Pattern of medical waste management: existing scenario in Dhaka City, Bangladesh

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Medical waste is infectious and hazardous. It poses serious threats to environmental health and requires specific treatment and management prior to its final disposal. The problem is growing with an ever-increasing number of hospitals, clinics, and diagnostic laboratories in Dhaka City, Bangladesh. However, research on this critical issue has been very limited, and there is a serious dearth of information for planning. This paper seeks to document the handling practice of waste (e.g. collection, storage, transportation and disposal) along with the types and amount of wastes generated by Health Care Establishments (HCE). A total of 60 out of the existing 68 HCE in the study areas provided us with relevant information.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The methodology for this paper includes empirical field observation and field-level data collection through inventory, questionnaire survey and formal and informal interviews. A structured questionnaire was designed to collect information addressing the generation of different medical wastes according to amount and sources from different HCE. A number of in-depth interviews were arranged to enhance our understanding of previous and existing management practice of medical wastes. A number of specific questions were asked of nurses, hospital managers, doctors, and cleaners to elicit their knowledge. The collected data with the questionnaire survey were analysed, mainly with simple descriptive statistics; while the qualitative mode of analysis is mainly in narrative form.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The paper shows that the surveyed HCE generate a total of 5,562 kg/day of wastes, of which about 77.4 per cent are non-hazardous and about 22.6 per cent are hazardous. The average waste generation rate for the surveyed HCE is 1.9 kg/bed/day or 0.5 kg/patient/day. The study reveals that there is no proper, systematic management of medical waste except in a few private HCE that segregate their infectious wastes. Some cleaners were found to salvage used sharps, saline bags, blood bags and test tubes for resale or reuse.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The paper reveals that lack of awareness, appropriate policy and laws, and willingness are responsible for the improper management of medical waste in Dhaka City. The paper also shows that a newly designed medical waste management system currently serves a limited number of HCE. New facilities should be established for the complete management of medical waste in Dhaka City.</p

Learning, Memory, and the Role of Neural Network Architecture

The performance of information processing systems, from artificial neural networks to natural neuronal ensembles, depends heavily on the underlying system architecture. In this study, we compare the performance of parallel and layered network architectures during sequential tasks that require both acquisition and retention of information, thereby identifying tradeoffs between learning and memory processes. During the task of supervised, sequential function approximation, networks produce and adapt representations of external information. Performance is evaluated by statistically analyzing the error in these representations while varying the initial network state, the structure of the external information, and the time given to learn the information. We link performance to complexity in network architecture by characterizing local error landscape curvature. We find that variations in error landscape structure give rise to tradeoffs in performance; these include the ability of the network to maximize accuracy versus minimize inaccuracy and produce specific versus generalizable representations of information. Parallel networks generate smooth error landscapes with deep, narrow minima, enabling them to find highly specific representations given sufficient time. While accurate, however, these representations are difficult to generalize. In contrast, layered networks generate rough error landscapes with a variety of local minima, allowing them to quickly find coarse representations. Although less accurate, these representations are easily adaptable. The presence of measurable performance tradeoffs in both layered and parallel networks has implications for understanding the behavior of a wide variety of natural and artificial learning systems

Efficient Physical Embedding of Topologically Complex Information Processing Networks in Brains and Computer Circuits

Nervous systems are information processing networks that evolved by natural selection, whereas very large scale integrated (VLSI) computer circuits have evolved by commercially driven technology development. Here we follow historic intuition that all physical information processing systems will share key organizational properties, such as modularity, that generally confer adaptivity of function. It has long been observed that modular VLSI circuits demonstrate an isometric scaling relationship between the number of processing elements and the number of connections, known as Rent's rule, which is related to the dimensionality of the circuit's interconnect topology and its logical capacity. We show that human brain structural networks, and the nervous system of the nematode C. elegans, also obey Rent's rule, and exhibit some degree of hierarchical modularity. We further show that the estimated Rent exponent of human brain networks, derived from MRI data, can explain the allometric scaling relations between gray and white matter volumes across a wide range of mammalian species, again suggesting that these principles of nervous system design are highly conserved. For each of these fractal modular networks, the dimensionality of the interconnect topology was greater than the 2 or 3 Euclidean dimensions of the space in which it was embedded. This relatively high complexity entailed extra cost in physical wiring: although all networks were economically or cost-efficiently wired they did not strictly minimize wiring costs. Artificial and biological information processing systems both may evolve to optimize a trade-off between physical cost and topological complexity, resulting in the emergence of homologous principles of economical, fractal and modular design across many different kinds of nervous and computational networks

Relationships between fertilizer application and nutritional values of plants in natural pastures

WOS: 000369772600003This study was carried out in natural pastures in Konya, Karaman, Aksaray and Nigde Provinces in Turkey. The aim of the study was to determine the effect of nitrogen fertilizers on plant nutritional values and plant numbers in the grassland plots. Nitrogen doses @ 0, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 kg/da (1 da = 0.1 ha = 1000 square meter) were applied to pastures in the ammonium nitrate form. Number of plants in the plots and nutritional values of plants were monitored. Besides, dry matter (DM), digestible dry matter (DDM), crude protein (CP), digestible protein (DP) and ash contents were determined. The study revealed that Festuca ovina was the main plant of natural pastures. The number of plants increased upto 20 kg nitrogen/da. Similarly, nutritional values of plants also increased upto 20 kg nitrogen/da and thereafter they decreased

The effect of 1-MCP concentration on skin and flesh color polyphenol oxidase activity during cold storage and shelf life periods in ‘Ankara’ pear (Pyrus communis L.)

In this research, the effect of postharvest 1-methylcyclopropane (1-MCP) concentrations of 150 and 300 ppb on fruit skin and flesh color, and polyphenol oxidase (PPO) activity of ‘Ankara’ pear (Pyrus communis L. ‘Ankara’) was investigated during two consecutive years. Fruit harvested at commercial harvest time were stored at 0±1°C temperature, 85-90% relative humidity (RH) conditions after 1-MCP treatments at 20°C for 24 h. In addition, for shelf life determinations, fruit were taken at 30 days intervals and kept at 20±1°C, 60-70% RH conditions for 2 weeks. The efficacy of 1-MCP treatments at both concentrations on keeping fruit color were clearer during shelf life periods and also they helped to decrease PPO activity. Moreover, fruit flesh L* and h* values are negatively and fruit flesh C values were positively correlated with PPO activity during shelf life periods in both years. A 1-MCP treatment concentration of 300 ppb could be promising for storing ‘Ankara’ pear fruit longer than 200 days and improved resistance to flesh browning disorder. © 2020 International Society for Horticultural Science. All rights reserved.Data in this study is some part of M.Sc. thesis, ?The Effect of Postharvest 1-Methylcyclopropane Treatments on Storage of ?Ankara? Pear Cultivar?, by Nalan Bakoglu, Ankara University Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences