The Necessity of Close Contact Tracing in Combating COVID-19 Infection – A Systemic Study

Many contact tracing solutions developed by countries around the globe in containing the Covid-19 pandemic are in the area of location-based tracing, which does not enable them to identify close contacts accurately. As location-based tracing implementations continuous on, the results have not been as effective as intended. Thus, in providing some closure, this study will dissect the need for close contact tracing solutions for the pandemic by providing a comprehensive contact tracing characteristic framework (CCTCF) for Covid-19, which will help authorities toward better pandemic management. In this study, CCTCF for Covid-19 was constructed by applying several methods. Using Problem, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome (PICO) as the framework, methods conducted were: (1) Case study to analyze the contact tracing systems in 30 countries; (2) Systematic literature review (n=2056) regarding solutions’ elements, (3) Thematic analysis for characteristics framework development. A total of 25 items were obtained for CCTCF, along with valuable insights that necessitate close contact tracing for the pandemic. Results from CCTCF have also shown that the best contact tracing solution for Covid-19 is bi-directional human-to-human close contact tracing, which uses a retrospective approach and is able to identify the source as well as groups of infection using a personal area network (PAN). Doi: 10.28991/esj-2022-SPER-019 Full Text: PD

Political transition and emergent forest-conservation issues in Myanmar.

Political and economic transitions have had substantial impacts on forest conservation. Where transitions are underway or anticipated, historical precedent and methods for systematically assessing future trends should be used to anticipate likely threats to forest conservation and design appropriate and prescient policy measures to counteract them. Myanmar is transitioning from an authoritarian, centralized state with a highly regulated economy to a more decentralized and economically liberal democracy and is working to end a long-running civil war. With these transitions in mind, we used a horizon-scanning approach to assess the 40 emerging issues most affecting Myanmar's forests, including internal conflict, land-tenure insecurity, large-scale agricultural development, demise of state timber enterprises, shortfalls in government revenue and capacity, and opening of new deforestation frontiers with new roads, mines, and hydroelectric dams. Averting these threats will require, for example, overhauling governance models, building capacity, improving infrastructure- and energy-project planning, and reforming land-tenure and environmental-protection laws. Although challenges to conservation in Myanmar are daunting, the political transition offers an opportunity for conservationists and researchers to help shape a future that enhances Myanmar's social, economic, and environmental potential while learning and applying lessons from other countries. Our approach and results are relevant to other countries undergoing similar transitions

Political transition and emergent forest-conservation issues in Myanmar.

Political and economic transitions have had substantial impacts on forest conservation. Where transitions are underway or anticipated, historical precedent and methods for systematically assessing future trends should be used to anticipate likely threats to forest conservation and design appropriate and prescient policy measures to counteract them. Myanmar is transitioning from an authoritarian, centralized state with a highly regulated economy to a more decentralized and economically liberal democracy and is working to end a long-running civil war. With these transitions in mind, we used a horizon-scanning approach to assess the 40 emerging issues most affecting Myanmar's forests, including internal conflict, land-tenure insecurity, large-scale agricultural development, demise of state timber enterprises, shortfalls in government revenue and capacity, and opening of new deforestation frontiers with new roads, mines, and hydroelectric dams. Averting these threats will require, for example, overhauling governance models, building capacity, improving infrastructure- and energy-project planning, and reforming land-tenure and environmental-protection laws. Although challenges to conservation in Myanmar are daunting, the political transition offers an opportunity for conservationists and researchers to help shape a future that enhances Myanmar's social, economic, and environmental potential while learning and applying lessons from other countries. Our approach and results are relevant to other countries undergoing similar transitions

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

Improving power quality in micro-grid

Unified Power Quality Conditioner (UPQC) has been a favourable candidate for high performance power conditioning devices due to its feasibility and ability to mitigate all power quality problems. It will be very useful in the future micro-grid systems where power quality issues will be more pervasive and severe due to greater use of power electronics devices and non-linear loads. In this project, among various types of UPQC, a three-phase three-wire (3P3W) topology with power angle control (PAC) method was selected to analyse thoroughly. The theories of PAC technique were studied and implemented with Simulink blocks .Various power quality problems such as voltage sag, voltage swell, voltage harmonic distortions, high power factor issue and current distortions were applied to the system in order to test the effectiveness of PAC method. The simulation results reveal that the PAC approach is able to solve the aforementioned power quality issues effectively. Moreover, as the PAC method can be further categorized into fixed PAC method and variable PAC method according to their power angle determination techniques, both methods were simulated in order to find out their main differences for future development.Bachelor of Engineerin

