Medical Students’ Attitudes and Influential Factors Towards Conducting Medical Research

Background: Medical research is becoming an essential part of medical students’ curricula in several medical colleges around Saudi Arabia. This study aimed to assess medical students' attitudes towards conducting medical research and identify their motives.   Methods: This is a cross-sectional study that was conducted between December 2021 and April 2022 and used the Student Attitude Towards Research (SAR) scale and the students’ perceived influential factors toward participating in research activities questionnaire. A 5-Likert scale was used to assess the level of students’ agreement from ‘strongly disagree=1’, ‘disagree=2’, ‘neutral=3’, ‘agree=4’, to ‘strongly agree=5’. Demographic information such as gender, year of study, and previously published research was collected. The survey was distributed among medical students in the college of medicine, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS) in Jeddah and Riyadh campuses, Saudi Arabia. The chi-square test was used to compare categorical values and report any differences. A P-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.   Results: A total of 500 responses were collected from the students (67.2% males and 32.8% females). Most students agreed with the following statements ‘Research is important for identifying and investigating problems in a subject matter’ (N=399, 79.8%) and ‘I am much interested in participating in research activities at the undergraduate level’ (N=318, 63.6%). There was a significant difference among students in responses to following statement: ‘I am always getting the chance to discuss about the scientific/academic research in my class) (P=0.022). Female students agreed more than male students that ‘faculty have adequate skills to handle research methodology’ (3.93±1.01 vs. 3.7±1.06, P=0.014). Furthermore, a significant difference was found in the following statement: ‘faculty members use research findings as a part of their teaching material’ (P <.001). The students agreed that their college has adequate infrastructure to organize research programs (N=321, 64.2%, P=0.005). The top four influential factors towards conducting medical research were ‘to facilitate entry into competitive residency programs’ (4.248) followed by ‘having an interest in specific research field or medical topic’ (4.226) and ‘to improve curriculum vitae (CV)’ (4.202) then ‘it is a necessary competency for future clinical work’ (4.164). A 5-Likert scale was used to calculate the average of the students’ responses where 5 indicates ‘strongly agree’ and 1 indicate ‘strongly disagree’.   Conclusion: The students showed a positive attitude towards conducting medical research at the undergraduate level. The influential factors highlighted how students conduct research to advance their careers and explore their interest in a specific field or medical topic. This study is important for decision-makers, residency program directors, and research center directors to reconsider published research & research activities as a prerequisite for acceptance into competitive programs. Future studies ought to investigate if medical students pursue research activities after college, their attitudes, and influential factors as well as to investigate the research skills they have and how they acquired them

Medical Students’ Attitudes and Influential Factors Towards Conducting Medical Research

Background: Medical research has become an essential part of medical students’ curricula at several medical colleges in Saudi Arabia. This study aimed to assess medical students' attitudes and identify factors influencing their willingness to conduct medical research. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted between December 2021 and April 2022 using the students' attitudes towards research and the students’ perceived influential factors toward participating in research activities questionnaires. A 5-Likert scale to calculate the average of the students’ responses, where 5 indicated ‘strongly agree’ and 1 indicated ‘strongly disagree’.  The survey was distributed to medical students at the College of Medicine, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS), Saudi Arabia. Results: A total of 500 responses were collected from the students (67.2% male and 32.8% female). Most students agreed with the following statement: ‘Research is important for identifying and investigating problems in a subject matter’ (N=399, 79.8%). More than half of the students agreed with the following statement: ‘I am very interested in participating in research activities at the undergraduate level’ (N=318, 63.6%). The top three influential factors for conducting medical research were ‘to facilitate entry into competitive residency programs’, followed by ‘interest in specific research fields or medical topics’ and ‘to improve curriculum vitae (CV).’ Conclusion: The majority of the surveyed students showed a positive attitude towards conducting medical research in King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Saudi Arabia. Most students conduct research to gain a competitive edge and explore specialties of interest

