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IntroductionThere is a huge resource gap in mental health service provision & service utilisation in LAMIC including Pakistan. SOUL Programme has been established in the City of Larkana, on charitable donations, which utilises principles of home-based outreach and produces clinical and functional outcomes.ObjectivesSOUL programme focuses on collaborative working with patients & families. The objectives include recognition, treatment, family education & psychosocial support to maximize clinical, functional & occupational outcomes.MethodsSingle cohort intervention (patients recruited on continual basis over time) with innovative service structure and culturally relevant open label intervention design developed with local academic psychiatric unit in Larkano, Pakistan. Training was provided to local mental health professionals on diagnosis, delivering care & use of recognized clinical outcome measures.ResultsWe have recruited a cohort of 160 patients on continual basis over time. Our analysis show a higher BPRS and lower GAF ratings for men in comparison to female cohort at the baseline. Our Ten year follow up has demonstrated statistically significant clinical / functional improvement on BPRS, CGI & GAF measures. The mean differences recorded for the individual measures after 12 months were BPRS, CGI-I and GAF and were all statistically significant. Innovative home-based community mental health intervention shows significant improvements in clinical and functional outcomes (with good effect size).ConclusionsSOUL Programme is a highly effective and cost-efficient intervention model for treatment of schizophrenia in a developing country setting. Our 10 year follow up study confirms the feasibility of this intervention model through close working with families of our patients.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

IntroductionPsychiatric services in LEDCs face a tripartite challenge: (i) limited financial capital; (ii) scarcity of professionals; (iii) restrictive health beliefs. Inevitably, services developed for the first-world are ill-suited here. Psychiatric services must be designed from the ground up: inspired by but not a replica of best practices in the developed world. The SOUL project in Larkana, Pakistan provides home based assessment by a psychiatrist and fortnightly treatment by a mobile nursing team for schizophrenic patients. Psychoeducation of carers and the community as well as facilitation of work for patients are core aims. This mixed-methods study evaluates the experiences of primary stakeholders - patients and their carers.Objectives1.Are patients and carers satisfied with the care received? 2.Has SOUL been successful in changing health beliefs? 3.How could the programme be improved?MethodsThe principal investigator accompanied the team for 4-weeks. Purposive sampling was employed. Satisfaction was assessed quantitatively using the likert based PSQ-18 questionnaire. Thereafter, qualitative data was gathered using semi-structured interviews and analysed using a grounded theory approach. A total of 27 interviews were conducted before data saturation.Results100% of interviewees answered ’Satisfied’ or ’Very’ Satisfied to all elements of the PSQ-18. Above all, stakeholders valued that treatment was free and highly accessible (home visits), promoting treatment adherence. They felt psychoeducation events significantly reduced community stigma and made families more likely to seek psychiatrists over faith healers. Provision of respite care was suggested as a future improvement.ConclusionsSOUL is highly valued by stakeholders and offers an excellent example of LEDC psychiatric care.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

OBJECTIVE:This study aimed to evaluate construction workers’ health behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions of health risks from work related and non-work related hazards. METHODS:Construction workers completed a survey that assessed hazardous health behaviors (such as alcohol and tobacco use), attitudes toward health, and health risk perceptions. We compared construction workers’ health behaviors to general population data from the behavioral risk factor surveillance system (BRFSS). RESULTS:Construction workers reported greater smoking and drinking compared with their age-adjusted white man counterparts in Missouri. While there was a high awareness of work-related health and safety risks, concerns about general health risks did not correspond with risks from relevant health behaviors. CONCLUSION:Educational efforts have created awareness of work-related safety and health issues in this population; similar efforts are needed to address disparities of general health behaviors.

The study examined the repellency of Gardenia jasminoides ethanol-extracted oil against the German cockroach, Blattella germanica, and the pharaoh ant, Monomorium pharaonis, which are serious pests in areas of public health hygiene. For the repellency tests, 31.4 μg of the oil was applied per cm2 on one half of filter paper discs (9 or 15 cm diameter for the ant and cockroach, respectively), whereas the other half was treated as control (DMSO + Tween). Repellency effects were observed 1, 2, 3 and 4 h after the insect release. The oil showed high repellency against all life stages of cockroaches and worker ants. The maximum repellency was observed for the cockroach adults (81.7 ± 3.1%) followed by the fourth, third and second nymphal stages (76.7 ± 4.2, 75.0 ± 3.4, and 56.7 ± 8.4%, respectively), after 1h exposure. The repellence effect was strong against worker ants (78.3 ± 4.8%) after 1 h exposure. The repellence effect can last at least four hours for both species. Analysis of Gardenia oil with Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry identified 14 major chemical components.

In this work, a new metaheuristic algorithm is developed by using social behavior in human dynasties. The motivation, conceptual framework, mathematical model, pseudocode, and working of the algorithm are described in this paper. The proposed dynastic optimization algorithm (DOA) has evolved with the wind turbine micrositing (WTM) problem in mind. The proposed DOA has been successfully applied to the traditional WTM and encouraging results have been obtained. It is demonstrated that the proposed approach is equally viable as other existing algorithms, such as the genetic algorithm (GA) and differential evolution algorithm (DEA). The main advantage of the proposed DOA is that it is simple, unique, fast, unbiased, and versatile in comparison with others. The validation of results has been made with respect to a few other mainstream algorithms in the literature. Besides, statistical sensitivity analysis is also performed. The 95% confidence interval forecasts for the power enhancement and cost reduction by using DOA against GA and DEA are encouraging and guarantee an adequate amount of mean increase in power output and a considerable average cost reduction.

