Models of Maternal Healthcare for African refugee women in High-Income Countries: A Systematic Review.

OBJECTIVE: To explore models of maternal healthcare for African refugee women and their acceptability, cost and associated outcomes. DESIGN: A systematic review and content analysis SETTING: High-income countries PARTICIPANTS: African refugee women REVIEW METHODS: Seven databases were searched to identify peer-reviewed literature using defined keywords and inclusion criteria. Two authors independently screened the search findings and the full texts of eligible studies. The quality of the included studies was appraised, and the findings were analysed using a template. RESULTS: Nine studies met the criteria. Four studies were qualitative, two quantitative and three studies used mixed methods. Four models of care were identified: midwifery-led care, hospital-based integrated care, primary care physician-led integrated care and a holistic refugee-specific primary healthcare model (one-stop shop). Issues affecting care delivery were identified as communication barriers, low health literacy, high transport costs and low engagement of refugee women in their care. KEY CONCLUSIONS: The lack of evidence regarding the impact of care models on the maternal healthcare outcomes of African refugees highlights the need to improve care evaluations. These results reinforce the importance of education and interventions to build refugee women's health literacy and strength-based communication approaches supported by multidisciplinary, multilingual and highly trained teams of health professionals. There is also a need to involve African refugee women in shared decision making. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The findings suggest the need for universal access to a woman-centred whole-of-system care approach for African refugees that emphasises culturally competent, safe, respectful and compassionate multi-professional care and greater economic security to cover costs

Watertight and 2-Manifold Surface Meshes Using Dual Contouring With Tetrahedral Decomposition of Grid Cubes

The Dual Contouring algorithm (DC) is a grid-based process used to generate surface meshes from volumetric data. The advantage of DC is that it can reproduce sharp features by inserting vertices anywhere inside the grid cube, as opposed to the Marching Cubes (MC) algorithm that can insert vertices only on the grid edges. However, DC is unable to guarantee 2-manifold and watertight meshes due to the fact that it produces only one vertex for each grid cube. We present a modified Dual Contouring algorithm that is capable of overcoming this limitation. Our method decomposes an ambiguous grid cube into a maximum of twelve tetrahedral cells; we introduce novel polygon generation rules that produce 2-manifold and watertight surface meshes. We have applied our proposed method on realistic data, and a comparison of the results of our proposed method with results from traditional DC shows the effectiveness of our method

A novel bio-inspired routing algorithm based on ACO for WSNs

The methods to achieve efficient routing in energy constrained wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a fundamental issue in networking research. A novel approach of ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm for discovering the optimum route for information transmission in the WSNs is proposed here for optimization and enhancement. The issue of path selection to reach the nodes and vital correspondence parameters, for example, the versatility of nodes, their constrained vitality, the node residual energy and route length are considered since the communications parameters and imperatives must be taken into account by the imperative systems that mediate in the correspondence procedure, and the focal points of the subterranean insect framework have been utilized furthermore. Utilizing the novel technique and considering both the node mobility and the existing energy of the nodes, an optimal route and best cost from the originating node to the target node can be detected. The proposed algorithm has been simulated and verified using MATLAB and the simulation results demonstrate that new ACO based algorithm achieved improved performance, about 30% improvement compared with the traditional ACO algorithm, and faster convergence to determine the best cost route, and recorded an improvement in the energy consumption of the nodes per transmission

Energy-efficient scalable routing protocol based on ACO for WSNS

Efficient routing is an essential requirement for the design of wireless sensor network (WSN) protocols to overcome inherent challenges and to meet hardware and resource constraints. An energy-efficient scalable routing algorithm based on ant colony optimization (ACO) for WSNs is presented here to find the optimal path of data transmission while consuming less energy leading to increase of network’s lifetime. Most of the existing ACO based routing algorithms are designed on the assumption that the sensor nodes and the sinks are stationary and do not consider the overhead of mobility and the current node energy is not considered, which will prompt sudden passing of certain nodes. To overcome the existing problem of accommodating node mobility, reducing initialization time for ant based routing algorithm and to maintain scalability in WSN for time critical applications, an ACO based WSN routing algorithm has been proposed and analyzed in this paper. The proposed algorithm has been simulated and verified utilizing MATLAB. The evaluation results demonstrate that it has reduced energy consumption, almost 50% less consumed energy even with the increasing number of nodes, compared with the traditional ACO and an existing ant-based routing algorithm. Moreover, it increases the nodes’ lifetime and lifetime of the network

