Spatial distribution, work patterns, and perception towards malaria interventions among temporary mobile/migrant workers in artemisinin resistance containment zone

BACKGROUND: Mobile populations are at a high risk of malaria infection and suspected to carry and spread resistant parasites. The Myanmar National Malaria Control Programme focuses on preventive interventions and vector control measures for the temporary mobile/migrant workers in Myanmar Artemisinin Resistance Containment Zones. METHODS: A prospective cross-sectional study was conducted in 2012 in Kawthaung and Bokepyin townships of Tanintharyi Region, Myanmar, covering 192 mobile/migrant aggregates. The objectives were to identify the spatial distribution of the mobile/migrant populations, and to assess knowledge, attitudes, perceptions, and practices concerning malaria prevention and control, and their preferred methods of interventions. The structure of the192 migrant aggregates was investigated using a migrant mapping tool. Individual and household information was collected by structured interviews of 408 respondents from 39 aggregates, supplemented by 12 in-depth interviews of health care providers, authorities, volunteers, and employers. Data were analyzed by triangulating quantitative and qualitative data. RESULTS: The primary reasons for the limitation in access to formal health services for suspected malaria within 24 hours were identified to be scattered distribution of migrant aggregates, variable working hours and the lack of transportation. Only 19.6% of respondents reported working at night from dusk to dawn. Among study populations, 73% reported a perceived risk of contracting malaria and 60% reported to know how to confirm a suspected case of malaria. Moreover, only 15% was able to cite correct antimalarial drugs, and less than 10% believed that non-compliance with antimalarial treatment may be related to the risk of drug resistance. About 50% of study population reported to seeking health care from the public sector, and to sleep under ITNs/LLINs the night before the survey. There was a gap in willingness to buy ITNs/LLINs and affordability (88.5% vs. 60.2%) which may affect their sustained and consistent use. Only 32.4% across all aggregates realized the importance of community participation in effective malaria prevention and control. CONCLUSIONS: Community-based innovative approaches through strong collaboration and coordination of multi-stakeholders are desirable for relaying information on ITNs/LLINs, rapid diagnostic test, and artemisinin combination therapy and drug resistance successfully across the social and economic diversity of mobile/migrant aggregates in Myanmar

Applying Japanese Educational Experiences to the Construction of Essential Perspectives for Educational Development in Developing Countries : Case Studies of Myanmar, the Philippines, and Cambodia

本研究の目的は，日本が関わる途上国への教育開発プロジェクトにおいて考慮する観点を提示することである．途上国の教育開発は，21世紀に入り校舎建設などのハード面から，教育方法の改善といったソフト面に重点が移ってきた．しかし，社会歴史的な文脈を考慮しないまま，工学的なアプローチでプロジェクトが運営されてきた．そこで途上国の研究協力者との共同分析を採用することで，途上国の教育問題がどのような社会文化的な状況との関係性のなかで生起しているのか，ミャンマー，フィリピン，カンボジアの3カ国について分析をする．分析の結果，「教師と児童生徒のパワーバランス」「地域間にある教育環境の差」「教師の努力に依存する傾向にある学校体制」「新しい教育方法を教育政策として教育現場に適切に伝えること」に問題があることが明らかになった．今後は，個々の事例をマクロな視点を含めて考察する必要がある．The purpose of this research is to clarify the viewpoints that need to be considered in educational development projects for developing countries. Educational development in developing countries has shifted from infrastructure development, such as constructing school buildings, to pedagogic development, such as improving teaching methods for the 21st Century. However, an engineering approach has often been taken to the management of these projects, ignoring their social-historical contexts. Therefore, undertaking collaborative research with teachers and researchers in developing countries, the authors analyzed relationships between educational challenges and social-cultural contexts in Myanmar, the Philippines, and Cambodia. A number of challenges were identified, including power imbalances between students and teachers, regional gaps in the educational environment, school systems that are overreliant on the efforts of teachers, and the dissemination of new educational methods. Future research needs to take a macro approach to the investigation of each of these challenges.本研究は，科研費基盤研究 (B) 海外学術調査「社会文化的アプローチによる国際教育協力の学習環境デザイン」 (17H04572) の成果の一部である

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

An Investigation into the Effectiveness of Discovery Learning in Teaching Lower Secondary Science

The major purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of discovery learning in teaching lower secondary science. The study was conducted with both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Firstly, a descriptive study was made to explore whether there is a link between the junior assistant science teachers’ teaching-learning activities and the six stages of discovery learning cycle. The subjects for this study were selected from the Yangon City Development Area by using a stratified random sampling method. A total of (198) junior assistant science teachers from (36) schools were selected for the study. According to the results, the activities of the junior assistant science teachers are strongly linked with the engagement and readiness stage, but weakly linked with the exploration and discovery stage of the discovery learning cycle. Secondly, an experimental study was used to investigate the effectiveness of discovery learning. In this experimental study, the subjects were Grade Six students selected from the schools where there have moderate teachers' teaching-learning activities on discovery learning in each strata. The experimental design adopted in this study was one of the quasi-experimental designs, namely, nonequivalent control group design. The experimental group was treated with discovery learning and the control group was taught by using teacher-centered method. After that, a posttest was administered to two groups. Independent samples t-test was used to test whether there were significant differences between the two groups. Findings indicated that those who received a treatment by using discovery learning demonstrated significantly better than those who do not received it. Findings proved that discovery learning has positive contribution to the science teaching at the middle school level and could encourage the improvement of students’ higher order thinking skills

A Study of the Teaching Styles of Trained and Untrained Primary Assistant Teachers

