Search results for: steady state availability

Authors: David Delpine Leila, Demnyo Sunita Femi, Musa David Garkida, Elisha Emmanuel Barde, Emmanuel Allahnanan, Yani Julius Philip

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Birds are among the key components of the earth’s biodiversity and the most diverse and evolutionarily successful groups of animals. The weaverbirds are a large family of birds found mostly in Africa, with a few species found in southern Asia and the West Indian Ocean islands. This study assessed the diversity and abundance of weaver birds and their allies within and around Ngel-Nyaki Forest Reserve in Yelwa, Sardauna Local Government Area of Taraba State, Nigeria. A total of 602 weaver birds and allies’ bird species were recorded using the Point Count Line Transect. The data collected during the research period were analyzed using simple percentages, and diversity was calculated using the Shannon Wiener Diversity Index. The fenced (ungrazed area) was more abundant with 351 individuals while the unfenced (grazed area) was less abundant with 251 individuals recorded. In the fenced (ungrazed area), Yellow Bishop (Euplectes capensis) had the highest abundance of (102; 29.01%), followed by Village Weaver (Ploceus cucullatus) (80; 22.79%), then Vieillot's Black Weaver (Ploceus nigerrimus) (40; 11.42%), Red-collard Widowbird (Ploceus ardens) (6; 1.71%), Dark-backed Weaver (5; 1.42%) and the least was Hartlaub Marsh Widowbird (1; 0.28%) while in the unfenced (grazed area), the Village weaver (Ploceus cucullatus) (85; 33.86%) was the most abundant, followed by Spectacled Weaver (Ploceus ocularis) (36; 14.34%), then Yellow Bishop (Euplectes capensis) (30; 11.95%), Baglefecht Weaver (Ploceus baglafecht) (23; 9.16%), Bannerman’s Weaver (Ploceus bannermani) (17; 6.77%) and the least was Yellow-mantled Widowbird (Euplectes macroura) (5; 1.99%). In terms of diversity, there were more weaver bird species in the fenced area with a Shannon Wiener Diversity Index of (Hˈ 2.03417) than in the unfenced area with a Shannon Wiener Diversity Index of (Hˈ 1.862671). The Shannon Wiener Diversity Index in both fenced and unfenced areas is significant. There was more abundance of bird species in the fenced area than in the unfenced area of the Forest Reserve. Thorough research should be conducted on the abundance and diversity of weavers and their allies because we were only able to access 4 km2 out of 46 km2 of land available, according to the Annual Report of Ngel-Nyaki Forest Reserve of 2020. It shows that there are many species of weaver birds and their allies, such as the Black-billed Weaver (Ploceus melanogaster) and the Red-billed Quelea (Quelea quelea), which are available within the reserve.

Keywords: abundance, diversity, weaver birds, allies, Ngel-Nyaki

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Authors: Emmanuel Benjamin, Matthias Blum

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Purpose – We address smallholder farmers’ restricted possibilities to adopt sustainable technologies which have direct and indirect benefits. Smallholders often face little asset endowment due to small farm size und insecure property rights, therefore experiencing constraints in adopting agricultural innovation. A program involving payments for ecosystem services (PES) benefits poor smallholder farmers in developing countries in many ways and has been suggested as a means of easing smallholder farmers’ financial constraints. PES may also provide additional mainstay which can eventually result in more favorable credit contract terms due to the availability of collateral substitute. Results of this study may help to understand the barriers, motives and incentives for smallholders’ participation in PES and help in designing a strategy to foster participation in beneficial programs. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses a random utility model and a logistic regression approach to investigate factors that influence agroforestry adoption. We investigate non-monetary factors, such as information spillover, that influence the decision to adopt such conservation strategies. We collected original data from non-government-run agroforestry mitigation programs with PES that have been implemented in the Mount Kenya region. Preliminary Findings – We find that spread of information, existing networks and peer involvement in such programs drive participation. Conversely, participation by smallholders does not seem to be influenced by education, land or asset endowment. Contrary to some existing literature, we found weak evidence for a positive correlation between the adoption of agroforestry with PES and age of smallholder, e.g., one increases with the other, in the Mount Kenyan region. Research implications – Poverty alleviation policies for developing countries should target social capital to increase the adoption rate of modern technologies amongst smallholders.

Keywords: agriculture innovation, agroforestry adoption, smallholders, payment for ecosystem services, Sub-Saharan Africa

Procedia PDF Downloads 384

Authors: Ross Goroshin, Joan Bruna, Jonathan Tompson, David Eigen, Yann LeCun

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Current state-of-the-art classification and detection algorithms rely on supervised training. In this work we study unsupervised feature learning in the context of temporally coherent video data. We focus on feature learning from unlabeled video data, using the assumption that adjacent video frames contain semantically similar information. This assumption is exploited to train a convolutional pooling auto-encoder regularized by slowness and sparsity. We establish a connection between slow feature learning to metric learning and show that the trained encoder can be used to define a more temporally and semantically coherent metric.

