Impact of Protracted War Crisis on Dental Students: A Comparative Multicountry Cross-sectional Study

BACKGROUND: The impact of conflict and war crisis on dental students is poorly understood. Given the prolonged conflicts and political instability in the Arabic-speaking countries, it is crucial to investigate the effect of these conditions on dental students. This study aimed to assess the impact of protracted war on dental students by comparing the personal, university, and wider context challenges they face across war-affected and unaffected countries. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted including a convenience sample of dental students from 13 universities in 12 Arabic-speaking countries. Respondents were those at entry and exit points of their undergraduate dental training. A self-administered paper questionnaire collected anonymized data on sociodemographics, and personal, university, and wider context challenges that students were facing. Multivariable Poisson regression analyses were carried out. RESULTS: The overall response rate was 64.8%. The mean age was 21.2 (standard deviation = 2.1) years, with 68% of participants being female. After adjusting for age and sex, dental students in Arabic-speaking countries affected by protracted war crisis were significantly more likely to report wider context challenges compared to their counterparts in unaffected countries (n = 2448; beta = 1.12; 95% confidence interval: 1.10-1.13; P < 0.001). DISCUSSION: Dental students in Arabic-speaking countries affected by protracted war crisis were more likely to suffer from wider context challenges such as difficulties in attendance due to the deterioration of security and lack of flexibility of teaching time to accommodate the different circumstances induced by the war crisis. Supporting dental students in areas affected by protracted war crises is needed and may include developing online dental education programs

Preprogrammed capillarity to passively control system-level sequential and parallel microfluidic flows

In microfluidics, capillarity-driven solution flow is often beneficial, owing to its inherently spontaneous motion. However, it is commonly perceived that, in an integrated microfluidic system, the passive capillarity control alone can hardly achieve well-controlled sequential and parallel flow of multiple solutions. Despite this common notion, we hereby demonstrate system-level sequential and parallel microfluidic flow processing by fully passive capillarity-driven control. After manual loading of solutions with a pipette, a network of microfluidic channels passively regulates the flow timing of the multiple solution menisci in a sequential and synchronous manner. Also, use of auxiliary channels and preprogramming of inlet-well meniscus pressure and channel fluidic conductance allow for controlling the flow direction of multiple solutions in our microfluidic system. With those components orchestrated in a single device chip, we show preprogrammed flow control of 10 solutions. The demonstrated system-level flow control proves capillarity as a useful means even for sophisticated microfluidic processing without any actively controlled valves and pumps.close5

Microfluidic device for robust generation of two-component liquid-in-air slugs with individually controlled composition

Using liquid slugs as microreactors and microvessels enable precise control over the conditions of their contents on short-time scales for a wide variety of applications. Particularly for screening applications, there is a need for control of slug parameters such as size and composition. We describe a new microfluidic approach for creating slugs in air, each comprising a size and composition that can be selected individually for each slug. Two-component slugs are formed by first metering the desired volume of each reagent, merging the two volumes into an end-to-end slug, and propelling the slug to induce mixing. Volume control is achieved by a novel mechanism: two closed chambers on the chip are initially filled with air, and a valve in each is briefly opened to admit one of the reagents. The pressure of each reagent can be individually selected and determines the amount of air compression, and thus the amount of liquid that is admitted into each chamber. We describe the theory of operation, characterize the slug generation chip, and demonstrate the creation of slugs of different compositions. The use of microvalves in this approach enables robust operation with different liquids, and also enables one to work with extremely small samples, even down to a few slug volumes. The latter is important for applications involving precious reagents such as optimizing the reaction conditions for radiolabeling biological molecules as tracers for positron emission tomography

Big Data Fusion Model for Heterogeneous Financial Market Data (FinDF)

The dawn of big data has seen the volume, variety, and velocity of data sources increase dramatically. Enormous amounts of structured, semi-structured and unstructured heterogeneous data can be garnered at a rapid rate, making analysis of such big data a herculean task. This has never been truer for data relating to financial stock markets, the biggest challenge being the 7 Vs of big data which relate to the collection, pre-processing, storage and real-time processing of such huge quantities of disparate data sources. Data fusion techniques have been adopted in a wide number of fields to cope with such vast amounts of heterogeneous data from multiple sources and fuse them together in order to produce a more comprehensive view of the data and its underlying relationships. Research into the fusing of heterogeneous financial data is scant within the literature, with existing work only taking into consideration the fusing of text-based financial documents. The lack of integration between financial stock market data, social media comments, financial discussion board posts and broker agencies means that the benefits of data fusion are not being realised to their full potential. This paper proposes a novel data fusion model, inspired by the data fusion model introduced by the Joint Directors of Laboratories, for the fusing of disparate data sources relating to financial stocks. Data with a diverse set of features from different data sources will supplement each other in order to obtain a Smart Data Layer, which will assist in scenarios such as irregularity detection and prediction of stock prices

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P &lt; 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Phytoextraction potential of cadmium and lead contamination using Melia azedarach and Populus alba seedlings

Vegetative growth, biomass, chemical content and uptake of cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) in Melia azedarach L. (chinaberry) and Populus alba L. (white poplar) seedlings were investigated using a 2-year pot experiment. The results indicated that P. alba and M. azedarach are tolerant to contaminated soil by Cd or Pb without any toxicity symptoms. Vegetative growth and chemical properties of M. azedarach are negatively affected by Cd more than Pb whereas, biomasses are negatively affected by Pb little than Cd. Likewise, vegetative growth and chemical properties are negatively affected by Cd more than Pb however, biomasses are negatively affected by Cd and Pb with the same significant level. Both species accumulate more concentrations of Cd and Pb in their roots than in leaves and stem. As a result, P. alba and M. azedarach are considered suitable phytoremediators for contaminated soils by Cd or Pb.Keywords: Phytoremediation, contamination, heavy metals, cadmium, lead, Populus alba, Melia azedarach.African Journal of Biotechnology, Vol 13(53) 4726-473