An interventional study on the levels of knowledge, attitude and practice on hand washing among the residents of Kampung Stapang I, Sibu from 11th June to 17th August 2012

/ Hand washing practice is one of preventive measures for some common infectious diseases. Thus to promote hand washing among community, level of knowledge and awareness amoog the population should be assessed so that appropriate interventions can be carried out. The objective of this study was to study the knowledge, attitude and practice 00 hand washing among residents of Stapang I aged 18 and above from 11th of June to 17th of August 201iJ The results obtained were then using as the baseline data to conduct an intervention programme beneficial to the community to enhance their level of knowledge, attitude and practice towards hand washing. Data collection was done by face to face interview using interview-based questionnaire. Data analysis was done using SPSS software version 20.0. Results showed that 50% of the respondents had good knowledge and good attitude while 63.3% had good practice towards hand washing. Post-intervention study showed significant improvement in the total score for knowledge and attitude towards hand washing (pO.05). In conclusion, there is a great need for intensive intervention in order to enhance the practice of hand washing among the respondents

Effects of hospital facilities on patient outcomes after cancer surgery: an international, prospective, observational study

Background Early death after cancer surgery is higher in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared with in high-income countries, yet the impact of facility characteristics on early postoperative outcomes is unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the association between hospital infrastructure, resource availability, and processes on early outcomes after cancer surgery worldwide.Methods A multimethods analysis was performed as part of the GlobalSurg 3 study-a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study of patients who had surgery for breast, colorectal, or gastric cancer. The primary outcomes were 30-day mortality and 30-day major complication rates. Potentially beneficial hospital facilities were identified by variable selection to select those associated with 30-day mortality. Adjusted outcomes were determined using generalised estimating equations to account for patient characteristics and country-income group, with population stratification by hospital.Findings Between April 1, 2018, and April 23, 2019, facility-level data were collected for 9685 patients across 238 hospitals in 66 countries (91 hospitals in 20 high-income countries; 57 hospitals in 19 upper-middle-income countries; and 90 hospitals in 27 low-income to lower-middle-income countries). The availability of five hospital facilities was inversely associated with mortality: ultrasound, CT scanner, critical care unit, opioid analgesia, and oncologist. After adjustment for case-mix and country income group, hospitals with three or fewer of these facilities (62 hospitals, 1294 patients) had higher mortality compared with those with four or five (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 3.85 [95% CI 2.58-5.75]; p<0.0001), with excess mortality predominantly explained by a limited capacity to rescue following the development of major complications (63.0% vs 82.7%; OR 0.35 [0.23-0.53]; p<0.0001). Across LMICs, improvements in hospital facilities would prevent one to three deaths for every 100 patients undergoing surgery for cancer.Interpretation Hospitals with higher levels of infrastructure and resources have better outcomes after cancer surgery, independent of country income. Without urgent strengthening of hospital infrastructure and resources, the reductions in cancer-associated mortality associated with improved access will not be realised

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Discutindo a educação ambiental no cotidiano escolar: desenvolvimento de projetos na escola formação inicial e continuada de professores

A presente pesquisa buscou discutir como a Educação Ambiental (EA) vem sendo trabalhada, no Ensino Fundamental e como os docentes desta escola compreendem e vem inserindo a EA no cotidiano escolar., em uma escola estadual do município de Tangará da Serra/MT, Brasil. Para tanto, realizou-se entrevistas com os professores que fazem parte de um projeto interdisciplinar de EA na escola pesquisada. Verificou-se que o projeto da escola não vem conseguindo alcançar os objetivos propostos por: desconhecimento do mesmo, pelos professores; formação deficiente dos professores, não entendimento da EA como processo de ensino-aprendizagem, falta de recursos didáticos, planejamento inadequado das atividades. A partir dessa constatação, procurou-se debater a impossibilidade de tratar do tema fora do trabalho interdisciplinar, bem como, e principalmente, a importância de um estudo mais aprofundado de EA, vinculando teoria e prática, tanto na formação docente, como em projetos escolares, a fim de fugir do tradicional vínculo “EA e ecologia, lixo e horta”.Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Amplify-and-forward based two-way relay ARQ system with relay combination

In this letter, we propose an automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol for the amplify-and-forward (AF) based two-way relay system. In the proposed ARQ scheme, the ARQ process is carried out by the relay node (RN). We assume that the RN has one buffer and it can store the signals received. With the help of the buffer, the RN can combine the signals received from different slots and choose to transmit or receive adaptively. Two combining methods, namely the maximal sum signal-to-noise ratio combining (MSC) scheme and the maximal minimum signal-to-noise ratio combining (MMC) scheme, are proposed, which are shown to improve the reliability of the relaying systems.Accepted versio