Keywords: machine learning, pattern clustering, pooling, classification

Procedia PDF Downloads 457

Authors: Elham Shirvani–Ghadikolaei, Seyed Mahdi Sajjadi

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State of the art technology has the tremendous impact on our life, in this situation education system have been influenced as well as. In this paper, tried to compare two space of learning text and hypertext with each other, and some challenges of using hypertext in religious education. Regarding the fact that, hypertext is an undeniable part of learning in this world and it has highly beneficial for the education process from class to office and home. In this paper tried to solve this question: the consequences and challenges of applying hypertext in religious education. Also, the consequences of this survey demonstrate the role of curriculum designer and planner of education to solve this problem.

Keywords: Hyper-textual, learning, religious education, learning text

Procedia PDF Downloads 314

Authors: Vijay Shankar

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In the era of water scarcity, effective use of water via irrigation requires good methods for determining crop water needs. Implementation of irrigation scheduling programs requires an accurate estimate of water use by the crop. Moisture depletion from the root zone represents the consequent crop evapotranspiration (ET). A numerical model for simulating soil water depletion in the root zone has been developed by taking into consideration soil physical properties, crop and climatic parameters. The governing differential equation for unsaturated flow of water in the soil is solved numerically using the fully implicit finite difference technique. The water uptake by plants is simulated by using three different sink functions. The non-linear model predictions are in good agreement with field data and thus it is possible to schedule irrigations more effectively. The present paper describes irrigation scheduling based on moisture depletion from the different layers of the root zone, obtained using different sink functions for three cash, oil and forage crops: cotton, safflower and barley, respectively. The soil is considered at a moisture level equal to field capacity prior to planting. Two soil moisture regimes are then imposed for irrigated treatment, one wherein irrigation is applied whenever soil moisture content is reduced to 50% of available soil water; and other wherein irrigation is applied whenever soil moisture content is reduced to 75% of available soil water. For both the soil moisture regimes it has been found that the model incorporating a non-linear sink function which provides best agreement of computed root zone moisture depletion with field data, is most effective in scheduling irrigations. Simulation runs with this moisture uptake function result in saving 27.3 to 45.5% & 18.7 to 37.5%, 12.5 to 25% % &16.7 to 33.3% and 16.7 to 33.3% & 20 to 40% irrigation water for cotton, safflower and barley respectively, under 50 & 75% moisture depletion regimes over other moisture uptake functions considered in the study. Simulation developed can be used for an optimized irrigation planning for different crops, choosing a suitable soil moisture regime depending upon the irrigation water availability and crop requirements.

Keywords: irrigation water, evapotranspiration, root uptake models, water scarcity

Procedia PDF Downloads 333

Authors: Sani Shehu, Mohd Afandi Salleh

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Parliament is a law making body which provided at national, state, province and territorial level playing a parliamentary role of representing people, law making, peace, and conflict resolution, ratifying and incorporating international convention into municipal law. Parliaments are created globally to give solid legitimacy to good governance under democratic system of government, and the representatives must be elected by the people, so the ECOWAS parliament is entitled to have this legitimacy, where members must be elected by adult people among the citizens of ECOWAS member states. This paper will discuss on the roles that ECOWAS parliament plays for the achievement of regional integration and economic goals of development and cooperation in the sub-region.

Keywords: ECOWAS parliament, composition, competence, power

Procedia PDF Downloads 482

Authors: Z. Aziz, S. Terkhi, Y. Sefir, R. Djelti, S. Bentata

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The effect of a uniform electric field across multibarrier systems (InAs/InxGa1-xAs) is exhaustively explored by a computational model using exact airy function formalism and the transfer-matrix technique. In the case of biased DFHBSL structure a strong reduction in transmission properties was observed and the width of the miniband structure linearly decreases with the increase of the applied bias. This is due to the confinement of the states in the miniband structure, which becomes increasingly important (Wannier-Stark Effect).

Keywords: dimer fibonacci height barrier superlattices, singular extended state, exact airy function, transfer matrix formalism

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Authors: J. Ikome, M. Ndeley

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When a machine breakdown forces a Modified Flow Shop (MFS) out of the prescribed state, the proposed strategy reschedules part of the initial schedule to match up with the preschedule at some point. The objective is to create a new schedule that is consistent with the other production planning decisions like material flow, tooling and purchasing by utilizing the time critical decision making concept. We propose a new rescheduling strategy and a match-up point determination procedure through a feedback mechanism to increase both the schedule quality and stability. The proposed approach is compared with alternative reactive scheduling methods under different experimental settings.

Keywords: advanced critical task methods modified flow shop (MFS), Manufacturing, experiment, determination

Procedia PDF Downloads 408

Authors: Mohammadamin Abbasnejad

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The analysis of expression and facial Action Units (AUs) detection are very important tasks in fields of computer vision and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) due to the wide range of applications in human life. Many works have been done during the past few years which has their own advantages and disadvantages. In this work, we present a new model based on Gaussian Conditional Random Field. We solve our objective problem using ADMM and we show how well the proposed model works. We train and test our work on two facial expression datasets, CK+, and RU-FACS. Experimental evaluation shows that our proposed approach outperform state of the art expression recognition.

