The Challenges of Biomedical Waste Management During the Ongoing Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) Pandemic: The Current Scenario

: The novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that has emerged and spread throughout the world causing CoV disease-19 (COVID-19) has since its discovery affected not only humans and animals but also the environment. Because of the highly infectious nature of the virus, and the respiratory aerosol transmission route, face masks and personal protective equipment have become mandatory for public and healthcare workers, respectively. Also, the complex nature of the pathogenicity of the virus, wherein, it has been associated with mild, moderate, and severe life-threatening infections, has warranted increased laboratory testing and placing the infected people in isolation and under constant observation in quarantine centers or at dedicated hospitals. Some infected people, who are generally healthy, and do not show symptoms have been placed in home quarantines. At this juncture, there has been increased amount of biomedical waste (BMW), and infectious general waste along with plastic disposable recyclable and non-recyclable waste. The increased BMW along with the potentially hazardous plastic waste collection, segregation, transport, and disposal has assumed increased significance during the ongoing pandemic. Therefore, this review attempts to investigate the current scenario of BMW management and strategies to minimize BMW and prevent potential environmental pollution.

Efficacy and sustainability of dialectical behaviour therapy for inpatient adolescents: a follow-up study

BackgroundDialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based treatment for adolescents targeting suicidal and non-suicidal self-injurious behaviours. Research supports DBT’s efficacy in inpatient settings, but implementation and sustainability are understudied.AimsThis study is a follow-up of a previous study by Tebbett-Mock et al and examines the efficacy and sustainability of an adolescent DBT inpatient unit within a psychiatric hospital in the Northeast. We hypothesised that adolescents who received DBT in our follow-up group (DBT Group 2) would not have statistical difference (ie, greater or fewer) of the following compared with the first group of patients who received DBT on the unit the year prior (DBT Group 1) and would have significantly fewer of the following compared with the treatment as usual (TAU) group: (1) constant observation hours for suicidal ideation, self-injury and aggression; (2) incidents of suicide attempts, self-injury and aggression; (3) restraints; (4) seclusions; (5) days hospitalised; (6) times readmitted to the unit within 30 days of discharge.MethodsWe conducted a retrospective chart review for adolescents receiving inpatient DBT (DBT Group 1, n=425; DBT Group 2, n=393) and a historical control group (TAU, n=376). The χ2 tests and one-way analysis of variance were conducted as preliminary analyses to examine group differences on diagnosis, gender and age. Kruskal-Wallis H tests were conducted to examine group differences on outcomes. Mann-Whitney U tests were used as post hoc analyses.ResultsPatients in DBT Group 2 were comparable to DBT Group 1 for the number of constant observation hours for self-injury (U=83 432.50, p=0.901), restraints (U=82 109, p=0.171) and days hospitalised (U=83 438.5, p=0.956). Patients in DBT Group 2 had a significantly greater number of incidents of suicide attempts compared with DBT Group 1 (U=82 662.5, p=0.037) and of self-injury compared with patients in DBT Group 1 (U=71724.5, p<0.001) and TAU (U=65649.0, p<0.001).ConclusionsResults provide support for adolescent inpatient DBT compared with TAU and highlight staff turnover and lack of training as potential barriers to sustainability and efficacy.

Activity Of The Office Of Muslims Of Uzbekistan…

For decades, the "Muslim question" was initially under the rule of Tsarist Russia, and later, during the years of Soviet rule, under the constant observation of a separate, uncontrollable, primarily white empire, and then the red empire.

The Implications of Digital Employee Monitoring and People Analytics for Power Relations in the Workplace

Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon prison project was based on three central assumptions: the omnipresence of the “watcher”; the universal visibility of objects of surveillance; and the assumption, by the “watched,” that they are under constant observation. While the metaphor of the panopticon, following Michel Foucault’s work, was often applied to workplace and workplace surveillance to highlight the “disciplining” power of the supervisor’s “gaze,” this paper argues that it is only with the recent advent of digital employee monitoring technology that the workplace is becoming truly “panoptic.” With modern electronic means of surveillance, the supervisor is always “looking”—even when not physically present or not actually watching employees—as all worker actions and movements may now be recorded and analyzed (in real time or at any time in the future). This paper argues that the modern workplace approximates Bentham’s panoptic prison much more than the “traditional” workplace ever did and examines the implications of this fundamental historical change in the paradigm of employee monitoring for power relations in the modern workplace.

