Biosecurity at Cattle Farms: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

peer reviewedBiosecurity is a key component of any animal and public health strategy and disease prevention and control programs. This study reviewed the main findings of different studies implemented from 2015 to 2021 to analyse the biosecurity situation at Belgian cattle farms, including attitudes and behaviours of cattle farmers and rural veterinarians regarding biosecurity measures. Specifically, the objective was to perform a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of the situation and propose a new conceptual framework improving the level of biosecurity in the cattle sector. Biosecurity in cattle farming remains relatively low and faces multiple challenges. Its future improvement requires the different stakeholders to agree on shared goals and objectives and to carefully consider animal, public and environmental health, as well as socioeconomic and cultural factors. Further cost efficiency studies are required to identify the most important biosecurity measures and convince the stakeholders of their utility and benefits. Cattle farmers rely mainly on rural veterinarians for technical guidance and consider them as trustful informants. To be more effective in promoting these good practices, rural veterinarians need a proper guidance from the authorities, a proper training on biosecurity and communication, as well as an enabling environment

Prevalence and Determinants of Medication Adherence among Patients with HIV/AIDS in Southern Vietnam

This study was conducted to determine the prevalence and determinants of medication adherence among patients with HIV/AIDS in southern Vietnam. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in a hospital in southern Vietnam from June to December 2019 on patients who began antiretroviral therapy (ART) for at least 6 months. Using a designed questionnaire, patients were considered adherent if they took correct medicines with right doses, on time and properly with food and beverage and had follow-up visits as scheduled. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify determinants of adherence. KEY FINDINGS: A total of 350 patients (from 861 medical records) were eligible for the study. The majority of patients were male (62.9%), and the dominant age group (≥35 years old) accounted for 53.7% of patients. Sexual intercourse was the primary route of transmission of HIV (95.1%). The proportions of participants who took the correct medicine and at a proper dose were 98.3% and 86.3%, respectively. In total, 94.9% of participants took medicine appropriately in combination with food and beverage, and 75.7% of participants were strictly adherent to ART. The factors marital status (odds ratio (OR) = 2.54; 95%CI = 1.51-4.28), being away from home (OR = 1.7; 95%CI = 1.03-2.78), substance abuse (OR = 2.7; 95%CI = 1.44-5.05), general knowledge about ART (OR = 2.75; 95%CI = 1.67-4.53), stopping medication after improvement (OR = 4.16; 95%CI = 2.29-7.56) and self-assessment of therapy adherence (OR = 9.83; 95%CI = 5.44-17.77) were significantly associated with patients' adherence. CONCLUSIONS: Three-quarters of patients were adherent to ART. Researchers should consider these determinants of adherence in developing interventions in further studies

Influence maximization under fairness budget distribution in online social networks

In social influence analysis, viral marketing, and other fields, the influence maximization problem is a fundamental one with critical applications and has attracted many researchers in the last decades. This problem asks to find a k-size seed set with the largest expected influence spread size. Our paper studies the problem of fairness budget distribution in influence maximization, aiming to find a seed set of size k fairly disseminated in target communities. Each community has certain lower and upper bounded budgets, and the number of each community's elements is selected into a seed set holding these bounds. Nevertheless, resolving this problem encounters two main challenges: strongly influential seed sets might not adhere to the fairness constraint, and it is an NP-hard problem. To address these shortcomings, we propose three algorithms (FBIM1, FBIM2, and FBIM3). These algorithms combine an improved greedy strategy for selecting seeds to ensure maximum coverage with the fairness constraints by generating sampling through a Reverse Influence Sampling framework. Our algorithms provide a (1/2 - epsilon)-approximation of the optimal solution, and require O(kT log ((8 + 2 epsilon)n ln + 2/delta + ln(nk)/epsilon(2))), O(kT log n/epsilon(2)k), and O(T/epsilon log k/epsilon log n/epsilon(2)k) complexity, respectively. We conducted experiments on real social networks. The result shows that our proposed algorithms are highly scalable while satisfying theoretical assurances, and that the coverage ratios with respect to the target communities are larger than those of the state-of-the-art alternatives; there are even cases in which our algorithms reaches 100% coverage with respect to target communities. In addition, our algorithms are feasible and effective even in cases involving big data; in particular, the results of the algorithms guarantee fairness constraints.Web of Science1022art. no. 418

Efficient streaming algorithms for maximizing monotone DR-submodular function on the integer lattice

