Search results for: physical health

Authors: Phuc D. Nguyen, Kristy L. Hansen, Branko Zajamsek

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The existence of special characteristics of wind farm noise such as amplitude modulation (AM) contributes significantly to annoyance, which could ultimately result in sleep disturbance and other adverse health effects for residents living near wind farms. In order to detect and quantify this phenomenon, several methods have been developed which can be separated into three types: time-domain, frequency-domain and hybrid methods. However, due to a lack of systematic validation of these methods, it is still difficult to select the best method for identifying AM. Furthermore, previous comparisons between AM methods have been predominantly qualitative or based on synthesised signals, which are not representative of the actual noise. In this study, a comparison between methods for detecting and quantifying AM has been carried out. The results are based on analysis of real noise data which were measured at a wind farm in South Australia. In order to evaluate the performance of these methods in terms of detecting AM, an approach has been developed to select the most successful method of AM detection. This approach uses a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve which is based on detection of AM in audio files by experts.

Keywords: amplitude modulation, wind farm noise, ROC curve

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Authors: Miguel A. Figueroa, José A. Lara-Ramos, Miguel A. Mueses

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Pharmaceutical residues are a section of emerging contaminants of anthropogenic origin that are present in a myriad of waters with which human beings interact daily and are starting to affect the ecosystem directly. Conventional waste-water treatment systems are not capable of degrading these pharmaceutical effluents because their designs cannot handle the intermediate products and biological effects occurring during its treatment. That is why it is necessary to hybridize conventional waste-water systems with non-conventional processes. In the specific case of an ozonation process, its efficiency highly depends on a perfect dispersion of ozone, long times of interaction of the gas-liquid phases and the size of the ozone bubbles formed through-out the reaction system. In order to increase the efficiency of these parameters, the use of a modified flotation cell has been proposed recently as a reactive system, which is used at an industrial level to facilitate the suspension of particles and spreading gas bubbles through the reactor volume at a high rate. The objective of the present work is the development of a mathematical model that can closely predict the kinetic rates of reactions taking place in the flotation cell at an experimental scale by means of identifying proper reaction mechanisms that take into account the modified chemical and hydrodynamic factors in the FeO-catalyzed Ozonation of Diclofenac aqueous solutions in a flotation cell. The methodology is comprised of three steps: an experimental phase where a modified flotation cell reactor is used to analyze the effects of ozone concentration and loading catalyst over the degradation of Diclofenac aqueous solutions. The performance is evaluated through an index of utilized ozone, which relates the amount of ozone supplied to the system per milligram of degraded pollutant. Next, a theoretical phase where the reaction mechanisms taking place during the experiments must be identified and proposed that details the multiple direct and indirect reactions the system goes through. Finally, a kinetic model is obtained that can mathematically represent the reaction mechanisms with adjustable parameters that can be fitted to the experimental results and give the model a proper physical meaning. The expected results are a robust reaction rate law that can simulate the improved results of Diclofenac mineralization on water using the modified flotation cell reactor. By means of this methodology, the following results were obtained: A robust reaction pathways mechanism showcasing the intermediates, free-radicals and products of the reaction, Optimal values of reaction rate constants that simulated Hatta numbers lower than 3 for the system modeled, degradation percentages of 100%, TOC (Total organic carbon) removal percentage of 69.9 only requiring an optimal value of FeO catalyst of 0.3 g/L. These results showed that a flotation cell could be used as a reactor in ozonation, catalytic ozonation and photocatalytic ozonation processes, since it produces high reaction rate constants and reduces mass transfer limitations (Ha > 3) by producing microbubbles and maintaining a good catalyst distribution.

Keywords: advanced oxidation technologies, iron oxide, emergent contaminants, AOTS intensification

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Authors: Mina Jafari, Kobra Hamraee, Saied Hossein Hosseini

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The prediction of breast cancer disease is one of the challenges in medicine. In this paper we collected 528 records of women’s information who live in Kabul including demographic, life style, diet and pregnancy data. There are many classification algorithm in breast cancer prediction and tried to find the best model with most accurate result and lowest error rate. We evaluated some other common supervised algorithms in data mining to find the best model in prediction of breast cancer disease among afghan women living in Kabul regarding to momography result as target variable. For evaluating these algorithms we used Cross Validation which is an assured method for measuring the performance of models. After comparing error rate and accuracy of three models: Decision Tree, Naive Bays and Rule Induction, Decision Tree with accuracy of 94.06% and error rate of %15 is found the best model to predicting breast cancer disease based on the health care records.

Keywords: decision tree, breast cancer, probability, data mining

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Authors: Hafsa Raheel

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Objectives: Secondary school girls, ages 15–19 years old were surveyed to find out the coping strategies they used when stressed. Adolescents, who are affected with stress and depression early in life, suffer from depression throughout their lives, especially if they are utilizing improper ways to cope with it. Methods: A cross-sectional school-based survey among 1028 adolescent girls was conducted among the secondary schools in Riyadh city, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Results: About 25% stated that they cry, 19% listen to music, 15% start eating a lot, 12% sit alone/isolate themselves, 11% pray/read the Quran, 10% get into a verbal argument or a fight. Only a few, 3% exercise, and 2% stated that they find someone to discuss and talk to. Conclusion: The majority of the adolescent girls in our survey rely on emotion-related coping mechanisms rather than problem-solving mechanisms. This can cause long-term implications in these adolescents as there is an increased probability to develop depression later on in life. Policy makers need to implement strategies for early identification of stress and depression. Talking to friends and family can serve as an effective way to cope with stress.

