Comparing System of Wheat Intensification with Normal Practices Under Different Levels of Organic and Inorganic Fertilizer in Southeast Region of Afghanistan

A field experiment was conducted to study the influence of NPK and FYM under normal practice and system of wheat intensification (SWI). The soil of the experimental area was sandy loam with pH (8.4); and available N (117.3 kg ha-1), medium in available P (13.85 kg ha-1) and high in available K (270 kg ha-1). Mazar 99 variety of wheat was chosen for the study. The experiment was laid out in split plot design with 24 treatments combination and three replications on a plot size of 1.5 x 3 m. Different cropping system (Broadcast method of sowing and system of wheat intensification) and different levels of NPK (50, 75 and 100%) were taken in main plot. Different levels of farm yard manure (0, 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100%) were assigned to sub plot in a split plot design. Application of 100 percent RDF under system of wheat intensification significantly influenced growth and growth attributes of wheat at different crop growth stages. Application of 100% RDF under system of wheat intensification (SWI) registered significantly higher plant height (23.4, 52.3, 77.7 and 82.9 cm), and dry matter accumulation (60, 257, 753 and 964 gram) at tillering, blooming, flowering and maturity stages and number of leaves (1130.0, 1722.3 and 2020.8) and number of tillers (187.9, 280.2 and 310) of wheat was also registered higher in same treatments at tillering, blooming and flowering stages of wheat respectively as compared to rest of the treatments. Different treatments of cropping system and different levels of RDF and FYM significantly influenced yield and yield attributes of wheat. Among the cropping system, M4 (100% RDF + SWI) registered significantly higher grain yield (3794.3 kg ha-1) and straw yield (6096.8 kg ha-1) as compared to rest of the treatments. Application of 100 percent farm yard manure recorded significant and maximum grain yield (3553.7 kg ha-1) as compared to rest of the treatments. While, the minimum grain yield (3060.8 kg ha-1) was recorded in S1 due to application of 0% FYM. Similarly, application of 100 percent farm yard manure recorded significantly higher straw yield (5935.5 kg ha-1) as compared to rest of the treatments. However, the lower grain yield (3060.8 kg ha-1) and straw yield (5373.4 kg ha-1) was observed in S1 due to application of zero percent farm yard manure. The interaction of 100% RDF + SWI with 100 % FYM showed highest grain yield (4060.0 kg ha-1) and straw yield (6450.0 kg ha-1) as compared to rest of the treatments. vOn the basis of economic analysis it is concluded that wheat cv. ‘Mazar 99’ sown under system of wheat intensification treated by 100% recommended dose of fertilizer (120-60-60 kg NPK/ha) accompanied with 20% N through FYM proved to be the most remunerative dose which will increase the grain yield of wheat by 33 percent as compared to M1S1 due to application of 100% RDF + 0% FYM under broadcast method of sowing. However, SWI will increase the net return by 36 percent as compared to broadcast method of sowing

Detection of Freezing of Gait using Unsupervised Convolutional Denoising Autoencoder

At the advanced stage of Parkinson’s disease, patients may suffer from ‘freezing of gait’ episodes: a debilitating condition wherein a patient’s “feet feel as though they are glued to the floor”. The objective, continuous monitoring of the gait of Parkinson’s disease patients with wearable devices has led to the development of many freezing of gait detection models involving the automatic cueing of a rhythmic auditory stimulus to shorten or prevent episodes. The use of thresholding and manually extracted features or feature engineering returned promising results. However, these approaches are subjective, time-consuming, and prone to error. Furthermore, their performance varied when faced with the different walking styles of Parkinson’s disease patients. Inspired by state-of-art deep learning techniques, this research aims to improve the detection model by proposing a feature learning deep denoising autoencoder to learn the salient characteristics of Parkinsonian gait data that is applicable to different walking styles for the elimination of manually handcrafted features. Even with the elimination of manually handcrafted features, a reduction in half of the data window sizes to 2s, and a significant dimensionality reduction of learned features, the detection model still managed to achieve 90.94% sensitivity and 67.04% specificity, which is comparable to the original Daphnet dataset research

EfficientNet-Lite and Hybrid CNN-KNN Implementation for Facial Expression Recognition on Raspberry Pi

Facial expression recognition (FER) is the task of determining a person’s current emotion. It plays an important role in healthcare, marketing, and counselling. With the advancement in deep learning algorithms like Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), the system’s accuracy is improving. A hybrid CNN and k-Nearest Neighbour (KNN) model can improve FER’s accuracy. This paper presents a hybrid CNN-KNN model for FER on the Raspberry Pi 4, where we use CNN for feature extraction. Subsequently, the KNN performs expression recognition. We use the transfer learning technique to build our system with an EfficientNet-Lite model. The hybrid model we propose replaces the Softmax layer in the EfficientNet with the KNN. We train our model using the FER-2013 dataset and compare its performance with different architectures trained on the same dataset. We perform optimization on the Fully Connected layer, loss function, loss optimizer, optimizer learning rate, class weights, and KNN distance function with the k-value. Despite running on the Raspberry Pi hardware with very limited processing power, low memory capacity, and small storage capacity, our proposed model achieves a similar accuracy of 75.26% (with a slight improvement of 0.06%) to the state-of-the-art’s Ensemble of 8 CNN model

Management of hepatitis C virus genotype 4: recommendations of an international expert panel.

