Diagnostic Color Strip Reader for World Health Partners Clinics

Despite the advancement of medical technology, many people in developing countries like India and Kenya still suffer from treatable diseases. In many of the health clinics in these areas, color strips are used for checkups and diagnosis of diseases. However, a big problem with these color strips is that the diagnosis of color strips take a long time because they have to be manually checked. Currently, World Health Partners (WHP) works with doctors and hospitals in India and Kenya to provide more accessible healthcare through telehealth networks to get consultations from rural clinics to specialists at hospitals. We are working with WHP to streamline the process of color strip diagnosis, by creating an application that goes through the process of reading a color strip in a single step. Our application analyzes an image of a color strip and returns the concentration of the different factors being tested on the color strip. By doing so, we provide a precise analysis of color strips, instead of having to wait for a specialist

Hypertension Prevalence, Knowledge, Attitude and Health Practices Among Employees of a Wellness Village: Basis for a Proposed Hypertension-Prevention Program

Hypertension is known as a silent killer because some people who suffer from it do not know that they have the disease. Globally, approximately 7.5 million deaths occur due to high blood pressure. In the Philippines, hypertension is ranked as number eight and is the leading cause of death among Filipinos. Moreover, 41.3 million employed Filipinos are suffering from this disease. This study aimed to determine the knowledge, attitude, and health practices to prevent hypertension among the employees of a Wellness Village. The study used a quantitative type of research where 30 respondents were surveyed, utilizing a purposive sampling method in the selection of the appropriate respondents. The data were treated statistically with the utilization of frequency-percentage distribution and mean. The results showed that the respondents have very good knowledge (overall % = 72.99%), a fair attitude (mean=2.76), and fair practice (mean=2.37) on hypertension and its lifestyle management. As a result of this study, the researcher created a proposed intervention program for the risk reduction of hypertension among workplace employees.Keywords: hypertension, employees, knowledge, attitude, practic

Implementation of school disaster risk reduction in coastal schools: Basis for a plan of action

School Disaster Risk Reduction Management (SDRRM) plays a crucial role in ensuring that learners, teachers and other school personnel are safe on the school premises. This study evaluated how well coastal schools in Cluster VII of the Division of Pampanga, Philippines had implemented a school disaster risk reduction management system. This study used the descriptive research method. Respondents to the study were seventy-four (74) public school teachers during the school year 2020-2021. In this research, the following findings were obtained: The respondents assessed safe learning facilities, school disaster management, risk reduction and resilience education and coastal school safety procedures. However, among these categories “coastal school safety procedures” got the lowest overall mean score. Additional findings showed that there is no discernible variation in the degree of SDRRM implementation across the respondent schools. This means that these schools have uniformity in implementing school disaster risk reduction management. It is recommended that schools maintain uniformity in the implementation of DRR policies

The Extent of Knowledge, Preparedness and Perception of Telemedicine among Family Medicine Residents in Cebu City during COVID-19

Telemedicine is providing healthcare services using electronic means at a distance including the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases as well as the research and evaluation, and education of healthcare providers. Its role in the time of the pandemic is vital, especially to the practice of medicine. This study is a descriptive, cross-sectional, survey research study conducted in four hospital training institutions in Cebu City. A total of 41 respondents gave their consent and were given the online survey questionnaire about the extent of knowledge, preparedness and perceptions of telemedicine. Out of the 41 respondents, 56.10% were young adults (26-30 years old), mostly females (70.73%), single (68.29%), first-year residents (43.90%), employed at a government hospital (70.73%) and are in the traditional residency pathway (82.93%). On relevant experience, 82.93% experienced telemedicine during residency, with 100% on follow-up consultations, and 95% were consulted due to infections. Respondents’ extent of knowledge was average while the extent of preparedness and perception were high. Problems with low connectivity (80.48%) were noted by most of the respondents. Resident physicians moderately understood the information about telemedicine but with a high extent of preparedness and perception. Challenges to low connectivity and handling patients’ data privacy were the major concerns met by the resident physicians in the use of telemedicine

Correlates and Demographic Differences on Nurses’ Awareness and Preparedness on Palliative Care to End-of-Life Care Practices: Basis for an Intervention Program

