Baseline measures of Primary Health Care Team functioning and overall Primary Health Care performance at Du Noon Community Health Centre

Background: The importance of effective team work for improving quality of care has been demonstrated consistently in research. We conducted a baseline measure of team effectiveness and a baseline measure of primary health care performance. Aim: To improve Primary health care team effectiveness and ultimately the quality and user experience of primary care at Du Noon Community Health Centre. (CHC) Setting: Du Noon CHC in the southern/western substructure of the Cape Town Metro district services. Methods: A cross sectional study using a combination of Nominal Group Technique (NGT) method and a questionnaire survey to assess PHC team effectiveness and to obtain baseline measure for Primary Health Care (PHC) organization and performance. Results: Data from 20 providers from the primary health care team, showed that the PHC team members perceived their team as a well functioning team (70% agreement on the 7 items of the PHC team assessment tool, incorporated in the ZA PCAT. The NGT method reveals that communication and leadership are the main challenges to effective team functioning, The NGT also provides ideas on how to deal with these challenges. Data from 110 users and 12 providers using the ZA PCAT: 18.2% of users rated first contact-access as acceptable to good; 47,3% rated ongoing care as acceptable to good. The remaining subdomains of the ZA PCAT were rated as acceptable to good by at least 65% of the users. 33% of the providers (doctors and clinical nurse practitioners) rated first contact-access as acceptable to good; 25% rated ongoing care as acceptable to good, the remaining subdomains of the ZA PCAT were rated as acceptable to good by at least 50% of providers. First contact-access received the lowest acceptable to good score (18.2%) and comprehensiveness (service available) received the highest score (88.2%) from the users. For the providers the lowest acceptable to good score was for ongoing care (25%) and the highest acceptable to good score was for primary health care team (100%). The total primary scores are good (above 60%) for both users and providers but moderately higher for the providers. Conclusions: How teams perceive their effectiveness can motivate them to generate ideas for improvement. There were discrepancies between ZA PCAT (PHC team functioning) results and the NGT method results. The ZA PCAT (8 pre-existing domains) baseline results show a contrast between providers' and users' perceptions of the PHC system at Du Noon consistent with the finding of the Western Cape ZA PCAT study. We encourage Du Noon CHC to use these results to improve the user experience of primary health care services there

Medicinal plants with anti-SARS-CoV activity repurposing for treatment of COVID-19 infection: A systematic review and meta-analysis

The novel SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus) has emerged as a significant threat to public health with startling drawbacks in all sectors globally. This study investigates the practicality of some medicinal plants for SARS-CoV-2 therapy using a systematic review and meta-analysis of their reported SARS-CoV-1 inhibitory potencies. Relevant data were systematically gathered from three databases, viz., Web of Science, PubMed and Scopus. The information obtained included botanical information, extraction method and extracts concentrations, as well as the proposed mechanisms. Fourteen articles describing 30 different plants met our eligibility criteria. Random effects model and subgroup analysis were applied to investigate heterogeneity. According to subgroup analysis, the substantial heterogeneity of the estimated mean based on the IC50 values reporting the most potent anti-SARS-CoV 3C-like protease (3CLpro) inhibitors (10.07 %, p < 0.0001), was significantly higher compared to the most active anti-SARS-CoV papain-like protease (PLpro) inhibitors (6.12 %, p < 0.0001). More importantly, the literature analysis revealed that fruit extracts of Rheum palmatum Linn. and the compound cryptotanshinone isolated from the root of Salvia miltiorrhiza (IC50 = of 0.8 ± 0.2 µmol L–1) were excellent candidates for anti-SARS-CoV targeting PLpro. Meanwhile, iguesterin (IC50 = 2.6 ± 0.6 µmol L–1) isolated from the bark of Tripterygium regelii emerged as the most excellent candidate for anti-SARS-CoV targeting 3CLpro. The present systematic review and meta-analysis provide valuable and comprehensive information about potential medicinal plants for SARS-CoV-2 inhibition. The chemotypes identified herein can be adopted as a starting point for developing new drugs to contain the novel virus

Building energy management

Statistics show that approximate energy usage in a building is 10–20 times more than residential which is around 70–300 kWh/m2. The electricity demand is expected to increase triple than current demand in 2030. It is found that total energy demand and produced are not balanced whereby there will be not enough energy to supply for higher demand in the future. This why we need to manage energy properly especially for commercial building. Thanks to technology, now there is no need for building owners to hire energy auditor in order to know how to manage energy in their building. Technology has evolved commercial building into smart building. By installing sensors in the building and make use of Internet of Things technology, the energy can be managed through web or mobile apps. In this chapter, we are going to explain on how building evolved from commercial building to smart building and the development of building energy management by using machine learning and big data analytic approach

Energy consumption prediction by using machine learning for smart building: Case study in Malaysia

Building Energy Management System (BEMS) has been a substantial topic nowadays due to its importance in reducing energy wastage. However, the performance of one of BEMS applications which is energy consumption prediction has been stagnant due to problems such as low prediction accuracy. Thus, this research aims to address the problems by developing a predictive model for energy consumption in Microsoft Azure cloud-based machine learning platform. Three methodologies which are Support Vector Machine, Artificial Neural Network, and k-Nearest Neighbour are proposed for the algorithm of the predictive model. Focusing on real-life application in Malaysia, two tenants from a commercial building are taken as a case study. The data collected is analysed and pre-processed before it is used for model training and testing. The performance of each of the methods is compared based on RMSE, NRMSE, and MAPE metrics. The experimentation shows that each tenant’s energy consumption has different distribution characteristics

