Professionals’ Attitudes and Behaviors Towards E-Payment Adoption in Egypt Post-Covid-19

The global rise of electronic payment services necessitates understanding the factors shaping adoption and usage patterns in Egypt, experiencing rapid growth in e-payment and economy. The implications of the interval’s perception of the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination are noteworthy. To explore these dynamics, a survey was conducted among students and faculty at a public University in Cairo, Egypt. We examined e-payment adoption using frequency of usage, money spent, percentage of expenditures, and an aggregated measure. Among demographics, working status and income had more influence than age, gender, and education. Regression models showed that gender, income, perceived ease of use, perceived risk, and social influence significantly predicted various dependent variables. However, perceived usefulness, incentives, perceived trust, and vaccine importance had limited relevance in e-payment adoption post-COVID-19. Given the limited sample size, further research is recommended

Attitudes and Behaviors of Egyptians Towards E-Payment Services

Because of the increasing prevalence of e-payment services across the globe, it is vital to understand what affects how and to what extent people utilize them. A survey was distributed to students and staff at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. Theoretically, the TAM model, TRA model, and social norms play a role in technology adoption. Most of the survey results are found to be consistent with those of western societies. Specifically, six constructs relating to adoption and four demographic backgrounds were tested. Usage was measured by three questions. A bivariate analysis indicates all constructs, i.e., incentive, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, social influence, perceived risk, and perceived trust, are significant. Regarding demographic variables, it is also found that age, working status, education, and gender relate to e-payment usage. However, gender and perceived usefulness are most important from the multivariate analysis. Since the study was conducted in a university environment and in English, a larger, more diverse sample is recommended for further research in Egypt

Post-vasectomy semen analysis: Optimizing laboratory procedures and test interpretation through a clinical audit and global survey of practices

Purpose: The success of vasectomy is determined by the outcome of a post-vasectomy semen analysis (PVSA). This article describes a step-by-step procedure to perform PVSA accurately, report data from patients who underwent post vasectomy semen analysis between 2015 and 2021 experience, along with results from an international online survey on clinical practice. Materials and Methods: We present a detailed step-by-step protocol for performing and interpretating PVSA testing, along with recommendations for proficiency testing, competency assessment for performing PVSA, and clinical and laboratory scenarios. Moreover, we conducted an analysis of 1,114 PVSA performed at the Cleveland Clinic’s Andrology Laboratory and an online survey to understand clinician responses to the PVSA results in various countries. Results: Results from our clinical experience showed that 92.1% of patients passed PVSA, with 7.9% being further tested. A total of 78 experts from 19 countries participated in the survey, and the majority reported to use time from vasectomy rather than the number of ejaculations as criterion to request PVSA. A high percentage of responders reported permitting unprotected intercourse only if PVSA samples show azoospermia while, in the presence of few non-motile sperm, the majority of responders suggested using alternative contraception, followed by another PVSA. In the presence of motile sperm, the majority of participants asked for further PVSA testing. Repeat vasectomy was mainly recommended if motile sperm were observed after multiple PVSA’s. A large percentage reported to recommend a second PVSA due to the possibility of legal actions. Conclusions: Our results highlighted varying clinical practices around the globe, with controversy over the significance of non-motile sperm in the PVSA sample. Our data suggest that less stringent AUA guidelines would help improve test compliance. A large longitudinal multi-center study would clarify various doubts related to timing and interpretation of PVSA and would also help us to understand, and perhaps predict, recanalization and the potential for future failure of a vasectomy.American Center for Reproductive Medicin

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 years; 78.2% included were male with a median age of 37 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

Leveraging Multi-View Information for Scene Understanding

The Humans can effortlessly recognize and perceive the information of the 3D scene on their daily pass of dozens of scenes, e.g. office, bedroom, elevator, kitchen. Even though this process is effortless for humans, it is an open challenge in the Computer Vision domain since the field was first established 60 years ago. 3D scene understanding from multi-views is key for the success of applications such as robot navigation and autonomous driving, etc. In this thesis, we seek to exploit multi-view scenes information to help indoor scene understanding to overcome challenges dependant on visual effects like shadows, specularities, and occlusions towards better scene understanding. Towards this goal, we propose techniques based on multiview scenes with corresponding 3D geometry to estimate semantic color-names, detect multi-view specularities, estimate multi-view 3D mesh colors, and estimate light source positions. We use available large-scale datasets (e.g. Matterport3D) for annotating real-world images datasets like Matterport3D Color Naming Dataset (M3DCN), and Matterport3D Light Sources dataset (M3DLS) while generating and rendering new 3D synthetic datasets like LIGHT Specularity Dataset (LIGHTS) to serve as evaluation and analysis datasets for semantic color-naming, light source position estimation, and high-light specularity detection problems respectively. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed techniques in comparison to the state-of-the-art techniques and show significant improvements over the baselines in quantitative and qualitative evaluations

Evaluation of topoisomerase II, ki-67, and P53 expression in non-muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma and their clinical significance

Background: Transurethral resection of tumor is the main treatment of non-muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma, but it is associated with high rate of recurrence and/or progression and this arouses the need for adjuvant therapy. Topoisomerase II (Top II), KI-67, and P53 are proliferation and cell cycle regulation markers that may predict tumor response to therapy. Aim: This study aimed to assess Top II, KI-67, and P53 expression and their effect on clinical outcome and response to therapy of non-muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma. Materials and Methods: Fifty cases of non-muscle invasive urothelial carcinoma were collected; Top II, KI-67, and P53 expression was evaluated. Patients received treatment then tumor recurrence was correlated with the expression of previous markers. Results: There was a significant association between high Top II score, P53, and KI-67 and high tumor grade (P = 0.0001, 0.001, and 0.0001), submucosal infiltration (P = 0.0001 and 0.01), and recurrence (P = 0.01, 0.001, and 0.001). Conclusion: Top II, P53, and KI-67 may predict tumor response to therapy and the clinical outcome in non-muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma

Seasonal abundance of the serpentine leaf miner Liriomyza trifolii and the bio efficiency of the larval ectoparasitoid Diglyphus isaea on cowpea in Alejelat region, Libya

The American serpentine leaf miner, L. trifolii (Burgess), is one of the most problematic insect pest species attacking a large number of vegetable crops, weeds, and ornamentals. The present study aimed to determine the natural abundance of the larval parasitoid D. isaea and the serpentine leaf miner L. trifolii. This study was carried out in Alejelat region during two summer seasons of 2018 and 2019 on cowpea. The highest monthly total numbers of L. trifolii larvae, D. isaea, host fed, and total killed larvae that occurred on August recording (1187, 535, 209, and 744), respectively. While the monthly average numbers recorded (862.5 ± 289.8, 341.7 ± 139.5, 123.75 ± 57.3, and 465.5 ± 194.8) for the former parameters during season 2018, respectively. On the other hand, the highest monthly total numbers of L. trifolii larvae, D. isaea, host fed, and the total killed larvae occurred on August recording (3211, 1264, 580, and 1844), respectively. While the monthly average numbers recorded (1517.5 ± 1299.6, 632 ± 438.5, 285.5, ± 201.8, and 917.5 ± 640.2) for the former parameters during season 2019, respectively. The percentage of total mortality reached 91.8%, and 87.6 in the first and the second season, respectively