Severity of Droughts in Arid Regions

The increasing water shortage in Jordan threatens the environment and badly affects most of the scoi-economic activities. In central Jordan, where major agricultural and water storage projects are located, the October – May rainy season precipitation for two gauging sites; namely Amman Airport and Madaba, is used in the present study to investigate the occurrence of extreme droughts. The extreme regional dry year occurs when the precipitation in that year falls under the threshold of 1 Standard Deviation below the long-term mean at site. Historical precipitation data, 1938 – 2005, are used to simulate 50000 precipitation data using multivariate stochastic simulation model of order 1, MAR(1). Drought analysis using the historical precipitation shows that extreme droughts fall out as individual years, while using generated precipitation droughts is distributed as 1 year events mostly, and as 2 and 3 years duration although less. This study also presents a theoretical model to estimate the return period of extreme droughts. The estimated return period of the 1 year extreme drought in central Jordan is around 10 years, whereas it is 160 years or more for droughts of longer durations. The probability that an extreme drought occurs at least once in a planning period of 25 years, defined as the risk, is found to be more than 90% for drought of 1 year duration, while it is found to be 15% or less for events of 2 years or more

A Pilot Comparative Study of Different Deep Features for Palmprint Identification in Low-Quality Images

Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are widespread, efficient tools of visual recognition. In this paper, we present a comparative study of three popular pre-trained CNN models: AlexNet, VGG-16 and VGG-19. We address the problem of palmprint identification in low-quality imagery and apply Support Vector Machines (SVMs) with all of the compared models. For the comparison, we use the MOHI palmprint image database whose images are characterized by low contrast, shadows, and varying illumination, scale, translation and rotation. Another, high-quality database called COEP is also considered to study the recognition gap between high-quality and low-quality imagery. Our experiments show that the deeper pre-trained CNN models, e.g., VGG-16 and VGG-19, tend to extract highly distinguishable features that recognize low-quality palmprints more efficiently than the less deep networks such as AlexNet. Furthermore, our experiments on the two databases using various models demonstrate that the features extracted from lower-level fully connected layers provide higher recognition rates than higher-layer features. Our results indicate that different pre-trained models can be efficiently used in touchless identification systems with low-quality palmprint images.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, Ninth Hungarian Conference on Computer Graphics and Geometry, Budapest, 201

Multiple Myeloma Baseline Immunoglobulin G Level and Pneumococcal Vaccination Antibody Response

Infections are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in multiple myeloma (MM), a cancer of the immune system. Vaccination clinical efficacy endpoints have not been demonstrated, and there are limited data on surrogate markers of efficacy. This pilot study evaluated sequential immunologic markers after standard pneumococcal vaccination (PV) in patients with MM and non-MM controls. Vaccination was standard for PV (PCV13 or PPV23), with laboratory testing at baseline and at 2, 4, 12 and 24 weeks after vaccination. Immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies to pneumococcal antigens were detected by ELISA. Prevaccination total IgG levels and IgG subclass levels were also measured by ELISA. Four of 6 controls responded with at least a 2-fold increase in antibody concentration; only 2 controls had a sustained increase in concentration. Six of 8 patients with MM had at least a 2-fold antibody increase; however, only 2 of these patients showed a sustained increase of antipneumococcal antibody. Response rate differences were not statistically significant in this small pilot, and there was no relationship between responsiveness to PV and initial serum total IgG levels or IgG subclasses at study entry. Future prospective studies are needed to ascertain the immunological and clinical efficacy and effectiveness of various vaccines and vaccination strategies in MM

Coping Strategies of Jordanian Adolescents With Cancer: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis Study

Interpretive phenomenological analysis methodology was used to explore coping strategies used by hospitalized Jordanian adolescents with cancer. In-depth face-to-face interviews were conducted with 10 Jordanian adolescents, aged 13 to18 years, who were receiving chemotherapy for cancer. During treatment, participants were confronted with physical, psychosocial, and emotional distresses resulting from the disease process, the treatment, and its associated side-effects. To cope with the impact of their illness, participants utilized 4 coping strategies: "Strengthening spiritual convictions," "Being optimistic and rebuilding hope," "Enhancing appearance," and "Finding self again." The findings of this study can assist health team members to promote positive psychological care to Arab Muslim adolescents with cancer in a supportive and therapeutic treatment environment

New leadership model for family physicians in the Eastern Mediterranean region: a pilot study across selected countries

Background: Family Medicine is growing rapidly across the Eastern Mediterranean Region. However, it needs support in terms of overall health system development. This will require strong leadership in family medicine to implement the change required to improve current conditions. Objective: To collect data that will support the development of a leadership program for the future family physicians in the region. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from July 2016 to September 2016 in eight countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Region, (Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia). These countries were selected to obtain perceptions of Family Physicians (FPs) regarding the current leadership model and to explore the need for a new future innovative model in Family Medicine (FM) across the region. Results: The information of 68 family physicians was included in the final analysis. The majority of the FPs was females as compared to males (71% vs. 29%). Forty-four percent of the FPs had 10 to 19 years of experience. Almost all of the FPs (96%) had completed some training in family medicine after graduation. About three fifths of the FPs had completed postgraduate qualifications and out of those, 64% had passed Board or Membership Examinations. Twenty-one percent of them are currently in a leadership role and 45% who were not in any leadership role responded that the current situation of FM in their country is poor. All of the leaders believed that it is important to develop strong leadership in FM to take the specialty forward. Almost similar proportions (67% and 64%) of leaders and non-leaders thought that establishing regional associations would enhance the FM practice model. Approximately two thirds of leaders (67%) responded that the current role of decision makers in the Ministry of Health (MOH) regarding capacity building in FM is not effective. The majority of the FPs (54% and 38%) considers that the existing postgraduate curriculum does not address leadership skill development in FM. Eighty-eight percent of the FPs both from leadership and non-leadership groups agreed that academic institutions and practicing FPs can play an effective leadership role in taking FM forward. Conclusion: The Family Medicine specialty will have to develop leadership capabilities in line with today’s fast-moving changes in healthcare for it to obtain the due recognition in the healthcare delivery system