Characterization of Chickpea Germplasm

In plant breeding, genetic diversity is an important component for crop improvement. An experiment was conducted at Ishurdi, Pabna (Bangladesh) to study the diversity and variability within the core germplasm collection of 93 chickpea accessions, and a total of 13 qualitative and 12 quantitative characteristics were studied. Among the qualitative characteristics more significant variations were observed in plant pigmentation, growth habit, flower color, seed color, seed shape, and texture. A total of 93 accessions were divided into eight clusters. The genotypes in Cluster IV and Cluster VIII were crossed with genotypes in Cluster I and Cluster VII for better yield performance. Correlation co-efficient study was done among the 12 quantitative characters with yield performance of the studied chickpea germplasm. Significant and positive correlation was observed among the days to 50% flowering, branches per plant, pods per plant, seeds per pod, straw yield, but significant and negative correlation was observed among the days to maturity, plant height, canopy width and hundred seeds weight within the yield performance of studied chickpea germplasm. Simultaneously, a more distinguished morphological diversity was found in number of pods per plant, grain yield per plant(g), 100-seed weight (g), harvest index and plant canopy height (cm) among the twelve quantitative traits of 93 chickpea accession. The chickpea accessions BD-6051, BD-6058, BD-6557, BD-6214, BD-6221, BD-6235, BD-6460, BD-6461, BD-6470, BD-6471, BD-6472, BD-6473, BD-6478, BD-6480, BD-6481, 6483, BD-6484, BD-6488, BD- 6491, BD-6500, BD-6505, and BD-6513 could be considered for crop improvement through the future breeding program of chickpea

A Multicriteria Optimization for Flight Route Networks in Large-Scale Airlines Using Intelligent Spatial Information

Air route network optimization, one of the airspace planning challenges, effectively manages airspace resources toward increasing airspace capacity and reducing air traffic congestion. In this paper, the structure of the flight network in air transport is analyzed with a multi-objective genetic algorithm regarding Geographic Information System (GIS) which is used to optimize this Iran airlines topology to reduce the number of airways and the aggregation of passengers in aviation industries organization and also to reduce changes in airways and the travel time for travelers. The proposed model of this study is based on the combination of two topologies – point-to-point and Hub-and-spoke – with multiple goals for causing a decrease in airways and travel length per passenger and also to reach the minimum number of air stops per passenger. The proposed Multi-objective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) is tested and assessed in data of the Iran airlines industry in 2018, as an example to real-world applications, to design Iran airline topology. MOGA is proven to be effective in general to solve a network-wide flight trajectory planning. Using the combination of point-to-point and Hub-and-spoke topologies can improve the performance of the MOGA algorithm. Based on Iran airline traffic patterns in 2018, the proposed model successfully decreased 50.8% of air routes (184 air routes) compared to the current situations while the average travel length and the average changes in routes were increased up to 13.8% (about 100 kilometers) and up to 18%, respectively. The proposed algorithm also suggests that the current air routes of Iran can be decreased up to 24.7% (89 airways) if the travel length and the number of changes increase up to 4.5% (32 kilometers) and 5%, respectively. Two intermediate airports were supposed for these experiments. The computational results show the potential benefits of the proposed model and the advantage of the algorithm. The structure of the flight network in air transport can significantly reduce operational cost while ensuring the operation safety. According to the results, this intelligent multi-object optimization model would be able to be successfully used for a precise design and efficient optimization of existing and new airline topologies

Physico-chemical factors of solar salt farms water in the coastal area of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

Physico-chemical factors of water at different gradient of the salt production pans (reservoir, condenser and crystallizer) of the coastal area in Cox’s Bazar were studied.Analyses of water temperature at different gradient of salt pans show almost similar values (31°C-32°C). The pH values varied from 4.9 to 7.4. The acidic pH values were recorded in Chakaria Sundarban area. Salinity ranged from 30.03‰ to 330.52‰, lowest salinity was found in reservoir pan and highest in crystallizer pan. Electric conductivity values fluctuated between 9.60 and 336.00 mmhos/cm and its values gradually increase from reservoir to crystallizer pans. Total hardness, Ca, Mg and HCO3 varied from 8000 to 213600 mg/l; 2987 to 106300 mg/l, 5013 to 107300 mg/l and 36.6 to 146.4 mg/l respectively and their values were always found to be Reservoir < Condenser< Crystallizer. Alkalinity ranged from 50-570 ppm, the lowest values were recorded in reservoir pan and highest were found in crystallizer. Usually higher concentration of K was obtained in crystallizer pan and the highest value (15.2g/l) was recorded at Moheskhali sampling area

