Establishing communication challenges and preferences among clinical trial participants in an under-resourced setting to improve adherence to study visits and participant retention

Background Ensuring protocol visit compliance and maintaining high participant retention remain critical elements of clinical trials. In the HVTN 702 HIV vaccine trial, Setshaba Research Centre in Soshanguve, Tshwane, South Africa, experienced challenges in communicating with participants to remind them about their study visits. In order to improve participants adhering to their study visits, and study retention, we aimed to identify challenges in mobile communication, and to establish preferences in communication methods and interest in receiving study information via cellphones. Methods We conducted a paper-based survey among HVTN 702 HIV vaccine trial participants at Setshaba Research Centre. The survey comprised of dichotomous and scale questions and was completed voluntarily and anonymously. The questions included those on their primary form of communication (calling, SMS and WhatsApp), the best time of day for the site to communicate with them, whether they were interested in receiving regular general study information updates via their cellular phone, how often they changed their cellular phones and/or network, whether they experienced any challenges with their cellular phones and what these challenges were, if any. All participants scheduled to visit the clinic from February to May 2019 were invited to participate. Thus, 90 of 380 (24%) participants enrolled by May 2019 were surveyed. Results The majority (68%) of participants were 26−35 years old and almost three-quarters (73%) were female. Almost all participants (99%) had a personal cellphone. Half of the participants experienced some challenge related to cellphones, these being poor network signal at home (12%), battery running flat frequently (11%), sharing their phone (9%), lack of data (9%), challenges with use of applications (6%) and their cellphones being unreliable (3%). Annually, 20% of participants made a single or multiple network changes. Communication preferences were calls by site staff (80%), SMS (16%) and WhatsApp (3%). Most preferred to be contacted in the morning (49%) or afternoon (31%). Site contact was rated as ‘very helpful’ (87%), and 97% were interested in receiving regular general study information updates via their cellphone. Conclusion Despite participants owning cellphones, there are still technical challenges, for example, network signals, battery-charging and applications. The majority of participants preferred being called rather than communicating by text messages or WhatsApp. Future studies need to include addressing participant challenges in maintaining contact and training of participants on use of cellphone applications to optimise communication. Noting the preferred time of day for participants to be called might improve the likelihood of making contact with them. The willingness to receive updates will aid in keeping participant interest high and enhance retention.

Stochastic Knapsack Revisited: The Service Level Perspective

A key challenge in the resource allocation problem is to find near-optimal policies to serve different customers with random demands/revenues, using a fixed pool of capacity (properly configured). Three classes of allocation policies, responsive (with perfect hindsight), adaptive (with information updates), and anticipative (with forecast information) policies, are widely used in practice. We analyze and compare the performances of these policies for both capacity minimization and revenue maximization models. In both models, the performance gaps between optimal anticipative policies and adaptive policies are shown to be bounded when the demand and revenue of each item are independently generated. In contrast, the gaps between the optimal adaptive policies and responsive policies can be arbitrarily large. More importantly, we show that the techniques developed, and the persistency values obtained from the optimal responsive policies can be used to design good adaptive and anticipative policies for the other two variants of resource allocation problems.

Wooden Extra Stories in Concrete Block of Flats in Finland as an Ecologically Sensitive Engineering Solution

This chapter examined the various stages and benefits of wooden extra stories from the perspective of Finnish housing and real estate companies through interviews with professionals involved in these projects. Key findings highlighted are as follows: (1) in the feasibility study, project planning primarily focuses on property condition and potential improvement targets as well as other considerations, for example, compliance with current regulations and parking arrangements; (2) in the project planning, application of extra stories is thoroughly examined, and construction costs, profits, and the sale of building rights are discussed; (3) in implementation planning, issues related to building rights, city plan change, and conditions of the company that manages the property play an important role; and (4) during construction, frequent information updates are made to residents regarding the site arrangements and the construction program. Wooden extra floor construction, which requires commitment, investment, and cooperation among the interested parties, has great potential in construction technology, contracting mechanisms, and ecological engineering solutions. It is believed that this chapter will increase the dissemination of wooden extra stories, thus contributing to the greater use of more sustainable materials in renovation projects and the ecologically sensitive engineering approaches to meet the challenges arising from climate change.