Real Time Fire Detection System with Image Processing

Fire detection by image processing is a growing research in this era. With many methods used to detect fire out there, an accurate method to detect fire without false alarms has not been produced much. This is due to the fact that many methods used RGB colour mode for detection. In this paper, the main focus was on detecting the fire effectively using thermal video from a thermal camera while in the same time will alert the people if fire was detected and also observed the speed of the fire which will benefit enormously to the fire fighters. With this, it was hope that fire can be detected effectively while alerting the people and giving valuable information to the fire fighters to do their job more effectively

Detection of Blast Resistance genes on Cultivated Rice in Myanmar using SSR and InDel Markers

The present study was conducted to detect the presence of blast resistance genes in cultivated rice in Myanmar. Thirteen blast resistance genes _Pib, Pik, Pik-h, Pik-m, Pik-s, Pi7, Pish, Pita, Pita-2, Piz-t, Pi(5)t and Piz-5_were screened on 57 released varieties by using 13 linked markers; 12 Simple Sequence Repeats and one Insertion Deletion, through polymerase chain reaction based methods. The genetic frequencies of these 13 major blast resistance genes ranged from 43.86% (Pik-m) to 7.02% (Piz-t) whereas Pita resistance gene amplicon was not observed on all tested varieties. The Pik-m gene was detected as the most prevalent one amongst the genotypes followed by Pi7 which distributed in frequency of 42.11%, Pik , Pita-2 and Pi5(t) (22.81%), Pik-s (21.05%) , Pib and Pik-h (19.30%), Pik (17.54%), Piz-5 (14.04%) and Pish (12.28%). The genotypic variation between the released varieties was detected. Among 57 released varieties, two varieties — Manawthuka and Mote Soe Ma Kyway Pyay line MMK 03-23-3 — possessed seven blast resistance genes the other 12 varieties carried single genes, five varieties five resistance genes, 13 varieties four resistance genes, six varieties three resistance genes and 15 varieties two resistance genes. In the rest four varieties resistance genes could not be amplified by tested markers. This study provided the information of resistant varieties that will be beneficial in pre-breeding program for developing of rice blast resistance varieties

A Novel Approach on Covid-19 Contact Tracing – Utilization of Low Calibrated Transmission Power & Signal Captures in BLE

Covid-19 pandemic has compelled countries to conduct contact tracing vigorously in order to curb the highly infectious virus from further spread. In this context, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) has been broadly used, utilizing Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) for Close Contact Identification (CCI). However, many of the available solutions are not able to adhere to the guidelines provided by Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention which are: (1) Distance requirement of within 6-feet (~2 meters) and (2) Minimum 15-minutes duration for CCI. In providing some closure to the gap, we proposed a novel approach of utilizing: (1) Low calibrated transmission power (Tx) and (2) Number of signal captures. Our proposed approach is to lowly calibrate Tx so that when distance is at 2 meters between users, number signal capture gets lower as the chipset’s smallest RSSI sensitivity value has been reached. In this paper, complete experimentation for Proof of Concept (POC) and Pilot test conducted are demonstrated. Results obtained shows that the accuracy for POC utilizing signal captures for 2 0.3 m distance is at: (1) 71.43% for 5 users and (2) 70.69% for 9 users. While so, accuracy for the Pilot test when considering CCI on individual case-basis is at 95% for 5 users

Characterization and Dielectric Properties of LaMnO3 Thin Films by Spin Coating Method

This paper presents LaMnO3 nanostructured thin films were deposited on silicon substrate by using Single Wafer Spin Processor. LaMnO3 powder was firstly prepared by pyrolysis method. The structural, morphology and thermal properties of LMO powder was examined by XRD, SEM and TG-DTA. The films obtained from spin coating technique have been annealed at 500 ºC and 600 ºC for 1 h. Morphology, and structural properties of fabricated LaMnO3 thin films were investigated by SEM and XRD analysis. The objective of this research is to explore the structure, dielectric properties and processing of thin films that contain nanoscale embedded hard particles