Evaluation of inappropriate prescribing to the hospitalized elderly patients in Al Shifa hospital, Gaza, Palestine

Background: The current study aimed to assess the prevalence of inappropriate prescribing (IP) for hospitalized elderly patients at Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza, Palestine.Methods: This study was a retrospective cross-sectional study. A total of 2385 prescribed drugs for 380 elderly inpatients in internal, cardiology, and respiratory departments were screened for IP. Four criteria were used to detect IP using chart review method; Drug-drug interactions (DDIs), drug contra-indications (CI), duplication of therapy and Beers' criteria 2012.Results: The results showed that 44.2% of patients had at least one IP. Around 33.2% of the patients had DDIs, 19.2% had IP according to Beers' criteria and 1.1% had drug CI. There was no duplication of therapy. A total of 323 IP instances were detected. Of them, 74% for DDIs and 24.8% for Beers' criteria. The prevalence of overall IP was significantly influenced by age (p-value=0.024), polypharmacy (p-value<0.001), degree of morbidity (p-value<0.001), and departments (p-value=0.018). The prevalence of DDIs was influenced by polypharmacy (p-value<0.001), degree of morbidity (p-value=0.001), and departments (p-value=0.005). Finally, the prevalence of IP according to Beers' criteria was significantly influenced by departments with the highest in the cardiology department (29.7%) (P-value=0.007).Conclusions: Although the overall IP was common, it was not far higher than that reported worldwide. The majority of IP was DDIs. Age, polypharmacy, degree of morbidity and departments influenced the occurrence of IP

Hydrogeology and Water Quality of Umm Alradhma Aquifer, Eastern Saudi Arabia

Umm Alradhma limestone aquifer represents the most important aquifers in Saudi Arabia. This aquifer is the largest groundwater reservoir in the Arabian Peninsula. It has high potential of groundwater with average saturated thickness of Umm Alradhma 270 m. the average transmissivity, hydraulic conductivity and effective porosity of Umm Alradhma limestone aquifer are 5800 m2/day, 33 m3/day and 30% respectively. The groundwater of the Umm Alradhma limestone aquifer exists under confined condition in the study area. The productivity of the wells reached 704000 m3/day and provided Riyadh City about 300,000 m3/day. The hydrochemical analyses of 52 groundwater samples representing Umm Alradhma limestone aquifer reveal that the groundwater origin is meteoric. The presence of marine salts in groundwater is attributed to the effective leaching and dissolution processes through the flow path within the aquifer materials (limestone, dolomitic limestone and dolomite). The groundwater salinity of the Umm Alradhma limestone aquifer in the study area ranges between 1195-1429 ppm. This suggests that groundwater of Umm Alradhma limestone aquifer is acceptable for domestic, industrial and agricultural purposes. Keywords: Umm Alradhma aquifer, Hydrogeology, Water Qualit

Environmental Impact of Landfill on Groundwater, South East of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The main objective of this work had been given to the environmental impact of landfill on groundwater. The groundwater in the study area had problems caused by the landfill and the high volumes of sewage water percolating into the groundwater. The existing soil stratigraphy at the landfill consisting of sandy sheet and fractured limestone lead to increasing leachate percolation into the groundwater. The groundwater resources are used mainly for crop irrigation in an agriculture dominated area. The chemical analysis of groundwater indicates that nitrate pollution can be a serious problem affecting groundwater due to the infiltration of leachate in landfill downward to groundwater and the use of nitrogen (N) fertilizers in agriculture. The high concentrations of NO3- and Zn especially in landfill site in groundwater, likely indicate that groundwater is being significantly affected by leachate percolation. The nitrate and Zinc concentrations in groundwater samples in landfill site reach 191 ppm and 1473 ? g/L respectively. The groundwater in the study area is exploited from fractured limestone aquifer belonging to several limestone formations and groundwater of the concerned aquifer exists under unconfined conditions. The groundwater flow direction is from the northwest to the southeast direction. The leachate produced by waste disposal sites contains large amounts of substances which are likely to contaminate groundwater. Chemical analyses were carried out on groundwater samples collected from the neighborhood of landfill yard and spread to southeast direction. The effects of dumping activity on groundwater appeared most clearly as high concentrations of total dissolved solids (TDS), electrical conductivity (EC), total hardness (TH), chloride, nitrates and sulphates. Groundwater samples from the wells situated close to the landfill were found to be more contaminated than that of the wells situated farther away. Keywords: Environmental Impact, Landfill, Groundwater, Saudi Arabi

