SICK BUILDINGS, POOR DESIGN AND PUBLIC HEATH

There is no doubt that there is a close relationship between health problems and housing conditions. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates in developing countries those 2 million early and unexpected deaths, with close to half occurring among children less than 5 years old die from indoor air pollution and bad housing. Housing is an important determinant of health, and substandard housing is a major public health issue. Designing and bad orientation of housing are found to have significant effects on poor respiratory health especially in children, and increase an infectious disease thereby putting them at higher risk of life-threatening diseases. The rate of spreading the diseases among children is increasing in developing countries in last years which form serious threats to public health and natural growth of children and inturn reflect on average of long life especially in Poor Urban Region and low socio-economic families. The research examined the relationship between housing and health using longitudinal data collecting and analyzing data from Chest Hospital records and giving a questionnaire to inhabitants who suffered from respiratory illness as a result of bad design and inadequate orientation…etc. For many children this means losing sleep, restricted physical activity, slow growth, and missing school. The research submits a criterion to redesign public housing especially the low incoming housing and employ the internal and external determinants as ventilation rates, percentages of voids, orientation, finishing materials and physical infrastructure…. etc. and many other factors which affect public health to improve environmental quality, assessing housing conditions and affordable housing. Now, it is the time to create healthier homes by confronting substandard housing for creating a healthy generation

Reading Capital: towards an understanding of the process of colonization in India

This thesis examines the applicability of Karl Marx’s theoretical apparatuses in explaining the development of capital relations in India’s transition from commercial to industrial colonialism. Its findings engage with and are a response to the preponderance of secondary literature that argues against Marx’s usefulness in understanding the colonial moment in the Global South. Many of these secondary studies have argued against the use of Marx because of his purported Eurocentricity that renders his conclusions regarding the Global South inadequate. This study argues that fundamental to dissecting this intellectual argument is developing an understanding of Marx’s levels of generality whereby the historical descriptions and conclusions, and the theoretical framework and methods he employs are abstracted. To this end, this thesis asserts the levels of generality as the most critical to reading Marx as they permit the reader to move beyond the causal laws and tendencies and instead delve further into the relations that allow them to exist. Finally, this study shows how Marx’s totality of social life can be used to understand a particular society in a specific moment: India in the colonial period. While not all-encompassing, it shows the applicability of Marx’s theoretical apparatus to examine a colonized society — using India as an illustration — especially with regards to modes of production, social relations, and some aspects of legal and governmental arrangements. While further research would need to incorporate additional aspects of the social totality, including mental conceptions, reproduction of daily life, technology, and relationships to nature, its combination with the findings of the present study allows for a more complete view of capital relations in colonial India

Nesting Biology and Seasonality of Long-Horned Bee Eucera nigrilabris Lepeletier (Hymenoptera, Apidae)

We provide information on the nesting behavior, seasonality and nest soli type characteristics of Eucera nigrilabris Lepeletier, 1841 in Egypt. A nest was discovered in a canal bank in Abbis Village, Alexandria, Western Egypt. The species is protandrous, univoltine, ground nesting species. The bees built deep nests about 85cm under the ground and consisted of lined, branched tunnel with many cell. The bees start fly by end of January until end of March and active in winter seasons. The soil of the nest has yellow color, sandy loam texture, low salinty and sodicity, and low calcium carbonate content. The bee distrbiution was influnced by the soil with high content of sodium carbonate. The bees forage on the wild flora of the family Asteraceae carriyng a yellow pollen load. There is no any record of a cleptoparasitism around the nesting area

SAVING THE MEMORIES IN THE FRAMEWORK OF SOCIAL HERITAGE CONSERVATION IN EGYPTIAN VILLAGES

Social memories is a part of our heritage. One of the complex challenges which facing our intangible heritage is how to deal to various forms of social meaning, special memories that form a distinguished culture in our community. Social heritage is heavily related to three factors; time, place and human. The research takes a case study Al-Shakluba village that focuses on the non-materialistic aspects of social and culture heritage that increases recognition with intangible values and plays an important role that how people interact with social and cultural environments and the importance of these values that impact on the ways in which people respond to conservation needs. So the paper records some social practices that depends on intangible memories, experiences and time depth in relation to people connecting to a place or a culture landscape through making a social survey for selected sites and make a questionnaire to recognize the intangible social needs of inhabitants and what their places carry a special memories for them ... So the research submits a strategy to preserve and revive these places and seeking to proposed an action plan for managing the continuously dialogue of social heritage conservation between present and past, memories preservation, identity and sense of place within a balance framework between authenticity and contemporary. The research also submits a strategy to build a critical link between tangible fabric of geography of places and the meanings, memories, cultural traditions and social practices that form part of the suite of associated intangible heritage values and carries the special memories and conserve of social practices in their living during a specific period of history

