Awareness on Digital Drugs Abuse and its Applied Prevention among Healthcare Practitioners in KSA

Digital drugs abuse, also known as I-dosing, has recently emerged as a danger to Middle Eastern teen­agers through different media channels. This study aimed to investigate the level of knowledge of digital drug abuse among health practioners in KSA, explore their attitude towards it and describe the possible pre­ventive policies if any, and their experience of any medicolegal implemented awareness strategies to combat this phenomenon.  A cross-sectional survey was used to gather data. An open-ended questionnaire with two parts contain­ing open-ended questions was developed, validated, pretested, and randomly distributed to 200 voluntary participating health care practitioners of both sexes (n = 200) attending a continuous medical education seminar in May 2015 held in Madinah. Ethical approval and an informed written consent was obtained. Participants were males (65%) and females (35%) with different professional degrees. The knowledge of I-dosing of digital drugs was 30%. The source of this knowledge was through media (96%) and through receiving inquiries concerning this topic (71.9%). Only 14.7% of participants knew the mechanism of action of digital drugs. However, 65% of the participants thought digital drugs are real threats. From the participants, 16.9% were approached by an awareness program concerning this issue. This study concluded the urgent need for an awareness program directed at medical practitioners and communities in KSA.   Keywords: Forensic Science, Digital Drug, I-Dosing, Teenage, Abuse, Prevention, Healthcare Practitioners

USING CONTEXT SPECIFIC GENERATIVE ADVERSARIAL NETWORKS FOR AUDIO DATA COMPLETION: MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS CASE STUDY

Audio quality plays an essential role in several applications ranging from music to voice conversations. Sound information is subject to quality loss caused by reasons such as intermittent network connections, or storage corruption. Recent approaches resorted to using GANs for audio reconstruction due to their successful deployment in visual applications. However, more often than not audio datasets include sounds from different contexts which increase the complexity of the patterns to be learned, leading to sub-optimal quality reconstruction. We propose a novel audio completion pipeline which clusters audio based on similarity and trains a dedicated specialized GAN for each context separately. The proposed technique is compared with the traditional method of training one general GAN in completing 200ms missing segments of 1 second audio samples. Experimental results on a public benchmark dataset show that using specialized GANs led to a clear improvement in the completion quality while reducing training convergence times

Cytotoxic Activity of Iraqi Cressa Cretica

Cressa cretica Fam: Convolvulaceae (morning glory). These plants are native to the tropical and subtropical areas of the world. Nutritional analysis provide it to be a potential source of minerals, energy, carbohydrate, alpha-tocopherol, edible oil. From phytochemical point of view, the plant was reported to contain: coumarins, sterols, alkaloids, tannins, glycosides, flavonoids, unidentified sugars and high salt content. Ethyl acetate layer and ethanolic layer were examined for cytotoxic activity.Kampferol-3-O-glucoside (Astragalin) was isolated as amorphous powder from the aerial parts of Cressa cretica. The flavonoid in the Iraqi plant was detected by TLC. Its presence was confirmed by HPLC

Community empowerment for environmental and social improvement in Panancangan Village, Lebak, Banten [Pemberdayaan masyarakat dalam rangka peningkatan ekonomi dan sosial di Desa Panancangan, Lebak, Banten]

Panancangan Village is located in Cibadak Sub-District, Lebak District, Banten Province. Several village residents had professions as oyster mushroom farmers and the results of cultivating these mushrooms could provide residents with an income of IDR 11,000 per kilo. During initial observations, the community empowerment team found that there were two main problems. The first was environmental problem. The environment around the village office looked barren and the air around the village feels very hot during the day. The second was social problem. Lack of residents’ skills and knowledge in the fields of mushroom management and food packaging, product marketing, and entrepreneurship, causes farmers to only sell their mushrooms in raw form. The objectives of this community service are providing education to village residents to increase environmental conservation awareness and increasing social development through training and education. Method used is through training both non-practical and practical training in plant cultivation and oyster mushroom management, food packaging, marketing, and entrepreneurship. The evaluation results showed that the training was effective and provided positive benefits for environmental and social improvements

A year of genomic surveillance reveals how the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic unfolded in Africa.

