Implantable port devices in paediatric oncology patients: A clinical experience from a tertiary care hospital

Objective: To assess the frequency of infection of portacath in children having malignant tumours and undergoing chemotherapy, and to assess the association of the infection with already known risk factors.Methods: The retrospective review was conducted at Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, and involved patient data related to the period between January 2005 to December 2010. A questionnaire was designed to collect the required data. A total of 67 children were included having portacath inserted for chemotherapy. Children in which portacath was inserted under local anaesthesia in Radiology department, reinserted or inserted because of a reason other than childhood malignancy were excluded. SPSS 19 was used for statistical analysis.Results: Of the total, 46 (67%) patients were males and a majority of the total (n = 31; 46%) was between 6-10 years of age. Besides, 42 (63%) patients had leukaemia, 7 (11%) had lymphoma and 18 (26%) had various solid tumours. Six (8.95%) ports were removed due to infection. There was significant difference between infection and non-infection groups with respect to absolute neutrophilic count levels (p \u3c 0.001). Positive association was found between low absoulute neutrophilic count level (\u3c or = 500) and the occurrence of port infection.Conclusions: Port infection rate is higher in children with low absoulute neutrophilic count. The issue needs to be addressed and one may have to alter the timings of port insertion. It is recommended to insert port when absolute neutrophilic count is normal. To further evaluate the subject, a multicentre trial must be conducted

Fostering ICT Competencies in Blended Learning : Role of Curriculum Content, Material, and Teaching Strategies

The study examined the direct and indirect influence of information communication technology (ICT)-integrated curriculum content, material, and teaching strategies on ICT competencies of students in blended learning. The ICT-integrated teaching strategies were used as a mediator in between the relationships of curriculum content, material, and ICT competencies. We used a survey questionnaire containing 26 items on the variables of research in this study. The data were collected from six universities in the Hunan Province of China. The target population consisted of undergraduate students of blended learning. In total, 486 participants participated in the study. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was applied to measure the relationships among variables. The results revealed that there were significant and positive relationships among ICT-integrated curriculum content, material, teaching strategies, and ICT competencies of students. Furthermore, it was also revealed that ICT-integrated teaching strategies in blended learning mediated the relationships in between ICT integrated curriculum content, material, and ICT competencies. It was concluded that the effective curriculum content, curriculum material, and teaching strategies are the critical predictors of ICT competencies. Moreover, teaching strategies worked as an intervening factor between the curriculum content, curriculum material, and ICT competencies. The practical implications and directions for future research are also presented in this study.Peer reviewe

An Efficient Supervised Machine Learning Technique for Forecasting Stock Market Trends

Background/introduction: In recent years, stock market forecasting has received a lot of attention from researchers. This attention and the growing stock market investments have highlighted this as an important and emerging application of machine learning.Methods: In this research work, we present a stock trend forecasting system with a focus on reducing the amount of sparseness in the data collected using machine learning. We conduct an outlier detection of the data available for reducing dimensionality and implement a K-nearest neighbor algorithm to classify stock trends.Results and conclusions: The experimental results show the performance and effectiveness of the proposed trend forecasting system compared to the existing systems. The proposed system’s model (i.e., KNN classifier) gives better results of low error (MSE = 0.00005, MAE = 0.005 and Logcosh = 0.004) on KSE dataset as compared to previous works

Social Media Tools for the Development of Pre-Service Health Sciences Researchers during COVID-19 in Pakistan

The development of health sciences researchers has immense significance during a pandemic to control, manage, and prevent future outbreaks of the disease. This study focused on the use of social media tools (SMT) among pre-service health sciences researchers to complement their research competencies (RCT) and research completion levels (RC) during COVID-19. This study used the Vitae research development framework (RDF) to measure research competencies as a mediator between the use of social media tools and research completion levels among post-graduate health sciences students. A cross-section survey research approach was adopted to collect data from the post-graduate students (n = 410) enrolled in health sciences departments at universities in Pakistan. The SmartPLS 3.3.8 software was used to analyze data through Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results revealed that different social media tools such as communication, information management, and multimedia have a direct influence on the research competencies of the pre-service researchers and have an indirect effect on the research completion levels. Health sciences institutions may devise social-media-based instructional strategies to develop post-graduate students’ research competencies, such as personal effectiveness, research governance, and research engagement, to help them compile their research and complete their degree program in time during an emergency

Social Media Tools for the Development of Pre-Service Health Sciences Researchers during COVID-19 in Pakistan

The development of health sciences researchers has immense significance during a pandemic to control, manage, and prevent future outbreaks of the disease. This study focused on the use of social media tools (SMT) among pre-service health sciences researchers to complement their research competencies (RCT) and research completion levels (RC) during COVID-19. This study used the Vitae research development framework (RDF) to measure research competencies as a mediator between the use of social media tools and research completion levels among post-graduate health sciences students. A cross-section survey research approach was adopted to collect data from the post-graduate students (n = 410) enrolled in health sciences departments at universities in Pakistan. The SmartPLS 3.3.8 software was used to analyze data through Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results revealed that different social media tools such as communication, information management, and multimedia have a direct influence on the research competencies of the pre-service researchers and have an indirect effect on the research completion levels. Health sciences institutions may devise social-media-based instructional strategies to develop post-graduate students’ research competencies, such as personal effectiveness, research governance, and research engagement, to help them compile their research and complete their degree program in time during an emergency

Support through Social Media and Online Class Participation to Enhance Psychological Resilience

