Diagnosis and Management of Isolated Superior Mesenteric Artery Dissection: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Waqas Ullah,Maryam Mukhtar,Hafez Mohammad Abdullah,Mamoon Ur Rashid,Asrar Ahmad,Abu Hurairah,Usman Sarwar,Vincent M. Figueredo 대한심장학회 2019 Korean Circulation Journal Vol.49 No.5

The objective of this study was to analyze the three different management modalities for isolated superior mesenteric artery (SMA) dissection. We did a comprehensive literature search and found 703 articles on the initial search, out of which 111 articles consisting of 145 patients were selected for analysis. The mean age was 55.7 years (standard deviation,9.7;33–85) and 80.6% were male. These patients were managed conservatively (41.3%), endovascularly (28.1%) or surgically (30%). The median follow-up was 10 months (interquartile range [IQR], 4–18 months), 12 months (IQR, 6–19 months) and 14 months (IQR, 6–20 months) respectively. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) was the most commonly used diagnostic tool in the conservative group (43.8%), while conventional CT scan was the most widely used in endovascular (58.1%) and surgical group (50%). 17% percent of the conservative group had SMA angiography for diagnosis, while this was less than 3% in the other groups. Of these patients, 96.7%, 97.4%, and 100.0% recovered successfully in the conservative, endovascular, and surgical groups respectively. There was no significant difference in the mortality between the three groups (Pearson χ2=0.482). This suggests a conservative and endovascular approach could be used in most patients, which can reduce costs and surgery-related morbidity and mortality. Surgical management should be reserved for cases having infarction or widespread bowel ischemia and in cases where other treatment modalities fail.

A Review on Path Selection and Navigation Approaches Towards an Assisted Mobility of Visually Impaired People

( Waqas Nawaz ),( Kifayat Ullah Khan ),( Khalid Bashir ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2020 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.14 No.8

Some things come easily to humans, one of them is the ability to navigate around. This capability of navigation suffers significantly in case of partial or complete blindness, restricting life activity. Advances in the technological landscape have given way to new solutions aiding navigation for the visually impaired. In this paper, we analyze the existing works and identify the challenges of path selection, context awareness, obstacle detection/identification and integration of visual and nonvisual information associated with real-time assisted mobility. In the process, we explore machine learning approaches for robotic path planning, multi constrained optimal path computation and sensor based wearable assistive devices for the visually impaired. It is observed that the solution to problem is complex and computationally intensive and significant effort is required towards the development of richer and comfortable paths for safe and smooth navigation of visually impaired people. We cannot overlook to explore more effective strategies of acquiring surrounding information towards autonomous mobility.

Country-Level Institutional Quality and Public Debt: Empirical Evidence from Pakistan

Waqas MEHMOOD,Rasidah MOHD-RASHID,Attia AMAN-ULLAH,Chui ZI ONG 한국유통과학회 2021 The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Busine Vol.8 No.4

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between country-level institutional quality and public debt in the context of Pakistan. The hypotheses of this study were assessed by using the country-level institutional quality data for Pakistan throughout the years from 1996 to 2018. Data came from the World Databank, IMF and Worldwide Governance Indicators databases. For the analysis, ordinary least square, quantile regression and robust regression were employed to assess the factors influencing the public debt. The results of this study indicate that the factors of voice and accountability, regulatory quality, and control of corruption have a positive and significant relationship with public debt, while political stability, government effectiveness, and the rule of law have a negative and significant effect on public debt. Based on the findings, a weak country-level institutional quality poses a substantial market risk as it signals the existence of an unfavorable economic condition that raises public debt. It was also revealed that an improved performance of country-level institutional quality can lead to the improvement of financial market transparency, hence reduce public debt. In contrast to previous studies, the present study will be breaking ground in enhancing public insight regarding the impact of country-level institutional quality on Pakistan’s public debt.

Benzaldehyde as an insecticidal, antimicrobial, and antioxidant compound produced by Photorhabdus temperata M1021.

Ullah, Ihsan,Khan, Abdul Latif,Ali, Liaqat,Khan, Abdur Rahim,Waqas, Muhammad,Hussain, Javid,Lee, In-Jung,Shin, Jae-Ho Microbiological Society of Korea 2015 The journal of microbiology Vol.53 No.2

<P>The Photorhabdus temperata M1021 secretes toxic compounds that kill their insect hosts by arresting immune responses. Present study was aimed to purify the insecticidal and antimicrobial compound(s) from the culture extract of P. temperata M1021 through bioassay guided fractionation. An ethyl acetate (EtOAc) extract of the P. temperata M1021 exhibited 100% mortality in Galleria mellonella larvae within 72 h. In addition, EtOAc extract and bioactive compound 1 purified form the extract through to column chromatography, showed phenol oxidase inhibition up to 60% and 80% respectively. The analysis of H-1 and C-13 NMR spectra revealed the identity of pure compound as 'benzaldehyde'. The benzaldehyde showed insecticidal activity against G. mellonella in a dose-dependent manner and 100% insect mortality was observed at 108 h after injection of 8 mM benzaldehyde. In a PO inhibition assay, 4, 6, and 8 mM concentrations of benzaldehyde were found to inhibit PO activity about 15%, 42%, and 80% respectively. In addition, nodule formation was significantly (P < 0.05) inhibited by 4, 6, and 8 mM of benzaldehyde as compare to control. Moreover, benzaldehyde was found to have great antioxidant activity and maximum antioxidant activity was 52.9% at 8 mM benzaldehyde as compare to control. Antimicrobial activity was assessed by MIC values ranged from 6 mM 10 mM for bacterial strains and 8 mM to 10 mM for fungal strains. The results suggest that benzaldehyde could be applicable for developing novel insecticide for agriculture use.</P>