The progression of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic in Africa has so far been heterogeneous, and the full impact is not yet well understood. In this study, we describe the genomic epidemiology using a dataset of 8746 genomes from 33 African countries and two overseas territories. We show that the epidemics in most countries were initiated by importations predominantly from Europe, which diminished after the early introduction of international travel restrictions. As the pandemic progressed, ongoing transmission in many countries and increasing mobility led to the emergence and spread within the continent of many variants of concern and interest, such as B.1.351, B.1.525, A.23.1, and C.1.1. Although distorted by low sampling numbers and blind spots, the findings highlight that Africa must not be left behind in the global pandemic response, otherwise it could become a source for new variants

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

Awareness on Digital Drugs Abuse and its Applied Prevention Among Healthcare Practitioners in KSA

Digital drugs abuse, also known as I-dosing, has recently emerged as a danger to Middle Eastern teen­agers through different media channels. This study aimed to investigate the level of knowledge of digital drug abuse among health practioners in KSA, explore their attitude towards it and describe the possible pre­ventive policies if any, and their experience of any medicolegal implemented awareness strategies to combat this phenomenon.  A cross-sectional survey was used to gather data. An open-ended questionnaire with two parts contain­ing open-ended questions was developed, validated, pretested, and randomly distributed to 200 voluntary participating health care practitioners of both sexes (n = 200) attending a continuous medical education seminar in May 2015 held in Madinah. Ethical approval and an informed written consent was obtained. Participants were males (65%) and females (35%) with different professional degrees. The knowledge of I-dosing of digital drugs was 30%. The source of this knowledge was through media (96%) and through receiving inquiries concerning this topic (71.9%). Only 14.7% of participants knew the mechanism of action of digital drugs. However, 65% of the participants thought digital drugs are real threats. From the participants, 16.9% were approached by an awareness program concerning this issue. This study concluded the urgent need for an awareness program directed at medical practitioners and communities in KSA.   Keywords: Forensic Science, Digital Drug, I-Dosing, Teenage, Abuse, Prevention, Healthcare Practitioners

Comparison of the leaving groups during the study of the aquation of halopentaammine cobalt(III) complex in tartarate at different percentage of tert-butanol

The experimental kinetic study of aquation for both complexes bromopentaammine cobalt(III) and chloropentaammine cobalt(III) ions in the presence of tartarate solution in mixed solvent media of water with tert-butanol (10-50%, v:v) was examined spectrophotometrically at different temperatures (30-60 °C) by comparing the special effects of the leaving group of chloro and bromo on the rate constant of aquation. Comparison of kip (rate constant of ion-pairing) for both complexes and show the non-linear plots of log (kip) ion-pair rate constants against the reciprocal of the dielectric constant D. The thermodynamic analyses of the kinetic data for both complexes have been discussed in terms of solvent effect on the ion-pair aquation reactions. The obtained isokinetic temperatures of these systems indicate the existence of compensation effect arising from solute-solvent interaction. The excessive change of ΔHip* and ΔSip* with the mole fraction of the co-solvent can be recognized to the change of the physical properties of the solvent-water mixture with the solvent structure. Undersized changes in ΔGip* with the mole fraction of the co-solvent was found, representing a compensating effects between ΔHip* and ΔSip*

Studies on ion-pairing effects of the kinetics of aquation of bromopentaammine cobalt(III) complex in malonate media

The aquation of bromopentaamminecobalt(III) ion in the presence of ion-pairing malonate anion in mixed solvent media of water with tert-butanol (10%-50%) v/v have been investigated spectrophotometrically at different temperatures (30-60 oC). Nonlinear plots of Log (kip) ion-pair rate constants against the reciprocal of the dielectric constant D, Log of water concentration and Grunwald-Winstein Y values were found. The thermodynamic and extrathermodynamic analyses of the kinetic data have been discussed in terms of solvent effect on the ion-pair aquation reactions. The obtained isokinetic temperatures of these systems indicate the existence of compensation effect arising from solute-solvent interaction. The extrema found in the change of ∆Hip* and ∆Sip*with the mole fraction of the co-solvent can be attributed to the change of the physical properties of the solvent-water mixture with the solvent structure. Application of a free energy cycle is performed to compare between the stability of the initial and the transition state of the complex. However, small changes in ∆Gip*with the mole fraction of the co-solvent was found, indicating a compensating effects between ∆Hip* and ∆Sip