In this wild water: The biography of some unpublished manuscripts by Robinson Jeffers, 1887-1962

For Robinson Jeffers, poet-philosopher and naturalist of Carmel, California, the universe is one entity, a being out of grasp of the mind enormous. Its parts are only differing manifestations of a single energy; all bear upon one another, influence one another. According to Jeffers we humans attain true freedom and peace by turning avmy from self, from mere humanity and human contrivances, imaginings, and dreams. This is Jeffers\u27 Doctrine of Inhumanism: a dark philosophy which proved increasingly unpopular as Jeffers more and more adamantly insisted upon dramatizing mankind\u27s smallness in the immense context of the universe. The biography of The Double Axe and Other Poems, published by Random House in 1948, shows that ten poems were expunged from the originally submitted manuscript. Notes and letters from this period show Bennett Cerf and Jeffers\u27 editor, Saxe Cummins, to be disconcerted by the fierce intensity and the dark political ramifications of Jeffers\u27 doctrine. Consequently, The Double Axe was printed with a disclaimer regarding the political views pronounced by the poet.” To the dismay of his publishers, Jeffers’ often uses political persons - Roosevelt, Hitler, Mussolini, Truman - to represent the ideas he works with aesthetically. But when he removes these topical references, his poetry sounds propagandistic. In using these particulars as metaphors, he makes contemporary issues and personalities point up his philosophy of Inhumanism. Because this is a particularly dark philosophy, these references to living persons have the effect of indicting them all equally, whether it is Hitler or Roosevelt singled out. Jeffers undertakes the task - which is especially unenviable in the milieu of World War II America - of showing that all leaders and all nations (both Nazi Germany and the United States) are equally culpable of distorting the importance and value of human endeavor. Jeffers’ poetry addresses man’s “excessive energies.” These energies, which receive special attention in the excised poems, lead man to “superfluous activities” - activities which “are devoted to self-interference, self-frustration, self-incitement, and self-worship.” He writes so as to discover a way to minimize what he interprets to be man’s “racial disease.” Because of his motives, Jeffer’s art is especially dangerous; for he would direct it to influence as well as reflect the reader’s experience. He presents his reader with a difficult task: to relate his experience of the poem, an experience distinctive and irreductible, to the larger flow of human experience. Such a challenge requires that the reader be sensitive not only to Jeffer’s specific point in a particular poem, but also to the history of human development. And, beyond that, to the evolution of the natural universe. Poetry for Jeffers is not merely mimetic or ontological, but polemical as well. Jeffers\u27 later poems are not necessarily or always tracts, but the materials on which they are based and the criteria by which the poet organizes them are frequently the same as the material and arrangements found in philosophical or religious statements. In one sense, it might be argued that Jeffers elevated propaganda to art by making poetry out of the stuff of argument. But in another sense, Jeffers\u27 best poems carry an autonomy and distinctiveness that makes them irreducible; they cannot be finally understood in a complete sense by deciphering the polemic that points back to external, contemporary reality. His poetry builds and inhabits a world of its own. Thus, the statements in a Jeffers poem may not be understood or judged as if they had been made in direct, argumentative speech, for his aesthetic - when it served him best - has its own complicating norms and dramatic justifications. So Jeffers\u27 poetry has an artistic autonomy even though it refers specifically to a moment of history, a real person, or a particular place. But the particulars are intended to point up a \u27\u27permanent human faculty, and are thus both real and poetic. When he does not use topical particulars, however, he sacrifices not only the reality, but also the poetry