Keywords: Gaussian Conditional Random Field, ADMM, convergence, gradient descent

Procedia PDF Downloads 358

Authors: Christo Februanto Putra

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This paper presents risk identification that affects investment feasibility on toll road infrastructure in Indonesia using qualitative methods survey based on the expert practitioner in investor, contractor, and state officials. The problems on infrastructure investment in Indonesia, especially on KPBU model contract, is many risk factors in the investment plan is not calculated in detail thoroughly. Risk factor is a value used to provide an overview of the risk level assessment of an event which is a function of the probability of the occurrence and the consequences of the risks that arise. As results of the survey which is to show which risk factors impacts directly to the investment feasibility and rank them by their impacts on the investment.

Keywords: risk identification, indonesia toll road, investment feasibility

Procedia PDF Downloads 282

Authors: Sawsan Domi

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Khartoum is considering as one of the hottest cities all over the world, the mean monthly outdoor temperature remains above 30 ºC. Solar Radiation on Building Surfaces considered within the world highest values. Buildings in Khartoum is receiving huge amounts of watts/m2. Northern, eastern and western facades always receive a greater amount than the south ones. Therefore, these facades of the building must be better protected than the others. One of the most important design limits affecting indoor thermal comfort and energy conservation are building envelope design, self-efficiency in building materials and optical and thermo-physical properties of the building envelope. A small sun-facing glazing area is very important to provide thermal comfort in hot dry climates because of the intensive sunshine. This study aims to propose a work plan to help minimize the negative environmental effect of the climate on buildings taking the intensive use of glazing. In the last 15 years, there was a rapid growth in building sector in Khartoum followed by many of wrong strategies getting away of being environmental friendly. The intensive use of glazing on facades increased to commercial, industrial and design aspects, while the glass envelope led to quick increase in temperature by the reflection affects the sun on faces, cars and bodies. Logically, being transparent by using glass give a sense of open spaces, allowing natural lighting and sometimes natural ventilation keeping dust and insects away. In the other hand, it costs more and give more overheated. And this is unsuitable for a hot dry climate city like Khartoum. Many huge projects permitted every year from the Ministry of Planning in Khartoum state, with a design based on the intensive use of glazing on facades. There are no Laws or Regulations to control using materials in construction, the last building code -building code 2008- Khartoum state- only focused in using sustainable materials with no consider to any environmental aspects. Results of the study will help increase the awareness for architects, engineers and public about this environmentally problem. Objectives vary between Improve energy performance in buildings and Provide high levels of thermal comfort in the inner environment. As a future project, what are the changes that can happen in building permits codes and regulations. There could be recommendations for the governmental sector such as Obliging the responsible authorities to version environmental friendly laws in building construction fields and Support Renewable energy sector in buildings.

Keywords: building envelope, building regulations, glazed facades, solar radiation

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Authors: Halit Turan, Mehmet Ozturk, Serdal Akyuz

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General Framework Agreement for Peace (Dayton Peace Agreement) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (GFAP), is one of the most challenging issues in the contemporary peace studies scholarship. It is clear that this agreement has created an exceptional state structure which Bosnia and Herzegovina has still executed for 20 years. The agreement, signed reluctantly by warring sides to end war, has carried out reaching the present day. Demonstrations held by unemployed people in the early of 2014 can be seen as a symptom of discontent about low economic wealth level which is a clear consequence of agreement. This paper lays out the influences of problems stemmed from the agreement to the future of country especially in terms of economic issues.

Keywords: Bosnia and Herzegovina, dayton peace agreement, economic problems, social discontent

Procedia PDF Downloads 256

Authors: Wei Jun, Liao Hualin, Wang Huajian, Chen Jingkai, Liang Hongjun, Liu Chuanfu

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Kuqa Piedmont is rich in oil and gas resources and has great development potential in Tarim Basin, China. However, there is a huge thick gravel layer developed with high content, wide distribution and variation in size of gravel, leading to the condition of strong heterogeneity. So that, the drill string is in a state of severe vibration and the drill bit is worn seriously while drilling, which greatly reduces the rock-breaking efficiency, and there is a complex load state of impact and three-dimensional in-situ stress acting on the rock in the bottom hole. The dynamic mechanical properties and the influencing factors of conglomerate, the main component of gravel layer, are the basis of engineering design and efficient rock breaking method and theoretical research. Limited by the previously experimental technique, there are few works published yet about conglomerate, especially rare in dynamic load. Based on this, a kind of 3D SHPB system, three-dimensional prestress, can be applied to simulate the in-situ stress characteristics, is adopted for the dynamic test of the conglomerate. The results show that the dynamic strength is higher than its static strength obviously, and while the three-dimensional prestress is 0 and the loading strain rate is 81.25~228.42 s-1, the true triaxial equivalent strength is 167.17~199.87 MPa, and the strong growth factor of dynamic and static is 1.61~1.92. And the higher the impact velocity, the greater the loading strain rate, the higher the dynamic strength and the greater the failure strain, which all increase linearly. There is a critical prestress in the impact direction and its vertical direction. In the impact direction, while the prestress is less than the critical one, the dynamic strength and the loading strain rate increase linearly; otherwise, the strength decreases slightly and the strain rate decreases rapidly. In the vertical direction of impact load, the strength increases and the strain rate decreases linearly before the critical prestress, after that, oppositely. The dynamic strength of the conglomerate can be reduced properly by reducing the amplitude of impact load so that the service life of rock-breaking tools can be prolonged while drilling in the stratum rich in gravel. The research has important reference significance for the speed-increasing technology and theoretical research while drilling in gravel layer.