Analysis of the Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Media in Public Relations Practices to Convey Covid-19 Information in Gorontalo Province

Public Relations has an important role in educating and providing understanding to the public in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as it is now. In this case, Public Relations acts as an intermediary between the government and the community by conveying policies related to the government's efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This study aims to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of PR strategies in delivering information on COVID-19 using social media, such as: websites, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative with a case study approach. Then the withdrawal of research informants using purposive sampling technique, informants consist of people who are directly involved with the delivery of information on covid-19 by Public Relations, with qualitative data collection consisting of depth interviews, participant observation, and documentation. The results of the study show that there are several advantages, namely (1) wide reach and large number of followers, (2) fast information updates, and (3) presenting informative and educative content. The shortcoming in question is that the management of social media is not yet maximal, which is less interactive in responding to public comments through comments on social media. The limitation of this study is that researchers only focus on the PR strategy in delivering information about COVID-19 in Gorontalo Province through social media only and not at the level of other conventional media, namely through websites, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. The value and originality of this research is the delivery of information and efforts to prevent the spread of covid-19 which is conveyed through social media PR. The contribution of this research to future PR practices is a deeper implementation of the concept of digital PR, especially during a pandemic like now where everything is done online.

Dopamine controls whether new declarative information updates reactivated memories through reconsolidation

Consolidation and reconsolidation are independent memory processes. Consolidation stabilizes new memories, whereas reconsolidation restabilizes memories destabilized when reactivated during recall. However, the biological role of the destabilization/reconsolidation cycle is still unknown. It has been hypothesized that reconsolidation links new information with reactivated memories, but some reports suggest that new and old memories are associated through consolidation mechanisms instead. Object-recognition memory (ORM) serves to judge the familiarity of items and is essential for remembering previous events. We took advantage of the fact that ORM consolidation, destabilization, and reconsolidation can be pharmacologically dissociated to demonstrate that, depending on the activation state of hippocampal dopamine D1/D5 receptors, the memory of a novel object presented during recall of the memory of a familiar one can be formed via reconsolidation or consolidation, but only reconsolidation can link them. We also found that recognition memories formed through reconsolidation can be destabilized even if indirectly reactivated. Our results indicate that dopamine couples novelty detection with memory destabilization to determine whether a new recognition trace is associated with an active network and suggest that declarative reminders should be used with caution during reconsolidation-based psychotherapeutic interventions.

A BIM-based space-oriented solution for hospital facilities management

Purpose This paper aims to propose a space-oriented solution as an interface enabling the knowledge transfer between the building and the facilities management (FM) industry. Design/methodology/approach The research gap is explored based on practical investigations in six large-scale hospitals in China. The theory of engineering systems integration inspires the proposed solution. A practical scenario is demonstrated to explain the workflow of this solution. Findings It is founded that lagging information updates of FM systems in hospital project are one of the main reasons for inefficient and costly FM workflow. Building information modelling (BIM) model could provide accurate building information to the FM systems at the building handover stage. However, few researchers focus on the continuous information transfer solution from the BIM model to FM systems during the building in-use phase. An interface should be established for the “conversation” between the frequent changes of building and the FM systems in the post-construction period. Practical implications The information updates in three FM systems due to space changes in a hospital project is considered as a practical scenario in this paper. It is presented with the workflow and the data logic chain. Originality/value The originality of this paper is to propose a solution to integrate the space information provided by the BIM model with the parameters of particular FM systems. This solution deploys a BIM model for the FM industry. The solution could allow the FM personnel to ease operations and maintenance workflow by updating the space information in the BIM model.

Hybrid DSS for recommendations of halal culinary tourism West Sumatra

<p><span id="docs-internal-guid-41629e29-7fff-b967-f086-5ed18dc647ab"><span>Decision support system (DSS) is a system that design to support managers in deciding on multiple criteria and multiple attributes. This study combines two methods in the DSS, that are analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method and simple additive weighting (SAW) method. This combination of two DSS method named hybrid DSS. The AHP method is using to find the weighting or priorities of criteria in DSS and then the value will use by SAW method using to find the decision. The decision of this DSS is the recommendation of halal culinary tourism in West Sumatra Indonesia. The purpose of this study is to provide updates from previous studies, related to adding indicators of halal culinary tourism and other information updates. The number of potential culinary tourism attractions and tourism, the problems that exist in the real field, is still lack of culinary information in West Sumatra. As a result, many tourists find it difficult to find the best and economical culinary. The SAW and AHP methods become the hybrid DSS method that will be able to classify and provide information on halal tourism in West Sumatra that is precise, accurate, consistent, and validated.</span></span></p>

Emotional Challenges across the Welfare provided among the Stranded University Students during Covid-19 Pandemic

The Movement Control Order (MCO) for Covid-19 safety measure caused worry and anxiety among university students, especially those stranded in their university hostels or rental accommodation. Universities’ staffs helped their basic living and study needs. This study aims to determine the emotional challenges among these students and examine the association between their emotional score across the university’s welfare. Based on a survey of 284 respondents, the findings show that there is a significant difference between their emotions and stranded locations. Residential facilities, information updates, and food provided are substantial to their emotional scores. Keywords: Emotional Challenges; Covid-19 Pandemic; Stranded Students; University Welfare eISSN: 2398-4287© 2021. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v6i16.2719