid Hussain 대한산업공학회 2021 Industrial Engineeering & Management Systems Vol.20 No.2

The emergence of private and foreign TV channels since 2002 have brought strategic changes in advertisement policies, especially in majority adds where the number of women portrayals adds are encouraged. This phenomenon leads more opportunities for women entrepreneurship in media business industry. The present study has investigated that how education play a role in enhancing more business opportunities for women entrepreneurs in advertising media. Using qualitative approach, a comparative analysis of PTV news (public) and GEO news (private) channels was done channel gives more prominence and frequency to women opportunities in their ads broadcasted in prime time (9 to 10 pm) during 30 days of simultaneous period in June 2020 amid CIVID-19 pandemic. The results shows that less educated females as media practitioners in advertisements may get less opportunities and educated females avail lucrative opportunities in Media Industry. Educational richness makes women more capable to influence more audience and grab their attention towards specific product/service with ample marketing skills and entrepreneurial eminency. Results also show that ratio of educated females in private channel advertisements is comparatively high and opportunities for highly educated female practitioners as entrepreneur are high. It is concluded that we need to support young women"s entrepreneurial thinking and to facilitate creative business stratus and promote an enterprise-friendly culture and development of small and medium-sized businesses to achieve success, growth, and jobs (SMEs) for educated women entrepreneurs. The critical role education has now been widely recognised in fostering more business attitudes and behaviours. Education helps women to think creatively, to be successful problem solvers, to critically evaluate a business concept, to connect, to network, to lead and to assess every project.

Biomonitoring of Toxic Effects of Pesticides in Occupationally Exposed Individuals

Arshad, Muhammad,Siddiqa, Maryam,Rashid, Saddaf,Hashmi, Imran,Awan, Muhammad Ali,Ali, Muhammad Arif Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute 2016 Safety and health at work Vol.7 No.2

Background: Workers in pesticide manufacturing industries are constantly exposed to pesticides. Genetic biomonitoring provides an early identification of potential cancer and genetic diseases in exposed populations. The objectives of this biomonitoring study were to assess DNA damage through comet assay in blood samples collected from industry workers and compare these results with those of classical analytical techniques used for complete blood count analysis. Methods: Samples from controls (n = 20) and exposed workers (n = 38) from an industrial area in Multan, Pakistan, were subjected to various tests. Malathion residues in blood samples were measured by gas chromatography. Results: The exposed workers who were employed in the pesticide manufacturing industry for a longer period (i.e., 13-25 years) had significantly higher DNA tail length ($7.04{\mu}m$) than the controls ($0.94{\mu}m$). Workers in the exposed group also had higher white blood cell and red blood cell counts, and lower levels of mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH), MCH concentration, and mean corpuscular volume in comparison with normal levels for these parameters. Malathion was not detected in the control group. However, in the exposed group, 72% of whole blood samples had malathion with a mean value of 0.14 mg/L (range 0.01-0.31 mg/L). Conclusion: We found a strong correlation ($R^2=0.91$) between DNA damage in terms of tail length and malathion concentration in blood. Intensive efforts and trainings are thus required to build awareness about safety practices and to change industrial workers' attitude to prevent harmful environmental and anthropogenic effects.

Biomonitoring of Toxic Effects of Pesticides in Occupationally Exposed Individuals

Muhammad Arshad,Maryam Siddiqa,Saddaf Rashid,Imran Hashmi,Muhammad Ali Awan,Muhammad Arif Ali 한국산업안전보건공단 산업안전보건연구원 2016 Safety and health at work Vol.7 No.2

