Abstract. Removing bugs in programs -even when location of faulty statements is known -is tedious and error-prone, particularly because of the increased likelihood of introducing new bugs as a result of fixing known bugs. We present an automated approach for generating likely bug fixes using behavioral specifications. Our key insight is to replace a faulty statement that has deterministic behavior with one that has nondeterministic behavior, and to use the specification constraints to prune the ensuing nondeterminism and repair the faulty statement. As an enabling technology, we use the SAT-based Alloy tool-set to describe specification constraints as well as for solving them. Initial experiments show the effectiveness of our approach in repairing programs that manipulate structurally complex data. We believe specification-based automated debugging using SAT holds much promise.

Purpose: Patient satisfaction can identify specific areas of improvement in community pharmacy services. Currently in Pakistan, no evidence exists in this regard. This study was conducted to determine the needs of patients and the current standards of pharmacies. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted between October 2016 and June 2017. A pilot tested questionnaire was used to collected the data from 1088 patients of 544 community pharmacies. Likert scale and one way ANOVA was used to analyze the data. Results: The response rate of community pharmacies was 80% and that of purchasers was 68.1%. The mean age of participants was 35.2 years. The mean overall satisfaction score of participants was 2.78/5.00. Many patients were dissatisfied (1.65/5.00) with parking facilities provided by pharmacies. Pharmacy service time fulfilled the requirements of most patients (4.16/5.00). The counseling person’s good attitude (3.99/5.00) was credited by purchasers. Level of patient satisfaction with the availability of medicines (3.19/5.00), safe storage of medicines in pharmacy stores (3.66/5.00), and quality of medicines (3.41/5.00) were almost moderate. Many patients were very satisfied (4.35/5.00) with readable instructions for their medications. Approximately half of the patients were dissatisfied with the waiting time. Many patients were also dissatisfied (2.28/5.00) with the knowledge of the counseling person. Patients perceived that staff interest in patient recovery (2.24/5.00) was low. No significant difference in level of satisfaction with regard to participant’s characteristics was found. Conclusions: The current study demonstrated a low level of patient satisfaction with regard to community pharmacy services in Pakistan. These services need improvement.

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Introduction Thyroid surgery is one of the most frequently performed surgical procedures worldwide. Total thyroidectomy is a recommended procedure for most of the thyroid diseases. The most common complication resulting after this surgery is transient hypocalcemia - the incidence is 24% - which increases the morbidity rate and increases the length of stay in the hospital. The objective of our study was to compare the frequency of transient hypocalcemia after vitamin D and calcium supplementation with the control group for patients undergoing total thyroidectomy. Patients and methods It was a randomized controlled trial conducted at Department of Surgery, Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission General Hospital, Islamabad, Pakistan from January 2017 to July 2017. A total of 92 patients of both genders undergoing total thyroidectomy were included in the study. Patients undergoing reoperation for thyroid disease, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) grade 3 or above, patients with chronic renal failure, preoperative hypocalcemia or hypercalcemia were excluded. The patients were sorted into two groups by lottery method; Group 1 in which Vitamin D (2,00,000 IU) and calcium (1 gm) was given 24 hours preoperatively. Group 2 was the control group. Total thyroidectomy was done and serum calcium levels were evaluated immediately after surgery on day two, seven and on the 30th day. The final outcome was measured at one month. Data was analyzed via the Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 22.0 (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY, USA). P value ≤ 0.05 was considered significant. Results The age ranged from 18 to 65 years with the mean age of 38.673 ± 8.63 years in group 1 while 41.217 ± 9.52 years in group 2, mean preoperative calcium level was 9.482 ± 0.49 mg/dl in group 1 and 9.678 ± 0.54 mg/dl in group 2. Hypocalcemia was seen in 3 (6.5%) in group 1 as compared to 12 (26.1%) patients in group 2 (p = 0.011). Conclusion Preoperative oral calcium and vitamin D supplements may prevent postoperative hypocalcemia, allowing a safe and early discharge. This will ultimately lead to improved patient satisfaction and significant cost savings.

The present research work deals with the development of pH‐responsive hydrogel by free radical polymerization in aqueous media to protect the rabeprazole sodium from acidic environment of stomach. Swelling behavior of hydrogels that was observed in buffer of various pH indicated highly pH‐dependent swelling of hydrogels. Characterization of pH‐responsive hydrogels by FTIR, SEM, and thermal analysis revealed that hydrogel has porous structure, favors swelling, drug loading, and drug release at a specific site in gastrointestinal tract and thermally more stable than parent polymer. In comparison with simple drug solution and hydrogel formulations, pharmacokinetic parameters of hydrogels formulations showed a significant difference in Cmax values of (CMC‐g‐AA) CA and the same oral dose of rabeprazole sodium was 87.28 ± 12.671 and 61.263 ± 5.37 ng/mL, respectively, Tmax of graft copolymer matrices CA (4.43 h) was significantly (P < 0.05) higher than drug solution (1 h) and area under curves (AUCs) for CA (952.25 ± 191 ng⋅h/mL) was significantly (P < 0.05) higher than the drug solution (83.67 ± 8.28 ng⋅h/mL) indicated the effect of dosage form would last for longer duration. Thus, in vitro and in vivo drug release studies of hydrogels proved their controlled release behavior with preferential delivery into alkaline pH environment and for a prolonged period of time.

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Abstract-Automated debugging is becoming increasingly important as the size and complexity of software increases. This paper makes a case for using constraint-based data structure repair, a recently developed technique for fault recovery, as a basis for automated debugging. Data structure repair uses given structural integrity constraints for key data structures to monitor their correctness during the execution of a program. If a constraint violation is detected, repair performs mutations on the data structures, i.e., corrupt program state, and transforms it into another state, which satisfies the desired constraints.The primary goal of data structure repair is to transform an erroneous state into an acceptable state. Therefore, the mutations performed by repair actions provide a basis of debugging faults in code (assuming the errors are due to bugs). A key challenge to embodying this insight into a mechanical technique arises due to the difference in the concrete level of the program states and the abstract level of the program code: repair actions apply to concrete data structures that exist at runtime, whereas debugging applies to code. We observe that static structures (program variables) hold handles to dynamic structures (heap-allocated data), which allows bridging the gap between the abstract and concrete levels.We envision a tool-chain where a data structure repair tool generates repair logs that are used by a fault localization tool and a repair abstraction tool that apply in synergy to not only identify the location of fault(s) in code but also to synthesize debugging suggestions. An embodiment of our vision can significantly reduce the cost of developing reliable software.

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