Keywords: huge thick gravel layer, conglomerate, 3D SHPB, dynamic strength, the deformation characteristics, prestress

Procedia PDF Downloads 213

Authors: Ruxandra Aursulesei, David O’Callaghan, Cian Ryan, Diarmaid O’Cualain, Viktor Varkarakis, Alina Sultana, Joseph Lemley

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Human errors caused by drowsiness are among the leading causes of road accidents. Neurobiological research gives information about the electrical signals emitted by neurons firing within the brain. Electrical signal frequencies can be determined by attaching bio-sensors to the head surface. By observing the electrical impulses and the rhythmic interaction of neurons with each other, we can predict the mental state of a person. In this paper, we aim to better understand intersubject and intrasubject variability in terms of electrophysiological patterns that occur at the onset of drowsiness and their evolution with the decreasing of vigilance. The purpose is to lay the foundations for an algorithm that detects the onset of drowsiness before the physical signs become apparent.

Keywords: electroencephalography, drowsiness, ADAS, annotations, clinician

Procedia PDF Downloads 117

Authors: Shashank Gupta, Carlos Cid, William John Munro

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Quantum distillation is the task of concentrating quantum correlations present in N imperfect copies to M perfect copies (M < N) using free operations by involving all P the parties sharing the quantum correlation. We present a threshold quantum distillation task where the same objective is achieved but using lesser number of parties (K < P). In particular, we give an exact local filtering operations by the participating parties sharing high dimension multipartite entangled state to distill the perfect quantum correlation. Later, we bridge a connection between threshold quantum entanglement distillation and quantum steering distillation and show that threshold distillation might work in the scenario where general distillation protocol like DEJMPS does not work.

Keywords: quantum networks, quantum distillation, quantum key distribution, entanglement distillation

Procedia PDF Downloads 49

Authors: May Thant Zin, Josephine Borja, Hirofumi Hinode, Winarto Kurniawan

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Nanotechnology has multiple and enormous advantages for all application. Therefore, this research is carried out to synthesize and characterize bimetallic iron with copper nano-particles. After synthesizing nano zero valent iron by reduction of ferric chloride by sodium borohydride under nitrogen purging environment, bimetallic iron with copper nanoparticles are synthesized by varying different loads of copper chloride. Due to different standard potential (E0) values of copper and iron, copper is coupled with iron at (Cu to Fe ratio of 1:5, 1:6.7, 1:10, 1:20). It is found that the resulted bimetallic Fe/Cu nanoparticles are composing phases of iron and copper. According to the diffraction patterns indicating the state of chemical combination of the bimetallic nanoparticles, the particles are well-combined and crystalline sizes are less than 1000 Ao (or 100 nm). Specifically, particle sizes of synthesized bimetallic Fe/Cu nanoparticles are ranging from 44.583 nm to 85.149 nm.

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Procedia PDF Downloads 448

Authors: Ashhar Ahmed Shaikh, Ayush Tandon

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The swift reduction of fossil fuels from nature has crucial need for alternative energy sources to cater vital demand. It is essential to boost alternative energy sources to cover the continuously increasing demand for energy while minimizing the negative environmental impacts. Solar energy is one of the reliable sources that can generate energy. Solar energy is freely available in nature and is completely eco-friendly, and they are considered as the most promising power generating sources due to their easy availability and other advantages for the local power generation. This paper is to review the implementation of power electronic devices through Solar Energy Grid Integration System (SEGIS) to increase the efficiency. This paper will also concentrate on the future grid infrastructure and various other applications in order to make the grid smart. Development and implementation of a power electronic devices such as PV inverters and power controllers play an important role in power supply in the modern energy economy. Solar Energy Grid Integration System (SEGIS) opens pathways for promising solutions for new electronic and electrical components such as advanced innovative inverter/controller topologies and their functions, economical energy management systems, innovative energy storage systems with equipped advanced control algorithms, advanced maximum-power-point tracking (MPPT) suited for all PV technologies, protocols and the associated communications. In addition to advanced grid interconnection capabilities and features, the new hardware design results in small size, less maintenance, and higher reliability. The SEGIS systems will make the 'advanced integrated system' and 'smart grid' evolutionary processes to run in a better way. Since the last few years, there was a major development in the field of power electronics which led to more efficient systems and reduction of the cost per Kilo-watt. The inverters became more efficient and had reached efficiencies in excess of 98%, and commercial solar modules have reached almost 21% efficiency.

Keywords: solar energy grid integration systems, smart grid, advanced integrated system, power electronics

Procedia PDF Downloads 187

Authors: Rock-Hyun Choi, Won-Seok Kang, Chang-Sik Son

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Physical activity is important for healthy living. Recently wearable devices which motivate physical activity are quickly developing, and become cheaper and more comfortable. In particular, fitness trackers provide a variety of information and need to provide well-analyzed, and user-friendly results. In this study, frequency analysis was performed to classify various data sets of Fitbit into simple activity status. The data from Fitbit cloud server consists of 263 subjects who were healthy factory and office workers in Korea from March 7th to April 30th, 2016. In the results, we found assumptions of activity state classification seem to be sufficient and reasonable.

