Conjugal Visits in Prisons Discourse: The Prisoners’ Voice in Malawi

The issue of possible provision of prisoners’ conjugal rights in jurisdictions not yet allowing them, such as Malawi, is still an intricate debate amongst the stakeholders. However, the most important stakeholder in the issue, the prisoner, is usually left out of the discourse. This study analyzed the perceptions of randomly sampled 305 prisoners on conjugal visits at one of the central prisons in Malawi. Both qualitative and quantitative data from prisoners’ perceptions were collected and used concurrently. The key finding was that prisoners (male and female) in Malawi generally had positive perceptions regarding conjugal visits since more than 80% of the respondents (n=305) reported that conjugal visits were good and recommended their possible introduction in Malawi. These incarcerated persons opined that conjugal visits reduced problems of homosexuality, sexual assaults, physical violence in prisons, supporting prisoners’ rehabilitation and reintegration efforts as well as helping prisoners in preserving and establishing family ties. Prisoners also viewed conjugal visits as another way of dealing with the HIV and AIDS problem in Malawi prisons. Though the potential challenge was reported to be its costs, it was opined that the programme was still worthy of introducing. It was therefore concluded that the prisoners’ voice is also valuable in not only conjugal visits discourse but also in all issues related to law and policy that concern them.

Energy Efficient Opportunistic Sensing Management in Fog Cloud Environment

With so many people now wearing mobile devices with sensors (such as smartphones), utilizing the immense capabilities of these business mobility goods has become a prospective skill to significant behavioural and ecological sensors. A potential challenge for pervasive context assessment is opportunistic sensing, has been effectively used to a wide range of applications. The sensor cloud combines cloud technology with a wireless sensor, resulting in a scalable and cost-effective computing platform for real-time applications. Because the sensor's battery power is limited and the data centre’s servers consume a significant amount of energy to supply storage, a sensor cloud must be energy efficient. This study provides a Fog-based semantic for enabling these kinds of technologies quickly and successfully. The suggested structure is comprised of fundamental algorithms to help set up and coordinate the fog sensing jobs. It creates effective multihop routes for coordinating relevant devices and transporting acquired sensory data to fog sinks. It was claimed that energy-efficient sensor cloud approaches were categorized into different groups and that each technology was examined using numerous characteristics. The outcomes of a series of thorough test simulation in NS3 to define the practicality of the created console, as well as the proportion of each parameter utilized for each technology, are computed.

Association Between Patient Survival and Clinician Variability in Treatment Rates for Aortic Valve Stenosis

Background Patients with symptomatic severe aortic stenosis (ssAS) have a high mortality risk and compromised quality of life. Surgical/transcatheter aortic valve replacement (AVR) is a Class I recommendation, but it is unclear if this recommendation is uniformly applied. We determined the impact of managing cardiologists on the likelihood of ssAS treatment. Methods and Results Using natural language processing of Optum electronic health records, we identified 26 438 patients with newly diagnosed ssAS (2011–2016). Multilevel, multivariable Fine‐Gray competing risk models clustered by cardiologists were used to determine the impact of cardiologists on the likelihood of 1‐year AVR treatment. Within 1 year of diagnosis, 35.6% of patients with ssAS received an AVR; however, rates varied widely among managing cardiologists (0%, lowest quartile; 100%, highest quartile [median, 29.6%; 25th–75th percentiles, 13.3%–47.0%]). The odds of receiving AVR varied >2‐fold depending on the cardiologist (median odds ratio for AVR, 2.25; 95% CI, 2.14–2.36). Compared with patients with ssAS of cardiologists with the highest treatment rates, those treated by cardiologists with the lowest AVR rates experienced significantly higher 1‐year mortality (lowest quartile, adjusted hazard ratio, 1.22, 95% CI, 1.13–1.33). Conclusions Overall AVR rates for ssAS were low, highlighting a potential challenge for ssAS management in the United States. Cardiologist AVR use varied substantially; patients treated by cardiologists with lower AVR rates had higher mortality rates than those treated by cardiologists with higher AVR rates.

An Exploratory Study of Advantages and Disadvantages of Website Preservation

Background of the study: website preservation should be explored due to several reasons. First, the theme website preservation is classified into a new field so there is a limited number of scientific articles discussing to this topic; Second, website preservation is not an easy task due to its potential challenge. Third, preserving website is an efford to maintain accestability to beneficial resources for future generations. Purpose: This paper will explore benefits and drawbacks in preserving websites. It also discuss problem and solution during website preservation process. The result of discussion will benefit for library manager to formulate an accurate policy on how to maintain accessibility of library’s website. Method: Reviewing literature is an analyses method in this paper Findings: Findings shows that website preservation has a lot of benefits rather than its drawbacks. The website preservation will support humanities researchers to collective memories to special events or importance person in the past; the website preservation assures accesstability to heritage data and it offers opportunity for library to collaborate in developing heritage database. Conclusion: Website preservation will have a lot of benefits rather than drawbacks. Library will be able to develop collective memory for future generations by preserving website contents. In addition, the website preservation also offers efficiency in collecting and managing metadata due to its advance technology.