Consumer Behavior in Fast Food Marketing in Bangladesh: A Case Study

The main objective of the study is to identify the determinants that influence consumer satisfaction in fast food marketing in Bangladesh. Data were collected from the students in a private industry in Dhaka city. Principal component factor analysis and SEM are employed for analyzing data. The results indicate that among the six explanatory variables, five are observed to statistically significantly influence consumer satisfaction in the fast food industry. These variables are food quality, service quality, food variety, outlet environment and convenient location. Keywords: Fast food, Consumer behavior, Consumer satisfaction, Factors, Marketin

A noble approach of ACO algorithm for WSN

In energy compelled wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the means by which to perform effectual routing is among the main focuses. A noble approach of ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm for discovering the optimum route in the WSNs for data transmission is proposed here for enhancement and optimization considering the issue of path selection to reach the nodes. Using the proposed ACO algorithm and considering both the node mobility and the existing energy of the nodes, an optimum route and best cost from the originating node to the target node can be detected. The proposed algorithm has been simulated and verified utilizing MATLAB and the simulation results demonstrate that new ant colony optimization based algorithm can achieve better performance and faster convergence to determine the best cost route

Farmers’ Perception and Adoption of Agroforestry Practices in Faridpur District of Bangladesh

This study mainly focused on exploring perception of farmers' towards agroforestry practices and identifying the demographic factors influencing agroforestry adoption in Faridpur district. Field survey was conducted during November-December, 2016 using semi-structured questionnaire. Multi-stage random sampling was used to select upazillas, unions and villages. Snowball purposive sampling was applied to select 84 respondents in total for the questionnaire survey. Chi-square was used to test variables at 5% level of significance. Homestead agroforestry was found to be the most common agroforestry practice (39.28%), followed by fruit-based agroforestry (21.42%), woodlot plantation (13.09%) and so on. Agroforestry was perceived to increase farm productivity by 82.14% of the respondents, 73.8% opined that agroforestry increase household income, while 30.95% perceived it as a means to food security. On the contrary, 34.52% opined that agroforestry practices decrease cash crops production, 17.85% of the respondents stated agroforestry as a difficult practice. Chi-square test showed no significant association between the adoption of agroforestry practices and respondent's age (P > 0.05) or income range (P > 0.05) of the respondents. On the other hand, there is a positive significant association between the adoption of agroforestry practices and educational level (p< 0.05) as well as the farm size (p< 0.05) of the respondents. The study suggests raising awareness regarding the benefits of agroforestry practices as well as providing technical assistance

Blood pressure and its associated factors: a comparative study among rural and urban adolescents in Bangladesh

Background: Hypertension in adolescents may lead to irreversible damages in vital organs, such as heart, brain, kidney and may cause death if treatments are not given despite early diagnosis. The aim of this study is to identify the status of blood pressure and its associated factors among adolescents.Methods: It was a cross-sectional study. 810 adolescents of 8 schools and colleges in Chittagong district were collected by stratified cluster sampling technique. Ages of the respondents were 14 to 19. Status of Blood pressure and its associated factors in urban and rural area were the main outcome of interest.Results: The study found the significant difference in physical activities and overweight statistics between urban and rural adolescents (P<0.001). Obesity was found only in the urban area that was 1.2%. The mean systolic blood pressure (114.53 mmHg, 110.61 mmHg) and mean diastolic blood pressure (69.87 mmHg, 68.58 mmHg) of boys and girls in urban respondents were more than rural (109.79 mmHg, 68.97 mmHg and 105.02 mmHg, 67.941 mmHg respectively) and was statistically significant (P<0.001). The mean SBP and DBP were 126 mmHg and 79 mmHg respectively among obese. In the study prevalence of hypertension was 1.5% in urban adolescents and 0.2% in rural adolescents. Consumption of fast food, living area, physical activity, paternal hypertension and BMI were found significantly associated (p<0.05) with hypertension among urban adolescents.Conclusions: The results suggest that hypertension and pre-hypertension is an important public health problem among adolescents in urban than rural. The main associated factors are fast food consumption, living area, physical activity, paternal hypertension and BMI