From Zoning Based Area To A Hybrid Space; The Transformation Strategies

One of the contemporary city`s ambition nowadays is to be more comfortable, flexible and coeval. Although numerous urban design attempts have appeared to enhance the user’s gratification, there are urgent demands to upgrade the classical public space to be more agreeable with the necessities of everyday life. Most of the urban areas after industry era are zoning based, meanwhile, have been less adaptable to daily life conditions economically, environmentally and psychologically alike. The zoning based space has a single- activity such as public or private, workspace or leisure space, etc., while the urgent demand is to look for kind of space, has mixed -activities that give it more richness, diversity, and interaction. This type of Heterotopic space has potentials, characteristics, and efforts that reconcile everyday life requirements. On another hand, it could be defined, as a smart space, which is more correspondent with technological development through applying the digital technologies involved it. This paper is an attempt to reframe the principles of creating public space and portrays the features of transforming the zoning based area into a hybrid one. In addition, it aims to implement deconstructive approach tools as strategies for enhancing user satisfaction in public space. The paper adopts a comparative approach that criticizes the zoning theory from different perspectives according to numerous situations and it accepts the hybrid space theory as a substitutional possibility to deconstruct the typical public space

Removal of nitrogen pollutant from domestic wastewater

Water as a medium for waste transport would be easily contaminated by human activities. Many methods have been proposed to treat contaminated water to protect human health and biodiversity (Z. Daud et al., 2017). Due to upgrade the existing wastewater treatment plant facilities, the typically advanced technologies have been proposed to remove many types of pollutant, effectively (Tchobanoglous, Burton, & Stensel, 2004). The development of wastewater treatment plant needs to be considered leading economic indicators to have low operational and maintenance costs (Lewandowski, 2015; Shammas, Wang, & Wu, 2009). Aerobic digestion (AD) has been known since 1950 as biological wastewater treatment process to treat wastewater by removing the pollutants for instance colloids, organic compounds and suspended solids to avoid the excessive pollutants released into the receiving water (Shammas and Wang, 2007)

The Predictive Ability of the Self-Esteem scale Dimensions for Bully Victimization Among Basic School Students in the City of Ma'an, Jordan

The study aimed at identifying the ability of the self-esteem scale dimensions in predicting bully victimization among basic school students in the city of Ma'an in Jordan.  The study examined the variations in students’ levels of self-esteem and levels of bully victimization in relevance to gender, academic achievement, and birth order. The bully victimization scale and self- esteem scale were used to achieve the purposes of this study. The sample included 225 students (104 males and 121females) from grades 6 to 9. The results showed statistically significant negative relation between total self-esteem scale and its dimensions and the levels of bully victimization and that the dimensions of self-esteem scale explained 17.5 % of variance of the degree of bully victimization. It was also revealed that family and social dimensions of self-esteem were statistically significant in predicting levels of bully victimization among the participants. Furthermore, there were statistically significant differences in students’ levels of self-esteem scale in favor of males and students with “excellent” academic achievement. However, there were no statistically significant differences in the students’ levels of self-esteem related to birth order. Finally, female students reported significantly higher levels of bully victimization; and that academic performance and birth order were not statistically significant. Keywords: Self- Esteem, Bully Victimization, Basic schools students, Ma'an, Jordan. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-11-08 Publication date: April 30th 202

The prevalence of bipolar spectrum disorder in medical students of Pakistan

Background: Bipolar affective disorder is cyclic swinging of mood between mania or hypo-mania and depression. Bipolar disorder is the sixth leading cause of disability worldwide and has a lifetime prevalence of about 1 to 3% in the general population. Despite a growing body of knowledge on bipolar spectrum disorder (BSD), relatively little is known about the clinical characteristics of BSD in medical students. This study evaluates the prevalence and severity of BSD in medical students in relation to certain socio-demographic factors like age, sex and class of education.Methods: A questionnaire based study was done on 298 medical students of Nishtar Medical University, Multan and Shaikh Zayed Medical College, Rahim Yar Khan chosen on basis of random sampling to test the prevalence of bipolar spectrum disorders using Mood Disorder questionnaire (MDQ). Out of these students 161 were males and 137 were females. Students were interviewed to obtain information about age, sex and academic year of education.Results: According to mood disorder questionnaire scoring, of the total 298 students 80 (26.84%) screened positive for bipolar spectrum disorder (BSD). Among 80 students who screened positive for BSD 43 (53.75%) are males while 37 (46.25%) are females. Class-wise distribution of BSD is as follows: Out of 80 students screened positive 15 (18.75%) are from 2nd year, 22 (27.5%) from 3rd year and 43 (53.75) from 4th year. Age-wise distribution of BSD is as following: Students of age 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23 years suffering from BSD were 5 (6.25%), 17 (21.25%), 23(28.75),22 (27.5%) and 13 (16.25%) respectively.Conclusions: In our study, the estimated rate of prevalence for bipolar spectrum disorder among medical students of Pakistan is 26.84%. There was no significant difference in prevalence on the basis of gender. Prevalence was increasing with both age and class wise distribution

