An Intervention Using A 10-Item Quiz For Educating Patients With Asthma On Their Disease And Its Treatment In The Waiting Area: How Well Did The Patients Do?

Background: Patients’ understanding and knowledge of their illness and its management have a direct impact on the outcome of care. This is particularly true of chronic illnesses like Bronchial Asthma. Opportunities for educating patients with asthma are numerous but are not well-utilised. One such opportunity exists in asthma clinics patients’ waiting rooms.Method: A 10-item quiz was handed to patients attending a specialized asthma care clinic in Khartoum on arrival. The patients were requested to read the quiz and tick what they believed was the appropriate answer from a list of possible answers. Only a yes or no answer is possible. The answered quiz was then handed to the clinic receptionist who would immediately provide the patient with the same list of questions but with the correct answers clearly highlighted and explained.Results: 143 patient encounters were recorded. 84 were female patients (58.7%). Age ranged between 12-75 years with a mean of 35 years. Nineteen percent of patients believed that asthma is a psychiatric illness, 51% that it leads to many psychiatric problems and 81% that it causes chronic problems with aging. Thirty percent felt that avoiding allergens/irritants is not important and 47% that antibiotics are helpful to treat exacerbations. Seventy four percent believed inhalers lead to addiction and 77% that steroid inhalers cause serious side-effects.Conclusion: As in many other studies, knowledge about asthma and its treatment in this cohort of Sudanese patients is poor. Hopefully, the answered quiz has helped in making these patients better educated on their illness.Keywords: Asthma control, patient knowledge

The impact of COVID-19 on BAME populations: a systematic review of experiences and perspectives

Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME) populations have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, having amongst the highest rates of infection and mortality. Additional risk factors for BAME populations include older age and living with poverty and deprivation. Information has emerged, but peer reviewed research and literature examining the experiences and/or perspectives of this most recent of diseases on BAME populations is fragmented and lacks coalescence. This systematic review will therefore bring together and integrate existing and emergent evidence around the experiences and/or perspectives of COVID-19 on BAME populations

The Generation of Fullerenes

We describe an efficient new algorithm for the generation of fullerenes. Our implementation of this algorithm is more than 3.5 times faster than the previously fastest generator for fullerenes -- fullgen -- and the first program since fullgen to be useful for more than 100 vertices. We also note a programming error in fullgen that caused problems for 136 or more vertices. We tabulate the numbers of fullerenes and IPR fullerenes up to 400 vertices. We also check up to 316 vertices a conjecture of Barnette that cubic planar graphs with maximum face size 6 are hamiltonian and verify that the smallest counterexample to the spiral conjecture has 380 vertices.Comment: 21 pages; added a not

Potential application of pomegranate seed oil oleogels based on monoglycerides, beeswax and propolis wax as partial substitutes of palm oil in functional chocolate spread

In this research, the effectiveness of pomegranate seed oil oleogel as a partial replacement of fat phase in chocolate spread was studied. Monoglyceride (MG), beeswax (BW) and propolis wax (PW) have been used as structuring agents at 5 g/100 g concentration to gel pomegranate seed oil. The oleogels were then combined with palm oil at 1:1 ratio. Different techniques, including polarized light microscopy, synchrotron XRD, mechanical analyses, and oil binding capacity were used to study the physical and mechanical properties of the palm oil-oleogel systems and chocolate spreads. Results highlighted that MG, BW and PW chemical nature led to the formation of different crystalline network in palm oil-oleogel systems. Chocolate spreads containing palm oil-oleogels showed an increase in the mechanical parameters in the order of PW < BW < MG. This trend might be attributed to the chemical composition of oleogelators and physical bonds formed in the samples. During storage, crystal transformation in MG and structural reorganization in waxes (PW and BW) samples showed a gradual decrease and increase in hardness, respectively. These findings could provide useful information in the application of pomegranate seed oil oleogel for novel confectionery products engineering

WZW orientifolds and finite group cohomology

The simplest orientifolds of the WZW models are obtained by gauging a Z_2 symmetry group generated by a combined involution of the target Lie group G and of the worldsheet. The action of the involution on the target is by a twisted inversion g \mapsto (\zeta g)^{-1}, where \zeta is an element of the center of G. It reverses the sign of the Kalb-Ramond torsion field H given by a bi-invariant closed 3-form on G. The action on the worldsheet reverses its orientation. An unambiguous definition of Feynman amplitudes of the orientifold theory requires a choice of a gerbe with curvature H on the target group G, together with a so-called Jandl structure introduced in hep-th/0512283. More generally, one may gauge orientifold symmetry groups \Gamma = Z_2 \ltimes Z that combine the Z_2-action described above with the target symmetry induced by a subgroup Z of the center of G. To define the orientifold theory in such a situation, one needs a gerbe on G with a Z-equivariant Jandl structure. We reduce the study of the existence of such structures and of their inequivalent choices to a problem in group-\Gamma cohomology that we solve for all simple simply-connected compact Lie groups G and all orientifold groups \Gamma = Z_2 \ltimes Z.Comment: 48+1 pages, 11 figure