Keywords: adolescents, stress, Saudi Arabia, mental health

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Authors: Joann Douziech

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Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) possess characteristics that present both challenges and gifts. Individuals with IDD require and are worthy of intentional, strategic, and specialized support throughout their lifespan to ensure optimum quality-of-life outcomes. The current global advocacy movement advancing the rights of individuals with IDD emphasizes a high degree of choice over life decisions. For some individuals, this degree of choice results in a variety of negative health and well-being outcomes. Improving the quality of life outcomes requires the combination of a commitment to the rights of the individual with a responsibility to provide support and choice commensurate with individual capacity. A belief that individuals with IDD are capable of learning and they are worthy of being taught provides the foundation for a holistic model of support throughout their lifespan. This model is based on three pillars of engineering the environment, promoting skill development and maintenance, and staff support. In an ever-changing world, supporting quality of life requires attention to moments, phases, and changes in stages throughout the lifespan. Balancing these complexities with strategic, responsive, and dynamic interventions enhances the quality of life of individuals with ID throughout their lifespan.

Keywords: achieving optimum quality of life, comprehensive support, lifespan approach, philosophy and pedagogy

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Authors: Vera Lúcia Raposo

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Medical devices are products used for medical purposes and aimed to operate in the human body, sometimes even inside the human body. Therefore, they can become particularly risky products, and some of the injuries caused by medical devices can have serious effects on the person’s health or body, even leading to death. Because they fit in the category of 'products' as described in Article 2 of Council Directive 85/374/EEC of 25 July 1985, concerning liability for defective products, the liability of the manufacturer of medical devices follows the rules of strict liability as long as one of the defects covered by the directive is at stake. The directive is not concerned with the product’s efficiency, but instead with the product’s safety, although in what regards medical devices (the same being valid for drugs) the two concepts frequently go together, and a lack of efficiency can result in a lack of safety. In the particular case of medical devices, the most debatable defects are the ones related with erroneous or non-existing information and the so-called development defects. This paper analyses how directive 85/374/EEC applies to medical devices, which defects are covered by its regulation, and which criteria can be used to evaluate the product’s safety. Some issues are still to be clarified, even though the decisions from the European Court of Justice and from national courts are valuable tools to understand the scope of directive 85/374/EEC in what regards medical devices.

Keywords: medical devices, producer’s liability, product safety, strict liability

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Authors: Madihah Shukri

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Research examining whether eating behaviour is related to unhealthy or healthy eating pattern is required to explain the mechanisms underlying obesity, and to inform health intervention aim to prevent and treat obesity. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between eating behaviours and nature of food consumption. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study of 588 adults (males = 231 and females = 357). The Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (DEBQ) was used to measure restrained, emotional and external eating. Nature of food consumption was assessed by self-reported consumption of fruit and vegetables, sweet food, junk food and snacking. Results: Results revealed that emotional eating was found to be the principal predictor of the consumption of less healthy food (sweet food, junk food and snacking), while external eating predicted sweet food intake. Intake of fruit and vegetable was associated with restrained eating. In light of the significant associations between eating behaviour and nature of food consumption, acknowledging individuals eating styles can have implications for tailoring effective nutritional programs in the context of obesity and chronic disease epidemic.

Keywords: eating behaviour, food consumption, adult, Malaysia

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Authors: Parashram Jakappa Patil

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India is the global leader in world cashew business and cashew-nut industry is one of the important food processing industries in world. However India is the largest producer, processor, exporter and importer eschew in the world. India is providing cashew to the rest of the world. India is meeting world demand of cashew. India has a tremendous potential of cashew production and export to other countries. Every year India earns more than 2000 cores rupees through cashew trade. Cashew industry is one of the important small scale industries in the country which is playing significant role in rural development. It is generating more than 400000 jobs at remote area and 95% cashew worker are women, it is giving income to poor cashew farmers, majority cashew processing units are small and cottage, it is helping to stop migration from young farmers for employment opportunities, it is motivation rural entrepreneurship development and it is also helping to environment protection etc. Hence India cashew business is very important agribusiness in India which has potential make inclusive development. World Bank and IMF recognized cashew-nut industry is one the important tool for poverty eradication at global level. It shows important of cashew business and its strong existence in India. In spite of such huge potential cashew processing industry is facing different problems such as lack of infrastructure ability, lack of supply of raw cashew, lack of availability of finance, collection of raw cashew, unavailability of warehouse, marketing of cashew kernels, lack of technical knowledge and especially processing technology and packaging of finished products. This industry has great prospects such as scope for more cashew cultivation and cashew production, employment generation, formation of cashew processing units, alcohols production from cashew apple, shield oil production, rural development, poverty elimination, development of social and economic backward class and environment protection etc. This industry has domestic as well as foreign market; India has tremendous potential in this regard. The cashew is a poor men’s crop but rich men’s food. The cashew is a source of income and livelihood for poor farmers. Cashew-nut industry may play very important role in the development of hilly region. The objectives of this paper are to identify problems of cashew processing and use of processing technology, problems of cashew kernel packaging, evolving of cashew processing technology over the year and its impact on final product and impact of good processing by adopting appropriate technology packaging on international trade of cashew-nut. The most important problem of cashew processing industry is that is processing and packaging. Bad processing reduce the quality of cashew kernel at large extent especially broken of cashew kernel which has very less price in market compare to whole cashew kernel and not eligible for export. On the other hand if there is no good packaging of cashew kernel will get moisture which destroy test of it. International trade of cashew-nut is depend of two things one is cashew processing and other is packaging. This study has strong relevance because cashew-nut industry is the labour oriented, where processing technology is not playing important role because 95% processing work is manual. Hence processing work was depending on physical performance of worker which makes presence of large workforce inevitable. There are many cashew processing units closed because they are not getting sufficient work force. However due to advancement in technology slowly this picture is changing and processing work get improve. Therefore it is interesting to explore all the aspects in context of cashew processing and packaging of cashew business.