Validation of air freezing index (AFI), for determination of frost penetration depth in typical arid and semi-arid zones of Iran

Depth of frost penetration is one of the main indices in agriculture, civil and transportation engineering. Soil temperature is a function of several factors including: topography, solar radiation, air temperature, moisture content and other physical properties of soil such as thermal capacity, coefficient of heat conductivity, and specific heat. The main objective of the present paper is to determine the frost penetration depth in soils based on the air temperature. In this study the daily and hourly temperatures of air and soil at different depths of three climatology stations located at Shahr-e-Kord, Yazd and Urmia cities of Iran were collected and analyzed for a period of 11 years from 1992 to 2003. In the first stage, Air Freezing Indices (AFI) of the three named stations was calculated using three methods known as: American, Norwegian and Finn and then the results were compared with the observed values accordingly. Investigations showed that correlation between the results is significant at one percent level, but the three methods gave different figures. Based on other references, it has been shown that the American method is more suitable for regions located at the middle latitudes. Thus, the correlations between Frost Penetration Depth (FPD) and AFI based on the US method were calculated and found to be 0.88 and 0.82 for Shahr-e-Kord and Urmia stations respectively. However, the correlation for Yazd station was much lower (0.65), and significant (P<0.05). As a general, it was concluded that application of this method is more relevant to semi-arid rather than arid zones, but in the absence of a better method, the same index could be used for determination of FDP in arid zones as well

Breakdown of Simple Scaling in Abelian Sandpile Models in One Dimension

We study the abelian sandpile model on decorated one dimensional chains. We determine the structure and the asymptotic form of distribution of avalanche-sizes in these models, and show that these differ qualitatively from the behavior on a simple linear chain. We find that the probability distribution of the total number of topplings $s$ on a finite system of size $L$ is not described by a simple finite size scaling form, but by a linear combination of two simple scaling forms $Prob_L(s) = 1/L f_1(s/L) + 1/L^2 f_2(s/L^2)$, for large $L$, where $f_1$ and $f_2$ are some scaling functions of one argument.Comment: 10 pages, revtex, figures include

Alternative proof for the localization of Sinai's walk

We give an alternative proof of the localization of Sinai's random walk in random environment under weaker hypothesis than the ones used by Sinai. Moreover we give estimates that are stronger than the one of Sinai on the localization neighborhood and on the probability for the random walk to stay inside this neighborhood

The Adverse Effects of Auditory Stress on Mouse Uterus Receptivity and Behaviour

Stress during gestation has harmful effects on pregnancy outcome and can lead to spontaneous abortion. Few studies, however, have addressed the impact of gestational stress, particularly auditory stress, on behavioural performance and pregnancy outcome in mice. This study aimed to examine the effect of two types of gestational stress on uterus receptivity and behavioural performance. Pregnant C57BL/6 mice were randomly assigned to either auditory or physical stress conditions or a control condition from gestational days 12-16. The auditory stress regimen used loud 3000 Hz tone, while the physical stressor consisted of restraint and exposure to an elevated platform. Three behavioural tests were performed in the dams after weaning. Uterine receptivity was investigated by counting the number of sites of implantation and fetal resorption. Also, the offspring survival rates during the early postnatal period were calculated. Auditory stress caused an increase in anxiety-like behaviour, reduced time spent exploring new object/environment, and reduced balance when compared to the physical stress and control groups. Auditory stress also caused higher rates of resorbed embryos and reduction of litter size. Our results suggest that the adverse effect of noise stress is stronger than physical stress for both uterus receptivity and behavioural performance of the dams. © 2017 The Author(s)