Key Distribution Strategy of Wireless Sensor Network Based on Multi-Hash Chain

Key management is the basis of the security mechanism for wireless sensor networks and services, and random key pre-distribution is the most effective key management mechanism at present. However, there is a potential challenge to most current random key pre-distribution strategies: it is difficult to achieve both ideal network security connectivity and network survivability. In this paper, we present a novel random key pre-distribution scheme based on the hash chain. By adjusting certain system parameters, such as the hash chain length, the number of common auxiliary nodes and the number of hash chains, a sensor node only need to preload a few of keys, making it possible to establish the pairwise key with high probability among its neighboring nodes. The proposed scheme can still maintain strong network survivability even if there are many compromised nodes. The theoretical analysis and simulation experiments show that the proposed scheme is not only effective and secure, but also scalable.

Differential behavior of COVID-19 in Multi-Country Journey: Challenges for Drug Intervention

COVID-19, a pandemic is different as it is in an ongoing phase. We need to understand how the pandemic is developing across the globe. All the existing data and research on the virus are preliminary; researchers are rapidly learning more about new and evolving problems. There is always an underlying mystery that can unfold by studying the available data on this emerging problem and especially to provide an understanding of what can and cannot be said based on this available knowledge. It has been seen that large outbreaks are in China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, Spain, and France, with the US and UK seeing rapidly increasing numbers. But most countries in the world have reported very few to number cases of COVID-19. This is surprising because the trajectory of the COVID-19 outbreak has been said to follow the exposure due to travel, and the areas with low incidence must be having other reasons. The primary factor resulting in the spread of infection is trans country and continent movement of people. The geographical distribution and pattern of COVID 19 infection show a very interesting feature, the tropical countries having a high incidence of Malaria and have undergone the chloroquine regimen show less spike in COVID19 infection. And one of the reasons may be that the virus has not yet reached and started localized transmission in every country, despite these countries having strong travel, migration, or trade relationships with China and the rest of the world. This observation raises various questions. Is the virus not reaching or establishing infections due to some measures taken and the transmission is controlled? The differential behavior of this virus might pose a potential challenge for the development of a suitable intervention that can be useful in all scenarios.

Characterization of a Clinical Enterobacter hormaechei Strain Belonging to Epidemic Clone ST418 Co-carrying blaNDM-1, blaIMP-4 and mcr-9.1

An Enterobacter hormaechei isolate (ECL-90) simultaneously harboring blaNDM-1, blaIMP-4 and mcr-9.1 was recovered from the secretion specimen of a 24-year-old male patient in a tertiary hospital in China. The whole genome sequencing of this isolate was complete, and 4 circular plasmids with variable sizes were detected. Multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) analysis assigned the isolate to ST418, known as a carbapenemase-producing epidemic clone in China. blaIMP-4 and mcr-9.1 genes were co-carried on an IncHI2/2A plasmid (pECL-90-2) and blaNDM-1 was harbored by an IncX3 plasmid (pECL-90-3). The genetic context of mcr-9.1 was identified as a prevalent structure, “rcnR-rcnA-pcoE-pcoS-IS903-mcr-9-wbuC”, which is a relatively unitary model involved in the mobilization of mcr-9. Meanwhile, blaNDM-1 gene was detected within a globally widespread structure known as NDM-GE-U.S (“ISAba125–blaNDM-1–blaMBL”). Our study warrants that the convergence of genes mediating resistance to last-resort antibiotics in epidemic clones would largely facilitate their widespread in clinical settings, thus representing a potential challenge to clinical treatment and public health.

Viability of Multi-Specialty Dental Center in Bacolod City

A Multi-Specialty Dental Center (MSDC) is one in which dentists share facilities, administration, income and expenses, support staff, and equipment. It is a single practice entity that provides general dentistry services in collaboration with the provision of one or more dental specialties. Moreover, dentists can specialize in related dental practices or offer a wide range of specialties. This business is relatively stable as it is a growing source of revenue. The primary purpose of a multi-specialty dental clinic is to serve all the needs of patients in one convenient location. Dental specialists can consult with each other and provide tests and radiological exams under one roof. Having a group of experts, dental professionals who can perform together to surpass a patient's dental or aesthetic objectives is an advantage. It is also essential to address a potential challenge within the multi-specialty dental facility.