Predictors of Medication Adherence and Blood Pressure Control among Saudi Hypertensive Patients Attending Primary Care Clinics: A Cross-Sectional Study

Purpose To assess the level of medication adherence and to investigate predictors of medication adherence and blood pressure control among hypertensive patients attending primary healthcare clinics in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. Patients and methods Hypertensive patients meeting the eligibility criteria were recruited from eight primary care clinics between January and May 2016 for this study. The patients completed Arabic version of Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS-8), an eight-item validated, self-reported measure to assess medication adherence. A structured data collection form was used to record patients’ sociodemographic, medical and medication data. Results Two hundred and four patients, of which 71.6% were females, participated in the study. Patients’ mean age was 59.1 (SD 12.2). The mean number of medication used by patients was 4.4 (SD 1.89). More than half (110; 54%) of the patients were non-adherent to their medications (MMAS score 65 years (OR 2.0 [95% CI: 1.0–4.2; P = 0.04]), and being diabetic (OR 0.25 [95% CI: 0.1–0.6; P = 0.04]) were found to be independent predictors of medication adherence. Conclusion Medication adherence is alarmingly low among hypertensive patients attending primary care clinics in Saudi Arabia which may partly explain observed poor blood pressure control. There is a clear need to educate patients about the importance of medication adherence and its impact on improving clinical outcomes. Future research should identify barriers to medication adherence among Saudi hypertensive patients

Crowoding in Mina based on pilgrims’ perception of safety and comfort in Hajj

Crowding perception has been studied in various settings to alleviate the effect of the crowded conditions on participants’ well-being. These include festivals, outdoor recreation, tourism and retail settings. However, very few researches have addressed the crowding perception in religious settings that include a large number of populations such as during the Hajj. More than two million pilgrims perform their Hajj every year. The Hajj process involves staying at the holy site of Mina from four to five days. In Mina, the pilgrims require a peaceful atmosphere to perform their Hajj rituals. A large number of pilgrims and Mina’s spatial constraints led to crowded conditions that affected the pilgrims’ peaceful atmosphere and created serious safety and comfort concerns. It appears that little research consideration has been given to alleviate the impact of the crowded conditions on the pilgrims. Therefore, the research aim is to establish parameters that affect pilgrims’ levels of crowding perception toward enhancing their perception of safety and comfort in Mina during the Hajj. Accordingly, a systematic literature review was employed to develop a conceptual framework that considers the possible influential factors that might affect the pilgrims’ and the effect of their perceived crowding on perceived levels of safety and comfort in Mina. Then, this research used a quantitative research design and data were randomly collected from 1243 pilgrims of seven pilgrim groups representing seven Hajj establishments. The data were analysed using the SPSS and AMOS software. The findings revealed that for all pilgrims, one socio-demographic factor (education), one personal factor (expectation), two social factors (provision of information and activities) and three physical factors (routing strategies, disorientation causes and coding and signage) are observed to have significant impact on the pilgrims’ crowding perception, which significantly affects their levels of perceived safety and comfort in Mina. The findings also indicated that the impact of influential factors on the pilgrims’ crowding perception varies according to their pilgrims’ group. Based on the findings, this research recommended eight parameters that affect the pilgrims’ levels of crowding perception to enhance their levels of perceived safety and comfort in Mina. Furthermore, this thesis suggested some theoretical and practical implications as well as important avenues for future research

A structured mechanism for identifying political influencers on social media platforms : top 10 Saudi political Twitter users

Social media networks, such as Twitter, offer the perfect opportunity to either positively or negatively affect political attitudes on large audiences. The existence of influential users who have developed a reputation for their knowledge and experience of specific topics is a major factor contributing to this impact. Therefore, knowledge of the mechanisms to identify influential users on social media is vital for understanding their effect on their audience. The concept of the influential user is related to the concept of opinion leaders' to indicate that ideas first flow from mass media to opinion leaders and then to the rest of the population. Hence, the objective of this research was to provide reliable and accurate structural mechanisms to identify influential users, which could be applied to different platforms, places, and subjects. Twitter was selected as the platform of interest, and Saudi Arabia as the context for the investigation. These were selected because Saudi Arabia has a large number of Twitter users, some of whom are considerably active in setting agendas and disseminating ideas. The study considered the scientific methods that have been used to identify public opinion leaders before, utilizing metrics software on Twitter. The key findings propose multiple novel metrics to compare Twitter influencers, including the number of followers, social authority and the use of political hashtags, and four secondary filtering measures. Thus, using ratio and percentage calculations to classify the most influential users, Twitter accounts were filtered, analyzed and included. The structured approach is used as a mechanism to explore the top ten influencers on Twitter from the political domain in Saudi Arabia

Assessing the effects of crowding perception and gender among Southeast Asia pilgrims in Mina, Saudi Arabia

This study gives a better understanding of the effect of crowding on pilgrims at the Hajj. It explores the levels of perceived crowding of Southeastern Asian pilgrims and investigates the effects of gender on their perceived crowding. Questionnaire in both Bahasa Melayu and English languages were administered for data collections from randomly selected pilgrims, (n=128), from the Southeast Asia Hajj group at Mina for three days (10th, 11th and 12th of Dhul-Hijjah). Results revealed that pilgrims witness high levels of crowd perception within their stay at Mina. In addition also, differences between the overall perceived crowding, perceived human crowding and perceived spatial crowding among pilgrims were revealed. Perceived human crowding was found as an indicator to the overall perceived crowding at Mina. Future research could be carried out to assess the effects of other factors such as education and cultural backgrounds and these findings can help authorities in charge of formulating policies manage crowd levels and perception

The Use of Double-Skin Façades to Improve the Energy Consumption of High-Rise Office Buildings in a Mediterranean Climate (Csa)

This is the final version. Available on open access from MDPI via the DOI in this recordEngineers use double-skin façades (DSF) to lower the energy consumption of buildings as they can potentially control incoming wind speeds and the amount of solar heat gain. The purpose of this present study was to (1) evaluate the use of DSFs, (2) its efficacy in improving the energy performance of high-rise office buildings in the hot, dry summer climate of the Mediterranean, and (3) to develop an optimum DSF model for this climate based on industry standards and recommen-dations for high-performance DSF parameters. In order to determine the efficiency of DSFs, two distinct variables, building orientation and the number of DSFs used, were taken into consideration. This study adopted an experimental (generate and test) research design and used Autodesk® Eco-tect® Analysis software to develop computer simulations with which to assess 15 single façades, juxtaposed façades, three façades, and four façades on cardinal orientations. The recorded energy consumption and savings were then compared with that of the reference model. The results indi-cated that the three DSF model, i.e., the S14 model, reduced energy consumption during heating by 28% and by 53.5% when cooling a high-rise office building located in the hot, dry summer climate of the Mediterranean (Csa).University of Ha’il, Saudi Arabi

ROLE OF THE PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN THE IMPROVEMENT OF CARDIAC MEASURES AND DECLINING OF COMORBIDITIES.

Background: Regular physical activity (PA) can prevent many non-communicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes mellitus (DM). The present study aimed to assess the health benefits of physical activities including blood pressure and comorbid conditions. Methodology: This is a prospective cohort case-control study that recruited 300 Saudi volunteers living in the city ofHail, Northern Saudi Arabia. Results: Out of 300 participants 155(51.7%) were males and 145 (48.3%) were females. There were 111(37%) participants committed to regular physical activity and the remaining 189(63%) without a defined commitment to physical activity (Uncommitted). Among 111 persons who claimed a commitment to regular physical activity (committed), 61(55%) were males and 50(45%) were females. The majority of committed individuals were at the age group 21-25 years followed by age group 26-30 and 31-35 years representing 32, 30, and 20 persons, respectively. The physical activity was highly practiced at the age range 21-30 years and this was found to be statistically significant P < 0.001. Conclusion: There is a low prevalence of physical activity in Hail region, particularly among females, which necessitates the suggestion of appropriate awareness programs. Younger and elder populations are in much need to be targeted with PA awareness programs