Joint link-and-user scheduling for buffer-aided relaying system with adaptive rate transmission

In this paper, we consider a relaying system which consists of a multiple-antenna source node (SN), M singleantenna destination nodes (DNs) and a multiple-antenna relay node (RN). The RN possesses a buffer and it is able to store the decoded message before retransmitting the message to the DNs. We use the joint link-and-user scheduling method to maximize the long term average achievable rate of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relaying system. The optimal scheduling criteria is obtained and a two-step approach is proposed to implement it. In addition, we propose a rate allocation scheme of the source-relay (S-R) link to preserve the flow conservation constraint of each individual user. Furthermore, two reduced complexity joint link-and-user scheduling methods which use the zero forcing (ZF) beamforming in the relay-destination (RD) link are investigated. It is shown that joint link-and-user scheduling can significantly increase the average achievable rate of the system.Accepted versio

Physical layer security in heterogeneous networks with pilot attack : a stochastic geometry approach

In this paper, we investigate physical layer security in a two-tier heterogeneous network with sub-6 GHz massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) macro cells and millimeter wave (mmWave) small cells. By considering pilot attacks from the eavesdroppers, we analyze the coverage and secrecy performance using stochastic geometry. For the sub-6 GHz tier, we show that increasing the number of BS antennas is more effective than increasing BS density in improving the coverage performance, whereas densifying BS is more effective for security enhancement. For the mmWave tier, we first derive the success probability of beam alignment based on a beam sweeping-based channel training model. It is shown that the mmWave tier may outperform the sub-6 GHz counterpart in terms of both coverage and secrecy through densifying the base stations. Our results also reveal that the mmWave small cell can provide better coverage performance in the high transmission rate region, and can achieve higher security in the low redundant rate region, which reveals the advantage of using mmWave for secure communication. Numerical results verify the analysis.Accepted versio

Nonlinear energy harvesting for millimeter wave networks with large-scale antennas

In this paper, an analytical framework is proposed to explore the potential of wireless power transfer (WPT) for a millimeter wave (mmWave) network with large-scale antennas. Prior works mostly focus on WPT systems with a linear energy harvesting (EH) model, which cannot properly capture the power dependent EH efficiency. On the other hand, based on a nonlinear EH model, the effect of practical EH circuit specifications on the EH performance can be analyzed. By using stochastic geometry approach, analytical and asymptotic expressions for the energy coverage probability, average harvested energy, and achievable rate are derived under different base station (BS) configuration and deployment scenarios. Numerical results provide interesting design insights that the EH circuit specifications significantly affect the network performance. Increasing the BS density and number of BS antennas can improve the network performance. Due to saturation of EH circuits, the typical receiver can only achieve finite maximum amount of harvested energy and achievable rate even when the BS has a large number of antennas.MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore)Accepted versio

Joint user pairing and subchannel allocation for multisubchannel multiuser nonorthogonal multiple access systems

In this paper, we investigate the issues of joint user pairing and subchannel allocation (JUP-SA) in a multisubchannel multiuser nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system. We first investigate the uplink and propose a JUP-SA scheme so that the minimum achievable diversity order of users is maximized. By deriving the upper and lower bounds of the outage probability of the worst-performance user, the achievable diversity order of the scheme is obtained. Following this, the downlink of the system is considered and a JUP-SA scheme that maximizes the minimum diversity order is presented. The closed-form expression of the worst-case outage probability is then derived and validated by simulation results. Numerical results show that both schemes in uplink and downlink NOMA systems can achieve the same diversity order as that of exhaustive search

Adaptive macro spatial modulation for mmWave dense networks

In this letter, an adaptive macro spatial modulation scheme is proposed for the uplink of a millimeter-wave dense network. In the proposed scheme, a user equipment (UE) adaptively establishes communication links with multiple small base stations (SBSs) and switches its beam direction between these SBSs according to part of its transmitting information. We first model the optimal signal transmission scheme that minimizes system symbol-error rate (SER) as an optimization problem and propose an iterative method with relative high computational complexity to solve it. To reduce the complexity, an approximation scheme is also provided, by ignoring the side lobe of the UE. Numerical results show that both proposed schemes can effectively reduce the system SER.This work was supported in part by NSFC, China, under Grant 61801304, Grant 61601308, Grant 61872248, and Grant U1736207, in part by the Guangdong NSF under Grant 2017A010101033 and Grant 2017A030312008, in part by Shenzhen S&T Foundation under Grant JCYJ20170818093658379, Grant JCYJ20170302140946299, and Grant JCYJ20170412110753954, in part by the Fok Ying-Tong Education Foundation for Young Teachers under Grant 161064, in part by the Guangdong Talent Project under Grant 2015TX01X111, and in part by GDUPS 2015