Social support was an important factor in minimizing the effect of social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. This research aimed to study the role of online class participation and social media usage to link the social support available from family and friends to psychological resilience among pre-service special education teachers against the negative psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. A survey was conducted with 377 pre-service special needs education (SNE) teachers enrolled at universities in Pakistan. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was applied using Smart-PLS 3.2.8. Results revealed that social media and online class participation played a mediating role between social support and psychological resilience in the pre-service special needs education (SNE) teachers studied. Teacher education institutions can devise strategies to develop social media platforms for student socialization during an emergency to help build resilience against the negative psychological effects of social isolation. Future studies could be conducted to adapt instructions and curricula to social media environments for education in an emergency.Peer reviewe

Physical activity levels and suggestions for its promotion among university students

Introduction: Physical activity not only has positive effects on health, but is also linked to various aspects of life. Physical activity is considered one of the main components that contribute to a healthy lifestyle and general improvement in health including physical strength, muscle endurance and flexibility. A variety of evidences show that regular physical activity is beneficial to health and strong scientific research exists that reported decreased mortality rate with an optimal level of physical activity. This study was designed to evaluate the physical activity status of university students and their suggestions to promote physical activity. Material & Methods: From January to October 2019, a cross-sectional study was conducted among 2,916 university students, studying at different universities in Faisalabad. The aim was to measure the levels of physical activity according to the pre-defined inclusion/exclusion criteria. Participants were enrolled in the study using convenient sampling. The questionnaire used in this study consisted of three sections, with the first part recording the demographics of the participants, the second part an International Physical Activity Questionnaire and the third part containing several suggestions for promoting physical activity. Logistic regression analysis was used for factors influencing physical activity behaviour. Confidence interval (CI=95%) and odds ratio (OR) were calculated and P-value <0.05 was considered significant. Results: The findings of our study revealed that 2469 (84.6%) of the students out of 2916 were physically active. Of 2916, 1541 (52.8%) participants were moderately active, while 928 (31.8%) participants were highly active. Overall 92.20% male were physically active compared to females 81.70%. Moreover, our study found that the most preferred suggestion for the promotion of physical activity proposed by the students (n=1011, 34.7%) was a provision of physical and social environments that encourage and allow safe and pleasurable physical activity. The least preferred suggestion by the students (n=735, 25.2%) was the addition of at least thirty minutes of exercise as part of the curriculum. Conclusion: This study found that the physical activity profile of most students was between moderate and high. The top-ranked suggestion for the promotion of physical activity among the students was a provision of physical and social environments that encourage and allow safe and pleasurable physical activity

Applying Deep Neural Networks for Predicting Dark Triad Personality Trait of Online Users

© 2020 IEEE. In the recent times, the social networking sites act as a rich source of information, which is shared among online users, who post comments and express their opinions in the form of likes and dislikes. Such content reflects important clues about the personality and behavior of the online community. The dark triad personality traits, such as the psychopathic behavior of individuals, can be detected using computational models. The earlier studies on the dark triad (psychopath) prediction exploit traditional machine learning techniques with limited dataset size. Therefore, it is required to develop an advanced deep neural network-based technique. In this work, we implement a deep neural network model, namely BILSTM for the efficient prediction of dark triad (psychopath) personality traits regarding online users. Experimental results depict that the proposed model attained an improved AUC (0.82) when compared to the baseline study

Iron, copper and silver nanoparticles: green synthesis using green and black tea leaves extracts and evaluation of antibacterial, antifungal and aflatoxin B1 adsorption activity

peer-reviewedThe present study was aimed to account an eco-friendly synthesis of iron (Fe), copper (Cu) and silver (Ag) nanoparticles (NPs) using green tea and black tea leaves extracts. Synthesized NPs were characterized using SEM, FTIR, EDX and UV/Vis spectroscopy techniques. Antibacterial activity of NPs was assessed against methicillin- and vancomycin-resistance Staphylococcus aureus strains. Antifungal activity was investigated against Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus fungal species. Adsorbent capability with aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) was also assessed in solution. Ag-NPs showed superior antibacterial/antifungal activities and reduced the aflatoxins production in comparison to Fe-NPs and Cu-NPs. Adsorption capability of all NPs with AFB1 contamination was found in the order of Fe-NPs > Cu-NPs > Ag-NPs. The equilibrium data showed the favorability of Langmuir isotherm with the adsorption capacity (131–139 ng/mg), Cu-NPs (114–118 ng/mg) and Ag-NPs (110–115 ng/mg). Thermodynamic parameters and kinetic studies revealed that adsorption process is spontaneous, endothermic and followed the pseudo-second order. These results suggest that the synthesized NPs could be effectively utilize as an alternative antibacterial/antifungal agent against diseases caused by multiple drug resistant pathogens. In addition, these metal NPs may be utilize as a possible aflatoxins adsorbent in human food and animal feed such as rice, wheat, maize, red chillies and poultry feed

Global, regional, and national burden of colorectal cancer and its risk factors, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Funding: F Carvalho and E Fernandes acknowledge support from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT), in the scope of the project UIDP/04378/2020 and UIDB/04378/2020 of the Research Unit on Applied Molecular Biosciences UCIBIO and the project LA/P/0140/2020 of the Associate Laboratory Institute for Health and Bioeconomy i4HB; FCT/MCTES through the project UIDB/50006/2020. J Conde acknowledges the European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC-StG-2019-848325). V M Costa acknowledges the grant SFRH/BHD/110001/2015, received by Portuguese national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), IP, under the Norma Transitória DL57/2016/CP1334/CT0006.proofepub_ahead_of_prin