Health Supplement Use and Related Adverse Events in Dubai, United Arab Emirates: A Cross-Study

Health supplement products contain ingredients of more than a thousand chemicals. Several of these chemicals may adversely affect human health. Previous studies have found that consumers are generally unaware of the risks of health supplements and their associated adverse events. In addition, they are unaware of the appropriate reporting process to relevant authorities should adverse events occur. Moreover, many healthcare professionals have inadequate knowledge, attitude, and practice in health supplement consumption-related adverse events and their reporting. The purpose of this research was to measure the health supplement consumption in the population of Dubai, the adverse events thereof, and the level of knowledge, attitude, and practice among healthcare professionals about the issue. This research project comprised two cross-sectional studies. The first was a telephone survey using computer-assisted personal interviewing carried out among the general population. The second study was an on-line survey among healthcare professionals from various private and government healthcare settings in Dubai that sought to assess their knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) toward health supplements. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the demographic characteristics of the sample using frequencies and percentages as appropriate. Chi-square, or ANOVA, was used as appropriate to test for statistical differences. Analyses were conducted using STATA version 14.2. In the first survey, among 1,203 participants, 455 (37.8%) reported either current or previous use of health supplements. Of the 455 users, 389 (85.54%) were knowledgeable about health supplements and 442 (97.14%) had encountered no adverse events. Of the 13 (2.86%) who had encountered adverse events, the degree of severity was either moderate or mild. Most (10, 76.92%) did not know how to report the adverse event to healthcare professionals. Only 3 (23.08%) had ever reported an event. In the second study, 427 healthcare professionals participated in the online survey. Of these, 78 (18.3%) had a good level of KAP towards health supplements, 166 (38.9%) had a fair level of KAP, while 183 (42.9%) had a poor level. Job experience of over 6 years resulted in a significant difference (P=0.017) in mean KAP scores. No statistically significant differences in scores were found with gender or educational levels. Significant differences, however, (P=0.001) were found with nationality where non-UAE national participants had a higher level of KAP than UAE nationals. There were also significant differences in mean KAP scores between occupational groups, physicians, and pharmacists having higher scores than other healthcare providers. The findings of this research provide important new knowledge about health supplement use in Dubai. The findings may be used to develop policies and programs on health supplements that will help to minimize the risk of adverse events arising from their use. The results also point out that it is important to institute educational initiatives to assess any risks related to the use of health supplements. Such initiatives will help to raise both awareness and knowledge in both the population and healthcare professionals regarding the use and adverse events of health supplements

A Robust Variable Step Size Fractional Least Mean Square (RVSS-FLMS) Algorithm

In this paper, we propose an adaptive framework for the variable step size of the fractional least mean square (FLMS) algorithm. The proposed algorithm named the robust variable step size-FLMS (RVSS-FLMS), dynamically updates the step size of the FLMS to achieve high convergence rate with low steady state error. For the evaluation purpose, the problem of system identification is considered. The experiments clearly show that the proposed approach achieves better convergence rate compared to the FLMS and adaptive step-size modified FLMS (AMFLMS).Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, 13th IEEE Colloquium on Signal Processing & its Applications (CSPA 2017

A Scheduling Algorithm to Enhance the Performance and the Cost of Cloud Services

Cloud computing is based on the pay-per-use; hence, the price of usage is one of the main factors for cloud services’ customers when selecting the cloud provider to rent the service from. Hence, cloud providers need to provide competitive costs of the services for the users. Therefore, the cloud providers, in addition to optimize the utilization of the resources, aim to provide the service with the competitive cost at the same time. In order to achieve this, there is a need for a new set of economical task scheduling algorithms for the cloud. This paper introduces an algorithm for task scheduling based on assigning priorities for tasks according to their profits, where we provided examples of usage of the algorithm and compared it to some of the traditional cloud scheduling algorithms. Keywords: Cloud Computing, Scheduling, Priority, Resource Utilization

Using ensemble decision tree model to predict student dropout in computing science