The Reaction of the Malaysian Stock Market to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Mehmood, Waqas,Mohd-Rashid, Rasidah,Aman-Ullah, Attia,Shafique, Owais,Tajuddin, Ahmad Hakimi World Association for Triple Helix and Future Stra 2021 Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia Vol.20 No.2

The present study was conducted to understand the turmoil effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the Malaysian stock market during the different periods of the Movement Control Order (MCO). The present study was based on the secondary data extracted from the DataStream and Bloomberg from 2nd January 2020 to 29th May 2020 to evaluate the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the Malaysian stock market. The findings suggested that during the different periods of the Movement Control Order (MCO) from the 1st January to 29th May 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected the performance of KLCI index and all sectoral indices. The weakest performance indices were energy, property, and finance while the least affected indices were healthcare, technology, telecommunications, and media. This paper provides a review of the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on the Malaysian stock market throughout the different periods of MCO.

Analysis of Phytohormones and Phosphate Solubilization in Photorhabdus spp.

Ihsan Ullah,Abdur Rahim Khan,박건석,임종희,Muhammad Waqas,이인중,신재호 한국식품과학회 2013 Food Science and Biotechnology Vol.22 No.suppl1

Bacteria of the genus Photorhabdus are nematodes (Heterorhabditidae) symbiont and highly entomopathogenic in nature. Present study was concerned to investigate the effects of Photorhabdus temperata M1021 and Photorhabdus luminescens TT01 on plant morphology and physiology (‘Dongjin-beyo’ and ‘waitoc’). A significant (p<0.05) increase in the plant growth attributes including total plant length, root length, biomass,and chlorophyll contents were observed after treatment with culture extracts. Moreover indole-3-acetic acid (IAA)production by respective bacteria was confirmed by GCMS analysis. IAA production through tryptophan independent pathway was confirmed in P. temperata M1021 and P. luminescens TT01. Phosphate solubilization capability was also investigated by growing them on pikovskaya (PVK)agar as well as on PVK liquid medium with pH 7 at 28±2oC for 14 days. IAA production and phosphate solubilization capability of these bacteria could be the potential factors for plant growth promotion.

Exogenous ascorbic acid mitigates flood stress damages of Vigna angularis

Ihsan Ullah,Muhammad Waqas,Muhammad Aaqil Khan,이인정,김원찬 한국응용생명화학회 2017 Applied Biological Chemistry (Appl Biol Chem) Vol.60 No.6

Prolonged water stress adversely affects many aspects of plant physiology, resulting in severe damage to growth and productivity. In response to this and other environmental stresses, plants have evolved complex physiological and biochemical adaptations. To boost existing plant defense mechanisms, this study quantified the negative effects of waterlogging stress and how it may be mitigated by the addition of a natural protective agent. Adzuki beans (Vigna angularis) were grown in commercially available microbe-free soil and subjected to waterlogging stress for 2 weeks. Waterlogging significantly reduced all growth-related variables: shoot length, fresh and dry biomass, chlorophyll content in stressed versus unstressed plants. Waterlogging stress generated reactive oxygen species that heavily damaged plant tissues, causing electrolyte leakage and eliciting an antioxidative response. Specifically, stress-response phytohormone content altered, with a reduction in abscisic acid (ABA) and an increase in jasmonic acid (JA). Furthermore, antioxidants such as malondialdehyde (MDA), catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), polyphenol oxidase (PPO), and peroxidase (POD) were significantly enhanced in waterlogged plants versus non-waterlogged plants. Supplementation of exogenous ascorbic acid (ASC) at 3, 5, and 7 mM revealed that the lowest concentration further reduced ABA and increased JA, enhancing water evaporation rates to raise water-stress tolerance. Moreover, 3 mM ASC also led to lower MDA, CAT, SOD, PPO, POD, and ascorbate peroxidase concentrations in waterlogged plants than in waterlogged plant not treated with ASC. Thus, ASC at a concentration of 3 mM was the most successful in relieving effects of waterlogging stress on plants.

Bargaining based Design Mechanism for delay sensitive tasks of mobile crowdsensing in IoT

Ahmad Waqas,Ullah Ata,Sheharyar,Jhanjhi N.Z.,Ghoniem Rania M.,Brohi Sarfraz Nawaz 한국통신학회 2024 ICT Express Vol.10 No.1

Internet of Things (IoT) is getting growing interest to offer great opportunities in combination with Mobile Crowd Sensing for real-time applications. Existing approaches motivate mobile workers (MWs) for approaching the distant locations to receive attractive incentives for traveling. The main question addressed is that a number of tasks remain incomplete out of total al-located tasks. Moreover, the profitability and feasible budget constraints of the platform is also not considered. This paper presents Bargaining based Design Mechanism (BDM) to involve the nearest located MWs to improve the completion of tasks. The main method involves a bargaining based game model that increases the task completion ratio while considering the feasible budget constraint, platform profitability and social welfare. The proposed approach comprises of two algorithms: one for the selection of optimal MWs with low cost and less delay. Second is to organize bargaining for rewarding the platform on social welfare. Our work is validated by developing a testbed on Windows Azure cloud. Results prove that proposed BDM out-performs the counterparts in terms of decay coefficient, task completion ratio, participant’s winning ratio, fraction of task incompletion and social welfare.

Succinct LSH Indexing Scheme for a Dynamic Graph

Kifayat Ullah Khan,Waqas Nawaz,Young-Koo Lee 한국정보과학회 2017 한국정보과학회 학술발표논문집 Vol.2017 No.06

Scalable Compression of a Weighted Graph

Kifayat Ullah Khan,Waqas Nawaz,Young-Koo Lee 한국정보과학회 2016 한국정보과학회 학술발표논문집 Vol.2016 No.6