IoT monitoring of water consumption for irrigation systems using SEMMA methodology

The efficient use of water is an issue that has captured the attention of scientists, technicians, and the community at large. The sustainability of water resources has been threatened by the current imbalance between water supply and demand. Intelligent consumption of water would contribute to the balance and reduce the waste in applications such as the agriculture. This paper shows the design of a water consumption monitoring system based on the Internet of Things (IoT). With the implementation of this system could be known in real time the consumption of water in a crop. In addition, the user of the system may take corrective actions that optimize their water consumption; this is achieved by applying the SEMMA methodology to evaluate the data obtained by the system using two cluster algorithms, Simple K-means and GenClus++. With the application of SEMMA it was possible to determine periods of water consumption that were considered as waste in the irrigation of crops, applying data analysis with both algorithms

Five insights from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 provides a rules-based synthesis of the available evidence on levels and trends in health outcomes, a diverse set of risk factors, and health system responses. GBD 2019 covered 204 countries and territories, as well as first administrative level disaggregations for 22 countries, from 1990 to 2019. Because GBD is highly standardised and comprehensive, spanning both fatal and non-fatal outcomes, and uses a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of hierarchical disease and injury causes, the study provides a powerful basis for detailed and broad insights on global health trends and emerging challenges. GBD 2019 incorporates data from 281 586 sources and provides more than 3.5 billion estimates of health outcome and health system measures of interest for global, national, and subnational policy dialogue. All GBD estimates are publicly available and adhere to the Guidelines on Accurate and Transparent Health Estimate Reporting. From this vast amount of information, five key insights that are important for health, social, and economic development strategies have been distilled. These insights are subject to the many limitations outlined in each of the component GBD capstone papers.Peer reviewe

Determinants of satisfaction with health care provider interactions at health centres in central Ethiopia: a cross sectional study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In primary health care, provider-patient interaction is fundamental platform and critically affects service delivery. Nevertheless, it is often ignored in medical research and practice and it is infrequently subjected to scientific inquiry, particularly in Ethiopia. This study aimed to assess patient satisfaction with health care provider interactions and its influencing factors among out-patients at health centers in West Shoa, Central Ethiopia.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross sectional facility based study was conducted on 768 out-patients of six health centers in West Shoa Zone, Central Ethiopia. The total sample size was allocated to each of the six health centers based on patient flow during the ten days prior to the start of data collection. Pre-tested instruments were used for data collection and the data were analyzed using SPSS version 16.0 statistical software. Factor score was computed for the items identified to represent the satisfaction scale by varimax rotation method. Using this regression factor score, multivariate linear regression analysis was performed and the effect of independent variables on the regression factor score was quantified.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Seventy three percent of the respondents perceived that provider's empathy was good and 35% complained that providers were not technically competent enough. In addition, 82% of the respondents rated non-verbal communication by the providers to be good, very good or excellent on a five-point ordinal scale. Regardless of the process, only 34.1% of the patients implied that the consultations made a difference in understanding their illness and coping with it. Generally speaking, 62.6% of the patients reported that they have been satisfied with their visit. Perceived empathy, perceived technical competency, non-verbal communication, patient enablement, being told the name of once illness, type and frequency of visit, knowing the providers and educational status were main independent predictors of patient satisfaction in this study. Furthermore, very good empathy (Beta = -4.323), fair non-verbal communication (Beta = -0.188), fewer expectations met (Beta = -0.169) and disagreement to technical competency (Beta = -0.156) had greater negative influence on patient satisfaction. On the other hand, excellent non-verbal communication (Beta = 0.114) and being told the name of once illness (0.109) had pronounced positive influence on patient satisfaction.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The present study showed that interpersonal processes including perceived empathy, perceived technical competency, non-verbal communication and patient enablement significantly influence patient satisfaction. Therefore, health care providers should work towards improving the communication skill of their professionals along with having technically competent workers which could possibly affect the perception of the patient about all of the variables identified as independent predictors of patient satisfaction in this study.</p

T-Cell Regulation in Lepromatous Leprosy

Regulatory T (T(reg)) cells are known for their role in maintaining self-tolerance and balancing immune reactions in autoimmune diseases and chronic infections. However, regulatory mechanisms can also lead to prolonged survival of pathogens in chronic infections like leprosy and tuberculosis (TB). Despite high humoral responses against Mycobacterium leprae (M. leprae), lepromatous leprosy (LL) patients have the characteristic inability to generate T helper 1 (Th1) responses against the bacterium. In this study, we investigated the unresponsiveness to M. leprae in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of LL patients by analysis of IFN-γ responses to M. leprae before and after depletion of CD25(+) cells, by cell subsets analysis of PBMC and by immunohistochemistry of patients' skin lesions. Depletion of CD25(+) cells from total PBMC identified two groups of LL patients: 7/18 (38.8%) gained in vitro responsiveness towards M. leprae after depletion of CD25(+) cells, which was reversed to M. leprae-specific T-cell unresponsiveness by addition of autologous CD25(+) cells. In contrast, 11/18 (61.1%) remained anergic in the absence of CD25(+) T-cells. For both groups mitogen-induced IFN-γ was, however, not affected by depletion of CD25(+) cells. In M. leprae responding healthy controls, treated lepromatous leprosy (LL) and borderline tuberculoid leprosy (BT) patients, depletion of CD25(+) cells only slightly increased the IFN-γ response. Furthermore, cell subset analysis showed significantly higher (p = 0.02) numbers of FoxP3(+) CD8(+)CD25(+) T-cells in LL compared to BT patients, whereas confocal microscopy of skin biopsies revealed increased numbers of CD68(+)CD163(+) as well as FoxP3(+) cells in lesions of LL compared to tuberculoid and borderline tuberculoid leprosy (TT/BT) lesions. Thus, these data show that CD25(+) T(reg) cells play a role in M. leprae-Th1 unresponsiveness in LL