Ethnic Diversity and Ethnic Strife: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

The objective of this paper is to present an overview of ethnicity, ethnic strife and its consequences, as seen from the perspective of the disciplines of economics, political science, social anthropology and sociology. What exactly is ethnicity--how is it to be defined, characterized and measured? What exactly are the causal links from ethnicity so defined to its presumed consequences, including tension and violence? What are the feedback loops from the consequences of ethnic divisions back to these divisions themselves? How can policy, if at all, mitigate ethnic divisions and ethnic conflict? Finally, what role does interdisciplinarity have in helping to understand ethnicity and ethnic strife, and how can interdisciplinary collaboration be enhanced? These are the questions which this paper takes up and deals with in sequence.Ethnicity, Conflict, Interdisciplinary Approaches, International Development, International Relations/Trade,

Serious adverse events following immunization after ChAdOx1 nCov-19 vaccination in India: a single center experience

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Layered Tablets: A Novel Oral Solid Dosage Form

Oral solid dosage forms hold a predominant position in the drug delivery system. Tablets are the most widely used and convenient dosage form. Due to their ease of manufacturing, the minimum cost of production, easy handling and storage, and better stability, tablets are most preferred. Patients who are prescribed more than one drug are in a situation to consume multiple tablets. To minimize the counts, one or more drugs are cast into layers to form a single tablet, thus called layered tablets. Layered tablets tend to improve patient compliance and reduce the cost of production by half. Layers can be of multiple drugs or the same drug at different doses or drugs with release enhancers or drugs with fillers. Layered tablets hold a greater potential with better patient outcomes as well as stay production-friendly

Reproducibility of linear and angular cephalometric measurements obtained by an artificial-intelligence assisted software (WebCeph) in comparison with digital software (AutoCEPH) and manual tracing method

ABSTRACT Introduction: It has been suggested that human errors during manual tracing of linear/angular cephalometric parameters can be eliminated by using computer-aided analysis. The landmarks, however, are located manually and the computer system completes the analysis. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence in the field of Dentistry, automatic location of the landmarks has become a promising tool in digital Orthodontics. Methods: Fifty pretreatment lateral cephalograms obtained from the Orthodontic department of SRM dental college (India) were used. Analysis were done by the same investigator using the following methods: WebCeph™, AutoCEPH© for Windows or manual tracing. Landmark identification was carried out automatically by Artificial Intelligence in WebCeph™ and with a mouse driven cursor in AutoCEPH©, and manually using acetate sheet and 0.3-mm pencil, ruler and a protractor. The mean differences of the cephalometric parameters obtained between the three methods were calculated using ANOVA with statistical significance set at p0.75 indicated good agreement. Results: Intraclass correlation coefficient between the three groups was >0.830, showing good level of agreement, and the value within each group was >0.950, indicating high intrarater reliability. Conclusion: Artificial Intelligence assisted software showed good agreement with AutoCEPH© and manual tracing for all the cephalometric measurements

Clinical and Environment Factors Impacting Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma Prognosis

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Frequency of significant fibrosis in various chronic liver diseases: an evaluation with Transient Elastography (TE)

INTRODUCTION: Liver biopsy has long been the gold standard to evaluate liver fibrosis. TE was developed as a non- invasive method to assess liver fibrosis by measuring liver stiffness using shear wave velocity. Many studies have proven its’ effectiveness as a method for evaluating liver fibrosis.1-2 The use of TE in UMMC began in 2013. OBJECTIVE: To determine the frequency and aetiology of liver fibrosis and cirrhosis in our local population METHOD: This was a retrospective study conducted at UMMC. Inclusion criteria was all patients who had TE performed from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2021. Their demographics, clinical characteristics and TE findings were charted. RESULTS: A total of 3066 patients were included, in which 51.7% were males and 48.3% were females. The median CAP value was 271 dB/m. The median E value was 6.5kPa. 11.2% and 11.3% of patients had significant fibrosis (10.1-14.9kPa) and cirrhosis(≥15kPa) respectively. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) was noted to be the most common aetiology for fibrosis (32.8%), followed by chronic hepatitis B (CHB) at 25.2%, chronic hepatitis C (CHC) at 6.7% and alcoholic liver disease (ALD) with 1.3%. This finding was also found to be similar in the cirrhosis group (NAFLD 32.5%, CHB 17.2%, CHC 11.9% and ALD 1.4%). 219 DISCUSSION: Our study shows that the most common cause for significant fibrosis and cirrhosis is NAFLD. This is in contrast with previous studies, that reported the most common aetiology being CHB.3-4 This is likely due to the availability of effective treatment for hepatitis B and C. This may also be attributed to the initiation of the national Hepatitis B vaccination program for newborns and the improvement in blood transfusion safety. CONCLUSION: NAFLD has the greatest frequency of fibrosis compared with other aetiologies of liver disease - mainly as there is no effective treatment, unlike viral hepatitis