A STUDY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY AMONG HEALTHY MEDICAL STUDENTS USING A VIRTUAL MODEL TO INVESTIGATE ACUTE COGNITIVE STRESS EFFECTS

Studies have shown that first-year medical students, experience psychological stress and, in some cases, mental illness due to new environments and stressful study regimes of the medical universities. An experimental study was conducted on first and next (2-3) year medical students of both genders. In the acute stress-recognized virtual model, participants were exposed to two increasing complexity visual tasks. Some derivative indices: correct answers in percent (CA%), reaction sustainability (RS), and functional ability level (FAL) were calculated based on the reaction time measures during simple and complex sensorimotor reactions (SSMRT, CSMRT). For statistical analysis ANOVA and Bonferroni correction t-test was used. No significant differences were found in mental activity between the two genders in 2-3 year medical students, except for CA% in the males' group during CSMRT which indicates that males concentrate well; There were significant differences in parameters of SSMRT (RS; CA%) and CSMRT (RS; FAL; CA%) between first-year males and females; Significant differences were found also in parameters of SSMRT (RS; CA%) and CSMRT (FAL; CA%) between first and next-year medical students in the females' group and no significant differences between first and next-year medical students in males group. Seems independent of gender, in 2-3 year medical students the sensorimotor and cognitive abilities are almost the same. The better mental performance parameters in the male group of first-year students can be explained only by the presence of certain stress in the female group, which can be related to the difficulty adapting to new environments and stressful learning regimes. In addition, male students are able to concentrate better compared to females on acute visual stress. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the psychophysiology of mental activity and further demonstrate how a virtual model can be used to investigate acute cognitive stress effects.  Article visualizations

Complications and In-Hospital Mortality After On- Pump Vs Off-Pump Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting

Off-pump surgery has involved into the most frequently adopted alternative technique to conventional on-pump coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) in the treatment of patients with coronary artery disease. Our aim was to compare data analyses of complications and in-hospital mortality after on-pump vs off-pump CABG. Materials and methods: Retrospective data analyses research is based on 402 patients, ranging in 37-75 years of age. Operations CABG were performed in 2009- 2012, at the West Georgian Interventional Medicine National Center Hospital, Kutaisi; Aleksandre Aladashvili Clinic, Tbilisi; and L.T.D. Lancet, Tbilisi. 253 cases were performed off pump and 149 cases were performed on pump. Groups were diversified by the F Fischer’s criteria. Odds ratio (OR) was made using regression analysis. Statistical analysis was made using SPSS 22 program. Results: While on pump during surgery, intraoperative shock occurred in 8(5.37%) cases, Thrombosis – 3(2.01%); Dissection – 3(2.01%), Stroke – 1(0.67%) and Myocardial Infarction – 1(0.67%). These complications were not detected during off pump CABG. Frequency of in-hospital mortality after off pump and on pump CABG are respectively 7(2.77%) and 15(10.07%) - p<0.0018. Totallyperi operative  complications were during off pump CABG – 35(13.83%) and on pump CABG – 41(27.51%)(p<0.0007). In the cases of on pump surgery, odds ratio of complications that arise: bleeding OR=4.48(95CI;1.38-14.54); atrial fibrillation – OR=6.64(95%CI:1.82-24.21); pulmonary complications - OR=2.24(95%CI:1.19-4.21), renal insufficiency - OR=8.75(95%CI:1.01- 75.63); in-hospital mortality – OR=2.365(95%CI:1.425-3.924). Conclusion: Off pump CABG seems to significantly reduce postoperative renal failure, bleeding, atrial fibrillation, and respiratory complications, while perioperative myocardial infarction rates remain significantly unchanged. Considering in-hospital mortality and perioperative complications, off pump CABG has much better results

Authoritative subspecies diagnosis tool for European honey bees based on ancestryinformative SNPs

Background With numerous endemic subspecies representing four of its five evolutionary lineages, Europe holds a large fraction of Apis mellifera genetic diversity. This diversity and the natural distribution range have been altered by anthropogenic factors. The conservation of this natural heritage relies on the availability of accurate tools for subspecies diagnosis. Based on pool-sequence data from 2145 worker bees representing 22 populations sampled across Europe, we employed two highly discriminative approaches (PCA and F-ST) to select the most informative SNPs for ancestry inference. Results Using a supervised machine learning (ML) approach and a set of 3896 genotyped individuals, we could show that the 4094 selected single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) provide an accurate prediction of ancestry inference in European honey bees. The best ML model was Linear Support Vector Classifier (Linear SVC) which correctly assigned most individuals to one of the 14 subspecies or different genetic origins with a mean accuracy of 96.2% +/- 0.8 SD. A total of 3.8% of test individuals were misclassified, most probably due to limited differentiation between the subspecies caused by close geographical proximity, or human interference of genetic integrity of reference subspecies, or a combination thereof. Conclusions The diagnostic tool presented here will contribute to a sustainable conservation and support breeding activities in order to preserve the genetic heritage of European honey bees.The SmartBees project was funded by the European Commission under its FP7 KBBE programme (2013.1.3-02, SmartBees Grant Agreement number 613960) https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7.MP was supported by a Basque Government grant (IT1233-19). The funders provided the financial support to the research, but had no role in the design of the study, analysis, interpretations of data and in writing the manuscript

e-Governance: Missed Opportunity of the Revolutionary Government. Case of Georgia

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2019This given thesis examines the circumstances around the introduction of the e-Governance in Georgia. It argues that after the Rose Revolution, the incumbent regime was extremely well-positioned to reform the very fabric of the society and the state itself. However, on the path of the democratization the Information and Communication Technologies were used in a limited way. Furthermore, the characteristics of the regime paired with the internal and external issues posed serious threat to the success of the e-Governance in the first place. The lack of any prior experience in this field, also played a major role in the failure of the new regime. And finally, it is argued that during the rule of the new government a perfect chance at employing the technologies for the benefit of the many was missed

A method of approximate factorization of positive definite matrix functions

An algorithm of factorization of positive definite matrix functions of second order is proposed