Search

The phase equilibria in the Cu-Sb-S-I quaternary system were studied by differential thermal analysis and X-ray phase analysis methods in the CuI-SbSI-SbI3 concentration intervals. The boundary quasi-binary section CuI-SbSI, 2 internal polythermal sections of the phase diagram, as well as, the projection of the liquidus surface were constructed. Primary crystallisation areas of phases, types, and coordinates of non- and monovariant equilibria were determined. Limited areas of solid solutions based on the SbSI (b-phase) and high-temperature modifications of the CuI (α1- and α2- phases) were revealed in the system. The formation of the α1 and α2 phases is accompanied by a decrease in the temperatures of the polymorphic transitions of CuI and the establishment of metatectic (3750C) and eutectoid (2800C) reactions. It was also shown, that the system is characterised by the presence of a wide immiscibility region that covers a significant part of the liquidus surface of the CuI and SbSI based phases

The presence of microbial load and high fiber content in various non conventional feedstuffs limit their utilization in poultry feed. In the present study, the feedstuffs were treated with acidified sodium chlorite (ASC) and its impact on the microbial load and metabolizable energy availability was assessed in the chickens. The effect of supplementation of feed grade enzyme was also evaluated either alone or in combination with ASC treatment. ASC was prepared by adding citric acid to an aqueous solution of sodium chlorite (625 g/liter). The sanitizing effect of ASC was assessed at 0, 100, 250 and 500 ppm levels in the meat cum bone meal (MBM) and sunflower meal (SFM), while its impact on the energy bioavailability from SFM and de-oiled rice bran (DORB) was assessed at 0, 100 and 250 ppm levels with (0.3 g/kg) and without exogenous enzyme supplementation. The results revealed that ASC treatment was effective in reducing the microbial load in MBM and SFM. Regarding the metabolizable energy availability, ASC treatment produced appreciable improvement both in SFM and DORB, while enzyme supplementation was effective only with SFM. It may be concluded that ASC treatment has a sanitizing effect and improves the energy bioavailability from feed ingredients like SFM and DORB in the chicken.

Aim: Nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in subtropical cropping systems is low causing a large quantity of reactive N loss to the environment. However, the mechanisms and pathways of such losses are poorly understood. The objectives of the research were to quantify N volatilization rates and corresponding NUE in a biochar and nitrapyrin-treated cabbage field using N-control as well as a 15N-based approach. Methods: The treatments consisted of: N-control, urea alone, urea with nitrapyrin (UN), urea with biochar (UB), and urea with biochar and nitrapyrin (UNB). In each plot, 15N-labeled urea was applied in 1 m2 micro-plots to repeat the treatments. Results: The UNB had higher (p < 0.001) crop yields than other treatments by 29, 23 and 16% over the urea, UN and UB treatments, respectively, while the UN and UB were also higher than the urea alone. The estimated 15N-based NUE was higher (p < 0.01) in the UNB (40%) than in the urea alone (32%) but similar to the UN (36%) and UB (38%). The N-control based calculation overestimated NUE by 2–13% relative to the 15N-based approach. The UNB treatment reduced NH3 volatilization by 37, 22, and 33% over urea alone, UB and UN, respectively (p < 0.01). Post-harvest soil organic carbon (SOC) and total N were higher (p < 0.001) in the UNB and UB treatments than the other treatments. Conclusion: Our results with a subtropical crop suggest that biochar alone or co-applied with nitrapyrin improves NUE and mitigates NH3 volatilization while increasing SOC and TN contents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dengue myositis is a recently recognized category of idiopathic inflammatory myopathies manifested as symmetric proximal muscle weakness with severe limb pain and high serum creatine kinase (CK) levels, in dengue patient (NS1 positive or IgM positive). A total 4 cases of dengue myositis were admitted at Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College during the period from August to October, 2023. All were male & they presented mainly with severe limp pain with inability to walk they were diagnosed as dengue fever serologically. Two cases presented during febrile phase & two following fever. Their S. CPK level were high with mildly low platelet count. None of Journal of Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons Vol. 41, Dengue Fever Supplement Issue, October 2023 them developed shock or hemorrhagic manifestation. They were treated supportively and all 4 cases recovered without any sequelae. Dengue myositis in children is usually benign and is differentiated from other causes of flaccid paralysis by tenderness of calf and thigh muscles and raised CPK levels with other normal neurological findings. But sometimes it may result in serious consequences, so all children with dengue infection should be followed up carefully with S.CPK level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Professional autonomy is a crucial component of the nursing profession. It enables nurses to make timely decisions at the patient’s bedside. The competency of human resources, especially nurses, is essential in maintaining patient safety and ensuring high-quality services. This study investigates nurses’ professional autonomy and its association with patient safety competency. Methods: This descriptive-correlational study was conducted on 200 nurses in educational-therapeutic hospitals affiliated with Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz City, Iran, in 2021. They were recruited utilizing stratified random sampling. Data collection tools comprised a demographic questionnaire, professional autonomy questionnaire, and patient safety competency self-evaluation questionnaire. The obtained data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, and median), the Mann-Whitney U test, the Kruskal-Wallis test, the Kendall Tau, and Spearman non-parametric correlation coefficients in SPSS software, version 26. P

