Association of body iron stores and anemia in a Ghanaian type-2 diabetes mellitus population: A multicentered cross-sectional study

Background and Aims: Anemia has been a common comorbidity in most chronic diseases, but has not been well monitored in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients. In this study, we investigated the prevalence of anemia and its nexus with iron stores among T2DM patients in health facilities in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. Methods: This multicenter cross-sectional study recruited 213 T2DM out-patients attending the diabetic clinics at the Kumasi South Hospital and St. Michaels Hospital, Jachie Pramso, Ghana, for routine check-ups. Self-reported questionnaires were used to collect sociodemographic, lifestyle, and clinical data from study participants. Blood samples were collected to estimate hematological parameters and iron stores. Mann–Whitney U test was used to assess the difference in hematological parameters and iron stores between anemic and nonanemic patients. All p \u3c 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: Of the 213 T2DM participants, the prevalence of anemia was 31.9%. More females 145 (68.1%) were registered than males 68 (31.9%). Anemic patients had significantly lower levels of mean cell volume [79.30/fL vs. 82.60/fL, p = 0.001], mean cell hemoglobin [26.60/pg vs. 27.90/pg, p \u3c 0.0001], and mean cell hemoglobin concentration [33.10/g/dL) vs. 33.80/g/dL, p \u3c 0.0001] than those without anemia. Serum levels of ferritin (p = 0.1140), transferrin (p = 0.5070), iron (p = 0.7950), and total iron binding capacity (p = 0.4610) did not differ significantly between T2DM patients with or without anemia. Conclusion: Despite the high prevalence of anemia among the T2DM patients in our cohort, patients present with apparently normal iron stores. This unrecognized mild anemia must be frequently monitored among T2DM patients

Achieving covert communication with a probabilistic jamming strategy

In this work, we consider a covert communication scenario, where a transmitter Alice communicates to a receiver Bob with the aid of a probabilistic and uninformed jammer against an adversary warden\u27s detection. The transmission status and power of the jammer are random and follow some priori probabilities. We first analyze the warden\u27s detection performance as a function of the jammer\u27s transmission probability, transmit power distribution, and Alice\u27s transmit power. We then maximize the covert throughput from Alice to Bob subject to a covertness constraint, by designing the covert communication strategies from three different perspectives: Alice\u27s perspective, the jammer\u27s perspective, and the global perspective. Our analysis reveals that the minimum jamming power should not always be zero in the probabilistic jamming strategy, which is different from that in the continuous jamming strategy presented in the literature. In addition, we prove that the minimum jamming power should be the same as Alice\u27s covert transmit power, depending on the covertness and average jamming power constraints. Furthermore, our results show that the probabilistic jamming can outperform the continuous jamming in terms of achieving a higher covert throughput under the same covertness and average jamming power constraints

Role of supply chain management in improving competitive advantage of Indonesian small and medium enterprises

Global competition has forced companies, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs), to improve their competitive advantage. Supply chain management practices are the ways to improve the competitive advantage, particularly in the global competition context. However, there is still doubt SMEs can compete globally, considering they face limited resources, skilled workforce, and business networks. Therefore, this study aims to examine the influence of supply chain management practices, covering cross-functional integration, partnership, responsiveness, and resilience. Moreover, this study has examined which practices dominate in improving competitive advantage. The quantitative study involved 445 SMEs located in East Java, Indonesia. The respondents are supervisors or higher levels and work in departments related to supply chain management, as they can provide the relevant information and possess complete knowledge of management practices. The data were collected via a questionnaire designed with a five-point Likert scale. The responses were analyzed using SmartPLS software 4.0. The results show that cross-function integration improves supply chain partnership, responsiveness, and resilience (β = 0.705, 0.382, 0.324; t-value = 25.177, 6.697, 5.783). Supply chain partnerships affect supply chain responsiveness, resilience, and competitive advantage (β = 0.327, 0.257, 0.249; t-value = 5.933, 4.536, 5.651). Moreover, supply chain responsiveness improves supply chain resilience and competitive advantage (β = 0.285, 0.106; t-value = 5.690, 2.099). Supply chain resilience improves competitive advantage (β = 0.435 and t-value = 8.987). SMEs can enhance their competitive advantage by integrating their internal cross-functional integration and adopting supply chain partnership, responsiveness, and resilience

An ecological and transdisciplinary ethnographic study of Indonesian TESOL returnee lecturer identity