Impact of Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program on Health Outcomes of Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the most common causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Patients with COPD experience a succession of distressing physical, psychological and social changes. Currently, there is no cure for COPD or its debilitating effects on pulmonary function. As a result, health care professionals have shifted their focus from reversing the disease process to reducing disability and improving QOL. The study was to assess the impact of pulmonary rehabilitation program on health outcomes of patients with COPD. The study was conducted in the chest diseases department of Mansoura University Hospital. A total of 27 COPD patients were enrolled in the study. They received the two- month home-based pulmonary rehabilitation program in addition to usual hospital care. The health outcomes were measured by five tools; Saint's George Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ), six minutes walk test, Modified Borg Dyspnea Scale and pulmonary function test.  The study revealed that, only activity dimension of SGRQ improved significantly in patients with both moderate and severe disease stages while patients with very severe stage showed significant improvement in all dimensions of SGRQ except symptoms dimention.  There was no significant improvement in pulmonary function tests of patients in three disease stages. Functional capacity and perceived exertional dyspnea were significantly improved for patients in the moderate and severe stages, while very severe stage patients showed significant improvement only in perceived dyspnea. The supervised two- month home-based pulmonary rehabilitation program is an effective non pharmacological intervention in the management of moderate, severe and very severe stable COPD patients. Keywords: Pulmonary rehabilitation; Quality of Life; health outcomes; COPD stages

A whole-health-economy approach to antimicrobial stewardship: Analysis of current models and future direction.

Antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) strategies are widely implemented in single healthcare sectors and organisations; however, the extent and impact of integrated AMS initiatives across the whole health economy are unknown. Assessing degree of integration of AMS across the whole health economy and its impact is essential if we are to achieve a ‘One Health’ approach to addressing antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and therefore we searched systematically for and analysed published examples of integrated AMS initiatives to address this gap. Application of a system-level framework to analyse integration of AMS initiatives across and within healthcare sectors shows that integration is emerging but needs strengthening. Findings from a small number of evaluations in high-income countries suggest that antimicrobial prescribing and healthcare-associated infections can be reduced using a multisectoral integrated AMS approach. More robust research designs to evaluate and understand the impact of multisectoral integrated AMS are needed, particularly with respect to differing health systems in different countries and local organisational contexts. Our analysis highlights a number of challenges and ways forward for enhancing the delivery of AMS through an integrated approach

What is the epidemiology of medication errors, error-related adverse events and risk factors for errors in adults managed in community care contexts? A systematic review of the international literature

© Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.Objective To investigate the epidemiology of medication errors and error-related adverse events in adults in primary care, ambulatory care and patients’ homes. Design Systematic review. Data source Six international databases were searched for publications between 1 January 2006 and 31 December 2015. Data extraction and analysis Two researchers independently extracted data from eligible studies and assessed the quality of these using established instruments. Synthesis of data was informed by an appreciation of the medicines’ management process and the conceptual framework from the International Classification for Patient Safety. Results 60 studies met the inclusion criteria, of which 53 studies focused on medication errors, 3 on error-related adverse events and 4 on risk factors only. The prevalence of prescribing errors was reported in 46 studies: prevalence estimates ranged widely from 2% to 94%. Inappropriate prescribing was the most common type of error reported. Only one study reported the prevalence of monitoring errors, finding that incomplete therapeutic/safety laboratory-test monitoring occurred in 73% of patients. The incidence of preventable adverse drug events (ADEs) was estimated as 15/1000 person-years, the prevalence of drug–drug interaction-related adverse drug reactions as 7% and the prevalence of preventable ADE as 0.4%. A number of patient, healthcare professional and medication-related risk factors were identified, including the number of medications used by the patient, increased patient age, the number of comorbidities, use of anticoagulants, cases where more than one physician was involved in patients’ care and care being provided by family physicians/general practitioners. Conclusion A very wide variation in the medication error and error-related adverse events rates is reported in the studies, this reflecting heterogeneity in the populations studied, study designs employed and outcomes evaluated. This review has identified important limitations and discrepancies in the methodologies used and gaps in the literature on the epidemiology and outcomes of medication errors in community settings.Peer reviewe

STRESSES IN SYIMMETRICALLY LOADED STEPPED CIRCULAR PLATES USING FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

This paper deals with theoretical and numerical investigations for the stresses induced in circular plates with variable thickness and exposed by static loads. The effects of different types of loads on stresses are considered. The radial and hoop stresses are obtained for stepped circular plates widely used in industry. Two different forms of such plates are considered, one has a raised central region and the other has an unraised one. The results are obtained by finite element method using a tapered annulus bending element. The graphs presented in this work show the effect of the different values of step radius, type of the applied load and the effect of the different boundary conditions on the stresses from the point of view of design. When the step radius vanishes or equals to the plate radius, the plate becomes of uniform thickness. Consequently, the results obtained can be compared with the values of exact solutions. The limits of this simple finite element model for stepped plates are investigated by a more advanced finite element model having three dimensional axisymmetric annular element