Abstract Background The COVID-19 pandemic has created a great challenge for educational systems worldwide. During this time, educational centers have been encouraged to use e-learning programs to protect the population against infection. Online teaching has the greatest effect on the process of teaching-learning for certain topics, including professional behavior and commitment, which has prompted educational systems to use creative strategies for a greater effect on learners. The present study aims to determine the effects of e-learning using educational multimedia on the ethical decision-making and professionalism of nursing students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods This study was conducted using a quasi-experimental design with a control group. The statistical population comprised second-semester nursing students in a first-rank nursing school in north western Iran. The samples were selected using simple random sampling and were divided into experimental (n = 40) and control (n = 40) groups. In the first stage of teaching, the conventional training method of the COVID-19 pandemic was used in both groups. In the second stage of teaching, an in-person workshop was organized for the control group and an e-learning workshop using educational multimedia for the experimental group. Data were collected by a tool with three parts: Demographic information, the Nursing Dilemma Test (NDT) by Crisham based on the Nurse Principled Thinking, and the Nursing Students Professional Behaviors Scale (NSPBS) designed by Goz. Data were analyzed in SPSS 25 software. Results There was a statistically significant increase in the post-test mean score of professionalism (125.70 ± 6.20 vs. 120.95 ± 9.28) and ethical decision-making (46.17 ± 3.81 vs. 44.02 ± 3.21) in the experimental group compared to the control group (P

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Coronavirus-19 has affected carbon emissions, which was declared as a pandemic by World Health Organization. Unprecedented environmental effects are being caused by Bangladesh's strict lockdown policies, which were implemented to stop the spread of Coronavirus-19. However, it is still unclear how the temporary halting and restart of industrial and commercial activities will affect the environment. In this study, it has been identified how Coronavirus-19 determinants like lockdown, daily confirmed cases, and daily confirmed deaths affect greenhouse gases. METHODS: From March 18, 2020 to February 4, 2022 the data series is used for Bangladesh. To ensure that the data series were stationary, the Augmented Dickey-Fuller and Phillips-Perron tests were utilized. Johansen co-integration test was utilized to determine co-integration among variables. The Granger causality test was utilized to identify directional causes and effects between Coronavirus-19 determinants and carbon emissions and the Vector Error Correction Model was employed to determine short-run and long run connections. FINDINGS: The study finds a bidirectional relationship between lockdown, carbon emissions and daily confirmed deaths, while a unidirectional association exists among Coronavirus-19 confirmed cases according to the Vector Error Correction Model. The Granger causality test also established the relationship between variables, except for daily confirmed cases. The pandemic's onset and subsequent lockdown resulted in decreased carbon dioxide emissions. The short-run link of carbon dioxide emissions with newly confirmed cases was corroborated by the directional relationship of variables, whereas there was a long-term and short-term association between confirmed deaths and lockdown. CONCLUSION: The reduction in carbon emissions during the pandemic will not be longlasting because it is anticipated that global economic activity will gradually return to the pre-Coronavirus-19 state. The directional and relational nature of lockdown offers the potential to connect carbon dioxide emissions to regular lives. During a lockdown, there is a connection between the atmosphere's changes and how natural organisms behave. Importantly, there is a room for investigation into how communities of organisms and the atmosphere would function without humans. The essential point is to stress that during the lockdown, the ecosystem is self-healing. Environmental activists and business people will find this study useful in developing future sustainable improvement strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration is not a new phenomenon. The first migrations are attributed to prehistoric times, but what has attracted a lot of attention today is its increasing growth (1).