The Role of Critical Thinking Components in Predicting Students’ Self-Efficacy (Case Study: Isfahan University of Medical Sciences)

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of critical thinking components in predicting self-efficacy (effort, self-regulation, and diligence) among the students of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. Statistical population of the study included 609 students of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, and 361 students were selected via random sampling as the statistical sample. The data were collected using both standard questionnaire and a researcher-made questionnaire whose reliability was confirmed by experts in the field. The validity of the whole questionnaire was also calculated at 0.90 via Cronbach alpha. Collected data were analyzed by SPSS 20 applications. Results, according to research hypotheses, revealed that both the components of cognitive maturity and engagement, as dimensions of tendency to critical thinking, in the first hypothesis, have an impact on students’ effort. However, the relationship between the component of innovation and students’ effort were rejected. In the second hypothesis, moreover, it was confirmed that the components of innovativeness and engagement can predict students’ self-regulation. That is, there was a significant relationship between the components of innovativeness and engagement with students’ self-regulation. Nevertheless, it was revealed that the component of cognitive maturity has no impact on students’ self-regulation

Efficient breast cancer classification network with dual squeeze and excitation in histopathological images.

Medical image analysis methods for mammograms, ultrasound, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) cannot provide the underline features on the cellular level to understand the cancer microenvironment which makes them unsuitable for breast cancer subtype classification study. In this paper, we propose a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based breast cancer classification method for hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) whole slide images (WSIs). The proposed method incorporates fused mobile inverted bottleneck convolutions (FMB-Conv) and mobile inverted bottleneck convolutions (MBConv) with a dual squeeze and excitation (DSE) network to accurately classify breast cancer tissue into binary (benign and malignant) and eight subtypes using histopathology images. For that, a pre-trained EfficientNetV2 network is used as a backbone with a modified DSE block that combines the spatial and channel-wise squeeze and excitation layers to highlight important low-level and high-level abstract features. Our method outperformed ResNet101, InceptionResNetV2, and EfficientNetV2 networks on the publicly available BreakHis dataset for the binary and multi-class breast cancer classification in terms of precision, recall, and F1-score on multiple magnification levels

Serum Amyloid A Level in Egyptian Children with Familial Mediterranean Fever

Background and Objectives. SAA is an acute-phase reactant detected during an FMF attack or other inflammatory conditions. High SAA levels may increase the risk of amyloidosis. The aim of the study is to measure the serum amyloid A (SAA) level in a group of Egyptian children with familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) and study its various correlates, if any. Methods. The study enrolled seventy-one children with FMF. Results. SAA level was high in 78.9% of the studied patients with a mean of 81.62±31.6 mg/L, and CRP was positive in 31% of patients. There was no significant releation between SAA level and any demographic or clinical manifestation. High SAA was more frequent in V726A allele (16.9%) followed by M694V allele (12.3%). Elevated SAA levels were more frequent in patients on low colchicine doses. Forty-five percent (45%) of patients have low adherence to colchicine therapy. Interpretation and Conclusion. High SAA levels were detected two weeks after last FMF attack in a large percentage of Egyptian FMF children. This indicates that subclinical inflammation continues during attack-free periods, and SAA could be used as a marker of it

Transforming the Capabilities of Artificial Intelligence in GCC Financial Sector: A Systematic Literature Review

Identity and access management is a business process framework that makes it easier to maintain genuine user identities and regulate access to sensitive assets. The word "access control"refers to an organization's policy for authorizing access procedures, the mechanisms that implement and enforce the policy, and the model that the policy and procedures are built on. Adopting new technology may give rise to specific cyber threats that decrease or degrade business operations. The paper has designed to discuss the artificial intelligence-based access control system as a necessary component of governing and safeguarding the financial sector's information assets in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Due to the dynamic and complicated nature of security rules for access control, organizations that employ web-enabled remote access in conjunction with applications access deployed over several networks face various obstacles, including increased operational complexity and monitoring concerns. Organizations spend a vast budget on securing their business. As the industry trend has shifted to intelligent internet-based companies on the same side, the cyber threat has become a challenge for the researcher to find the solution. A systematic research is conducted to fill the gaps in the existing literature by picking the most relevant research papers (126) from the four most reputable online repositories based on the four research questions specified. These research topics aim to evaluate the current situation from many perspectives and provide new avenues for future study to be studied soon to maintain high security and authenticity inside financial sectors of the GCC's countries