This research explores the identity negotiation of TESOL academic returnee lecturers who returned to their home country, Indonesia, after finishing their Master or PhD study at several universities in western countries. The returnee lecturers had all been teaching English before being awarded an Indonesian government scholarship to study overseas. When they returned to Indonesia, they all became lecturers at Indonesian higher education institutions. Studies on transnational academic mobility and language teacher identity exist but those that particularly focus on the identity of language teachers as academic returnees remain limited. In addition to this, language teachers and/or mobile academics from Indonesia are under investigated. The goal of this ecological and transdisciplinary study was to investigate the ways academic returnee lecturers negotiate their identities and to identify the underpinning ideologies of their identity negotiation within the context of their working places. Using an ethnographic approach, data were gathered from six Indonesian academic returnee lecturers who were working in three different higher education institutions on the island of Java. Interviews, digital observations and participants’ social media posts were used as sources of data, collected online, because of the Covid 19 pandemic. Interactional sociolinguistics analysis and critical discourse analysis were carried out on the data. Data were interpreted in the light of the ecological and transdisciplinary framework of language teacher identity, which is complemented with the concepts of indexicality, polycentricity, and moral behavioural script. Findings showed that participants negotiated their identities through various discursive practices: (1) the bifurcated lens, in order to make sense of their struggle in feeling morally incompatible with the academic culture in Indonesian higher education institutions; (2) enabling or disabling the possibility of hybrid identity; and (3) enacting a different aspect of their identity, which was the identity of being a good Muslim. The two strongest ideologies that underpinned participants’ identity negotiation were neoliberalism and Javanese filial piety and harmony. The study makes several contributions to knowledge. One, it makes methodological contributions towards the research fields of transnational academic mobility and language teacher identity using a digital ethnographic approach, especially collecting participants’ social media posts, which has not yet been incorporated in many studies. Second, it makes iv theoretical contributions to transnational academic mobility research by placing identity as the core of the research framework and identifying neoliberalism as one of the core underpinning ideologies in the returnees’ reintegration process. This thesis also contributes to the field of language teacher identity research by incorporating the concepts of indexicality, polycentricity and moral behavioural scripts when exploring teachers’ identity negotiation or identity work. In addition, this research highlights how teachers’ religious identity and the challenges of a home country’s social structure are significant in the process of returnee lecturer reintegration. The study identifies implications for future Indonesian academic returnees, Indonesian government scholarship institutions, the executives in Indonesian higher education institutions, and the Human Resource Department in these institutions. These institutions could support returnee lecturers by providing programs, which includes debriefing sessions and continuous peer support and mentorship

Characteristics of place for food destinations: A foodscape perspective

There is a lack of understanding of the fundamental relation between food and place and the attributes of the production and consumption of food experiences that collectively make a place a food tourism destination. This chapter explores how a food destination is characterised through a foodscape lens together with the local stakeholders’ and tourists’ viewpoints of commercialised food tourism activities in an emerging food tourism destination. The results reveal five attributes that shape a place as a food tourism destination. These attributes are: connection of food to culinary landscape; social interactions; food quality; price; and linkages between food and agriculture

In-circuit forensic analysis of IoT memory modules

Digital forensic investigation involves data acquisition from storage and memory devices including embedded memory, such as flash memory. In the age of IoT-connected systems, in which a typical crime scene often has several interconnected smart devices, chip-off analysis, the physical removal of a microchip from the circuitry for digital forensic acquisition, is time-consuming and can potentially lead to loss of data, even damage to the original memory chip involved in the alleged crime (due to the heat the chip is exposed to during the process). This study introduces a novel system-on-a-chip approach designed for rapid and non-intrusive data acquisition from IoT devices, addressing the limitations of traditional chip-off forensic techniques that often result in data loss and potential damage to memory chips. Utilizing a purpose-designed smart device, this method enables direct data retrieval from the microchip level, integrating seamlessly into a forensic toolkit to improve the speed and integrity of evidence gathering while maintaining the operational state of the device. The method places particular emphasis on physical data acquisition, essential for thorough analysis, including the recovery of deleted files and investigation of file tampering. The research develops a remote acquisition technique that accesses memory modules of diverse smart devices with minimal footprint, offering a device-agnostic solution that preserves data in its last functional state, thus enhancing evidence recovery. By ensuring the forensic soundness of the data extraction process, this innovative approach significantly advances digital forensics, enhancing both the integrity and admissibility of evidence in legal scenarios