Impacts of Climate Modes on Air-Sea Heat Exchange in the Red Sea

The impacts of various climate modes on the Red Sea surface heat exchange are investigated using the MERRA reanalysis and the OAFlux satellite reanalysis datasets. Seasonality in the atmospheric forcing is also explored. Mode impacts peak during boreal winter [December–February (DJF)] with average anomalies of 12–18 W m−2 to be found in the northern Red Sea. The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the east Atlantic–west Russia (EAWR) pattern, and the Indian monsoon index (IMI) exhibit the strongest influence on the air–sea heat exchange during the winter. In this season, the largest negative anomalies of about −30 W m−2 are associated with the EAWR pattern over the central part of the Red Sea. In other seasons, mode-related anomalies are considerably lower, especially during spring when the mode impacts are negligible. The mode impacts are strongest over the northern half of the Red Sea during winter and autumn. In summer, the southern half of the basin is strongly influenced by the multivariate ENSO index (MEI). The winter mode–related anomalies are determined mostly by the latent heat flux component, while in summer the shortwave flux is also important. The influence of the modes on the Red Sea is found to be generally weaker than on the neighboring Mediterranean basin

Double deep Q-network based joint edge caching and content recommendation with inconsistent file sizes in fog-RANs

In this paper, the joint edge caching and content recommendation problem for the case of inconsistent file sizes is investigated for fog radio access networks (F-RANs). Firstly, we transform the joint caching and recommendation policy into a ‘single’ caching policy. Then, a time-varying personalized user request model is proposed to describe the fluctuant demands of users. To maximize the long-term net profit of each fog access point (F-AP), we formulate the caching optimization problem and resort to a reinforcement learning (RL) framework. To address the impact of file size inconsistency, a ‘pre-split’ mechanism with a dynamic upper limit is adopted to meet the constraint of storage capacity, and a ‘lazy’ updating mechanism is introduced into the training process. Finally, a double deep Q-network (DDQN) based distributed edge caching algorithm is proposed with content recommendation. Simulation results show that compared with the existing methods, the average net profit of our proposed algorithm can be increased up to 29.7% while content recommendation can not only increase caching efficiency but also accelerate convergence

Towards an end-to-end analysis and prediction system for weather, climate, and Marine applications in the Red Sea

AbstractThe Red Sea, home to the second-longest coral reef system in the world, is a vital resource for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Red Sea provides 90% of the Kingdom’s potable water by desalinization, supporting tourism, shipping, aquaculture, and fishing industries, which together contribute about 10%–20% of the country’s GDP. All these activities, and those elsewhere in the Red Sea region, critically depend on oceanic and atmospheric conditions. At a time of mega-development projects along the Red Sea coast, and global warming, authorities are working on optimizing the harnessing of environmental resources, including renewable energy and rainwater harvesting. All these require high-resolution weather and climate information. Toward this end, we have undertaken a multipronged research and development activity in which we are developing an integrated data-driven regional coupled modeling system. The telescopically nested components include 5-km- to 600-m-resolution atmospheric models to address weather and climate challenges, 4-km- to 50-m-resolution ocean models with regional and coastal configurations to simulate and predict the general and mesoscale circulation, 4-km- to 100-m-resolution ecosystem models to simulate the biogeochemistry, and 1-km- to 50-m-resolution wave models. In addition, a complementary probabilistic transport modeling system predicts dispersion of contaminant plumes, oil spill, and marine ecosystem connectivity. Advanced ensemble data assimilation capabilities have also been implemented for accurate forecasting. Resulting achievements include significant advancement in our understanding of the regional circulation and its connection to the global climate, development, and validation of long-term Red Sea regional atmospheric–oceanic–wave reanalyses and forecasting capacities. These products are being extensively used by academia, government, and industry in various weather and marine studies and operations, environmental policies, renewable energy applications, impact assessment, flood forecasting, and more.</jats:p

Burnout among surgeons before and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: an international survey

Background: SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had many significant impacts within the surgical realm, and surgeons have been obligated to reconsider almost every aspect of daily clinical practice. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study reported in compliance with the CHERRIES guidelines and conducted through an online platform from June 14th to July 15th, 2020. The primary outcome was the burden of burnout during the pandemic indicated by the validated Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure. Results: Nine hundred fifty-four surgeons completed the survey. The median length of practice was 10&nbsp;years; 78.2% included were male with a median age of 37&nbsp;years old, 39.5% were consultants, 68.9% were general surgeons, and 55.7% were affiliated with an academic institution. Overall, there was a significant increase in the mean burnout score during the pandemic; longer years of practice and older age were significantly associated with less burnout. There were significant reductions in the median number of outpatient visits, operated cases, on-call hours, emergency visits, and research work, so, 48.2% of respondents felt that the training resources were insufficient. The majority (81.3%) of respondents reported that their hospitals were included in the management of COVID-19, 66.5% felt their roles had been minimized; 41% were asked to assist in non-surgical medical practices, and 37.6% of respondents were included in COVID-19 management. Conclusions: There was a significant burnout among trainees. Almost all aspects of clinical and research activities were affected with a significant reduction in the volume of research, outpatient clinic visits, surgical procedures, on-call hours, and emergency cases hindering the training. Trial registration: The study was registered on clicaltrials.gov "NCT04433286" on 16/06/2020