Keywords: cashew, processing technology, packaging, international trade, change

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Authors: Z. Khoshnood, L. Khoshnood

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Pesticides and drugs used in agriculture and veterinary medicine may end up in aquatic environments and bioaccumulate in the food chain, thus causing serious problems for fauna and human health. For determination of the toxic effects of atrazine herbicide on Caspian kutum, Rutilus frisii kutum larvae, the 96-h LC50 of atrazine was measured for newly hatched larvae as 18.53 ppm. Toxicity of atrazine herbicide on Caspian kutum larvae was investigated using concentrations: 9.25 ppm, 4.62 ppm and 2.31 ppm for 7 days. Comparison of the length, weight, and condition factor showed that no significant differences between atrazine exposed and control groups. The concentration of Na+, K+, Ca2+, Mg2+ and Cl- in whole body of larvae in control and atrazine exposure groups were measured and the results showed that concentrations of all these ions is higher in atrazine exposure group than control group. It is obvious from this study that atrazine negatively affects osmoregulation process and changes ion compositions of the body even at sublethal concentration and acute exposure but have no effects on growth parameters of the body.

Keywords: atrazine, Caspian Kutum, acute toxicity, body ions, LC50

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Authors: Austin Belfiori, Kevin Rinek, Zach Barcroft, Jennifer Berglind

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Diet influences the composition of the gut microbiota and host's health. Disruption of the balance among the microbiota, epithelial cells, and resident immune cells in the intestine is involved in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). To study the role of gut microbiota in intestinal inflammation, the microbiome of control mice (C57BL6) given a gluten-containing standard diet versus C57BL6 mice given the gluten-free (GF) feed (n=10 in each group) was examined. All mice received the 3% DSS for 5 days. Throughout the study, feces were collected and processed for DNA extraction and MiSeq Illumina sequencing of V4 region of bacterial 16S rRNA gene. Alpha and beta diversities and compositional differences at phylum and genus levels were determined in intestinal microbiota. The mice receiving the GF diet showed a significantly increased abundance of Firmicutes and a decrease of Bacteroides and Lactobacillus at phylum level. Therefore, the gluten free diet led to reductions in beneficial gut bacteria populations. These findings indicate a role of wheat gluten in dysbiosis of the intestinal microbiota.

Keywords: gluten, colitis, microbiota, DSS, dextran sulphate sodium

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Authors: M. S. V. K. V. Prasad, G. Siva Praveena, P. V. V. Prasada Rao

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It is known that the groundwater quality is very important parameter because it is the main factor determining its suitability for drinking, agricultural and industrial purposes. Water Quality Index (WQI) has been calculated for ground water samples taken from Narsapur-Mogalthur mandals, West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, India, from 10 different locations in the pre-monsoon season as well as post monsoon. The water samples were analyzed for pH, Electrical Conductivity (EC), Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Total Hardness (TH), major cations like calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium and anions like chloride, nitrate and sulphate in the laboratory using the standard methods given by the American Public Health Association (APHA). The overall quality of water in the study area is somewhat good for all constituents. Drinking water at almost all the locations was found to be slightly contaminated, except a few locations during the year 2014. It was found that some effective measures are urgently required for water quality management in this region.

Keywords: Water Quality Index, Physico-chemical parameters, Quality rating, monsoon

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Authors: Cassi Henderson, Lucia Corsini, Shiv Kapila, Egle Augustaityte, Tsemaye Uwejamomere Zinzan Gurney, Aleyna Yildirim

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Plastic pollution is a major threat to human and planetary health. In Low- and Middle-Income Countries, plastic waste poses a major problem for marginalized populations who lack access to formal waste management systems. This study explores the potential for converting waste plastic into construction blocks. It is the first study to analyze the use of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) as a binder in plastic-sand bricks. Unlike previous studies of plastic sand-bricks, this research tests the properties of bricks that were made using a low-cost kiln technology that was co-designed with a rural, coastal community in Kenya.  The mechanical strength, resistance to fire and water absorption properties of the bricks are tested in this study. The findings show that the bricks meet structural standards for mechanical performance, fire resistance and water absorption. It was found that 30:70 PET to sand demonstrated the best overall performance.

