Blockchain is an emerging field which works on the concept of a digitally distributed ledger and consensus algorithm removing all the threats of intermediaries. Its early applications were related to the finance sector but now this concept has been extended to almost all the major areas of research including education, IoT, banking, supplychain, defense, governance, healthcare, etc. In the field of healthcare, stakeholders (provider, patient, payer, research organizations, and supply chain bearers) demand interoperability, security, authenticity, transparency, and streamlined transactions. Blockchain technology, built over the internet, has the potential to use the current healthcare data into peer to peer and interoperable manner by using a patient-centric approach eliminating the third party. Using this technology, applications can be built to manage and share secure, transparent and immutable audit trails with reduced systematic fraud. This study reviews existing literature in order to identify the major issues of various healthcare stakeholders and to explore the features of blockchain technology that could resolve identified issues. However, there are some challenges and limitations of this technology which are needed to be focused on future research.

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During development, cortical interneurons (cINs) are generated from the ventral telencephalon, robustly migrate to the dorsal telencephalon, make local synaptic connections, and critically regulate brain circuitry by inhibiting other neurons. Thus, their abnormality is associated with various brain disorders. Human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-derived cINs can provide unlimited sources with which to study the pathogenesis mechanism of these disorders as well as provide a platform to develop novel therapeutics. By employing spinner culture, we could obtain a >10-fold higher yield of cIN progenitors compared to conventional culture without affecting their phenotype. Generated cIN spheres can be maintained feeder-free up to 10 months and are optimized for passaging and cryopreservation. In addition, we identified a combination of chemicals that synchronously matures generated progenitors into SOX6 + KI67 − migratory cINs and extensively characterized their maturation in terms of metabolism, migration, arborization, and electrophysiology. When transplanted into mouse brains, chemically matured migratory cINs generated grafts that efficiently disperse and integrate into the host circuitry without uncontrolled growth, making them an optimal cell population for cell therapy. Efficient large-scale generation of homogeneous migratory cINs without the need of feeder cells will play a critical role in the full realization of hPSC-derived cINs for development of novel therapeutics.

Background: The objective of the study was to find out the knowledge of career counselling among High School Students in Pakistan, their attitude towards attaining this knowledge and role of counsellors in order to get the right decision.Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted from October to November 2016in two private institutes of Karachi. It included 500 students enrolled in a single high school for A-level and intermediate study program for session year 2016-2017. A Structured questionnaire was developed and adapted from previous studies. Data entry and analysis was done using SPSS 20. Frequencies, percentages, and P-values were reported for the categorical variables, while mean and standard deviation for Age. The variables were cross tabulated against Knowledge to find out their associations. A P-value of 0.05 was considered as statistically significant.Results: Out of 500 respondents, 54% were females. Most of the students were in the age group of 17-19 years. Most of the students took Science as a major subject, while many declared it was their first attempt for higher school examination. 32.6% students had an aim of becoming Engineer while 29.8% wanted to be doctors. Most of these made this choice based on their personal interest. 54.8% of students had knowledge of career counselling. On applying chi square tests, availability of career counsellor and seminar attendance was found to be significantly associated with knowledge. Many of the students found counselling to be very important and they believed that there is a need of counsellor in every school. Most of them found their parents to be the most helpful in choosing their career.Conclusions: It is concluded that most high school students possess appropriate knowledge, positive attitude but lack of proper practices. Students consider career counselling to be really important and they are really concerned in acquiring appropriate guidance. Parents seemed to play an influential role in their choices. It is evident that very few schools provide with career counselling session and there is no concept of presence of career counsellors in any school of Pakistan.