Keywords: activity status, fitness tracker, heart rate, steps

Procedia PDF Downloads 385

Authors: Laura Isabel Guarin, Juliana Vargas, Philippe Chang

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The analysis and study of Open Channel flow dynamics for River applications has been based on flow modelling using discreet numerical models based on hydrodynamic equations. The overall spatial characteristics of rivers, i.e. its length to depth to width ratio generally allows one to correctly disregard processes occurring in the vertical or transverse dimensions thus imposing hydrostatic pressure conditions and considering solely a 1D flow model along the river length. Through a calibration process an accurate flow model may thus be developed allowing for channel study and extrapolation of various scenarios. The Magdalena River in Colombia is a large river basin draining the country from South to North with 1550 km with 0.0024 average slope and 275 average width across. The river displays high water level fluctuation and is characterized by a series of meanders. The city of La Dorada has been affected over the years by serious flooding in the rainy and dry seasons. As the meander is evolving at a steady pace repeated flooding has endangered a number of neighborhoods. This study has been undertaken in pro of correctly model flow characteristics of the river in this region in order to evaluate various scenarios and provide decision makers with erosion control measures options and a forecasting tool. Two field campaigns have been completed over the dry and rainy seasons including extensive topographical and channel survey using Topcon GR5 DGPS and River Surveyor ADCP. Also in order to characterize the erosion process occurring through the meander, extensive suspended and river bed samples were retrieved as well as soil perforation over the banks. Hence based on DEM ground digital mapping survey and field data a 2DH flow model was prepared using the Iber freeware based on the finite volume method in a non-structured mesh environment. The calibration process was carried out comparing available historical data of nearby hydrologic gauging station. Although the model was able to effectively predict overall flow processes in the region, its spatial characteristics and limitations related to pressure conditions did not allow for an accurate representation of erosion processes occurring over specific bank areas and dwellings. As such a significant helical flow has been observed through the meander. Furthermore, the rapidly changing channel cross section as a consequence of severe erosion has hindered the model’s ability to provide decision makers with a valid up to date planning tool.

Keywords: erosion, finite volume method, flow dynamics, flow modelling, meander

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Authors: Ibragim Issabekov, Byron Crape, Lyazzat Toleubekova

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Background: Palliative care substantially improves the quality of life of terminally-ill patients. Symptom control is one of the keystones in the management of patients in palliative care settings, lowering distress as well as improving the quality of life of patients with end-stage diseases. The most common symptoms causing significant distress for patients are pain, nausea and vomiting, increased respiratory secretions and mental health issues like depression. Aims are: 1. to identify best practices in symptom management in palliative patients in accordance with internationally approved guidelines and compare aforementioned with actual practices in Kazakhstan; to evaluate the criteria for assessing symptoms in terminally-ill patients, 2. to review the availability and utilization of pharmaceutical agents for pain control, management of excessive respiratory secretions, nausea, and vomiting, and delirium and 3. to develop recommendations for the systematic approach to end-of-life symptom management in Kazakhstan. Methods: The use of qualitative research methods together with systematic literature review have been employed to provide a rigorous research process to evaluate current approaches for symptom management of palliative patients in Kazakhstan. Qualitative methods include in-depth semi-structured interviews of the healthcare professionals involved in palliative care provision. Results: Obstacles were found in appropriate provision of palliative care. Inadequate education and training to manage severe symptoms, poorly defined laws and regulations for palliative care provision, and a lack of algorithms and guidelines for care were major barriers in the effective provision of palliative care. Conclusion: Assessment of palliative care in this medium-income transitional-economy country is one of the first steps in the initiation of integration of palliative care into the existing health system. Achieving this requires identifying obstacles and resolving these issues.

Keywords: end-of-life care, middle income country, palliative care, symptom control

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Authors: Helyeh Doutaghi

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In 2005, the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was created by the UN Member States agreeing to not only to have the primary responsibility to protect their civilians from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, but also to be responsible towards those civilians whose State was found manifestly failing in that regard. This paper will assess the doctrine of R2P and will argue that R2P too, just like humanitarian intervention, suffers from a lack of legal basis and political will to implement it. Or better said, it is being selectively used by the hegemon’s power to achieve its political will. In doing so, the origin and development shall be explained. Furthermore, it will be submitted that R2P has failed to achieve its purpose due to the unresolved Security Council’s deadlock. Lastly, the concept of legal morality entailed in R2P and its use in real life cases since 2005 will be examined.

Keywords: responsibility to protect, humanitarian intervention, United Nations, legitimacy, legality