Keywords: recycling, PET, plastic, sustainable construction, sustainable development

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Authors: Seyed Mehdi Razavi Khosroshahi

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In recent years a great deal of efforts has been made to find natural derivative compounds to replace it's with synthetic drugs, herbicides or pesticides for management of human health and agroecosystem programs. This process can lead to a reduction in environmental harmful effects of synthetic chemicals. Xanthotoxin, as a furanocoumarin compound, found in some genera of the Apiaceae family of plants. The current work focuses on some xanthotoxin cytotoxicity and antipathogenic activities. The results indicated that xanthotoxin showed strong cytotoxic effects against LNCaP cell line with the IC₅₀ value of 0.207 mg/ml in a dose-dependent manner. After treatments of the cell line with 0.1 mg/ml of the compound, the viability of the cells was reached to zero. The current study revealed that xanthotoxin displayed strong antifungal activity against human or plant pathogen fungi, Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspegillusn flavus and Fusarum graminearum with minimum inhibitory concentration values of 52-68 µg/ml. The compound exhibited antibacterial effects on some Erwinia and Xanthomonas species of bacteria, as well

Keywords: Xanthomonas, cytotoxic, antipathogen, LNCaP, Aspergillus fumigatus, spegillusn flavus

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Authors: Vahid Bayrami Rad

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In recent years, the use of artificial intelligence techniques, tools, and methods in processing medical images and health-related applications has been highlighted and a lot of research has been done in this regard. For example, colonoscopy and diagnosis of colon lesions are some cases in which the process of diagnosis of lesions can be improved by using image processing and artificial intelligence algorithms, which help doctors a lot. Due to the lack of accurate measurements and the variety of injuries in colonoscopy images, the process of diagnosing the type of lesions is a little difficult even for expert doctors. Therefore, by using different software and image processing, doctors can be helped to increase the accuracy of their observations and ultimately improve their diagnosis. Also, by using automatic methods, the process of diagnosing the type of disease can be improved. Therefore, in this paper, a deep learning framework called KCBA is proposed to classify colonoscopy lesions which are composed of several methods such as K-means clustering, a bag of features and deep auto-encoder. Finally, according to the experimental results, the proposed method's performance in classifying colonoscopy images is depicted considering the accuracy criterion.

Keywords: colorectal cancer, colonoscopy, region of interest, narrow band imaging, texture analysis, bag of feature

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Authors: Farzad Jalilian, Mehdi Mirzaei Alavijeh, Fazel Zinat Motlagh

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Social support is an important benchmark of health for people in avoidance conditions. The main goal of this study was to determine the three kinds of social support (family, friend and other significant) to drug cessation among male addicts, in Kermanshah, the west of Iran. This cross-sectional study was conducted among 132 addicts, randomly selected to participate voluntarily in the study. Data were collected from conduct interviews based on standard questionnaire and analyzed by using SPSS-18 at 95% significance level. The majority of addicts were young (Mean: 30.4 years), and with little education. Opium (36.4%), Crack (21.2%), and Methamphetamine (12.9%) were the predominant drugs. Inabilities to reject the offer and having addict friends are the most often reasons for drug usage. Almost, 18.9% reported history of drug injection. 43.2% of the participants already did drug cessation at least once. Logistic regression showed the family support (OR = 1.110), age (OR = 1.106) and drug use initiation age (OR = 0.918) was predicting drug cessation. Our result showed; family support is a more important effect among types of social support in drug cessation. It seems that providing educational program to addict’s families for more support of patients at drug cessation can be beneficial.

Keywords: drug cessation, family support, drug use, initiation age

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Authors: Sarthak Karki, Haribansha Timalsina

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Kanchan Arsenic Filter is an economical low cost and termed the most efficient arsenic removal filter system in South Asian countries such as Nepal. But when the effluent quality was evaluated, it was seen to possess a lower removal rate of arsenite species. In addition to that, greater pathogenic growth and loss in overall efficacy with time due to precipitation of iron sulphates were the further complications. This brings the health issue on the front line as millions of people rely on groundwater sources for general water necessities. With this paper, we analyzed the mechanisms and changes in the efficiency of the extant filter system when integrated with activated laterite and hair column beds, plus an additional charcoal layer for inhibiting pathogen colonies. Hair column have rich keratin protein that binds with arsenic species, and similarly, raw laterite has huge deposits of iron and aluminum, all of these factors helping to remove heavy metal contaminants from water sources. Further study on the commercialized mass production of the new proposed filter and versatility analysis is required.

