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During the COVID-19 situation, various application-based work has to be studied and deployed to enable an IoT-based health framework. This work-based study may guide professionals in envisaging solutions to related problems and fighting against the COVID-19 type pandemic. Therefore, it identifies various technologies of IoT-based systems for monitoring pandemic situations. The mechanisms included in IoT like actuators, sensors, and the cloud-based network serves to help people from home rather than visiting the hospital occasionally. It uses optimizers to train the "noise” and "cough” target classes. Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) were initially employed in several speech processing approaches, but as the discipline of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) advanced alongside machine learning, it was discovered that MFCCs could accurately capture timbre. Overall, the study finds different IoT applications for the medical area during the pandemic situation with detailed descriptions. In this present condition, advanced methodologies have given way to innovation in day-to-day life. The IoT-based model provides an enhancement of 98.8% with a minimum training loss of 0.15. The framework depicts the excellent working of the proposed framework, and a true positive value of around 96.6% is shown in the confusion matrix and a true negative rate of around 97% was illustrated using this model. By making it possible for the cost-effective fabrication of wearable sensors through printing on a variety of flexible polymeric substrates, the rapid advancements in solution-based nanomaterials presented a hopeful viewpoint to the field of wearable sensors. This review focuses on the most recent significant advancements in the field of wearable sensors, including novel nanomaterials, manufacturing techniques, substrates, sensor types, sensing mechanisms, and readout circuits. It concludes with difficulties in the subject's future application. © 2021 Journal of Robotics and Control (JRC). All rights reserved.
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Over 600,000 new lymphoma cases and around 280,000 lymphoma-related deaths were reported in 2020. The delayed diagnosis of lymphoma has long been a problem. However, the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted healthcare services worldwide, may have caused more significant delays in lymphoma diagnoses. Since lymphomas can sometimes present with symptoms like COVID-19 and can affect the lungs, there is also a risk of misdiagnosis. We collected 505 lymphoma and 180 COVID-19 case reports from ScienceDirect and applied boosting methods to classify each patient as having COVID-19 or lymphoma based on the patient's age, gender and reported symptoms. LightGBM had the highest ROC AUC (0.89), meaning it best differentiates between the two diseases. Therefore, this model can be used as a screening tool to reduce the delay in lymphoma diagnosis and improve the patients' chances of survival. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Since the start of the pandemic, the number of cases has been increased rapidly. Due to asymptomatic and mild cases and restricted testing in many geographic locations, the overall number of actual COVID-19 cases is likely significantly higher than the number of verified cases. Several COVID-19-related comorbid diseases impair immune system function, which has an impact on COVID-19 responsiveness. So, we evaluated the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 after the third wave of COVID-19 and assessed the effect of comorbid diseases on this immune response. The current cross-sectional study was conducted in August 2021 after the third wave of COVID-19. The study included 287 participants. All participants were asked about their epidemiological data, comorbid diseases, data suggesting COVID-19 infection, and precautions measures to minimize the exposure to the disease. Of the 278 participants, 50% had a positive IgG response to COVID-19. Regarding comorbid diseases, the IgG antibody titer was significantly lower in patients with chronic kidney diseases (CKD) on dialysis, ischemic heart disease, and chronic obstructive lung diseases than other participants (p= 0.01, p= 0.02, p= 0.005, respectively). Neither precaution measures nor comorbid diseases had a role in risk factors of COVID-19 infections in our participants. In conclusion, high seroprevalence (50%) of SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody after the third wave of COVID-19 was observed in the current study. Comorbid conditions as hypertension, chronic cardiac diseases, chronic chest problems, and CKD on dialysis could decrease the immune response against COVID-19 infection. Copyright© by the Egyptian Association of Immunologists.