Laser Vaporization of Mouth Lesions, an Overview

Lasers are utilized in dentistry as a therapeutic tool or as an auxiliary tool. The major purpose of employing lasers in dentistry is to overcome the difficulties that are currently observed in traditional dental treatment treatments. The laser is used in hard tissue applications such as caries prevention, bleaching, restorative removal and curing, cavity preparation, dentinal hypersensitivity, growth modulation, and diagnostics, whereas soft tissue applications include wound healing, removal of hyperplastic tissue to uncover impacted or partially erupted teeth, photodynamic therapy for malignancies, and photo-stimulation of herpetic lesions. Lasers' capacity to perform minimally invasive operations with minimum patient discomfort has proven effective in the patient delivery system in dentistry practice. The availability of lasers with various wavelengths has produced a surgical panacea, and laser technology has replaced traditional surgical techniques in many oral surgical operations

Whole-genome sequencing of chronic lymphocytic leukemia identifies subgroups with distinct biological and clinical features.

The value of genome-wide over targeted driver analyses for predicting clinical outcomes of cancer patients is debated. Here, we report the whole-genome sequencing of 485 chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients enrolled in clinical trials as part of the United Kingdom's 100,000 Genomes Project. We identify an extended catalog of recurrent coding and noncoding genetic mutations that represents a source for future studies and provide the most complete high-resolution map of structural variants, copy number changes and global genome features including telomere length, mutational signatures and genomic complexity. We demonstrate the relationship of these features with clinical outcome and show that integration of 186 distinct recurrent genomic alterations defines five genomic subgroups that associate with response to therapy, refining conventional outcome prediction. While requiring independent validation, our findings highlight the potential of whole-genome sequencing to inform future risk stratification in chronic lymphocytic leukemia

A precise measurement of the jet energy scale derived from single-particle measurements and in situ techniques in proton–proton collisions at s=\sqrt{s}= 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Abstract The jet energy calibration and its uncertainties are derived from measurements of the calorimeter response to single particles in both data and Monte Carlo simulation using proton–proton collisions at $$\sqrt{s} = 13$$ s = 13 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector during Run 2 at the Large Hadron Collider. The jet calibration uncertainty for anti- $$k_T$$ k T jets with a jet radius parameter of R $$_\textrm{jet} = 0.4$$ jet = 0.4 and in the central jet rapidity region is about 2.5% for transverse momenta ( $$p_{\text {T}}$$ p T ) of 20 $$\text {GeV}$$ GeV , about $$0.5\%$$ 0.5 % for $$p_{\text {T}} =300$$ p T = 300 $$\text {GeV}$$ GeV and $$0.7\%$$ 0.7 % for $$p_{\text {T}} =4$$ p T = 4 $$\text {TeV}$$ TeV . Excellent agreement is found with earlier determinations obtained from $$p_\textrm{T}$$ p T -balance based in situ methods ( $$Z/\gamma$$ Z / γ +jets). The combination of these two independent methods results in the most precise jet energy measurement achieved so far with the ATLAS detector with a relative uncertainty of $$0.3\%$$ 0.3 % at $$p_\textrm{T}=300$$ p T = 300 GeV and $$0.6\%$$ 0.6 % at 4 TeV. The jet energy calibration is also derived with the single-particle calorimeter response measurements separately for quark- and gluon-induced jets and furthermore for jets with R $$_\textrm{jet}$$ jet varying from 0.2 to 1.0 retaining the correlations between these measurements. Differences between inclusive jets and jets from boosted top-quark decays, with and without grooming the soft jet constituents, are also studied