Midpoint Inequalities in Fractional Calculus Defined Using Positive Weighted Symmetry Function Kernels

The aim of our study is to establish, for convex functions on an interval, a midpoint version of the fractional HHF type inequality. The corresponding fractional integral has a symmetric weight function composed with an increasing function as integral kernel. We also consider a midpoint identity and establish some related inequalities based on this identity. Some special cases can be considered from our main results. These results confirm the generality of our attempt

Solving the Modified Regularized Long Wave Equations via Higher Degree B-Spline Algorithm

The current article considers the sextic B-spline collocation methods (SBCM1 and SBCM2) to approximate the solution of the modified regularized long wave (MRLW) equation. In view of this, we will study the solitary wave motion and interaction of higher (two and three) solitary waves. Also, the modified Maxwellian initial condition into solitary waves is studied. Moreover, the stability analysis of the methods has been discussed, and these will be unconditionally stable. Moreover, we have calculated the numerical conserved laws and error norms L2 and L∞ to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the method. The numerical examples are presented to illustrate the applications of the methods and to compare the computed results with the other methods. The results show that our proposed methods are more accurate than the other methods

Role of bioconvection, porous medium, and activation energy on the dynamic of Sisko nanofluid: the case of an enlarging cylinder

The current problem is attributed to various features of Sisko nanofluids flow over-stretching cylinder along bioconvection of motile microorganisms in the presence of activation energy and non-Fourier thermal diffusion. The appropriate methodology is adopted to transform the governing boundary layer equations of fluid flow into the dimensionless nonlinear ODEs. The transformed coupled nonlinear differential equations are resolved numerically with MATLAB software with Bvp4c (Lobatto-IIIa) solver. The effect of dissimilar parameters viz., the Sisko material parameter, porosity parameter, bioconvection Lewis number, thermophoresis parameter, and bioconvection parameter on the velocity, temperature, concentration, and micro-organisms distribution are presented in numeric and graphics modes. The porous drag force of the Darcian linear system is used to evaluate the porosity parameter. It is also noticed that the numerical values of the porosity parameter reduced the velocity while it is enhancing the temperature. This research of wall cooling and heating bears is indispensable applications in solar porous water absorber systems, chemical engineering, space technology, metallurgy, substantial processing, and so forth.This Research was supported by Taif University Researchers Supporting Project Number (TURSP-2020/217), Taif University, Taif, Saudi Arabia

On the enhancement of thermal transport of Kerosene oil mixed TiO₂and SiO₂ across Riga wedge

Efficient thermal transportation in compact heat density gadgets is a prevailing issue to be addressed. The flow of a mono nanofluid (SiO2/Kerosene oil) and hybrid nanofluid (TiO2 + SiO2/Kerosene oil) is studied in context of Riga wedge. The basic purpose of this work pertains to improve thermal conductivity of base liquid with inclusions of nano-entities. The hybrid nanofluid flow over Riga wedge is new aspect of this work. The concentration of new species is assumed to constitute the base liquid to be non-Newtonian. The fundamental formulation of the concentration laws of mass, momentum and energy involve partial derivatives. The associated boundary conditions are taken in to account. Similarity variables are utilized to transform the leading set of equations into ordinary differential form. Shooting procedure combined with Runge-Kutta method is harnessed to attain numerical outcomes. The computational process is run in matlab script. It is seen that the velocity component f′(η) goes upward with exceeding inputs of modified Hartmann number Mh and it slows down when non-dimensional material parameter αh takes large values. Also, Nusselt number - θ′(0) is enhanced with developing values of Eckert number Ec and Biot number Bi.Published versionThis Research was supported by Taif University Researchers Supporting Project Number (TURSP-2020/217), Taif University, Taif, Saudi Arabia