The objectives of this study were to investigate the pH of common beverages and to evaluate the effects of common acidic beverages on the surface hardness and weight loss of human tooth specimens. A total of 106 beverages were conveniently purchased from supermarkets in Karachi, Pakistan. Prior to evaluation, beverages were refrigerated or stored at room temperature in accordance with the manufacturers’ recommendations. Beverages were categorized into six groups: ‘Sports and Energy drinks’, ‘Water’, ‘Fruit Juices and Drinks’, ‘Sodas’, ‘Milk and Flavored Milk’ and ‘Teas and Coffee’. Using a pH meter, the pH of each beverage was measured in triplicate at room temperature. In addition, the influence of five highly acidic beverages on the weight loss and surface hardness of human tooth specimens was evaluated using gravimetric analysis and the Vickers hardness tester, respectively. ‘Sports and Energy drinks’, ‘Fruits Juices and Drinks’ and ‘Sodas’ were the most acidic beverage categories, with a pH range of 3.00–5.00. A total of 33% of beverages tested in this study were highly acidic (pH less than 4.00), 29% of beverages were moderately acidic (pH 4.00–4.99) and 31% were mildly acidic (pH 5.00–6.99). Significant weight loss was observed in all immersed specimens compared to control counterparts (p < 0.05). Similarly, for surface hardness, five highly acidic beverages (Red Bull, Pepsi, Apple Cidra, Tang Mosambi and Tang Orange) significantly decreased the surface hardness of specimens (p < 0.05). The pH levels of commonly available beverages in Pakistan are highly acidic, which may encourage loss of minerals from teeth; hence, affecting their surface hardness.

This study examined how technology influences the study habits of students at RAK Medical and Health Sciences University. A cross sectional survey was conducted among 306 health sciences students using a self-administered questionnaire about their study habits (preparation for exam, place of study, use of text books / online study, device used, time spent on technology) and use of technology. The results showed that students rely more on technology than text books to study. Further studies can be conducted to investigate how technology can be used to improve their psychomotor and linguistic skills including communication skills which are vital for health care professionals.

In this work, we present a set of techniques that considerably improve the performance of executing concurrent MapReduce jobs. Our proposed solution relies on proper resource allocation for concurrent Hive jobs based on data dependency, inter-query optimization and modeling of Hadoop cluster load. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work towards Hive/MapReduce job optimization which takes Hadoop cluster load into consideration.We perform an experimental study that demonstrates 233% reduction in execution time for concurrent vs sequential execution schema. We report up to 40% extra reduction in execution time for concurrent job execution after resource usage optimization.The results reported in this paper were obtained in a pilot project to assess the feasibility of migrating A/B testing from Teradata + SAS analytics infrastructure to Hadoop. This work was performed on eBay production Hadoop cluster.

Objective: To estimate the burden of pulmonary tuberculosis among asymptomatic young male applicants in a government organization in Pakistan and to find out the pattern of disease on chest x-ray and high-resolution CT chest. Study Design: Prospective longitudinal study. Place and Duration of Study: Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Faisal Base Hospital Karachi, Pakistan, from Dec 2017 to Feb 2019. Methodology: An active search for detecting pulmonary tuberculosis was conducted in 1819 asymptomatic young male adults between 18 and 30 years who had applied for employment in a government organization with a pay scale ranging from 2 to 14 grade. Screening chest x-ray (CXR) was done as a part of their medical examination. High-resolution CT chest, sputum smear bacilloscopic and GeneXpert mycobacterium tuberculosis/resistance to Rifampicin assay tests were done in cases in which chest x-ray was suggestive of pulmonary tuberculosis. Results: Chest x-Ray and high-resolution CT of five out of 1819 male applicants were suggestive of pulmonary tuberculosis. Three cases (0.16%) were confirmed as positive on lab tests. Radiographic and High-resolution CT patterns showed upper lobe lesions, consistent with the radiological appearance of the immuno-competent host disease. Conclusion: The considerable presence of pulmonary tuberculosis was detected among asymptomatic young adults of this region; therefore, formulating a strategy to actively detect and treat analogous populations with high susceptibility to Pulmonary tuberculosis could help reduce this endemic disease.

Study habits have an impact on students' capacity for learning. Amongst these, the technology use has implicit a controversial part. This study aimed to assess the study habits of university students and the role of technology in learning. A cross sectional survey was conducted. A simple random sampling technique of 301 students from the different colleges of the selected university was used.  A self-administered developed questionnaire about the students’ demographic data, their study habits including time management, study environment, study techniques, test preparation, device used for studying, number of hours per day spent on technology and how technology enhances learning.  The findings revealed that most of students preferred to use laptop for learning. Around half of them spent 2-5 hours every day on technology for studying purpose. There was a statistical significant difference between gender, nationality and different element of the students study habits as time management and methods of studying as teacher notes and attending the revision classes. More than textbooks, students rely on technology for their academic work. The use of technology to enhance university students' psychomotor and linguistic abilities, including communication skills that are crucial for the health care team, can be the subject of further research.