Background: Workers in pesticide manufacturing industries are constantly exposed to pesticides. Genetic biomonitoring provides an early identification of potential cancer and genetic diseases in exposed populations. The objectives of this biomonitoring study were to assess DNA damage through comet assay in blood samples collected from industry workers and compare these results with those of classical analytical techniques used for complete blood count analysis. Methods: Samples from controls (n = 20) and exposed workers (n = 38) from an industrial area in Multan, Pakistan, were subjected to various tests. Malathion residues in blood samples were measured by gas chromatography. Results: The exposed workers who were employed in the pesticide manufacturing industry for a longer period (i.e., 13-25 years) had significantly higher DNA tail length (7.04 ㎛) than the controls (0.94 ㎛). Workers in the exposed group also had higher white blood cell and red blood cell counts, and lower levels of mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH), MCH concentration, and mean corpuscular volume in comparison with normal levels for these parameters. Malathion was not detected in the control group. However, in the exposed group, 72% of whole blood samples had malathion with a mean value of 0.14 mg/L (range 0.01-0.31 mg/L). Conclusion: We found a strong correlation (R2 = 0.91) between DNA damage in terms of tail length and malathion concentration in blood. Intensive efforts and trainings are thus required to build awareness about safety practices and to change industrial workers’ attitude to prevent harmful environmental and anthropogenic effects.

Optimality of Linear MIMO Detection for 5G Systems via 1-Opt Local Search

Khurshid Kiran,Khan Adnan Ahmed,Siddiqui Muhammad Haroon,Hadi M. Usman,Rashid Imran,Imran Muhammad 대한전기학회 2021 Journal of Electrical Engineering & Technology Vol.16 No.2

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) symbol detection problem belongs to non-deterministic polynomial acceptable hard combinatorial optimization (CO) class. One of the key trials in design of MIMO scheme is to develop a low complexity detection algorithm without much compromise in performance. Detection approaches proposed in the literature can be split into non-linear and linear algorithms. Vertical Bell-Labs Layered Space Time (V-BLAST) and Sphere Decoder (SD) are non-linear methods used for extracting transmitted data; whereas, Zero-Forcing (ZF) and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) detections are comparatively in complex and eff ectual linear techniques. In this work, the heuristic 1-Opt local search method used for solving computationally hard combinatorial optimization problems is applied to the ZF and MMSE detection algorithms. First, simple MIMO decoding using ZF and MMSE is accomplished to fi nd the estimated symbol then the transmitted symbol is calculated using the heuristic 1-opt approach by means of the estimated symbol. Simulation results demonstrate that 1-opt search when applied to the ZF and MMSE displays better bit error rate (BER) performance than the simple ZF and MMSE detectors. It is also verifi ed through simulations that the proposed 1-Opt based detectors display better BER performance as compared to the complex nonlinear VBLAST and SD at considerably reduced complexity. Hence, the proposed detectors are appropriate for eff ective hardware implementations.

Effect of pH and Concentration on Electrochemical Corrosion Behavior of Aluminum Al-7075 T6 Alloy in NaCl Aqueous Environment

Raza, Syed Abbas,Karim, Muhammad Ramzan Abdul,Shehbaz, Tauheed,Taimoor, Aqeel Ahmad,Ali, Rashid,Khan, Muhammad Imran The Korean Electrochemical Society 2022 Journal of electrochemical science and technology Vol.13 No.2

In the present study, the corrosion behavior of aluminum Al-7075 tempered (T-6 condition) alloy was evaluated by immersion testing and electrochemical testing in 1.75% and 3.5% NaCl environment at acidic, neutral and basic pH. The data obtained by both immersion tests and electrochemical corrosion tests (potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy tests) present that the corrosion rate of the alloy specimens is minimum for the pH=7 condition of the solution due to the formation of dense and well adherent thin protective oxide layer. Whereas the solutions with acidic and alkaline pH cause shift in the corrosion behavior of aluminum alloy to more active domains aggravated by the constant flux of acidic and alkaline ions (Cl^- and OH^-) in the media which anodically dissolve the Al matrix in comparison to precipitated intermetallic phases (cathodic in nature) formed due to T6 treatment. Consequently, the pitting behavior of the alloy, as observed by cyclic polarization tests, shifts to more active regions when pH of the solutions changes from neutral to alkaline environment due to localized dissolution of the matrix in alkaline environment that ingress by diffusion through the pores in the oxide film. Microscopic analysis also strengthens the results obtained by immersion corrosion testing and electrochemical corrosion testing as the study examines the corrosion behavior of this alloy under a systematic evaluation in marine environment.