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This research aimed to clarify the impact of the application of IFRS 9 standard on the financial performance of Jordanian Commercial Banks (JCB) under the Corona pandemic, to achieve the goal of this research Descriptive analytical method was used the Population consisted Of all Jordanian commercial banks, While the research sample consisted of the following commercial banks (Housing Bank, Arab Bank, Jordan Bank, Jordan Kuwaiti Baank, union Bank and Cairo Amman Bank) during the period of 2018 till the end of the third quarter of 2021 where the owners’ equity was used to select the research simple and SPSS was used to analyze the research data. The financial performance was measured through financial indicators (profitability, financial strength, liquidity, financial risks), and the independent financial variable was measured through the provision for declining credit facilities and government accounts. One of the most prominent results of the research in the level of significance (α ≤ 0.05) and the trademark (9) IFRS on the financial performance of JCB in light of the Corona pandemic. In addition, the atmosphere of the exemplary research in postgraduate studies and benefit from the application of the IFRS (9) criterion as much as possible, in addition to following up on updates and amendments on a regular basis. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Over 10 million people around the world are affected by tuberculosis (TB) every year, making it a major global health concern. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, TB services in many countries have been temporarily disrupted, leading to a potential delay in the diagnosis of TB cases and many cases going under the radar. Since both diseases sometimes present similarly and generally affect the lungs, there is also a risk of misdiagnosis. This study aims to analyse the differences between COVID-19 and TB in different patients, as a first step in the creation of a TB screening tool. 180 COVID-19 and 215 TB case reports were collected from ScienceDirect. Using Natural Language Processing tools, the patient's age, gender, and symptoms were extracted from each report. Tree-based machine learning algorithms were then used to classify each case report as belonging to either disease. Overall, the cases included 252 male and 117 female patients, with 26 cases not reporting the patient's sex. The patients' ages ranged from 0 to 95 years old, with a median age of 41.5. There were 33 cases with missing age values. The most frequent symptom in the TB cases was weight loss while most COVID-19 cases listed fever as a symptom. Of all algorithms implemented, XGBoost performed best in terms of ROC AUC (86.9 %) and F1-score macro (78%). The trained model is a good starting point, which can be used by medical staff to aid in referring potential TB patients in a timely manner. This could reduce the delay in TB diagnosis as well as the TB death toll, especially in highly infected countries. © 2022 Lavoisier. All rights reserved.
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Effective project management plays a crucial role to the success of organizations via resilient execution of activities, in terms of performance and efficiency. Due to the recent market dynamics and its associated uncertainties, affecting several segments in the oil and gas (O&G) industry, utilization of innovative contracting schemes such as Front End Engineering Design (FEED) competition, and value engineered products are becoming of great importance to achieve the project's goals optimally. This paper discusses the competitiveness and strategic benefits of employing the vendor's pre-engineered and standardized turbomachinery equipment/solutions, to meet the required functionality while maintaining the highest levels of quality and safety. Several project management concepts and tools were employed, such as SWOT analysis, to discuss the benefits of supplying vendor's pre-engineered high value and long-lead turbomachinery equipment within projects, as a cost-effective solution, in place of customized products. A Requirements-to-Implementation Mapping (RIM) exercise was also carried out to benchmark the pre-engineered solutions with the industry practices while considering the packaging requirements from well-known international and national oil companies. This paper also presents success stories of implementing pre-engineered solutions that strongly contributed in improving the management of projects from engineering to operational phase. This study works in line with the recent O&G operators' initiatives in promoting agile approach to mitigate the forces that are impacting the industry and in turn the economy, such as COVID-19 pandemic. The study analysis, employing semi-quantitative approach, revealed that the pre-engineered solution brings to customers an improved value proposition in terms of cost, delivery, quality, safety, and aftermarket support, which contributes greatly in minimizing gold plating to achieve leaner projects. Standardized equipment is also found to be effective in minimizing the risks associated with changes and therefore improving the control on project constraints as well as simplifying the purchasing management of strategic equipment. In this respect, the use of standardization and pre-engineered activities could lead to a reduction of lead time up to 30%. The reliability of the standardized equipment will also be increased due to the proven frozen designs which have been repeatedly manufactured, tested, and supplied and therefore ensures successful and seamless project close-out. The proposed approach of mixing pre-engineered commodities to customized and configurable features based on site conditions provides the proper flexibility required by O&G industry while, simultaneously, maximizing the benefits of standardization. The strategic benefits of pre-engineered turbomachinery packages in the context of project management and supply chain process is not well recognized. This study explains these benefits to increase the customer's confidence level in utilizing this approach and benefit from its values, especially during the changing dynamics of the O&G industry. © Copyright 2021, Society of Petroleum Engineers
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BACKGROUND: The clinical teaching is the core component of the nursing curriculum, the alarming pandemic rates brought uncertainty to clinical teaching, weighing the safety of patients, students, and faculty, which demanded essential modification in clinical teaching and resulted in challenges in relation to effective response to clinical teaching requirements. This study aimed to assess the effective clinical teaching from the nurse educators' perspective during the remote teaching that followed the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: This study is a national Web-based descriptive study. Participants were recruited from five major Nursing Colleges in Oman. Descriptive and inferential as well as multiple linear regression analyses were conducted. RESULTS: A total of 127 nurse educators completed the survey with mean age of 43.9 (SD = 6.9) years. The overall effective clinical teaching score was 54.4 (SD = 10.9) which is considered acceptable, although the nurse educators in Oman reported the highest score on the safety dimension of the effective clinical teaching. Furthermore, females, doctoral prepared nurse educators, and those who acted as preceptors reported higher effective clinical teaching levels compared to their counterparts. The regression analysis showed that age, gender, and attending infection control training are significant predictors of effective clinical teaching. CONCLUSION: The paradigm shift in clinical teaching requires adequate measures including identification and appropriate training of clinical instructors and preceptors to meet clinical teaching demands in remote teaching. It is also important to take actions that promote and maintain the safety prioritization in bedside clinical teaching. These measures might positively impact on the nursing education process.