Studies have shown that the Philippines has less emphasis on supplying quality palliative care and that end-of-life care is inadequate and limited.  This study explored the relationship and demographic differences in awareness, and preparedness on palliative care and practices towards end-of-life care among hospital nurses.  The descriptive-correlation design was utilized in this study.  Respondents were 381 hospital nurses from 17 different hospitals from eight different regions.  A conceptualized self-constructed questionnaire from literature was developed and used in gathering the data. Results of the analysis showed that nurses have very high (M=3.50, SD=0.33) awareness but only have a high (M=3.47, SD=0.34) level of preparedness in palliative care.  Whereas, end-of-life care practices as to psycho-spiritual (M=3.92, SD=0.50), socio-cultural (M=4.11, SD=0.56), physical (M=4.44, SD=4.44), and coordination (M=4.35, SD=0.50) are all often practiced.  Correlation analysis revealed that both awareness and preparedness on palliative are positively, and significantly correlated with their end-of-life care practices (p=0.00; p=0.00).  There were no significant differences found in end-of-life care practices considering age, gender, marital status, years of clinical experience, and unit of assignment of the nurses.  Moreover, only preparedness came out as significant predictor of all the dimensions of practices (R2=0.18, p=0.00; R2=0.16, p=0.00; R2=0.12, p=0.00; R2=0.13, p=0.00) It is recommended that a further study that will consider other factors in examining the relationship and differences between the variables be conducted

Design and Development of a Remote Station for Real-time Monitoring of Urban Flooding

This paper presents the design and development of urban flood monitoring stations that use pressure sensor to determine flooding levels. GPRS and SMS were used to communicate data from the remote stations to a server located at a data center. A web-based visualization tool has been developed to allow access to data in real-time. Based on experiments, the sensor measurements have a difference of 0.872cm to 3.067cm with actual values. The higher differences tend to be associated with higher water levels while lower differences were noted for lower water levels. With further experimentation, these differences can be used as correction factors to get to a more accurate reading, specially for purposes of R&D or modeling, though for issuance of warnings to the public, these differences are small enough especially since warnings are mostly based on qualitative descriptions such as knee-deep or waist deep flood level. Image capture was also experimented on and is envisioned to be incorporated with the station to provide a means to verify water level by providing a visual reference. Likewise, the image capture device will serve as a redundant sensor that can also determine flood levels thru image processing. Currently, two prototypes are deployed along Espana Avenue, an area known for flooding. Data from the stations show the typical behavior of flood water but currently, there is no reliable means to verify the accuracy of sensor readings, until the image capture device is installed. The data are viewable thru a web-based visualization tool

New records of Hyachelia tortugae and H. lowryi.

12 pages : illustrations (some color), map ; 26 cm. Specimens collected by the American Museum of Natural History's Center for Biodiversity and Conservation as part of its ongoing program of Pacific sea turtle research and conservation. (Page 3)Amphipods of the genus Hyachelia collected during an epibiont survey conducted over three years (2009, 2010, and 2011) at Palmyra Atoll are reported. Both known species, i.e., Hyachelia tortugae Barnard, 1967, and Hyachelia lowryi Serejo and Sittrop, 2009, were collected from Pacific green turtles, Chelonia mydas (Linnaeus). Given the increased awareness of epibionts and the desire of researchers to make positive identifications, figures of the diagnostic features of both amphipod species are presented. The significance of the cooccurrence of these two species on Pacific green turtles (Chelonia mydas) is discussed

An atypical DYRK kinase connects quorum-sensing with posttranscriptional gene regulation in Trypanosoma brucei.

The sleeping sickness parasite, Trypanosoma brucei, uses quorum sensing (QS) to balance proliferation and transmission potential in the mammal bloodstream. A signal transduction cascade regulates this process, a component of which is a divergent member of the DYRK family of protein kinases, TbDYRK. Phylogenetic and mutational analysis in combination with activity and phenotypic assays revealed that TbDYRK exhibits a pre-activated conformation and an atypical HxY activation loop motif, unlike DYRK kinases in other eukaryotes. Phosphoproteomic comparison of TbDYRK null mutants with wild-type parasites identified molecules that operate on both the inhibitory 'slender retainer' and activatory 'stumpy inducer' arms of the QS control pathway. One of these molecules, the RNA-regulator TbZC3H20, regulates parasite QS, this being dependent on the integrity of its TbDYRK phosphorylation site. This analysis reveals fundamental differences to conventional DYRK family regulation and links trypanosome environmental sensing, signal transduction and developmental gene expression in a coherent pathway