Evaluation of allelopathic potential of selected plant species on Parthenium hysterophorus

The phytotoxicity of shoot leachates of selected plant species was assessed on germination, and on shootcut and seedling bioassays of Parthenium hysterophorus. Shoot leachates of selected plant species were effective in inhibiting germination of Parthenium seeds, with Azardirachta indica the most effective. Shoot growth was inhibited most, and shoots damaged the most, by leachates of Solanum nigrum

Teachers developing assessment for learning: impact on student achievement

While it is generally acknowledged that increased use of formative assessment (or assessment for learning) leads to higher quality learning, it is often claimed that the pressure in schools to improve the results achieved by students in externally-set tests and examinations precludes its use. This paper reports on the achievement of secondary school students who worked in classrooms where teachers made time to develop formative assessment strategies. A total of 24 teachers (2 science and 2 mathematics teachers, in each of six schools in two LEAs) were supported over a six-month period in exploring and planning their approach to formative assessment, and then, beginning in September 1999, the teachers put these plans into action with selected classes. In order to compute effect sizes, a measure of prior attainment and at least one comparison group was established for each class (typically either an equivalent class taught in the previous year by the same teacher, or a parallel class taught by another teacher). The mean effect size was 0.32

Action Recognition using High-Level Action Units

Vision-based human recognition is the process of naming image sequences with action labels. In this project, a model is developed for human activity detection using high-level action units to represent human activity. Training phase learns the model for action units and action classifiers. Testing phase uses the learned model for action prediction.Three components are used to classify activities such as New spatial- temporal descriptor, Statistics of the context-aware descriptors, Suppress noise in the action units. Representing human activities by a set of intermediary concepts called action units which are automatically learned from the training data. At low-level, we have existing a locally weighted word context descriptor to progress the traditional interest-point-based representation. The proposed descriptor incorporates the neighborhood details effectively. At high-level, we have introduced the GNMF-based action units to bridge the semantic gap in activity representation. Moreover, we have proposed a new joint l2,1-norm based sparse model for action unit selection in a discriminative manner. Broad experiments have been passed out to authorize our claims and have confirmed our intuition that the action unit based representation is dangerous for modeling difficult activities from videos. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.16042

Is assertive community treatment coercive?

Background: Assertive community treatment (ACT) has become one of the cornerstones of care for people with serious mental illnesses. ACT is usually conceptualized as incorporating a multidisciplinary team approach, active and persistent attempts to engage clients, direct provision of comprehensive health and social care, and in-vivo and out-of-hours working. In addition, the service is ongoing, not time-limited, and has a low practitioner-to-client ratio (usually 1:10). However, ACT is not without its critics, many of them focused on the use of "coercive" techniques with ACT patients 12. At one end of the spectrum are those opponents of ACT who contend, "ACT is largely a euphemistic label for coercion." Despite substantial interest in the coercive aspects of ACT, no studies have focused specifically on understanding the phenomenology of the use and experience of leverage in ACT. Methods: Staff and patients of 4 ACT teams in Manhattan were recruited to participate in focus groups exploring their experiences with and opinions about the use of leverage in ACT. A total of 21 patients and 24 staff members participated with group size ranging from 10 to 12 members. Results: With only one exception, patients said uniformly that they did not believe that their ACT team was coercive or went too far in pressuring them to comply with treatment. ACT staff seemed more aware of the dangers of engaging in coercive behavior. Hence, they indicated a need to "keep each other in check." Conclusion: This preliminary series of focus groups with patients and staff members of ACT programs revealed little evidence from either set of participants of significant use of leverage or perceptions of coercion. Instead both patients and staff reported that supporting patients and building relationships with them were the preferred mechanisms for promoting treatment goals. This study suggests that ACT is not an intrinsically coercive model for the delivery of mental health services

Thoracic Surgery Preparation, Patient Election, and Its Management During Covid-19 Pandemic: Surabaya Experiences

A novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak began in Wuhan, Hubei Province, in December 2019. It has spread rapidly from China to worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 posed a historic challenge to health care systems around the world, healthcare systems needed to consider providing clinical services to other patients in need. The specialty of general thoracic surgery includes the management of serious diseases such as chest wall congenital anomaly, lung cancers, esophageal cancers, mediastinal tumor, chest wall infection, and trauma. Thoracic surgery is one of high risk procedure in this pandemic, however, a high level of evidence supports the surgical management of potential patients with thoracic disease and anomaly is still lacking. Critical determinants of robust thoracic surgery service provision are pre-existing plans for epidemic response. "Flatten the curve" as an aggressive action is needed. Prioritizations of thoracic surgery cases are needed to differ between elective and emergency cases to limit any contamination. Before surgery, important pre-operative assessments were conducted aims to identify patients' high risk and adjust the procedure. example of a recommendation, if urgent / emergency surgery with symptoms clear clinical pneumonia or rapid test (+). The lessons learned can apply to the other areas during this pandemic, and the world, in preparation for the next one