In recent years, the issue of maximizing submodular functions has attracted much interest from research communities. However, most submodular functions are specified in a set function. Meanwhile, recent advancements have been studied for maximizing a diminishing return submodular (DR-submodular) function on the integer lattice. Because plenty of publications show that the DR-submodular function has wide applications in optimization problems such as sensor placement impose problems, optimal budget allocation, social network, and especially machine learning. In this research, we propose two main streaming algorithms for the problem of maximizing a monotone DR-submodular function under cardinality constraints. Our two algorithms, which are called StrDRS1 and StrDRS2, have (1/2 - epsilon) , (1 - 1 /e - epsilon) of approximation ratios and O(n/epsilon log(log B/epsilon ) log k), O(n/epsilon log B), respectively. We conducted several experiments to investigate the performance of our algorithms based on the budget allocation problem over the bipartite influence model, an instance of the monotone submodular function maximization problem over the integer lattice. The experimental results indicate that our proposed algorithms not only provide solutions with a high value of the objective function, but also outperform the state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of both the number of queries and the running time.Web of Science1020art. no. 377

Piezoelectric catalysis for efficient reduction of CO₂ using lead-free ferroelectric particulates

The increase in global energy demand, together with a rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have encouraged research into the reduction of CO2 into useful chemicals and fuels. In this paper, we demonstrate the piezo-catalytic reduction of CO2 using lead-free lithium-doped potassium sodium niobate (KNN) ferroelectric ceramic particulates. The application of acoustic waves generated by ultrasound to a suspension of the ceramics particles creates pressure waves result in a large change in the spontaneous polarisation of the KNN particles via the piezoelectric effect, which in turn creates surfaces charges for CO2 reduction. The effect of CO2 gas concentration, the presence of dissolved species, and catalyst loading on piezo-catalytic performance are explored. By optimization of the piezo-catalytic effect, a promising piezo-catalytic CO2 reduction rate of 438 μmol g−1 h−1 is achieved, which is much larger than the those obtained from pyro-catalytic effects. This efficient and polarisation tuneable piezo-catalytic route has potential to promote the development of CO2 reduction via the utilisation of vibrational energy for environmental benefit.</p

Drug-Related Problems in Prescribing for Pediatric Outpatients in Vietnam

BACKGROUND: Our study was conducted to determine the prevalence of drug-related problems (DRPs) in outpatient prescriptions, the impact of DRPs on treatment efficacy, safety, and cost, and the determinants of DRPs in prescribing for pediatric outpatients in Vietnam. METHODS: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted on pediatric outpatients at a pediatric hospital in Can Tho, Vietnam. DRPs were classified according to the Pharmaceutical Care Network Europe classification (PCNE) of 2020. The study determined prevalence of DRPs and their impacts on efficacy, safety, and cost. Multivariate regression was used to identify the determinants of DRPs. RESULTS: The study included 4339 patients (mean age 4.3, 55.8% male), with a total of 3994 DRPs, averaging 0.92 DRP/prescription. The proportion of prescriptions with at least one DRP was 65.7%. DRPs included inappropriate drug selection (35.6%), wrong time of dosing relative to meals (35.6%), inappropriate dosage form (9.3%), inappropriate indication (7.1%), and drug-drug interactions (0.3%). The consensus of experts was average when evaluating each aspect of efficiency reduction, safety reduction, and treatment cost increase, with Fleiss' coefficients of 0.558, 0.511, and 0.541, respectively (p < 0.001). Regarding prescriptions, 50.1% were assessed as reducing safety. The figures for increased costs and decreased treatment effectiveness were 29.0% and 23.9%, respectively. Patients who were ≤2 years old were more likely to have DRPs than patients aged 2 to 6 years old (OR = 0.696; 95% CI = 0.599-0.809) and patients aged over 6 years old (OR = 0.801; 95% CI = 0.672-0.955). Patients who had respiratory system disease were more likely to have DRPs than patients suffering from other diseases (OR = 0.715; 95% CI = 0.607-0.843). Patients with comorbidities were less likely to have DRPs than patients with no comorbidities (OR = 1.421; 95% CI = 1.219-1.655). Patients prescribed ≥5 drugs were more likely to have DRPs than patients who took fewer drugs (OR = 3.677; 95% CI = 2.907-4.650). CONCLUSION: The proportion of prescriptions in at least one DRP was quite high. Further studies should evaluate clinical significance and appropriate interventions, such as providing drug information and consulting doctors about DRPs