Keywords: laterite, charcoal, arsenic removal, hair column

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Authors: Hongmei Chi

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The Blockchain has become a necessity for many different societal industries and ordinary lives including cryptocurrency technology, supply chain, health care, public safety, education, etc. Therefore, training our future blockchain developers to know blockchain programming vulnerability and I.T. students' cyber security is in high demand. In this work, we propose a framework including learning modules and hands-on labs to guide future I.T. professionals towards developing secure blockchain programming habits and mitigating source code vulnerabilities at the early stages of the software development lifecycle following the concept of Secure Software Development Life Cycle (SSDLC). In this research, our goal is to make blockchain programmers and I.T. students aware of the vulnerabilities of blockchains. In summary, we develop a framework that will (1) improve students' skills and awareness of blockchain source code vulnerabilities, detection tools, and mitigation techniques (2) integrate concepts of blockchain vulnerabilities for IT students, (3) improve future IT workers’ ability to master the concepts of blockchain attacks.

Keywords: software vulnerability detection, hands-on lab, static analysis tools, vulnerabilities, blockchain, active learning

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Authors: Bedilu A. Ejigu, Eshetu Wencheko, Kiros Berhane

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Anaemia is a condition in which the haemoglobin concentration falls below an established cut-off value due to a decrease in the number and size of red blood cells. The current study aimed to assess the spatial pattern and identify predictors related to anaemia using the third Ethiopian demographic health survey which was conducted in 2010. To achieve this objective, this study took into account the clustered nature of the data. As a result, multilevel modeling has been used in the statistical analysis. For analysis purpose, only complete cases from 15,909 females, and 13,903 males were considered. Among all subjects who agreed for haemoglobin test, 5.49 %males, and 19.86% females were anaemic. In both binary and ordinal outcome modeling approaches, educational level, age, wealth index, BMI and HIV status were identified to be significant predictors for anaemia prevalence. Furthermore, it was noted that pregnant women were more anaemic than non-pregnant women. As revealed by Moran's I test, significant spatial autocorrelation was noted across clusters. The risk of anaemia was found to vary across different regions, and higher prevalence was observed in Somali and Affar region.

Keywords: anaemia, Moran's I test, multilevel models, spatial pattern

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Authors: Yung-Chen Hsu, Juan Hernandez, W. T. Evert Ting, Dawit Gizachew

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Mycotoxin contamination of foods and feeds poses a high risk for human and animal health. Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a ubiquitous mycotoxin produced by Aspergillus and Penicillium fungi. It exhibits nephrotoxicity, teratogenicity, mutagenicity, and immunotoxicity in both humans and animals. OTA has been detected in foods such as cereals, coffee, grapes, cocoa, wine, and spices. Consumption of food contaminated with OTA has been linked to kidney and liver diseases. Niger (Guizotia abyssinica) is an oil seed that is used for extracting cooking oil in countries like Ethiopia and India. The seed cake (a byproduct from oil extraction) is also used as dairy cattle feed in Ethiopia. It is also exported to North America and Europe to be used mainly as bird feed. To our knowledge, there have been no studies on the growth and production of OTA on niger seeds. In this study, the environment conditions that support OTA production including effects of water activity, temperature, and incubation time on growth and OTA production by A. fresenii and A. sulphureus were investigated.

Keywords: mycotoxin, ochratoxin A, aspergillus, niger seed

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Authors: Ariunaa.S., Javzandulam E., Chimegsaikhan S., Altantsetseg B., Oyungerel S., Bat-Erdene T., Naranbaatar S., Otgonbayar B., Suvdaa N., Tumenbayar B.

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Introduction: Prenatal stress has been linked to heightened allergy sensitivity in offspring. However, there is a notable absence of research on the mesovarium structure of offspring born from mothers subjected to cold stress during pregnancy. Understanding the impact of maternal cold stress on the mesovarium structure could provide valuable insights into reproductive health outcomes in offspring. Objective: This study aims to investigate structural changes in the mesovarium of offspring born from cold-stress affected rats. Material and Methods: 20 female Westar rats weighing around 200g were chosen and evenly divided into four containers; then, 2-3 male rats were introduced to each container. The Papanicolaou method was used to estimate the spermatozoa and estrus period from vaginal swabs taken from female rats at 8:00 a.m. Female rats examined with the presence of spermatozoa during the estrous phase of the estrous cycle are defined as pregnant. Pregnant rats are divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group was stressed using the model of severe and chronic cold stress for 30 days. They were exposed to cold stress for 3 hours each morning between 8:00 and 11:00 o’clock at a temperature of minus 15 degrees Celsius. The control group was kept under normal laboratory conditions. Newborn female rats from both experimental and control groups were selected. At 2 months of age, rats were euthanized by decapitation, and their mesovaria were collected. Tissues were fixed in 4% formalin, embedded in paraffin, and sectioned into 5μm thick slices. The sections were stained with H&E and digitized by digital microscope. The area of brown fat and inflammatory infiltrations were quantified using Image J software. The blood cortisol levels were measured using ELISA. Data are expressed as the mean ± standard error of the mean (SEM). The Mann-Whitney test was used to compare the two groups. All analyses were performed using Prism (GraphPad Software). A p-value of < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Result: Offspring born from stressed mothers exhibited significant physiological differences compared to the control group. Specifically, the body weight of offspring from stressed mothers was significantly lower than the control group (p=0.0002). Conversely, the cortisol level in offspring from stressed mothers was significantly higher (p=0.0446). Offspring born from stressed mothers showed a statistically significant increase in brown fat area compared to the control group (p=0.01). Additionally, offspring from stressed mothers had a significantly higher number of inflammatory infiltrates in their mesovarium compared to the control group (p<0.047). These results indicate the profound impact of maternal stress on offspring physiology, affecting body weight, stress hormone levels, metabolic characteristics, and inflammatory responses. Conclusion: Exposure to cold stress during pregnancy has significant repercussions on offspring physiology. Our findings demonstrate that cold stress exposure leads to increased blood cortisol levels, brown fat accumulation, and inflammatory cell infiltration in offspring. These results underscore the profound impact of maternal stress on offspring health and highlight the importance of mitigating environmental stressors during pregnancy to promote optimal offspring outcomes.