This paper presents an automatic detection method for thin boundaries of silver-stained endothelial cells (ECs) imaged using light microscopy of endothelium mono-layers from rabbit aortas. To achieve this, a segmentation technique was developed, which relies on a rich feature space to describe the spatial neighbourhood of each pixel and employs a Support Vector Machine (SVM) as a classifier. This segmentation approach is compared, using hand-labelled data, to a number of standard segmentation/thresholding methods commonly applied in microscopy. The importance of different features is also assessed using the method of minimum Redundancy, Maximum Relevance (mRMR), and the effect of different SVM kernels is also considered. The results show that the approach suggested in this paper attains much greater accuracy than standard techniques; in our comparisons with manually labelled data, our proposed technique is able to identify boundary pixels to an accuracy of 93%. More significantly, out of a set of 56 regions of image data, 43 regions were binarised to a useful level of accuracy. The results obtained from the image segmentation technique developed here may be used for the study of shape and alignment of ECs, and hence patterns of blood flow, around arterial branches.

The genus Hieroglyphus Krauss 1877 comprises a numbers of species. Of these, the occurrence of three species H. perpolita (Uvarov), H. oryzivorus Carl and H. nigrorepletus I. Bolivar in Pakistan was revised. In these species the significant taxonomic variations have been reported. The phallic complex of these species s discussed and taxonomic key for identification of species is presented. The natural history and geographical distribution of the genus is reviewed. It occurs mostly east, south-east and west region of Pakistan. The H. oryzivorus is largely disjunct geographically; it is only restricted in Dadu and Larkana district of Sindh, while H. perpolita and H. nigrorepletus have been recorded through out the country. In addition to this, one new species H. akbari has been added. In this new species the lobes of female subgential plate are elongated and pointed and the lateral lobes are rounded and the posterior margin of the pronotum is obtuse angular. This character led to the diverse systemic position for this species in relation to the other species of this genus studied. This manuscript presents result of an expedition conducted for the collection of grasshopper during the year 2005-2007 in various provinces of Pakistan.

The acridid grasshopper genus Hieroglyphus Krauss 1877 is regarded as a major pest of rice, sugarcane, wheat, maize, and a minor pest of millet and fodder crops in Pakistan. We investigated the adaptability of the pest Hieroglyphus perpolita (Uvarov 1933) to its food plants in terms of life history characteristics under laboratory conditions. Nymphs and adults of H. perpolita were reared on four food plants (Oryza sativa, Zea mays, Saccharum officinarum, Saccharum bengalense) and a mixed diet. Feeding on S. bengalense led to the fastest nymphal development (25.38 days) while the slowest development was on S. officinarum (45.5 days). Adults laid a significantly higher number of egg-pods and total number of eggs per female on S. bengalense and O. sativa than on the other plants (respectively 3.1 plus or minus 0.87 and 2.2 plus or minus 0.78, and 82.10 plus or minus 27.31 and 64.50 plus or minus 30.28). Therefore, H. perpolita showed significant differences in nymphal development, longevity and fecundity when raised on the various food plants. S. bengalense and O. sativa had superior nutritional value and were more suitable food plants than the others. In the wild, the prevalence of hoppers and adults of H. perpolita is mainly associated with the presence of S. bengalense. A brief description of the ecology of H. perpolita in the wild is given.

Hieroglyphus Krauss is among the most economically important pest of rice, sugarcane, wheat, maize and minor pest of millets and fodder crops in Pakistan. Presently immature stages of Hieroglyphus perpolita (Uvarov), H. oryzivorus Carl and H. nigrorepletus I. (Bolivar) were studied under the laboratory conditions during the years 2005-2007 from Pakistan. The first instar hatched in the form of vermiform larva. In both sexes, normally there are five moults and six nymphal stages and the adult being the seventh stage. Hoppers usually emerge during June-July as soon as monsoon begins. Sex ratio was extremely in the favour of females in all the species were studied. Inner side of hind femur with tinge of red or orange red color was reported in H. perpolita on contrary to this; it was light green in H. nigrorepletus. Posterior margin of pronotum was recorded almost straight in H. oryzivorus while it was obtuse angular in H. perpolita. Morphometric studies on the immature stages o

The grasshopper species Hieroglyphus are well known as major pest of rice, sugarcane, wheat and in many countries of the world including Pakistan. However, no information is available regarding H. perpolita (Uvarov). Therefore, a study was carried out on taxonomy, morphology, distribution and ecology of H. perpolita from Pakistan during the year 2005-2007. In H. perpolita pronotum cylindrical dorsum crossed by four wide sulci, prosternal process bifurcate. Lophi elongate, zygoma of cingulum narrow; rami broad; apodemes slightly shorter than basal valves of penis. Further, other significant differences are studied in H. perpolita on the bases of morphological traits as well as on genitalia components. This species occurs in macropterous form with two distinguish color forms: shining yellow and dark green. H. perpolita is univoltine and crossed six nymphal stages to become adult. Hoppers usually begin to emerge in second week of June, but by middle of July most of the hoppers