Comparative Analysis of State-of-the-Art Deep Learning Models for Detecting COVID-19 Lung Infection from Chest X-Ray Images

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has already taken millions of lives and damaged economies across the globe. Most COVID-19 deaths and economic losses are reported from densely crowded cities. It is comprehensible that the effective control and prevention of epidemic/pandemic infectious diseases is vital. According to WHO, testing and diagnosis is the best strategy to control pandemics. Scientists worldwide are attempting to develop various innovative and cost-efficient methods to speed up the testing process. This paper comprehensively evaluates the applicability of the recent top ten state-of-the-art Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for automatically detecting COVID-19 infection using chest X-ray images. Moreover, it provides a comparative analysis of these models in terms of accuracy. This study identifies the effective methodologies to control and prevent infectious respiratory diseases. Our trained models have demonstrated outstanding results in classifying the COVID-19 infected chest x-rays. In particular, our trained models MobileNet, EfficentNet, and InceptionV3 achieved a classification average accuracy of 95\%, 95\%, and 94\% test set for COVID-19 class classification, respectively. Thus, it can be beneficial for clinical practitioners and radiologists to speed up the testing, detection, and follow-up of COVID-19 cases

Moral Intelligence and its Relation to Conflict Resolution Skill among King Saud University Students in the light of some Variables

هدفت الدراسة الحالية التعرف إلى الذكاء الأخلاقي وعلاقته بمهارة حل النزاعات لدى طلبة جامعة الملك سعود في ضوء متغير الجنس، ونوع الكلية (علمي، إنساني)، والمستوى الدراسي، والكشف عن إمكانية التنبوء بمهارة حل النزاعات لدى طلبة جامعة الملك سعود من خلال درجاتهم على مقياس الذكاء الأخلاقي. وقد شملت عينة الدراسة (360) طالباً وطالبة من طلاب الجامعة، واستخدم الباحثون المنهج الوصفي بشقيه الارتباطي والمقارن، وأشارت نتائج الدراسة إلى أن الذكاء الأخلاقي، ومهارة حل النزاعات جاءا بدرجة منخفضة، كما أشارت نتائج الدراسة أن هناك فروقا في الذكاء الأخلاقي لصالح الذكور، في حين لم تكن هناك فروق ذات دلالة إحصائية في الذكاء الأخلاقي تعود لنوع الكلية، أو المستوى الدراسي. كما أشارت النتائج أيضا إلى وجود علاقة ارتباطية دالة إحصائيا عند مستوى دلالة .010 بين الذكاء الأخلاقي ومهارة حل النزاعات. كما أشارت النتائج إلى أن المتغيرات المستقلة (أبعاد الذكاء الأخلاقي: القلب الطيب، والضمير، وإدراك الانفعالات، والخيال الأخلاقي) تسهم في التنبؤ بالدرجة الكلية لمهارة حل النزاعات. الكلمات المفتاحية: الذكاء الأخلاقي، مهارة حل النزاعات، جامعة الملك سعود، المملكة العربية السعودية.The aim of the present study was to identify moral intelligence and its relation to conflict resolution skill among King Saud University students in the light of gender, the type of college (sciences or humanities) and the study level. Furthermore, this study attempted to find out whether it is possible to predict the conflict resolution skill among students of King Saud University (KSU) by their score on the moral intelligence scale. The sample of the study consisted of (360) students from KSU. The researchers used the correlative and comparative descriptive method. The findings of the study indicated that the score of the moral intelligence and conflict resolution skill was low. In addition, the findings showed that there was a difference in moral intelligence in favor of males, while there were no statistically significant differences in the moral intelligence based on the type of college or the study level. The study findings also revealed that there was a statistically significant correlation at the level of 0.01 between moral intelligence and conflict resolution skill. It was also found out that independent variables (dimensions of moral intelligence: sympathy, conscience, recognition of emotions & moral imagination) contribute to predicting the overall skill of conflict resolution. Keywords: conflict resolution, moral intelligence, KSU, KSA. &nbsp