Keywords: brown fat, cold stress during pregnancy, inflammation, mesovarium

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Authors: Gurbir Singh Khaira, Anmoldeep Singh Kang

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Exposures to environmental pollution remain a major source of health risk throughout the world, though risks are generally higher in developing countries, where poverty, lack of investment in modern technology and weak environmental legislation combine to cause high pollution levels. This paper will tell us about the environment is threatened severely by so many problems, some of which are caused by the activities of Construction Projects. The research reveals major environmental impacts of building construction projects to include environmental pollution, resource depletion and habitat destruction causing Destruction of ecosystem, Desertification, Soil Erosion and increasing Material Wastage. Construction is considered as one of the main sources of environmental pollution in the world, the level of knowledge and awareness of project participants, especially project managers, with regards to environmental impacts of construction processes needs to be enhanced. It was found that ‘Transportation Resource’, ‘Noise Pollution’, and ‘Dust Generation with Construction Machinery’ are the greatest environmental impacts in INDIA respectively. The results of this study are useful for construction managers and other participants in construction sites to become aware of construction processes impacts on the environment.

Keywords: construction projects, environmental impacts, material waste age, awareness

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Authors: Gulshan Kumar Jawa, Sandeep Mohan Ahuja

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With the increase in industrialization, the presence of heavy metals in wastewater streams has turned into a serious concern for the ecosystem. The metals diffuse through the food chains, causing various health hazards. Conventional methods used to remove these heavy metals from water have some limitations, such as cost, secondary pollution due to sludge formation, recovery of metal, economic viability at low metal concentrations, etc. Many of the biomaterials have been investigated by researchers for the adsorption of heavy metals from water solutions as an alternative technique for the last two decades and have found promising results. In this paper, the batch study on the use of pods of acacia karoo for the adsorption of Cd(II) and Pb(II) from aqueous solutions has been reported. The effect of various parameters on the removal of metal ions, such as pH, contact time, stirring speed, initial metal ion concentration, adsorbent dose, and temperature, have been established to find the optimum parameters through one parameter optimization. Further, kinetic, equilibrium, and thermodynamic studies have been conducted. The pods of acacia karoo have shown great potential for adsorption of Cd(II) and Pb(II) from aqueous solutions and have proven to be a better and more economical alternative for the purpose.

Keywords: adsorption, heavy metals, biomaterials, Cadmium(II), Lead(II), pods of acacia karoo

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Authors: Karen Detoya

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Decreasing cortisol usually leads to good psychological health. This is done in various ways, such as by hugging. Although hugging may decrease a person’s cortisol, it is not advisable during pandemics. Besides that, non-contact cultures and histories of molestation may elicit negative feelings in a person when hugged; thus, hugging a stuffed toy is an option. This research explored the effect of 15 minutes of hugging a stuffed toy among stressed government employees. There are two groups in the study and 15 participants per group. Cortisol was measured before and after the intervention. The first group hugged a stuffed toy for 15 minutes, while the second group stayed in the room without hugging anything. For data analysis, t-tests for dependent samples and t-tests for independent samples were utilized. Results showed no significant differences in the cortisol levels of the two groups before and after the experiment. It also showed no significant difference between the cortisol levels of the two groups after the experiment. Comparing the experimental group by age (18-41 years old and 42-65 years old) and gender (male and female), results showed no significant difference in their cortisol hormones after the intervention.

Keywords: hugging, cortisol, stuffed toy, stressed government employees

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Authors: Laura Sapranaviciute-Zabazlajeva, Abdonas Tamosiunas, Dalia Luksiene, Dalia Virviciute

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The cardiovascular diseases (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the EU, especially in the middle aged and elderly population. Psychological wellbeing (PWB) has been linked with better cardiovascular health and survival in the elderly. The aim of the study is to evaluate associations between CVD risk and PWB in middle-aged and elderly population. 10,940 middle aged and older Lithuanians of age 45-74 years, were invited to participate in the study. A study sample was a random and stratified by gender and age. In 2006-2008 7,087 responders participated in the survey, so the response rate was 64.8%. A follow-up study was conducted from 2006 till 2015. New CVD cases and deaths from CVD were evaluated using the Kaunas population-based CVD register and death register of Kaunas. Study results revealed that good PWB predicts longer life in female participants (Log Rank = 13.7, p < 0.001). In the fully adjusted model for socio-demographic, social and CVD risk factors, hazard ratio for CVD mortality risk was lower amongst women with good PWB (HR = 0.28, 95% CI 0.11-0.72), but not significantly for men. Our study concludes, that lower CVD mortality rates is being associated with better PWB in female aged 45-74 years.