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Recently, coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) considered as novel pulmonary diseases, and it is considered as emerging virus that ledto the pandemic and considered a zoonotic that most commonly spreadas direct contact through respiratory and mucosal membranes. COVID-19 especially affects the lungs and immune systems especially in an aged people. This review is aimed to understand the pathogenesis and pathophysiology that might help the clinicians and researchers for more effectiveness management to avoidfuture risks of COVID-19. The scientific information was collected from Medline of EBSCO, Science Direct, Scopus, and BioMedical. The main clinical symptoms of COVID-19 showed fever, chill, coughing, dyspnea, headache, sore throat, and chest pain. SARS-COV-2 is moreseverethan SARS-COV. The replication of the viral genome within the host cells is a pathway of infected stage of the SARS-CoV-2, which considered as viral life cycle with complex process involving translation of the viral polymerase and host proteins in order to perform RNA proofreading.
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Corona Virus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) continues to spread rapidly in the world. It has dramatically affected daily lives, public health, and the world economy. This paper presents a segmentation and classification framework of COVID-19 images based on deep learning. Firstly, the classification process is employed to discriminate between COVID-19, non-COVID, and pneumonia by Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Then, the segmentation process is applied for COVID-19 and pneumonia CT images. Finally, the resulting segmented images are used to identify the infected region, whether COVID-19 or pneumonia. The proposed CNN consists of four Convolutional (Conv) layers, four batch normalization layers, and four Rectified Linear Units (ReLUs). The sizes of Conv layer used filters are 8, 16, 32, and 64. Four max-pooling layers are employed with a stride of 2 and a 2 × 2 window. The classification layer comprises a Fully-Connected (FC) layer and a soft-max activation function used to take the classification decision. A novel saliency-based region detection algorithm and an active contour segmentation strategy are applied to segment COVID-19 and pneumonia CT images. The acquired findings substantiate the efficacy of the proposed framework for helping the specialists in automated diagnosis applications. © 2021 Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.
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BACKGROUND: A major shift has occured in the trend of dealing with dental caries from primary to secondary prevention, specially after SDF approval off-label by US FDA in recent years and Hall Technique (HT) in the last decade. OBJECTIVES: To determine the frequency of awareness and use of Silver Diammine Fluoride (SDF) and Hall technique among dental professionals in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted in a public hospital, metropolitan city of Middle Eastern region between March 15, 2019 & January 31, 2020. Dental practitioners were requested, with their consent, to fill up a digitally designed survey. Chi-square test on SPSS-20.0 was applied to compare frequency of awareness and use of SDF and HALL Technique among the survey participants. RESULTS: The awareness of SDF was found to be 73.6% among specialists, 54.9% among graduates and 29.6% among students whereas awareness of HALL technique for stainless steel crown in pediatric dentistry was found statistically similar in all participants groups i.e. 42.7% in students, 55.5% in graduates and 54.9% in specialist group (p = 0.125). CONCLUSION: The results show potential with regards to awareness of dental specialists & postgraduate residents but inadequate among general dentists and students though all were keen advocates and found committed to its use to help the community. It points towards a further need of the of education for all groups. Those non- invasive techniques are very useful tools in general but specifically during Covid-19 pandemic where they can play a major role in preventing the spread of infection, arresting decay, alleviating pain and anxiety without resorting to aggressive treatment like pulp treatment/extraction. Low response rate may be improved in future through the respondents' counselling and regular follow up.