Introduction: Late-onset neonatal sepsis is one of the most common causes of neonatal deaths in hospital as well as community in developing country like Bangladesh. It can present asmeningitis, pneumonia, pyelonephritis, or gastroenteritis. Various risk factors play important role in its causation. In this study our main goal was to evaluate the risk factors of late onset neonatal sepsis in SCANU (Special Care Newborn Unit) of a tertiary care hospital. Methods: This cross-sectional study was done in the SCANU of Dr. M.R. Khan Shishu Hospital and Institute of Child Health, Mirpur-2, Dhaka for 6 months. A total of 59 neonates with late onset sepsis in SCANU were included during the study period. Results: The socio-demographic status of the neonates with late onset sepsis shows that, most of the neonates (44.1%) were between 24 to 28 days. Also, 54.24% patients were male and 57.6% patients belong to middle economic status group. In the study, 79.7% had Cough with respiratory distress followed by 23.7% had cough only, 6.8% had fever, 52.5% had vomiting, abdominal distension, and 8.5% patients had Jaundice. Only 1.7% patients used bottles for feeding. Among neonates, the highest (49.15%) came with the risk factor of poor hygiene. The Majority (95%) of low-birth-weight neonates had patchy opacity resembling pneumonia in chest x-ray. Conclusion: Poor hygiene is a high-risk factor for neonates with late onset sepsis. Bottle feeding had comparatively higher risk in developing late onset sepsis than formula feeding with spoon. Poor cord care is another risk factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Introduction Academic procrastination is a common phenomenon among medical science students. This issue can negatively affect the students’ academic performance. The aim of this study was to investigate perfectionism and anxiety as potential predictors of academic procrastination in medical and dental students. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted among medical and dental students of a public medical sciences university in the south of Iran. Students were assessed using the procrastination assessment scale for students (PASS), Tehran multidimensional perfectionism scale (TMPS), and anxiety subscale of the general health questionnaire (GHQ). Predictors of academic procrastination were evaluated using multiple regression analysis with adjustments made for gender and academic semester. Results A total of 176 medical and 79 dental students participated in the study. None of the perfectionism components were predictors of academic procrastination. However, anxiety was a significant predictor of academic procrastination in the total sample of students (standardized β = 0.404, p

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV), a subset of the Internet of Things (IoT) within the transportation sector, enhances driving safety and comfort by utilizing intelligent transportation systems to facilitate communication among vehicles and other entities. In this context, communication extends beyond vehicles and roadside units (RSUs), supporting interactions between vehicles, mobile devices, sensors, and infrastructure. Ensuring the security of vehicular communications is essential in the IoV paradigm. Recently, Limbasiya et al. proposed secure and efficient communication protocols for IoV, claiming their protocols are resilient against various known attacks. However, our paper identifies significant vulnerabilities in Limbasiya et al.’s protocols, including susceptibility to identity guessing, impersonation, password guessing, and man-in-the-middle attacks. Furthermore, these protocols lack confidentiality, unlinkability, and the ability for the IoV server to trace malicious vehicle users when necessary. To address these drawbacks, we introduce improved protocols for secure communications within the IoV framework. Afterwards, we assess the security of our proposals through both informal and formal analyses, employing the RoR model, BAN logic, the ProVerif, Scyther, and Tamarin tools.

Abstract Background and aim Education development offices are one of the main branches of medical education centers for directing the educational performance of medical sciences universities to achieve educational goals. Due to their close presence and communication with educational environments, these offices are highly important. To effectively guide and empower these offices, it is necessary to analyze their current situation, identify the challenges, and provide solutions to address them. This study was conducted to identify the challenges and provide solutions for the activities of medical education development offices. Methods This qualitative study was conducted in two stages, including 29 semi-structured interviews and a focus group discussion with experts in 2022 at Kerman University of Medical Sciences. The sampling method was purposive. The content analysis of data was performed based on conventional qualitative content analysis. Results Data analysis resulted in the emergence of two main categories including challenges facing the activities of medical education development offices and solutions for improving the activities of these offices, and comprising some categories containing organizational structure factors, cognitive factors, communication factors, and motivational factors. Conclusion Education development offices are one of medical universities’ main policymaking and quality control institutions. Efforts are being made to establish EDOs structures within the university. The formation of a clear and performance-based reward system for faculty members who are the managers of the EDOs is proposed. Improving interactions between EDOs and other parts of the university to coordinate activities, and exchange of experiences are highlighted.

Abstract Background The Drug–Target Interaction (DTI) prediction uses a drug molecule and a protein sequence as inputs to predict the binding affinity value. In recent years, deep learning-based models have gotten more attention. These methods have two modules: the feature extraction module and the task prediction module. In most deep learning-based approaches, a simple task prediction loss (i.e., categorical cross entropy for the classification task and mean squared error for the regression task) is used to learn the model. In machine learning, contrastive-based loss functions are developed to learn more discriminative feature space. In a deep learning-based model, extracting more discriminative feature space leads to performance improvement for the task prediction module. Results In this paper, we have used multimodal knowledge as input and proposed an attention-based fusion technique to combine this knowledge. Also, we investigate how utilizing contrastive loss function along the task prediction loss could help the approach to learn a more powerful model. Four contrastive loss functions are considered: (1) max-margin contrastive loss function, (2) triplet loss function, (3) Multi-class N-pair Loss Objective, and (4) NT-Xent loss function. The proposed model is evaluated using four well-known datasets: Wang et al. dataset, Luo's dataset, Davis, and KIBA datasets. Conclusions Accordingly, after reviewing the state-of-the-art methods, we developed a multimodal feature extraction network by combining protein sequences and drug molecules, along with protein–protein interaction networks and drug–drug interaction networks. The results show it performs significantly better than the comparable state-of-the-art approaches.