Procedia PDF Downloads 342

Authors: Seyran Naghdi

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Background: Orphan drug development is limited by very high costs attributed to the research and development and small size market. How health policymakers address this challenge to consider both supply and demand sides need to be explored for directing the policies and plans in the right way. The price is an important signal for pharmaceutical companies’ profitability and the patients’ accessibility as well. Objective: This study aims to find out the orphan drugs' price-setting patterns and approaches in health systems through a systematic review of the available evidence. Methods: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) approach was used. MedLine, Embase, and Web of Sciences were searched via appropriate search strategies. Through Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the appropriate terms for pricing were 'cost and cost analysis', and it was 'orphan drug production', and 'orphan drug', for orphan drugs. The critical appraisal was performed by the Joanna-Briggs tool. A Cochrane data extraction form was used to obtain the data about the studies' characteristics, results, and conclusions. Results: Totally, 1,197 records were found. It included 640 hits from Embase, 327 from Web of Sciences, and 230 MedLine. After removing the duplicates, 1,056 studies remained. Of them, 924 studies were removed in the primary screening phase. Of them, 26 studies were included for data extraction. The majority of the studies (>75%) are from developed countries, among them, approximately 80% of the studies are from European countries. Approximately 85% of evidence has been produced in the recent decade. Conclusions: There is a huge variation of price-setting among countries, and this is related to the specific pharmacological market structure and the thresholds that governments want to intervene in the process of pricing. On the other hand, there is some evidence on the availability of spaces to reduce the very high costs of orphan drugs development through an early agreement between pharmacological firms and governments. Further studies need to focus on how the governments could incentivize the companies to agree on providing the drugs at lower prices.

Keywords: orphan drugs, orphan drug production, pricing, costs, cost analysis

Procedia PDF Downloads 165

Authors: Radheshyam Yadav, Ramakrishna Wusirika

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Plant Growth Promoting Bacteria (PGPB) and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal (AM) Fungi are ubiquitous in soil and often very critical for crop yield and agriculture sustainability, and this has motivated the agricultural practices to support and promote PGPB and AM Fungi in agriculture. PGPB can be involved in a range of processes that affect Nitrogen (N) and Phosphorus (P) transformations in soil and thus influence nutrient availability and uptake to the plants. A field study with two wheat cultivars, HD-3086, and HD-2967 was performed in Malwa region, Bathinda of Punjab, India, to evaluate the effect of native and non-native PGPB alone and in combination with AM fungi as an inoculant on wheat grain yield, nutrient uptake and soil health parameters (dehydrogenase, urease, β‐glucosidase). Our results showed that despite an early insignificant increase in shoot length, plants treated with PGPB (Bacillus sp.) and AM Fungi led to a significant increase in shoot growth at maturity, aboveground biomass, nitrogen (45% - 40%) and phosphorus (40% - 34%) content in wheat grains relative to untreated control plants. Similarly, enhanced grain yield and nutrients uptake i.e. copper (27.15% - 36.25%) iron (43% - 53%) and zinc (44% - 47%) was recorded in PGPB and AM Fungi treated plants relative to untreated control. Overall, inoculation with native PGPB alone and in combination with AM Fungi provided benefits to enhance grain yield, wheat biofortification, and improved soil fertility, despite this effect varied depending on different PGPB isolates and wheat cultivars. These field study results provide evidence of the benefits of agricultural practices involving native PGPB and AM Fungi to the plants. These native strains and AM Fungi increased accumulations of copper, iron, and zinc in wheat grains, enhanced grain yield, and soil fertility.

Keywords: AM Fungi, biofortification, PGPB, soil microbial enzymes

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Authors: Zeite Shumneiyang Koireng

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Liberation is the act of liberating or the state of being liberated. Indian philosophy, in general, understands liberation as moksa, which etymological is derived from the Sanskrit root muc+ktin meaning to loose, set free, to let go, discharge, release, liberate, deliver, etc. According to Indian schools of thought, moksa is the highest value on realizing which nothing remains to be realized. It is the cessation of birth and death, all kinds of pain and at the same time, it is the realization of one’s own self. Sankara’s Advaita philosophy is based on the following propositions: Brahman is the only Reality; the world has apparent reality, and the soul is not different from Brahman. According to Sankara, Brahman is the basis on which the world form appears; it is the sustaining ground of all various modification. It is the highest self and the self of all reveals himself by dividing himself [ as it was in the form of various objects] in multiple ways. The whole world is the manifestation of the Supreme Being. Brahman modifying itself into the Atman or internal self of all things is the world. Since Brahman is the Upadhana karana of the world, the sruti speaks of the world as the modification of Brahman into the Atman of the effect. Contemplation as the fulfillment of man finds a radical foundation in Aquinas teaching concerning the natural end or as he also referred to it, natural desire. The third book of the Summa Contra Gentiles begins the study of happiness with a consideration of natural desire. According to him, all creatures, even those devoid of understanding are ordered to God as an ultimate end. Intrinsically, a part of every nature is a tendency or inclination, originating in the natural form and tendency toward the end for which the possessor of nature exists. It is the study of the nature and finality of inclination that Aquinas establishes through an argument of induction man’s Contemplation of God as the fulfillment of his nature. The present paper is attempted to critically approach two important, seminal and originated thought, representing Indian and Western traditions which mark on the thinking of their respective times. Both these thoughts- Advaitic concept of Liberation in the Indian tradition and the concept of Contemplation in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles’- confront directly the question of the ultimate meaning of human existence. According to Sankara, it is knowledge and knowledge alone which is the means of moksa and the highest knowledge is moksa itself. Liberation in Sankara Vedanta is attained as a process of purification of self, which gradually and increasingly turns into purer and purer intentional construction. Man’s inner natural tendency for Aquinas is towards knowledge. The human subject is driven to know more and more about reality and in particular about the highest reality. Contemplation of this highest reality is fulfillment in the philosophy of Aquinas. Rather, Contemplation is the perfect activity in man’s present state of existence.