The burden of chronic diseases and patients' preference for healthcare services among adult patients suffering from chronic diseases in Bangladesh

Background: Low‐and middle‐income countries (LMICs) have a disproportionately high burden of chronic diseases, with inequalities in health care access and quality services. This study aimed to assess patients' preferences for healthcare services for chronic disease management among adult patients in Bangladesh. Methods: The present analysis was conducted among 10,385 patients suffering from chronic diseases, drawn from the latest Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2016–2017. We used the multinomial logistic regression to investigate the association of chronic comorbid conditions and healthcare service‐related factors with patients' preferences for healthcare services. Results: The top four dimensions of patient preference for healthcare services in order of magnitude were quality of treatment (30.3%), short distance to health facility (27.6%), affordability of health care (21.7%) and availability of doctors (11.0%). Patients with heart disease had a 29% significantly lower preference for healthcare affordability than the quality of healthcare services (relative risk ratio [RRR] = 0.71; 0.56–0.90). Patients who received healthcare services from pharmacies or dispensaries were more likely to prefer a short distance to a health facility (RRR = 6.99; 4.80–9.86) or affordability of healthcare services (RRR = 3.13; 2.25–4.36). Patients with comorbid conditions were more likely to prefer healthcare affordability (RRR = 1.39; 1.15–1.68). In addition, patients who received health care from a public facility had 2.93 times higher preference for the availability of medical doctors (RRR = 2.93; 1.70–5.04) than the quality of treatment in the health facility, when compared with private service providers. Conclusions: Patient preferences for healthcare services in chronic disease management were significantly associated with the type of disease and its magnitude and characteristics of healthcare providers. Therefore, to enhance service provision and equitable distribution and uptake of health services, policymakers and public health practitioners should consider patient preferences in designing national strategic frameworks for chronic disease management. Patient or Public Contribution: Our research team includes four researchers (co‐authors) with chronic diseases who have experience of living or working with people suffering from chronic conditions or diseases

The COVID-19 vaccination acceptance/hesitancy rate and its determinants among healthcare workers of 91 Countries: A multicenter cross-sectional study.

The aim of this study was to investigate the COVID-19 vaccination acceptance rate and its determinants among healthcare workers in a multicenter study. This was a cross-sectional multi-center survey conducted from February 5 to April 29, 2021. The questionnaire consisted of 26 items in 6 subscales. The English version of the questionnaire was translated into seven languages and distributed through Google Forms using snowball sampling; a colleague in each country was responsible for the forward and backward translation, and also the distribution of the questionnaire. A forward stepwise logistic regression was utilized to explore the variables and questionnaire factors tied to the intention to COVID-19 vaccination. 4630 participants from 91 countries completed the questionnaire. According to the United Nations Development Program 2020, 43.6 % of participants were from low Human Development Index (HDI) regions, 48.3 % high and very high, and 8.1 % from medium. The overall vaccination hesitancy rate was 37 %. Three out of six factors of the questionnaire were significantly related to intention to the vaccination. While 'Perceived benefits of the COVID-19 vaccination' (OR: 3.82, p-value<0.001) and 'Prosocial norms' (OR: 5.18, p-value<0.001) were associated with vaccination acceptance, 'The vaccine safety/cost concerns' with OR: 3.52, p-value<0.001 was tied to vaccination hesitancy. Medical doctors and pharmacists were more willing to take the vaccine in comparison to others. Importantly, HDI with OR: 12.28, 95 % CI: 6.10-24.72 was a strong positive determinant of COVID-19 vaccination acceptance. This study highlighted the vaccination hesitancy rate of 37 % in our sample among HCWs. Increasing awareness regarding vaccination benefits, confronting the misinformation, and strengthening the prosocial norms would be the primary domains for maximizing the vaccination coverage. The study also showed that the HDI is strongly associated with the vaccination acceptance/hesitancy, in a way that those living in low HDI contexts are more hesitant to receive the vaccine