Knowledge of final year medical students about diabetes mellitus during and after COVID-19 pandemic, single university experience

Introduction: COVID-19 pandemic had let to disruption of routine and medical education especially in the first few months from announcing the pandemic status globally. At Al-Mustansiriyah University in Baghdad-Iraq, there was a shift toward providing online classes where students could attend their classes from home in order to reduce the risk of infection transmission. Curfew and lockdown took place during different times in the year of announcing the pandemic 2020. Online sessions were introduced for the first time in the history of the University. Objective(s): To compare the knowledge of final year medical students at Al-Mustansiriyah University about diabetes mellitus during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Method(s): By running an online questionnaire to the 6th year medical students of classes 2019-2020 and 2021-2022. A 39 Questions included 5 main domains;demographics, pathophysiology, diagnosis, management, and technology related to diabetes mellitus. Descriptive analysis was used. Result(s): Total of 198 students responded, 129 (89F) from the first period, and 69 (43F) from the second period. The self-assessment of knowledge indicated better ratings among students in the second period compared to students from the first period. Overall more students had attended diabetology classes and felt more prepared to apply their knowledge post pandemic (table 1). The overall score for correct answers from students of class 2021-22 was higher than the score of students of class 2019-20, 64.6% versus 57.2% respectively. Conclusion(s): The pandemic had affected the students' attendance for diabetology classes, which resulted in less knowledge, that reflected on lower rating of self-assessment and confidence to deal with diabetes. Final year medical students post pandemic had better chance to learn. Those gaps in knowledge need to be bridged during the postgraduate training and education.

The role of hybrid IoT with cloud computing and fog computing to help the oil and gas industry recover from Covid-19 and face future challenges

Recently, the oil and gas industry faced several crucial challenges affecting the global energy market, including the Covid-19 outbreak, fluctuations in oil prices with considerable uncertainty, dramatically increased environmental regulations, and digital cybersecurity challenges. Therefore, the industrial internet of things (IIoT) may provide needed hybrid cloud and fog computing to analyze huge amounts of sensitive data from sensors and actuators to monitor oil rigs and wells closely, thereby better controlling global oil production. Improved quality of service (QoS) is possible with the fog computing, since it can alleviate challenges that a standard isolated cloud can't handle, an extended cloud located near underlying nodes is being developed. The paradigm of cloud computing is not sufficient to meet the needs of the already extensively utilized IIoT (i.e., edge) applications (e.g., low latency and jitter, context awareness, and mobility support) for a variety of reasons (e.g., health care and sensor networks). Couple of paradigms just like mobile edge computing, fog computing, and mobile cloud computing, have arisen in recently to meet these criteria. Fog computing helps to optimize services and create better user experiences, such as faster responses for critical, time-sensitive needs. At the same time, it also invites problems, such as overload, underload, and disparity in resource usage, including latency, time responses, throughput, etc. The comprehensive review presented in this work shows that fog devices have highly constrained environments and limited hardware capabilities. The existing cloud computing infrastructure is not capable of processing all data in a centralized manner because of the network bandwidth costs and response latency requirements. Therefore, fog computing demonstrated, instead of edge computing, and referred to as "the enabling technologies allowing computation to be performed at the edge of the network, on downstream data on behalf of cloud services and upstream data on behalf of IIoT services" (Shi et al., 2016) is more effective for data processing when data sources are close together. A review of fog and cloud computing literature suggests that fog is better than cloud computing because fog computing performs time-dependent computations better than cloud computing. The cloud is inefficient for latency-sensitive multimedia services and other time-sensitive applications since it is accessible over the internet, like the real-time monitoring, automation, and optimization of petroleum industry operations. As a result, a growing number of IIoT projects are dispersing fog computing capacity throughout the edge network as well as through data centers and the public cloud. A comprehensive review of fog computing features is presented here, with the potential of using it in the petroleum industry. Fog computing can provide a rapid response for applications through preprocess and filter data. Data that has been trimmed can then be transmitted to the cloud for additional analysis and better service delivery. © 2021, Society of Petroleum Engineers

Impact of COVID-19 on educational and academic activities of health-care professionals: An international survey of doctors, dentists and nurses

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the whole world in different levels from numerous aspects. This deadly, highly contagious viral infection has led to lockdown in many cities across the world;significantly disrupting previously planned educational activities. Objectives: We aim to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the educational and academic activities of the health care professionals practicing in different countries. Subjects and Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted using a link to an online questionnaire which was sent to doctors, dentists and nurses working in several countries using WhatsApp medical groups. The questionnaire consisted of eight questions related to the impact of COVID-19 on educational and academic activities of the health care professionals (HCPs). Results: 898 responses received from doctors (66.5%), nurses (21%) and dentist (12.5%), working in 36 countries. 66.6% of respondents think their academic activities are less than what it was before the pandemic. However, 63% of participants have attended more webinars and 58% have completed more on-line courses and e-learning sessions during the pandemic. Conclusions: COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the academic activities of HCPs. However, COVID-19 health crisis created an opportunity for enriching the educational activities through e-learning, online courses, and webinars. This experience should be utilized in the future, with more online material available.