Promising inhibitors against main protease of SARS CoV-2 from medicinal plants: In silico identification

Some compounds reported as active against SARS CoV were selected, and docking studies were performed using the main protease of SARS CoV-2 as the receptor. The docked complex analysis shows that the ligands selectively bind with the target residues and binding affinity of amentoflavone (‒10.1 kcal mol‒1), isotheaflavin-3\u27-gallate (‒9.8 kcal mol‒1), tomentin A and D (‒8.0 and ‒8.8 kcal mol‒1), theaflavin-3,3\u27-digallate (‒8.6 kcal mol‒1), papyriflavonol A (‒8.4 kcal mol‒1), iguesterin (‒8.0 kcal mol‒1) and savinin (‒8.3 kcal mol‒1) were ranked above the binding affinity of the reference, co-crystal ligand, ML188, a furan-2-carboxamide-based compound. To pinpoint the drug-like compound among the top-ranked compounds, the Lipinski’s rule of five and pharmacokinetic properties of all the selected compounds were evaluated. The results detailed that savinin exhibits high gastrointestinal absorption and can penetrate through the blood-brain barrier. Also, modifying these natural scaffolds with excellent binding affinity as new anti-SARS CoV agents may lead to discovering novel drug-like candidates with promising safety profiles

Local perspectives on inland fisheries in Kavango River, Namibia : a socio-economic and ecological approach

From ancient time fisheries has been a major source of food for humanity and provider of employment and economic benefits to those engaged in it. Namibia is an arid country and with limited freshwater fisheries, chiefly found in the northern part of the country (Kavango and Zambezi River in the Caprivi region).Although freshwater fisheries is limited in Namibia, it serves a vital societal role in terms of food security and source of income. This stydy attempts to describe the status of Kavango fisheries from local people's and ecological perspectives. The study further attempts to analyse historical development of fisheries in Kavango and relate it to questions of sustainable resource utilisation in terms of ecosystem dynamic, socio-economic processes, institutions and rules and regulations. This was done by looking at the rationale behind the use of different types of gear (traditional and modern), socio-economic characteristics of fishing population, people's perception about the carrying capacity of fish resource and most efficient way of managing the resource (i.e. traditional, government or both). The results of this study indicated that some fish species have declined, and there is a growing awareness among local people that modern gears are the cause. People in Kavango seemed to prefer traditional over modern gears. There seemed to be few formal employment opportunities in the area, and the sale of fish as source of income has increased and to continue to increase further in the future. Both traditional and government laws and regulation are poorly enforced. However, the local people preferred fishing to be traditionally regulated. As is often the case in rural communities in Africa, women have the main household responsibility for food security and they tend to fish more than men. Co-management (where functions, rights and responsibilities of resouce management are shared among stakeholders), provision of good storage and transportation of fish and diversification of agricultural production are among the recommendations made to relieve pressure on the resource.M-MNRS

A Review of the Recent Development in the Synthesis and Biological Evaluations of Pyrazole Derivatives

Pyrazoles are five-membered heterocyclic compounds that contain nitrogen. They are an important class of compounds for drug development; thus, they have attracted much attention. In the meantime, pyrazole derivatives have been synthesized as target structures and have demonstrated numerous biological activities such as antituberculosis, antimicrobial, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory. This review summarizes the results of published research on pyrazole derivatives synthesis and biological activities. The published research works on pyrazole derivatives synthesis and biological activities between January 2018 and December 2021 were retrieved from the Scopus database and reviewed accordingly

A Review of the Recent Developments of Molecular Hybrids Targeting Tubulin Polymerization

Microtubules are cylindrical protein polymers formed from αβ-tubulin heterodimers in the cytoplasm of eukaryotic cells. Microtubule disturbance may cause cell cycle arrest in the G2/M phase, and anomalous mitotic spindles will form. Microtubules are an important target for cancer drug action because of their critical role in mitosis. Several microtubule-targeting agents with vast therapeutic advantages have been developed, but they often lead to multidrug resistance and adverse side effects. Thus, single-target therapy has drawbacks in the effective control of tubulin polymerization. Molecular hybridization, based on the amalgamation of two or more pharmacophores of bioactive conjugates to engender a single molecular structure with enhanced pharmacokinetics and biological activity, compared to their parent molecules, has recently become a promising approach in drug development. The practical application of combined active scaffolds targeting tubulin polymerization inhibitors has been corroborated in the past few years. Meanwhile, different designs and syntheses of novel anti-tubulin hybrids have been broadly studied, illustrated, and detailed in the literature. This review describes various molecular hybrids with their reported structural–activity relationships (SARs) where it is possible in an effort to generate efficacious tubulin polymerization inhibitors. The aim is to create a platform on which new active scaffolds can be modeled for improved tubulin polymerization inhibitory potency and hence, the development of new therapeutic agents against cancer