Keywords: liberation, Brahman, contemplation, fulfillment

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Authors: R. N. Pateriya, T. K. Bhattacharya

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In India, rice-wheat cropping system occupies the major area and contributes about 40% of the country’s total food grain production. It is necessary that production of rice and wheat must keep pace with growing population. However, various factors such as degradation in natural resources, shift in cropping pattern, energy constraints etc. are causing reduction in the productivity of these crops. Seedbed for rice after wheat is difficult to prepare due to presence of straw and stubbles, and require excessive tillage operations to bring optimum tilth. In addition, delayed sowing and transplanting of rice is mainly due to poor crop residue management, multiplicity of tillage operations and non-availability of the power source. With increasing concern for fuel conservation and energy management, farmers might wish to estimate the best cultivation system for more productivity. The widest spread method of tilling land is ploughing with mould board plough. However, with the mould board plough upper layer of soil is neither always loosened at the desired extent nor proper mixing of different layers are achieved. Therefore, additional operations carried out to improve tilth. The farmers are becoming increasingly aware of the need for minimum tillage by minimizing the use of machines. Soil management can be achieved by using the combined active-passive tillage machines. A study was therefore, undertaken in wheat-harvested field to study the impact of conventional and modified tillage practices on paddy crop cultivation. Tillage treatments with tractor as a power source were selected during the experiment. The selected level of tillage treatments of tractor machinery management were (T1:- Direct Sowing of Rice), (T2:- 2 to 3 harrowing and no Puddling with manual transplanting), (T3:- 2 to 3 harrowing and Puddling with paddy harrow with manual transplanting), (T4:- 2 to 3 harrowing and Puddling with Rotavator with manual transplanting). The maximum output was obtained with treatment T1 (7.85 t/ha)) followed by T4 (6.4 t/ha), T3 (6.25 t/ha) and T2 (6.0 t/ha)) respectively.

Keywords: crop residues, cropping system, minimum tillage, yield

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Authors: Jared Abuga, Wesley Too

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Medical error is the third leading cause of death in US, with approximately 98,000 deaths occurring every year as a result of medical errors. The world financial burden of medication errors is roughly USD 42 billion. Medication errors may lead to at least one death daily and injure roughly 1.3 million people every year. Medical error reporting is essential in creating a culture of accountability in our healthcare system. Studies have shown that attitudes and practice of healthcare workers in reporting medical errors showed that the major factors in under-reporting of errors included work stress and fear of medico-legal consequences due to the disclosure of error. Further, the majority believed that increase in reporting medical errors would contribute to a better system. Most hospitals depend on nurses to discover medication errors because they are considered to be the sources of these errors, as contributors or mere observers, consequently, the nurse’s perception of medication errors and what needs to be done is a vital feature to reducing incidences of medication errors. We sought to explore knowledge among nurses on medical errors and factors affecting or hindering reporting of medical errors among nurses working at the emergency unit, KNH. Critical care nurses are faced with many barriers to completing incident reports on medication errors. One of these barriers which contribute to underreporting is a lack of education and/or knowledge regarding medication errors and the reporting process. This study, therefore, sought to determine the availability and the use of reporting systems for medical errors in critical care unity. It also sought to establish nurses’ perception regarding medical errors and reporting and document factors facilitating timely identification and reporting of medical errors in critical care settings. Methods: The study used cross-section study design to collect data from 76 critical care nurses from Kenyatta Teaching & Research National Referral Hospital, Kenya. Data analysis and results is ongoing. By October 2022, we will have analysis, results, discussions, and recommendations of the study for purposes of the conference in 2023

Keywords: errors, medical, kenya, nurses, safety

Procedia PDF Downloads 250

Authors: N. Garrós, P. Bustos, N. Beirampour, R. Mohammadi, M. Mallandrich, A.C. Calpena, H. Colom

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Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a persistent skin condition characterized by chronic inflammation caused by an autoimmune response. It is a prevalent clinical issue that requires continual treatment to enhance the patient's quality of life. Systemic therapy often involves the use of glucocorticoids or immunosuppressants to manage symptoms. Our objective was to create and assess topical liposomal formulations containing Baricitinib (BNB), a reversible inhibitor of Janus-associated kinase (JAK), which is involved in various immune responses. These formulations were intended to address flare-ups and improve treatment outcomes for AD. We created three distinct liposomal formulations by combining different amounts of 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC), cholesterol (CHOL), and ceramide (CER): (i) pure POPC, (ii) POPC mixed with CHOL (at a ratio of 8:2, mol/mol), and (iii) POPC mixed with CHOL and CER (at a ratio of 3.6:2.4:4.0 mol/mol/mol). We conducted various tests to determine the formulations' skin tolerance, irritancy capacity, and their ability to cause erythema and edema on altered skin. We also assessed the transepidermal water loss (TEWL) and skin hydration of rabbits to evaluate the efficacy of the formulations. Histological analysis, the HET-CAM test, and the modified Draize test were all used in the evaluation process. The histological analysis revealed that liposome POPC and POPC:CHOL avoided any damage to the tissues structures. The HET-CAM test showed no irritation effect caused by any of the three liposomes, and the modified Draize test showed a good Draize score for erythema and edema. Liposome POPC effectively counteracted the impact of xylol on the skin, and no erythema or edema was observed during the study. TEWL values were constant for all the liposomes with similar values to the negative control (within the range 8 - 15 g/h·m2, which means a healthy value for rabbits), whereas the positive control showed a significant increase. The skin hydration values were constant and followed the trend of the negative control, while the positive control showed a steady increase during the tolerance study. In conclusion, the developed formulations containing BNB exhibited no harmful or irritating effects, they did not demonstrate any irritant potential in the HET-CAM test and liposomes POPC and POPC:CHOL did not cause any structural alteration according to the histological analysis. These positive findings suggest that additional research is necessary to evaluate the efficacy of these liposomal formulations in animal models of the disease, including mutant animals. Furthermore, before proceeding to clinical trials, biochemical investigations should be conducted to better understand the mechanisms of action involved in these formulations.