Higher-order nonlinear electron-acoustic solitary excitations in partially degenerate quantum electron-ion plasmas

Propagation of dressed solitary excitations are studied in a partially degenerate quantum plasma in the framework of quantum-hydrodynamics (QHD) model using multiple scales technique. The evolution equation together with a linear inhomogeneous differential equation is solved using Kodama-Taniuti renormalizing technique. It is shown that the type of solitary excitations (bright or dark) is defined by two critical plasma parameter values.Comment: To appear in Indian Journal of Physic

Evaluating Knowledge Anchors in Data Graphs against Basic Level Objects

The growing number of available data graphs in the form of RDF Linked Da-ta enables the development of semantic exploration applications in many domains. Often, the users are not domain experts and are therefore unaware of the complex knowledge structures represented in the data graphs they in-teract with. This hinders users’ experience and effectiveness. Our research concerns intelligent support to facilitate the exploration of data graphs by us-ers who are not domain experts. We propose a new navigation support ap-proach underpinned by the subsumption theory of meaningful learning, which postulates that new concepts are grasped by starting from familiar concepts which serve as knowledge anchors from where links to new knowledge are made. Our earlier work has developed several metrics and the corresponding algorithms for identifying knowledge anchors in data graphs. In this paper, we assess the performance of these algorithms by considering the user perspective and application context. The paper address the challenge of aligning basic level objects that represent familiar concepts in human cog-nitive structures with automatically derived knowledge anchors in data graphs. We present a systematic approach that adapts experimental methods from Cognitive Science to derive basic level objects underpinned by a data graph. This is used to evaluate knowledge anchors in data graphs in two ap-plication domains - semantic browsing (Music) and semantic search (Ca-reers). The evaluation validates the algorithms, which enables their adoption over different domains and application contexts

Process Intensification of Enzymatic Fatty Acid Butyl Ester Synthesis Using a Continuous Centrifugal Contactor Separator

Fatty acid butyl esters were synthesized from sunflower oil with 1-butanol using a homogeneous Rhizomucor miehei lipase in a biphasic organic (triglyceride, 1-butanol, hexane)– water (with enzyme) system in a continuous setup consisting of a cascade of a stirred tank reactor and a continuous centrifugal contactor separator (CCCS), the latter being used for integrated reaction and liquid–liquid separation. A fatty acid butyl ester yield up to 93% was obtained in the cascade when operated in a once-through mode. The cascade was run for 8 h without operational issues. Enzyme recycling was studied by reintroduction of the water phase from the CCCS outlet to the stirred tank reactor. Product yield decreased over time to an average of 50% of the initial value, likely due to accumulation of 1-butanol in water phase, loss of enzyme due to agglomeration, and the formation of a separate enzyme layer

Cardiac-Specific Elevations in Thyroid Hormone Enhance Contractility and Prevent Pressure Overload-Induced Cardiac Dysfunction

Thyroid hormone (TH) is critical for cardiac development and heart function. In heart disease, TH metabolism is abnormal, and many biochemical and functional alterations mirror hypothyroidism. Although TH therapy has been advocated for treating heart disease, a clear benefit of TH has yet to be established, possibly because of peripheral actions of TH. To assess the potential efficacy of TH in treating heart disease, type 2 deiodinase (D2), which converts the prohormone thyroxine to active triiodothyronine (T3), was expressed transiently in mouse hearts by using the tetracycline transactivator system. Increased cardiac D2 activity led to elevated cardiac T3 levels and to enhanced myocardial contractility, accompanied by increased Ca(2+) transients and sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca(2+) uptake. These phenotypic changes were associated with up-regulation of sarco(endo)plasmic reticulum calcium ATPase (SERCA) 2a expression as well as decreased Na(+)/Ca(2+) exchanger, beta-myosin heavy chain, and sarcolipin (SLN) expression. In pressure overload, targeted increases in D2 activity could not block hypertrophy but could completely prevent impaired contractility and SR Ca(2+) cycling as well as altered expression patterns of SERCA2a, SLN, and other markers of pathological hypertrophy. Our results establish that elevated D2 activity in the heart increases T3 levels and enhances cardiac contractile function while preventing deterioration of cardiac function and altered gene expression after pressure overload