Keywords: psychological well-being, cardiovascular disease, elderly, survival

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Authors: Allmin Susaiyah, Aki Härmä, Milan Petković

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Automatic generation of insights from data using insight mining systems (IMS) is useful in many applications, such as personal health tracking, patient monitoring, and business process management. Existing IMS face challenges in controlling insight extraction, scaling to large databases, and generalising to unseen domains. In this work, we propose a hybrid approach consisting of rule-based and neural components for generating insights from data while overcoming the aforementioned challenges. Firstly, a rule-based data 2CNL component is used to extract statistically significant insights from data and represent them in a controlled natural language (CNL). Secondly, a BERTSum-based CNL2NL component is used to convert these CNLs into natural language texts. We improve the model using task-specific and domain-specific fine-tuning. Our approach has been evaluated using statistical techniques and standard evaluation metrics. We overcame the aforementioned challenges and observed significant improvement with domain-specific fine-tuning.

Keywords: data mining, insight mining, natural language generation, pre-trained language models

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Authors: Faten Khazaei

Abstract:

More than being turning points in history, crises are moments of acceleration of processes that are already in place. The current pandemic, as one such crisis, has triggered and exacerbated conversations about who belongs and who does not, within different European nation states, whose lives should be protected, to the detriment of whom and to what cost. In the face of the outbreak of the coronavirus, the unity of the European Union, at least at the beginning of the crisis, started to crumble. Nation-states reappeared as the main actors, and nationalistic responses spread in Europe. By closing their borders and introducing a travel ban for the Schengen Area, European countries have retreated into national fortresses. Additionally, government after government restored to war metaphors, in some cases even granting the military a visible role in the management and communication of the crisis. Mobility restrictions became a powerful tool for discrimination when their primary target was nationals of particular countries, regardless of their presence in the contaminated areas. These initial policies, measures and the recent vaccine-related management of the pandemic show the role nationalism plays in the context of public health responses to emergencies. While many scholars since last year started to document the impact of these measures on citizens', migrants', human rights and so on, almost no attention has been paid to examine and compare configurations of different European national identities that were generated in the course of the management of the pandemic, and to a sociohistorical perspective to investigate the possible links between those nationalistic and war-related discourse, on the one hand, and the exclusionary policies and practices that surged in Europe and beyond, on the other. EUROSICK's objective is to combine the sociology of migration and nationalism with research on historical disasters to fill this gap. Filling these gaps is urgent as it allows us to understand the reifications of nationalisms and the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ distinctions they produce, the ways in which they lead to regressive patterns of policy-making, and to stigmatization of entire communities and exclusionary policies even against European citizens. EUROSICK’s objective will thus positively impact the capacity of Europe to tackle the future crises, such as that of climate, in a more collective and efficient way and to avoid falling back to these understudied but historically repetitive reactions in the face of emergencies. EUROSICK examines the media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and the related policy documents in three European countries (Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland) at different points in time: before the outbreak in Europe, at the time of the outbreak, and the spring of 2021 following the discovery and implementation of vaccination programmes in Europe. The paper will analyse how the current pandemic crisis is reconfiguring pre-existing tensions and social divisions related to national identity within European debates. It will look at the ways in which this global threat got domesticated by comparing three different European nation states and investigates further what can be learnt from the effects of the pandemic in three different nationalist discourses and traditions. The analysis will be carried out thanks to my expertise in the analysis of discourse-practice nexus. This analytical strategy helps to better understand the development of policies to combat the pandemic, by focusing on the discursive conceptualizations of the crisis and the framing of the problems to be later addressed in practice.

Keywords: public health emergencies, nationalism, COVID politics, International solidarity

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Authors: Burcu Yilmaz Şahinbaşkan, Recep Karadağ, Emine Torgan

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Nowadays, many natural dyes are used for colouration of textile materials. The natural dyes are friendly to human health and environment. Cochineal (Dactylopius coccus Costa) can be used with other natural dye plants for colouration of silk and wool fabrics. Almost never research works on the dyeing of silk fabric with Dactylopius coccus Costa and Quercus infectoria Olivier together. In this study, dyeability of 100 % silk fabric with Dactylopius coccus Costa and Quercus infectoria Olivier was studied. Optimum dyeing parameters were determined by using different concentration of Dactylopius coccus Costa (10%), Quercus infectoria Olivier (0,1,5 and 10%) and mordant salt (0 and 3%). The dyed silk fabrics were examined for their colorimetric and fastness properties. The fabrics were dyed succesfully dark colours with 10 % Dactylopius coccus Costa, 10 % Quercus infectoria Olivier and presence of mordanting after dyeing process (3% mordant salt). The washing and light colour fastness of the dyed fabrics were investigated and adequate results were obtained.