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) professionals play a key role in the development of an economy. STEM workers are critical thinkers as they contribute immensely by driving innovations. There is a high demand for professionals in the STEM fields but there is also a shortage of human resource in these areas. One way to reduce this problem is by identifying students who are at-risk of dropping out and then intervening with focused strategies that will ensure that these students remain in same the programme till graduation. Therefore, this research aims to use a data mining classification technique to identify students who are at-risk of dropping out from their Computing Science (CS) degree programmes. The Random Forest (RF) decision tree algorithm is used to learn patterns from historical data about first-year undergraduate CS students who are enrolled in a tertiary institute in the South Pacific. A number of factors are used which comprise of students demographic information, previous education background, financial information as well as data about students' academic interaction. Feature selection is performed to determine which factors have greater influence in students' decision in dropping out. Cross-validation techniques are used to ensure that the models are not over-fitted. Two models were built using a 5fold and 10-fold cross-validation and the results were compared using several measures of model performance. The results show that the factors corresponding to students' academic performance in a first-year programming course had the greatest impact student attrition in CS

A Study of Delay and Data Traffic of IEEE 802.15.4 ZigBee-Based WSN in a Smart Home

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) play a key role in modern applications, for instance, in smart homes as will be demonstrated in this paper. ZigBee technology provides better support when compared with WiFi, Bluetooth and Ultra Wide Band (UWB) standards regarding transmission range. This paper deals with the use of ZigBee WSN in a domestic application, namely smart home control. This model comprises a smart home with multiple rooms, designed in such a way that each room has sensors comprise for a varied environment. The sensor nodes will be presented by ZigBee end device which transmits the traffic to a master node in the form of a ZigBee coordinator. An OPNET modeler V14.5 was used in this simulation study. This paper presents seven models related to delay and data traffic received to improve WSN performance. Seven different WSN designs variations were utilized according to the number of rooms, sensors, coordinators, and routers. The outcomes demonstrate that one coordinator model causes more delay when compared with multiple coordinator models. Conversely, the presence of a router causes additional delay. This model should help electrical engineers when designing smart homes that utilize WSNs

Tui Na (or Tuina) Massage: A Minireview of Pertinent Literature, 1970-2017

Background: Tuina massage is a traditional method used effectively in the treatment of various ailments in China since ancient time, and currently it is used around the world. Objective: This minireview aims to describe several aspects of Tuina massage an integral part of Traditional Chinese Medicine in order to fill up the knowledge gap concerning traditional practitioners in Saudi Arabia. Methods: Electronic searches of databases using Boolean operators and keywords were conducted to retrieve data published in English and Chinese literature. Thousands of articles were identified and screened by two independent reviewers using exclusion and inclusion criteria, and 56 articles were finally included in this study. Results: Tuina has a very rich history in Chinese culture since antiquity. With continuous advancements in research, training, regulation and clinical practice, Tuina massage became popular worldwide and now used either alone or in conjunction with other complementary and alternative medicine or conventional therapies in diverse diseases associated with pain and other symptoms with good outcome. Although Tuina has good safety profile with level of evidence (LOE) of I to III, well defined indications and contraindications, a variety of minor adverse effects together with some major complications including deaths have been reported in the literature. Besides continuous training of Tuina practitioners, Tuina massage practice needs regulatory measures and guidelines for avoiding complications and improving the clinical outcome of patients. Conclusion: Evidently, Chinese Tuina massage supported by theory, mechanisms, procedure and included randomized clinical trials snapshots, systematic reviews and meta-analysis with LOE of I to III is reported to be effective in several conditions. Further, rigorous randomized controlled studies with active comparators including other traditional modality or conventional medications or placebo with intensified quality control measures are required to provide further robust evidence-based data to support its efficacy in chronic diseases associated with pain and disabilities

Chemokines and chemokine receptors in colorectal cancer; multifarious roles and clinical impact

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Colorectal cancer (CRC) is considered the second cause of cancer death worldwide. The early diagnosis plays a key role in patient prognosis and subsequently overall survival. Similar to several types of cancer, colorectal cancer is also characterised by drug resistance and heterogeneity that contribute to its complexity -especially at advanced stages. However, despite the extensive research related to the identification of biomarkers associated to early diagnosis, accurate prognosis and the management of CRC patients, little progress has been made thus far. Therefore, the mortality rates, especially at advanced stages, remain high. A large family of chemoattractant cytokines called chemokines are known for their significant role in inflammation and immunity. Chemokines released by the different tumorous cells play a key role in increasing the complexity of the tumour's microenvironment. The current review investigates the role of chemokines and chemokine receptors in colorectal cancer and their potential as clinical molecular signatures that could be effectively used as a personalised therapeutic approach. We discussed how chemokine and chemokine receptors regulate the microenvironment and lead to heterogeneity in CRC. An important aspect of chemokines is their role in drug resistance which has been extensively discussed. This review also provides an overview of the current advances in the search for chemokines and chemokine receptors in CRC.Peer reviewe