HCV has been classified into no fewer than six major genotypes and a series of subtypes. Each HCV genotype is unique with respect to its nucleotide sequence, geographic distribution, and response to therapy. Genotypes 1, 2, and 3 are common throughout North America and Europe. HCV genotype 4 (HCV-4) is common in the Middle East and in Africa, where it is responsible for more than 80% of HCV infections. It has recently spread to several European countries. HCV-4 is considered a major cause of chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, and liver transplantation in these regions. Although HCV-4 is the cause of approximately 20% of the 170 million cases of chronic hepatitis C in the world, it has not been the subject of widespread research. Therefore, this document, drafted by a panel of international experts, aimed to review current knowledge on the epidemiology, natural history, clinical, histological features, and treatment of HCV-4 infections

Global economic burden of unmet surgical need for appendicitis

Background: There is a substantial gap in provision of adequate surgical care in many low-and middle-income countries. This study aimed to identify the economic burden of unmet surgical need for the common condition of appendicitis. Methods: Data on the incidence of appendicitis from 170 countries and two different approaches were used to estimate numbers of patients who do not receive surgery: as a fixed proportion of the total unmet surgical need per country (approach 1); and based on country income status (approach 2). Indirect costs with current levels of access and local quality, and those if quality were at the standards of high-income countries, were estimated. A human capital approach was applied, focusing on the economic burden resulting from premature death and absenteeism. Results: Excess mortality was 4185 per 100 000 cases of appendicitis using approach 1 and 3448 per 100 000 using approach 2. The economic burden of continuing current levels of access and local quality was US $92 492 million using approach 1 and$73 141 million using approach 2. The economic burden of not providing surgical care to the standards of high-income countries was $95 004 million using approach 1 and$75 666 million using approach 2. The largest share of these costs resulted from premature death (97.7 per cent) and lack of access (97.0 per cent) in contrast to lack of quality. Conclusion: For a comparatively non-complex emergency condition such as appendicitis, increasing access to care should be prioritized. Although improving quality of care should not be neglected, increasing provision of care at current standards could reduce societal costs substantially

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

Pooled analysis of WHO Surgical Safety Checklist use and mortality after emergency laparotomy

Background The World Health Organization (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist has fostered safe practice for 10 years, yet its place in emergency surgery has not been assessed on a global scale. The aim of this study was to evaluate reported checklist use in emergency settings and examine the relationship with perioperative mortality in patients who had emergency laparotomy. Methods In two multinational cohort studies, adults undergoing emergency laparotomy were compared with those having elective gastrointestinal surgery. Relationships between reported checklist use and mortality were determined using multivariable logistic regression and bootstrapped simulation. Results Of 12 296 patients included from 76 countries, 4843 underwent emergency laparotomy. After adjusting for patient and disease factors, checklist use before emergency laparotomy was more common in countries with a high Human Development Index (HDI) (2455 of 2741, 89.6 per cent) compared with that in countries with a middle (753 of 1242, 60.6 per cent; odds ratio (OR) 0.17, 95 per cent c.i. 0.14 to 0.21, P <0001) or low (363 of 860, 422 per cent; OR 008, 007 to 010, P <0.001) HDI. Checklist use was less common in elective surgery than for emergency laparotomy in high-HDI countries (risk difference -94 (95 per cent c.i. -11.9 to -6.9) per cent; P <0001), but the relationship was reversed in low-HDI countries (+121 (+7.0 to +173) per cent; P <0001). In multivariable models, checklist use was associated with a lower 30-day perioperative mortality (OR 0.60, 0.50 to 073; P <0.001). The greatest absolute benefit was seen for emergency surgery in low- and middle-HDI countries. Conclusion Checklist use in emergency laparotomy was associated with a significantly lower perioperative mortality rate. Checklist use in low-HDI countries was half that in high-HDI countries.Peer reviewe

Global variation in anastomosis and end colostomy formation following left-sided colorectal resection

Background End colostomy rates following colorectal resection vary across institutions in high-income settings, being influenced by patient, disease, surgeon and system factors. This study aimed to assess global variation in end colostomy rates after left-sided colorectal resection. Methods This study comprised an analysis of GlobalSurg-1 and -2 international, prospective, observational cohort studies (2014, 2016), including consecutive adult patients undergoing elective or emergency left-sided colorectal resection within discrete 2-week windows. Countries were grouped into high-, middle- and low-income tertiles according to the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). Factors associated with colostomy formation versus primary anastomosis were explored using a multilevel, multivariable logistic regression model. Results In total, 1635 patients from 242 hospitals in 57 countries undergoing left-sided colorectal resection were included: 113 (6·9 per cent) from low-HDI, 254 (15·5 per cent) from middle-HDI and 1268 (77·6 per cent) from high-HDI countries. There was a higher proportion of patients with perforated disease (57·5, 40·9 and 35·4 per cent; P < 0·001) and subsequent use of end colostomy (52·2, 24·8 and 18·9 per cent; P < 0·001) in low- compared with middle- and high-HDI settings. The association with colostomy use in low-HDI settings persisted (odds ratio (OR) 3·20, 95 per cent c.i. 1·35 to 7·57; P = 0·008) after risk adjustment for malignant disease (OR 2·34, 1·65 to 3·32; P < 0·001), emergency surgery (OR 4·08, 2·73 to 6·10; P < 0·001), time to operation at least 48 h (OR 1·99, 1·28 to 3·09; P = 0·002) and disease perforation (OR 4·00, 2·81 to 5·69; P < 0·001). Conclusion Global differences existed in the proportion of patients receiving end stomas after left-sided colorectal resection based on income, which went beyond case mix alone