Landslide Susceptibility Analysis: A Case Study of Nainital Municipal Area

Landslides are one of the most recurrent natural phenomena that are of overwhelming significance in the Himalayas. The Himalayan terrain being under severe transmutation by human interference and excess urban penetration has led to triggering of landslides along with causing colossal damage to property and loss of life. Immense risk looms large all along the Himalayas with cumulating conditions that build the potentiality to landslides. The study of landslides has drawn worldwide attention mainly due to the aggravating socio-economic consequences as well as the increasing pressure of urbanization on the mountain environment. In order to reduce the damage and manage vulnerable areas, there is imperative need to formulate comprehensive Landslide Vulnerability and Susceptibility Zonation maps for different areas of the Himalayan region emphasizing the urbanized and burgeoning pockets. The concept of landslide susceptibility and landslide susceptibility assessment have been introduced in the past couple of decades and various methodologies have been developed for evaluating the devastating power of landslides and its associated processes. The ultimate aim is to evolve a method suitable for specific areas through which appropriate management measures can be taken to reduce the risk from potential landslides. Any approach towards LSZ would require identification of the conditions leading to slope failure, their systematic mapping and evaluation of their relative contributions by amalgamation of all factors in the ultimatum. The aim of this paper is to assess the various landslide vulnerability factors in Nainital Municipality area on raster-based GIS platform and generate landslide vulnerability and susceptibility maps. To achieve the objective, a detailed inventory of maps based on all parameters assessed has been generated of the study area from the satellite imageries and field data. The accuracy of results is being validated by constant observation and prediction accuracies.

Prevalence of Dental Fluorosis among Southern Jordanian Population

Introduction. Jordan is one of the Middle Eastern countries that is classified as a poor water resource country. People in Jordan consume any available water. In the south of Jordan, water resources are limited. The drinking water contains high levels of fluoride, which in turn leads to augmented danger of both skeletal and dental fluorosis. Aims. This study is focused on evaluating the pervasiveness of dental fluorosis among patients of Karak City and assessing the degree and distribution of fluorosis. Materials and Methods. This research focuses on 2,512 patients ranging from 12 to 52 years old seeking dental treatment in the Dental Department at “Prince Ali ben Al Houssin Hospital” in Karak City. Dental fluorosis status was assessed by using Modified Dean’s Fluorosis Index.” The data collected were subjected to statistical analysis. Results. The dental fluorosis prevalence within our sample was 39.9% in Karak City. Females were more influenced than males, and fluorosis was detected more often in those who drank tap water and was more common in a very mild and localized form. Conclusion. Fluorosis necessitates constant observation, and future study in terms of the intake in Jordan is recommended in terms of all sources. It would not be too soon to note that the supply of drinking water needs to be changed in South Jordan.

Scarcity, Rural Consumers and COVID-19: Challenges and Opportunities

While the entire world is under constant observation and lock down caused by the Coronavirus COVID-19, the most suffered are being neglected. As the press says “The rich brought this virus in to the country and the one paying for it are the poor and marginalized population”. The virus has not only challenged the entire health and immune system, it has also taken a toll on the already damaged economy of our country. Every sector has been through loss, be it is production, transportation or supply chain. The major trouble is the larger the population density is, the bigger the threat it is going to be. As the same has been observed in Italy, India also is dreading for that nightmare to turn into reality. But the recipient of all these hassle and negligence comes down to the bottom of the pyramid. The nation and the GoI sure are trying to support every individual. Yet the question lies: Is this sufficient?

CAAI—a cognitive architecture to introduce artificial intelligence in cyber-physical production systems

This paper introduces CAAI, a novel cognitive architecture for artificial intelligence in cyber-physical production systems. The goal of the architecture is to reduce the implementation effort for the usage of artificial intelligence algorithms. The core of the CAAI is a cognitive module that processes the user’s declarative goals, selects suitable models and algorithms, and creates a configuration for the execution of a processing pipeline on a big data platform. Constant observation and evaluation against performance criteria assess the performance of pipelines for many and different use cases. Based on these evaluations, the pipelines are automatically adapted if necessary. The modular design with well-defined interfaces enables the reusability and extensibility of pipeline components. A big data platform implements this modular design supported by technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, and Kafka for virtualization and orchestration of the individual components and their communication. The implementation of the architecture is evaluated using a real-world use case. The prototypic implementation is accessible on GitHub and contains a demonstration.

Effect of Logarithmically Transformed IMERG Precipitation Observations in WRF 4D-Var Data Assimilation System

Precipitation estimates from numerical weather prediction (NWP) models are uncertain. The uncertainties can be reduced by integrating precipitation observations into NWP models. This study assimilates Version 04 Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) (IMERG) Final Run into the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model data assimilation (WRFDA) system using a four-dimensional variational (4D-Var) method. Three synoptic-scale convective precipitation events over the central United States during 2015–2017 are used as case studies. To investigate the effect of logarithmically transformed IMERG precipitation in the WRFDA system, this study reports on several experiments with six-hour and hourly assimilation windows, regular (nontransformed) and logarithmically transformed observations, and a constant observation error in regular and logarithmic spaces. Results show that hourly assimilation windows improve precipitation simulations significantly compared to six-hour windows. Logarithmically transformed precipitation does not improve precipitation estimations relative to nontransformed precipitation. However, better predictions of heavy precipitation can be achieved with a constant error in the logarithmic space (corresponding to a linearly increasing error in the regular space), which modifies the threshold of rejecting observations, and thus utilizes more observations. This study provides a cost function with logarithmically transformed observations for the 4D-Var method in the WRFDA system for future investigations.