Adult Cardiac Surgery During Covid-19 Pandemic

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by the SARS Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has affected over 200 countries worldwide. First case of COVID-19 wasfound in Wuhan, China, precisely around December 2019. COVID-19, especially in thosewith underlying health conditions or comorbidities, has an increasingly rapid and severeprogression, often leading to death. This virus is a single-strand RNA coronavirus, binding the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor which enters human cells. Coronavirusdisease has been reported to affect cardiac and vascular organs. cardiomyocyte death andinflammation are results of a direct mechanism that involves viral infiltration into myocardialtissue. Some cardiovascular manifestations of myocardial injuries associated with COVID-19are arrhythmias, myocardial infarction, heart failure, and elevated biomarkers (cardiactroponin I and brain-type natriuretic peptide). Some of this manifestation requires immediate intervention or surgery. Criteria are needed for hospitals or institutions that mostly maintain cardiac surgery services and surgery-urgent patients depending on severity of the disease and hospital resources. These criteria also limit the risk of exposure to patients and healthcare workers and allocate resources appropriately to those in greatest need. This paper aims to share our discussion and give an overview of patients undergoing cardiac surgery, providing clinicians with recommendations to triage and plan these procedures during the COVID-19 outbreak effectively

Non-invasive molecular imaging of inflammatory macrophages in allograft rejection.

BackgroundMacrophages represent a critical cell type in host defense, development and homeostasis. The ability to image non-invasively pro-inflammatory macrophage infiltrate into a transplanted organ may provide an additional tool for the monitoring of the immune response of the recipient against the donor graft. We therefore decided to image in vivo sialoadhesin (Sn, Siglec 1 or CD169) using anti-Sn mAb (SER-4) directly radiolabelled with (99m)Tc pertechnetate.MethodsWe used a heterotopic heart transplantation model where allogeneic or syngeneic heart grafts were transplanted into the abdomen of recipients. In vivo nanosingle-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT/CT) imaging was performed 7 days post transplantation followed by biodistribution and histology.ResultsIn wild-type mice, the majority of (99m)Tc-SER-4 monoclonal antibody cleared from the blood with a half-life of 167 min and was located predominantly on Sn(+) tissues in the spleen, liver and bone marrow. The biodistribution in the transplantation experiments confirmed data derived from the non-invasive SPECT/CT images, with significantly higher levels of (99m)Tc-SER-4 observed in allogeneic grafts (9.4 (±2.7) %ID/g) compared to syngeneic grafts (4.3 (±10.3) %ID/g) (p = 0.0022) or in mice which received allogeneic grafts injected with (99m)Tc-IgG isotype control (5.9 (±0.6) %ID/g) (p = 0.0185). The transplanted heart to blood ratio was also significantly higher in recipients with allogeneic grafts receiving (99m)Tc-SER-4 as compared to recipients with syngeneic grafts (p = 0.000004) or recipients with allogeneic grafts receiving (99m)Tc-IgG isotype (p = 0.000002).ConclusionsHere, we demonstrate that imaging of Sn(+) macrophages in inflammation may provide an important additional and non-invasive tool for the monitoring of the pathophysiology of cellular immunity in a transplant model

Air Pollution Emissions 2008-2018 from Australian Coal Mining: Implications for Public and Occupational Health.

Occupational exposure limits for respirable coal dust are based on exposure during working hours, but coal miners may experience additional community-based exposures during nonworking hours. We analyzed Australia National Pollutant Inventory (NPI) data for the years 2008-2018 to estimate air pollutants (metals, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter ≤ 10 micrometers (PM10) and ≤2.5 micrometers (PM2.5)) originating from coal mines. PM10 levels from community-based air monitors in Queensland and New South Wales were also compared between mining and nonmining communities. Results indicated that tons of coal mined increased over the study period, and that levels of particulate matter, metals, and nitrogen oxides increased significantly over time as well. Coal mines accounted for 42.1% of national PM10 air emissions from NPI sites. PM2.5 from coal mines accounted for 19.5% of the national total, metals for 12.1%, and nitrogen oxides for 10.1%. Coal mining occurred in 57 different post codes; the 20 coal-mining post codes with the highest PM10 emissions were home to 160,037 people. Emissions of all studied pollutants were significantly higher from coal mining sites than from other types of NPI sites. Results from community-based air monitoring stations indicated significantly higher population PM10 exposure in coal mining communities than in nonmining communities. The health of the public at large is impacted by coal mining, but to the extent that miners also live near coal mining operations, their total exposure is underestimated by consideration of exposure only during working hours