Introduction: Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) has high prevalence among the patients with psychiatric disorders. Self-Injury plays an important role in the treatment, prognosis and risk of suicide, which highlights the need for an appropriate tool to assess the nature and psychological functions of NSSI. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the psychometric properties of the Persian version of the Ottawa Self-Injury inventory (OSI) in hospitalized patients. Methods: The present study was a psychometric study based on analytical method. The research has been performed on 310 patients with non-suicidal self-injury who have been referred to Nekoei-Hedayati Hospital in Qom City. Sample group completed Persian version of the Ottawa Self-Injury inventory. Data were analyzed using SPSS-16 and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, Content Validity Index (CVI) and Content Validity Ratio (CVR). Results: The results showed that content validity index in this study was more than 0.75 and content validity ratio for validity of questions was more than 0.79. The impact score of all items (Except for the tenth question) was higher than 1.5 that confirmed the face validity of inventory. The total Cronbach's alpha coefficient was calculated 0.71. Another result of this study was that 52% of patients reported at least one addictive characteristic. Conclusion: The finding showed that Persian version of Ottawa Self-Injury inventory has appropriate validity (face /content) and reliability in the inpatient population.

The demands on educational managers in medical universities are growing as a result of organizational transformations in healthcare, the increasing complexity of healthcare services, and evolving concepts in medical education, such as new teaching methods, assessment, and learning approaches (1). These demands aim to enhance the quality of medical education and provide better healthcare services to the community. To meet these needs, various strategies are proposed. It is essential to have education development centers (EDCs) and Educational Development Offices (EDOs) that are responsible for guiding and improving the quality of educational activities in universities (2). Studies have shown that the presence of EDCs has led to the improvement of educational quality in medical science universities (3). To manage the quality of educational development activities across all educational institutions within universities, EDOs operate as the executive body of the EDC within medical schools and educational centers. These offices have defined some responsibilities at the conceptual, executive, and supervisory levels to guide the development of educational quality in faculties and teaching hospitals. However, can these offices cope well with these huge tasks? Educational Development Offices face various challenges that reduce their effectiveness in fulfilling these responsibilities. The major known challenges that EDCs and EDOs confront in performing their roles for the development of medical education within medical universities include inadequate familiarity of planners, policymakers, and faculty members with education as a specialized field; inadequacy of educational strategies and programs at universities; issues related to student evaluation of professors and communication of the evaluation results to faculty members; attention to differences in teaching experience and background among faculty members in conducting faculty development programs; supervision of implemented teaching methods by faculty members; and the adoption of various electronic teaching methods. Among the other challenges, one can mention multiple organizational roles of faculty members and the justification of the importance and responsibilities of EDOs by college/hospital administrators and even some EDCs (3-5). The results of conducted studies demonstrated that challenges arising from a lack of scientific awareness or organizational importance are fundamentally significant. These challenges include limited familiarity of educational planners and policymakers with the science of education, as well as an absence of profound understanding by college/hospital administrators and even some EDOs and EDCs of the importance and responsibilities of educational development offices. University faculty members face serious challenges in managing these offices due to their multiple organizational roles and responsibilities within the university. For instance, clinical faculty members should manage hospital-based educational development offices, which, in addition to their educational, clinical, and research roles, present some difficulties. Performing this task becomes more challenging when hospital administrators fundamentally do not believe in the necessity of these offices for improving the quality of the hospital. Considering the increasing complexity and multidimensionality of educational processes in medical universities, and based on existing evidence, it is doubly important to support the readiness of collaborating faculty members in educational development offices to fulfill leadership roles and embrace managerial responsibilities, while also creating motivation to engage in practical and complex issues related to enhancing learning quality. Emphasizing formal and informal training programs within organizations and raising awareness among influential individuals in the education field can be useful in addressing these challenges. Enhancing management and leadership skills through relevant empowerment courses will lead to a change in the perception of leadership roles; gaining awareness of the organization's impact on educational leaders' performance, organizational mission, and commitment to fulfilling them; self-awareness of strengths and weaknesses; increased motivation and self-confidence in assuming leadership responsibilities; increased knowledge of leadership concepts, principles, and strategies; changing one's leadership style; and embracing new leadership roles and responsibilities (6). Focusing on the quality of medical education is at the core of the responsibilities of educational institutions, and to achieve this, it is required to establish and strengthen organizational mechanisms, including the creation and enhancement of educational development offices in faculties and hospitals. Paying attention to the challenges faced by these organizations and striving to address them will significantly enhance the quality of education. To overcome these challenges, the engagement and commitment of all beneficiaries within universities, including administrators and faculty members, are required.