Keywords: baricitinib, HET-CAM test, histological study, JAK inhibitor, liposomes, modified draize test

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Authors: Betty Kibirige

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Students entering the University of Zululand (UNIZULU) Science Faculty mostly come with skills that allow them to prepare for exams and pass them in order to satisfy requirements for entry into a tertiary Institution. Some students hail from deep rural schools with limited facilities, while others come from well-resourced schools. Personal experience has shown that it may take a student the whole time at a tertiary institution following the same skills as those acquired in high school as a sure means of entering the next level in their development, namely a postgraduate program. While it is apparent that at this point in human history, it is totally impossible to teach all the possible content in any one subject, many academics approach teaching and learning from the traditional point of view. It therefore became apparent to explore ways of developing a graduate that will be able to approach life with skills that allows them to navigate knowledge by applying conceptual and critical thinking skills. Recently, the Science Faculty at the University of Zululand introduced two Engineering programs. In an endeavour to approach the development of the Engineering graduate in this institution to be able to tackle problem-solving in the present-day excessive information availability, it became necessary to study and review approaches used by various academics in order to settle for a possible best approach to the challenge at hand. This paper focuses on the development of a deep rural child in a graduate with conceptual and critical thinking skills as major attributes possessed upon graduation. For this purpose, various approaches were studied. A combination of these approaches was repackaged to form an approach that may appear novel to UNIZULU and the rural child, especially for the Engineering discipline. The approach was checked by offering quiz questions to students participating in an engineering module, observing test scores in the targeted module and make comparative studies. Test results are discussed in the article. It was concluded that students’ graduate attributes could be tailored subconsciously to indeed include conceptual and critical thinking skills, but through more than one approach depending mainly on the student's high school background.

Keywords: graduate attributes, conceptual skills, critical thinking skills, traditional approach

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Authors: Aidelunuoghene Sunday Ojeifo

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More than a decade ago, the Islamist Terrorist group called Boko Haram has caused terrible violence in the north-eastern part of Nigeria. The group’s use of suicide attacks is a dreadful trait of international terrorist violence. It is certainly not in doubt that Boko Haram is the biggest headache of the Nigerian Government right now. The objective of this paper is to answer four fundamental questions about the extremist group: Who is Boko Haram? Why does the group rebel? How has the Nigerian state responded to the emergency and disaster in which more than 200 schoolgirls were abducted from their school in Chibok? Is there any assistance from other nations of the world to help Nigeria out of the grips of this cruel dilemma?

Keywords: Boko Haram, disaster, hazards, vulnerability, insurgents

Procedia PDF Downloads 383

Authors: Zelalem Fantahun

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Part-of-speech tagging is the process of assigning a part-of-speech or other lexical class marker to each word into naturally occurring text. Part-of-speech tagging is the most fundamental and basic task almost in all natural language processing. In natural language processing, the problem of providing large amount of manually annotated data is a knowledge acquisition bottleneck. Since, Amharic is one of under-resourced language, the availability of tagged corpus is the bottleneck problem for natural language processing especially for POS tagging. A promising direction to tackle this problem is to provide a system that does not require manually tagged data. In unsupervised learning, the learner is not provided with classifications. Unsupervised algorithms seek out similarity between pieces of data in order to determine whether they can be characterized as forming a group. This paper explicates the development of unsupervised part-of-speech tagger using K-Means clustering for Amharic language since large amount of data is produced in day-to-day activities. In the development of the tagger, the following procedures are followed. First, the unlabeled data (raw text) is divided into 10 folds and tokenization phase takes place; at this level, the raw text is chunked at sentence level and then into words. The second phase is feature extraction which includes word frequency, syntactic and morphological features of a word. The third phase is clustering. Among different clustering algorithms, K-means is selected and implemented in this study that brings group of similar words together. The fourth phase is mapping, which deals with looking at each cluster carefully and the most common tag is assigned to a group. This study finds out two features that are capable of distinguishing one part-of-speech from others these are morphological feature and positional information and show that it is possible to use unsupervised learning for Amharic POS tagging. In order to increase performance of the unsupervised part-of-speech tagger, there is a need to incorporate other features that are not included in this study, such as semantic related information. Finally, based on experimental result, the performance of the system achieves a maximum of 81% accuracy.

Keywords: POS tagging, Amharic, unsupervised learning, k-means

Procedia PDF Downloads 453