Exhibition floor talk | Crossroads

Artists | Elise BLUMANN | Brian BLANCHFLOWER | Susanna CASTLEDEN | Jo DARBYSHIRE | Julie DOWLING | Eva FERNANDEZ | Thomas HOAREAU | Dianne JONES | Connie PETRILLO | Gregory PRYOR | Joanna LAMB | Brian MCKAY | Bryant MCDIVEN | Howard TAYLOR | Rover THOMASCurators | Ted SNELL, Danielle FUSCO | CROSSROADS Exhibition Statement | The beginning of each new work is a form of Faustian bargain for every artist. It is a point of departure. Every project is full of potential, ripe with possibility, and always shrouded by the fear of impending failure. It is a leap into the void, a crossroads where ideas are put on the line, challenges are identified, and the resulting fission of risk instantly becomes the engine for creative engagement. Like the famous American Blues singer Robert Johnson falling down on his knees in his song CrossRoad, it is an energised moment of decision.When Rover Thomas rolled out a canvas on the parched red Kimberley earth in 1994 and began to stain it with resin, the image that emerged with the addition of white ochre dots was revolutionary. Suffused with his life experience as a stockman and informed by his cultural knowledge and spiritual connection to Country, he constructed a new conceptual framework for depicting the land. Crossroads, an etching made from that original painting, depicts two intersecting tracks, drawn with a reductive simplicity that fuses instantly into memory. Images of the unique Western Australian landscape frequently recur in the selection of works acquired for the ECU art collection.Elise Blumann first encountered the tortured forms of the Melaleucas along the foreshore of the Swan River when she and her husband Atrnold arrived in Western Australia in the 1930s after fleeing Hitler’s Germany. The trees registered their battle with the strong southerly winds in every twist and iteration of their trunks and branches. Set in the glistening white sand and low scrub, they were the perfect metaphor for her life and the state of the world when she was at a crossroads in her own life. Painting on card, initially in situ, she responded to their rhythmic choreography. In the soft pinks, ochres, chromatic greys, and Prussian blue accents she inherited from her Modernist training in Europe, she found a succinct equivalent for the rich subtleties of the local vegetation.For Howard Taylor, each encounter with the bush was a transcendent experience that presented an opportunity to rethink his approach to documenting the landscape. Tree and Sky is a wing-like monolith painted in a modulated tonal flow from dark to light using a variety of different hues of blue. It is the equivalence for looking up to the sky through and around the form of a tree. As Taylor explains. “the physical business of seeing and the more subjective one of feeling” are combined, each viewer “…improves (their) perception by cultivating the looking thing”.Artist’s record what they see and the City of Perth as it developed was another recurring theme in the ECU Collection. During the 1990s, Thomas Hoareau documented the changes to the City of Perth. Based at Gotham Studios on the corner of James and William Streets. He watched the destruction of significant buildings and the ebb and flow of people that changed the character of the inner-city environment. Horeau painted what he saw around him, offering a recognisable point of reference for his audience. Perth was at a crossroads, and Hoareau depicted it with incisive clarity to encourage them to register what was happening to their environment

Exhibition floor talk | Sonifying covid

Exhibition Statement | Sonifying COVID is an exhibition that focuses on art made from and about the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on how sound and vibration as tools of expression, can shed light on the “other” somatic impacts on the pandemic. By ‘other’ the artists mean not the physical symptoms of COVID-19, but rather the bodily anxiety, stress, and tension we internalize by listening to the news, remembering to wash our hands often, and incessantly checking apps and web maps for new information and details of hotspots, numbers of infections, and so on. The exhibition is sound forward, using sonification and vibration as the nexus that brings together two independent but interrelated works both created from data of the pandemic over the last two years.Pandemic Resonance by Diana Chester, Melody Li, Julian Belbachir, Sonya Holowell and Benjamin Carey, is a meditation, an experimental sound-forward, dialogue free experience about living through COVID. The work explores the environmental impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on people’s emotional and physical well-being, while offering a soothing counterpoint to the constant bombarding we all face in the news. This counterpoint comes in the form of the healing vibrational power of music. As a black screen fades in and out on short snippets of the lives of Sydneysiders in Isolation during the pandemic, the piece offers the audience a space to project their own memories and experiences of the pandemic into the soundscape that envelops them.Parsing the Pandemic is a sound and visual work that explores the Johns Hopkins University Data on COVID-19 case numbers worldwide from 2020. This is a collaboration between three artists, Diana Chester, Benjamin Carey and Luke Hespanhol, who have taken this raw data set as their starting point to generate work that creatively explores the relationship between the data and their lived experience of the pandemic. The work consists of two quadraphonic fixed media soundscapes, Transmission and Isolation, and a video diptych Permanent Hypnagogia.Permanent Hypnagogia by Luke Hespanhol, consists of a video diptych: each half offers a complementary subjective perspective of an individual in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic: passively looking out into the world, and into himself. The whirlwind-like graphics generated on top of the movies are driven by the Johns Hopkins University data on COVID case numbers worldwide from February to May 2020. The viewer is thus positioned in the centre of an experience of dizziness in face of the relentless statistics of cases, deaths, vaccinations rates and escalating crises. At that stage of the pandemic, every case corresponded to great suffering, often a life lost. The artwork conveys the feeling of a permanent shift between being awake and dreaming – a state known as hypnagogia – bearing in mind that dreams are not always nice, and within which judgements are often suspended amidst surreal imagery.Transmission by Benjamin Carey, is a quadrophonic fixed media work that makes use of COVID-19 infection data from 2020, as well as audio from a press conference of the World Health Organisation from the same period. Datasets of infection rates from eight countries of interest (USA, UK, China, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Brazil) were used as sonification parameters to generate all sound synthesis, concatenative re-synthesis and audio processing in the work. The sonification imbues the speech of journalists and members of the scientific community with the statistical reality of rising and falling daily case numbers, at a time when the WHO, and the scientific community at large, were grappling with the nature of asymptomatic transmission at this early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic

Exhibition floor talk | Herenow: Artists in Wonderland

Herenow 24: Artists in Wonderland presents an exploration of contrasting styles, concepts and techniques from a diverse group of artists at various points in their artistic journeys. This exhibition invites the viewers into a wonderland of eleven different realms, each illuminating the creator’s personality and inspirations.These wonderful worlds from which each artist lives and creates, divulges a narrative which illustrates and conveys passion, innocence, sentiment and intent to showcase and educate viewers on personal, political and playful themes. Viewers are encouraged to observe and consider the narrative of each work and imagine going down the rabbit hole into the artists own little worlds of wonder

Understanding workplace bullying in the Pakistani public sector: An ecological systems perspective

Workplace bullying is a pervasive and complex phenomenon, influenced by various individual, interpersonal, organisational, and societal factors. The literature underscores the diverse contextual understanding of bullying behaviours across organisations operating within different societies. However, prevalent perspectives, tools, and theoretical frameworks used to comprehend workplace bullying predominantly stem from a Western-centric viewpoint. Moreover, most existing research adopts a positivist approach, focusing narrowly on specific theoretical lensesto explore limited factors at individual, interpersonal, or organisational levels, neglecting the role of the broader societal context. While the contribution of this research has advanced the field, studies have complicated the overall conceptualisation and contextual understanding of workplace bullying, and how the various factors at different levels interact with each other in influencing workplace bullying. The present study explored how workplace bullying is understood and conceptualised by the employees in one of the largest Pakistani public sector organisations. Furthermore, building on the work environment hypothesis using the ecological systems approach, the study explored how ecological systems–level factors at the macro (societal), exo (organisational), meso (interpersonal) and micro (individual) levels interact to influence bullying behaviours and examined the consequences on individuals, organisations, and society. Data were collected in two phases. In the first phase, the study employed semi-structured interviews with 38 targets and witnesses of bullying behaviours using the critical incident technique (CIT) approach as a framework to guide interview questions and analysis. The CIT enabled the participants to share their personal experiences of bullying or experiences of bearing witness to workplace bullying events in the form of a sequential narrative – including the bullying incidents along with pre and post-incident events. Additionally, ten executives were interviewed to obtain their understanding of the bullying phenomenon and gain further knowledge about the broader contextual factors that influence workplace bullying in the organisation. In the second phase, nine key informant interviews were conducted based on themes derived from the first-phase interviews. The findings of the study demonstrate that employees in the Pakistani public sector organisation conceptualised bullying as exposure to additional work, being pushed to perform unreasonable tasks or being forced to engage in corrupt practices. The study findings show that the broader contextual societal factors interact with the work environment and individual factors influencing workplace bullying. The study findings further highlight that the interaction between the influencing factors represents a complex web in which the broader societal factors appear to be the primary influence affecting the work environment. The study also indicates that an environment of fear within the organisation renders the targets unable to defend themselves, resulting in the reoccurrence of workplace bullying. Finally, the study findings demonstrate that workplace bullying affects employees’ mental and physical health, induces behavioural changes and has consequences for social life. As a pioneering ecologicalsystems study to understand bullying behaviours in the public sector, the findings of this study are valuable for academics, human resources managers, practitioners, and other stakeholders (such as policymakers). For academics, the study provides a framework (for future empirical testing) describing the interaction between the ecological subsystems influencing bullying behaviour. It offers practitioners a framework that systematically guides them to understand workplace bullying in the Pakistani public sector. Finally, the study offers implications for practice to assist policymakers in devising policies that lead to a healthy work environment and assist employees to understand the complexity of bullying behaviours