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BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a novel infectious disease that is caused by SARS-CoV-2, a newly emergent coronavirus, was first recognized in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Genetic sequencing of the virus suggests that it is a betacoronavirus closely linked to the SARS virus. COVID-19 disease associated with hematological parameter changes like changes in complete blood picture and coagulopathy. Numerous observational studies have suggested that the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and lymphocyte proportion and the platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) are inflammatory markers. OBJECTIVES: The aim was to study the changes in hematological parameters in patients with COVID-19 in relation to the severity and outcome of the disease. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A prospective study had been done during the period of 3 months that extends from March to May 2020. From 543 patients admitted to the Basra Teaching Hospital COVID-19 wards, 112 medical reports of patients had been randomly selected. The demographic and blood test results for each patient were collected and followed the patient disease severity and the outcome. None of the selected patients had chronic disease or chronic use of medicine (s) that might affect the blood indices. Further analysis and statistics were done by SPSS software. RESULTS: The study showed that females were more than males 56.25% and 43.75%n respectively. Severity categorization showed that majority of cases were mild (88, 78.58%). Furthermore, the study reveals that 11 (9.82%) had leukocytosis, 6 (5.4%) of patients with leukopenia, 6 (5.36%) of patients with lymphopenia, and 16 (14.28%) of patients with neutrophilia. Seven patients (6.25%) had thrombocytosis while 6 patients (5.36%) presented with thrombocytopenia. Neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio in this study showed 28/112 (25%) patients with N/L ratio >= 3.1. Of those patients with high N/L, 39.29% were aged >= 65 years. All the patients with severe disease had high N/L (P = 0.000). The study showed that PLR >= 626 was found in 13.39% (15/112) of the studied patients, all of them had either severe (73.3%) or moderate (26.67%) disease which was highly significant when compared to low ratio (P=0.000). CONCLUSION: The study showed that the severity of COVID19 was associated with lymphopenia, monocytosis, and elevated NLR and PLR values. On the other hand, both values (NLR and PLR) could be used as hematological predictors for disease severity and the outcome of patients with COVID-19.
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Resilient supply chain management plays an essential role in the success of organizations in terms of operational performance, efficiency, and sustainability that in turn ensures business continuity. While effective supply chain is directly dependent on logistics, inventory control, and materials handling, it is also strongly interlinked with the utilization of new technologies that will enhance the complete supply chain cycle. This paper develops a framework that introduces three-dimensional (3D) printing in the oil and gas industry, taking into consideration the challenges that this technology is facing to penetrate the conservative oil and gas industry and realizing its potential benefits to the business. This research work utilizes different purchasing models to cover a significant category of expenditures in an oil and gas company, which is providing an alternative cost effective option for sourcing high value and long lead old/obsolete spare parts from original equipment manufaturers (OEM)s overseas. Several frameworks used worldwide were employed, such as the Kraljic matrix & PESTLE (Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Legal and Environmental) analysis, to employ different manufacturing/supply technologies for different stock item classes. These tools provided a systematic pathway to perform market analysis of the existing local 3D printing market and potential for growth and competitiveness in upcoming years. This paper also presents a trial attempt to 3D scan and digitize 215 materials as a first step in the prepared framework guideline. This study works in line with recent ADNOC initiatives in promoting local workshops and In-Country Value (ICV), andUAE precautions taken to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in oil and gas plants. The adaptive framework provided a roadmap to debottleneck the constraints that conventional supply chains faces with the critical supplies. The developed decision support matrices, employing semi-quantitave approaches, serves in achieving the business need of every supply in terms of cost, schedule, or combination of both. The framework provides a guideline on the utilization of 3D printing, while maintaining the highest levels of quality. A qualitative analysis showed that the introduction of 3D printing would increase the diversity and market competition leading to potential price reduction. The utilization of 3D printing technology as part of a strategic supply chain process is not well developed. This study presents an effective framework that will increase the confidence level of oil and gas operators in utilizing this technology and benefit from its values. Copyright © 2020, Society of Petroleum Engineers