Keywords: Dactylopius coccus Costa, Quercus infectoria Olivier, natural dye, dyeing, silk fabric

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Authors: Varsha Reddy Jayar

Abstract:

Background: Our elderly family members deserve our best care. It's our responsibility to ensure they're healthy and safe. The population of India is increasing rapidly. People are literally being born in the streets, and there is a high growth on taxes and healthcare costs. Indian families are challenged with taking care of everyone. When you have elderly parents and a demanding job, it can be difficult to take care of them. You might not have enough time to care for them when you're already working or dealing with emotional difficulties. Living alone in old age can cause older individuals to face many health risks. Many seniors find living and caring for themselves challenging when they live by themselves. This study explored the factors that affect whether or not elderly people choose to live in old age homes. Methods: This study was carried out on 123 elderly people living in different old age homes in Karnataka, India. The reason for their residence at the home was explored using an interview. Results: It was found that the most common reason for living in an old age home is due to abuse from children and grandchildren; the majority reported were Daughter in law issues in the family specific to the adjustment and understanding amongst them. Conclusion: More and more elderly people in India are choosing to stay in old age homes as they get older. The government and voluntary agencies must have some sort of arrangements for institutional support.

Keywords: old age home, elderly, Aging, challenges of aging

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Authors: B. Alajmi, L. Marouf, A. S. Chaudhry

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In recent years, increasing emphasis has been placed upon issues concerning the evaluation of health care. In this regard, knowledge management has also been considered an important component of the evaluation process. KM facilitates the transfer of existing knowledge or the development of new knowledge among healthcare staff and patients. This research aimed to examine how hospitals in Kuwait employ knowledge management practices, including capturing, sharing, and generating, and the perceived impact of KM practices on performance of hospitals in Kuwait. Through adopting a quantitative survey method with 277 sample of doctors, the study found that in terms of the three major knowledge management practices – knowledge capturing, sharing, and generating – the adoption of KM practices were rated very low in the sampled hospitals in Kuwait. Hospitals paid little attention to the main activities that support the transfer of expertise among doctors in hospitals. However, as predicted by previous studies, knowledge management practices were perceived to have an impact on hospitals’ performance. Through knowledge capturing, sharing, and generating, hospitals could improve the services they provide through documenting best practices, transforming their hospitals into learning organizations in which lessons learned are captured, stored, and made available for others to learn from.

Keywords: knowledge management, hospitals, knowledge management practices, knowledge management tools, performance

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Authors: Safa Ladhari, Alireza Saidi, Phuong Nguyen-Tri

Abstract:

During health crises, such as COVID-19, using disposable protective equipment (PEs) (masks, gowns, etc.) causes long-term problems, increasing the volume of hazardous waste that must be handled safely and expensively. Therefore, producing textiles for antimicrobial and reusable materials is highly desirable to decrease the use of disposable PEs that should be treated as hazardous waste. In addition, if these items are used regularly in the workplace or for daily activities by the public, they will most likely end up in household waste. Furthermore, they may pose a high risk of contagion to waste collection workers if contaminated. Therefore, to protect the whole population in times of sanitary crisis, it is necessary to equip these materials with tools that make them resilient to the challenges of carrying out daily activities without compromising public health and the environment and without depending on them external technologies and producers. In addition, the materials frequently used for EPs are plastics of petrochemical origin. The subject of the present work is replacing petroplastics with bioplastic since it offers better biodegradability. The chosen polymer is polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), a family of polyhydroxyalkanoates synthesized by different bacteria. It has similar properties to conventional plastics. However, it is renewable, biocompatible, and has attractive barrier properties compared to other polyesters. These characteristics make it ideal for EP protection applications. The current research topic focuses on the preparation and rapid evaluation of the biological activity of nanotechnology-based antimicrobial agents to treat textile surfaces used for PE. This work will be carried out to provide antibacterial solutions that can be transferred to a workplace application in the fight against short-term biological risks. Three main objectives are proposed during this research topic: 1) the development of suitable methods for the deposition of antibacterial agents on the surface of textiles; 2) the development of a method for measuring the antibacterial activity of the prepared textiles and 3) the study of the biodegradability of the prepared textiles. The studied textile is a non-woven fabric based on a biodegradable polymer manufactured by the electrospinning method. Indeed, nanofibers are increasingly studied due to their unique characteristics, such as high surface-to-volume ratio, improved thermal, mechanical, and electrical properties, and confinement effects. The electrospun film will be surface modified by plasma treatment and then loaded with hybrid antibacterial silver and titanium dioxide nanoparticles by the dip-coating method. This work uses simple methods with emerging technologies to fabricate nanofibers with suitable size and morphology to be used as components for protective equipment. The antibacterial agents generally used are based on silver, zinc, copper, etc. However, to our knowledge, few researchers have used hybrid nanoparticles to ensure antibacterial activity with biodegradable polymers. Also, we will exploit visible light to improve the antibacterial effectiveness of the fabric, which differs from the traditional contact mode of killing bacteria and presents an innovation of active protective equipment. Finally, this work will allow for the innovation of new antibacterial textile materials through a simple and ecological method.

Keywords: protective equipment, antibacterial textile materials, biodegradable polymer, electrospinning, hybrid antibacterial nanoparticles

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