The purpose of this research was to study the teaching styles of trained and untrained primary assistant teachers. The participants of this research were primary assistant teachers from Yedashe Township. The researcher classified sample teachers into two groups, (150) trained teachers and (150) untrained teachers. The questionnaires consisted of (40) items of five points Likert-scale. The teaching style questionnaires for teachers were based on Anthony F. Grasha’s teaching style inventory (1996). It includes five types of styles. They are expert style, formal authority style, personal model style, facilitator style and delegator style. A quantitative research method was used to analyze the teaching styles of teachers. The independence samples t- test and comparison of means were employed for the analysis of quantitative data. According to the research finding, there was a significant difference between trained and untrained teachers on personal model and facilitator teaching style. Moreover, untrained teachers preferred in formal authority teaching style and trained teachers preferred expert, personal model, facilitator and delegator teaching style. This showed that training is necessary for all teachers. This study has a positive contribution not only for teachers to be effective in their teaching but also for the improvement of education

Clustering Spatial Data using DBSCAN (Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise)

Clustering algorithms are data attractive for the last class identification in spatial databases. This system presents the new clustering algorithm DBSCAN (Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise). DBSCAN is a density-based clustering algorithm, grows regions with sufficiently high density into clusters and discovers of arbitrary shape and size in spatial databases. DBSCAN defines a cluster as a maximum set of density-connected objects. Every object not contained in any cluster is considered to be noise. DBSCAN is efficient even for large spatial databases. This system performs the effectiveness and efficiency of DBSCAN using spatial databases. The results demonstrate that DBSCAN is significantly more effective in discovering clusters of arbitrary shape than the well-known algorithm CLARANS (Clustering Large Applications based on RANdomized Search) and the run time comparison of DBSCAN and CLARANS on these databases in terms of efficiency

Implementation of Secure Production Database System by Using AES and RBAC

Protecting privacy and ensuring the security of very important data and operations in an organization are essential need for the detergent production organization. Access control is the important mechanism for protecting information from unauthorized user and access. And as the access control is an essential need, the security of data in database is an essential and important need too. No matter what degree of security is put in place, many conventional database security systems are bugged with holes that can be used by attackers to penetrate the database. So the sensitive data in database are still vulnerable to attack. Since both the access control and security of data are the essential need for a system, this paper describes based on the two security mechanisms: role based access control (RBAC) and advanced encryption standard (AES).The system provides the security of production system that has sensitive data e.g, the formula of each production of the product

Comparison of Apriori Algorithm and Frequent Pattern Growth Approach

Data mining is the process of analyzinglarge data sets in order to find patterns that can behelp to isolate key variables to build predictivemodels for management decision making. Thediscovery of interesting association relationshipsamong huge amount of business transaction recordscan help in many business decision making process,such as catalog design, cross marketing and lossleader analysis. Association rule mining is atechnique to find useful patterns and associations intransactional databases. Aprirori and FrequentPattern growth approach are the well-knowalgorithms for mining frequent item sets in a set oftransactions. This system is intended to compare theresults (time, number of frequent itemset, Associationrules) of the same dataset by applying the Apriorimethod and Frequent Pattern Growth method. Thetwo dataset, the Kyar Nyo Pan Stationary Store andOrange minimarket are used

MINIMUM AND MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE EVALUATING BY LINEAR REGRESSION ANALYSIS

Climate prediction is a need of the day and is to be a beneficial issue for local government to rescue their people lives and properties. In this study, it was aimed to be predicted the maximum and minimum air temperature for Loilem by using the variables of temperature and monthly period. Collecting temperature data in five years is used to analyze linear regression model. To be performed the result, the model is a good fit to predict the maximum and minimum temperature based on monthly data. To be performed in the result, it is a good fit model to predict the maximum and minimum temperature based on monthly data

Effects of Different Mulching Materials on Plant Growth, Fruit Yield and Quality of Two Cultivars of Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus Thunb.)

The study was conducted to investigate plant growth, fruit yield and quality attributes of two cultivars of watermelon as affected by mulching materials during the winter seasons of 2014 and 2015 in the field of Department of Horticulture and Agricultural Biotechnology, Yezin Agricultural University. The treatments were laid out in two-factor factorial arrangement in randomized complete block design with four replications. The first factor was mulching materials: rice straw, black polyethylene, silver polyethylene and clear polyethylene and without mulch was control. The second factor was cultivars: namely 855 and Padamya.The data on main vine length (cm), number of nodes on main vine and number of branches per plant were weekly recorded. Soil moisture content (%) and weed infestation (g) were also measured. At harvest time, single fruit weight (kg), total fruit yield (ton ha-1), skin and pulp firmness (kg cm-2), Brix %, juice content (%) and total titratable acidity (TTA %) and color values of L*, a*, b* were also analyzed. All mulching materials showed significantly higher single fruit weight and total fruit yield than control. The plants without mulch (control) showed the lowest values in single fruit weight and total fruit yield. All mulching materials not only maintained the maximum soil moisture but also suppressed weed infestation. There was an interaction between mulching materials and cultivars on single fruit weight, total fruit yield and also the fruit quality attributes of juice content and color values of L*, a* and b*.According to the results, mulching practice is efficient for watermelon production and silver polyethylene mulch is the best among them. There were no significant differences in the main growth parameters of single fruit weight and total fruit yield between two cultivars. Moreover, the quality attributes of Brix %, juice content and TTA % of cultivar 855 did not differ from cultivar Padamya. Therefore, cultivar Padamya may be a potential cultivar for local consumption and for export in future along with the cultivar 855