Time series subsidence evaluation using NSBAS InSAR: a case study of twin megacities (Rawalpindi and Islamabad) in Pakistan

Ground deformation associated with natural and anthropogenic activities can be damaging for infrastructure and can cause enormous economic loss, particularly in developing countries which lack measuring instruments. Remote sensing techniques like interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) can thus play an important role in investigating deformation and mitigating geohazards. Rawalpindi and Islamabad are twin cities in Pakistan with a population of approximately 5.4 million, along with important government and private entities of national and international interest. In this study, we evaluate rapid paced subsidence in this area using a modified small baseline subset technique with Sentinel-1A imagery acquired between 2015 and 2022. Our results show that approximately 50 mm/year subsidence occurs in the older city of Rawalpindi, the most populated zone. We observed that subsidence in the area is controlled by the buried splays of the Main Boundary Thrust, one of the most destructive active faults in the recent past. We suggest that such rapid subsidence is most probably due to aggressive subsurface water extraction. It has been found that, despite provision of alternate water supplies by the district government, a very alarming number of tube wells are being operated in the area to extract ground water. Over 2017–2021, field data showed that near-surface aquifers up to 50–60 m deep are exhausted, and most of the tube wells are currently extracting water from depths of approximately 150–160 m. The dropping water level is proportional to the increasing number of tube wells. Lying downstream of tributaries originating from the Margalla and Murree hills, this area has a good monsoon season, and its topography supports recharge of the aquifers. However, rapid subsidence indicates a deficit between water extraction and recharge, partly due to the limitations inherent in shale and the low porosity near the surface lithology exposed in the area. Other factors amplifying the impacts are fast urbanization, uncontrolled population growth, and non-cultivation of precipitation in the area

Antimicrobial resistance among migrants in Europe: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are rising globally and there is concern that increased migration is contributing to the burden of antibiotic resistance in Europe. However, the effect of migration on the burden of AMR in Europe has not yet been comprehensively examined. Therefore, we did a systematic review and meta-analysis to identify and synthesise data for AMR carriage or infection in migrants to Europe to examine differences in patterns of AMR across migrant groups and in different settings. METHODS: For this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed, and Scopus with no language restrictions from Jan 1, 2000, to Jan 18, 2017, for primary data from observational studies reporting antibacterial resistance in common bacterial pathogens among migrants to 21 European Union-15 and European Economic Area countries. To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to report data on carriage or infection with laboratory-confirmed antibiotic-resistant organisms in migrant populations. We extracted data from eligible studies and assessed quality using piloted, standardised forms. We did not examine drug resistance in tuberculosis and excluded articles solely reporting on this parameter. We also excluded articles in which migrant status was determined by ethnicity, country of birth of participants' parents, or was not defined, and articles in which data were not disaggregated by migrant status. Outcomes were carriage of or infection with antibiotic-resistant organisms. We used random-effects models to calculate the pooled prevalence of each outcome. The study protocol is registered with PROSPERO, number CRD42016043681. FINDINGS: We identified 2274 articles, of which 23 observational studies reporting on antibiotic resistance in 2319 migrants were included. The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or AMR infection in migrants was 25·4% (95% CI 19·1-31·8; I2 =98%), including meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (7·8%, 4·8-10·7; I2 =92%) and antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria (27·2%, 17·6-36·8; I2 =94%). The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or infection was higher in refugees and asylum seekers (33·0%, 18·3-47·6; I2 =98%) than in other migrant groups (6·6%, 1·8-11·3; I2 =92%). The pooled prevalence of antibiotic-resistant organisms was slightly higher in high-migrant community settings (33·1%, 11·1-55·1; I2 =96%) than in migrants in hospitals (24·3%, 16·1-32·6; I2 =98%). We did not find evidence of high rates of transmission of AMR from migrant to host populations. INTERPRETATION: Migrants are exposed to conditions favouring the emergence of drug resistance during transit and in host countries in Europe. Increased antibiotic resistance among refugees and asylum seekers and in high-migrant community settings (such as refugee camps and detention facilities) highlights the need for improved living conditions, access to health care, and initiatives to facilitate detection of and appropriate high-quality treatment for antibiotic-resistant infections during transit and in host countries. Protocols for the prevention and control of infection and for antibiotic surveillance need to be integrated in all aspects of health care, which should be accessible for all migrant groups, and should target determinants of AMR before, during, and after migration. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health Research Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, Imperial College Healthcare Charity, the Wellcome Trust, and UK National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare-associated Infections and Antimictobial Resistance at Imperial College London

Evolving trends in the management of acute appendicitis during COVID-19 waves. The ACIE appy II study

Background: In 2020, ACIE Appy study showed that COVID-19 pandemic heavily affected the management of patients with acute appendicitis (AA) worldwide, with an increased rate of non-operative management (NOM) strategies and a trend toward open surgery due to concern of virus transmission by laparoscopy and controversial recommendations on this issue. The aim of this study was to survey again the same group of surgeons to assess if any difference in management attitudes of AA had occurred in the later stages of the outbreak. Methods: From August 15 to September 30, 2021, an online questionnaire was sent to all 709 participants of the ACIE Appy study. The questionnaire included questions on personal protective equipment (PPE), local policies and screening for SARS-CoV-2 infection, NOM, surgical approach and disease presentations in 2021. The results were compared with the results from the previous study. Results: A total of 476 answers were collected (response rate 67.1%). Screening policies were significatively improved with most patients screened regardless of symptoms (89.5% vs. 37.4%) with PCR and antigenic test as the preferred test (74.1% vs. 26.3%). More patients tested positive before surgery and commercial systems were the preferred ones to filter smoke plumes during laparoscopy. Laparoscopic appendicectomy was the first option in the treatment of AA, with a declined use of NOM. Conclusion: Management of AA has improved in the last waves of pandemic. Increased evidence regarding SARS-COV-2 infection along with a timely healthcare systems response has been translated into tailored attitudes and a better care for patients with AA worldwide

Surgical site infection after gastrointestinal surgery in high-income, middle-income, and low-income countries: a prospective, international, multicentre cohort study

Background: Surgical site infection (SSI) is one of the most common infections associated with health care, but its importance as a global health priority is not fully understood. We quantified the burden of SSI after gastrointestinal surgery in countries in all parts of the world. Methods: This international, prospective, multicentre cohort study included consecutive patients undergoing elective or emergency gastrointestinal resection within 2-week time periods at any health-care facility in any country. Countries with participating centres were stratified into high-income, middle-income, and low-income groups according to the UN's Human Development Index (HDI). Data variables from the GlobalSurg 1 study and other studies that have been found to affect the likelihood of SSI were entered into risk adjustment models. The primary outcome measure was the 30-day SSI incidence (defined by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria for superficial and deep incisional SSI). Relationships with explanatory variables were examined using Bayesian multilevel logistic regression models. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT02662231. Findings: Between Jan 4, 2016, and July 31, 2016, 13 265 records were submitted for analysis. 12 539 patients from 343 hospitals in 66 countries were included. 7339 (58·5%) patient were from high-HDI countries (193 hospitals in 30 countries), 3918 (31·2%) patients were from middle-HDI countries (82 hospitals in 18 countries), and 1282 (10·2%) patients were from low-HDI countries (68 hospitals in 18 countries). In total, 1538 (12·3%) patients had SSI within 30 days of surgery. The incidence of SSI varied between countries with high (691 [9·4%] of 7339 patients), middle (549 [14·0%] of 3918 patients), and low (298 [23·2%] of 1282) HDI (p < 0·001). The highest SSI incidence in each HDI group was after dirty surgery (102 [17·8%] of 574 patients in high-HDI countries; 74 [31·4%] of 236 patients in middle-HDI countries; 72 [39·8%] of 181 patients in low-HDI countries). Following risk factor adjustment, patients in low-HDI countries were at greatest risk of SSI (adjusted odds ratio 1·60, 95% credible interval 1·05–2·37; p=0·030). 132 (21·6%) of 610 patients with an SSI and a microbiology culture result had an infection that was resistant to the prophylactic antibiotic used. Resistant infections were detected in 49 (16·6%) of 295 patients in high-HDI countries, in 37 (19·8%) of 187 patients in middle-HDI countries, and in 46 (35·9%) of 128 patients in low-HDI countries (p < 0·001). Interpretation: Countries with a low HDI carry a disproportionately greater burden of SSI than countries with a middle or high HDI and might have higher rates of antibiotic resistance. In view of WHO recommendations on SSI prevention that highlight the absence of high-quality interventional research, urgent, pragmatic, randomised trials based in LMICs are needed to assess measures aiming to reduce this preventable complication