Antibody Response after Homologous and Heterologous Prime-Boost COVID-19 Vaccination in a Bangladeshi Residential University Cohort.

COVID-19 vaccination strategies, including heterologous prime-boost regimens and additional booster doses, aim to optimize immune responses. However, seroepidemiological studies on immune responses to different COVID-19 vaccine types and schedules remain limited. This study investigated antibody levels following homologous and heterologous prime-and-boost COVID-19 vaccination in Bangladesh. In a cohort of 606 participants who received first/second/booster doses of vaccines (AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Sinopharm), anti-spike IgG and anti-nucleocapsid IgG levels were measured. Antibody titer variations with respect to age, gender, intervals between doses, and prior infection status were analyzed. mRNA vaccines elicited the highest antibody levels after homologous and heterologous boosting. The AstraZeneca booster resulted in a sharp titer decline rate of ~0.04 units per day. Second or booster vaccine doses significantly increased antibody levels, especially in males (p < 0.05). Older age correlated with higher titers, likely reflecting previous infection, which was further confirmed by the elevation of anti-nucleocapsid IgG levels. About 95.5% of non-Sinopharm recipients were anti-nucleocapsid IgG positive, suggesting prior exposure exceeding self-reported infections (12.5%). mRNA and heterologous COVID-19 boosting enhances humoral immunity over homologous prime-boost vector/inactivated vaccination. However, waning immunity merits further investigation across vaccine platforms.

Power quality improvement of a proposed grid-connected hybrid system by load flow analysis using static var compensator.

Renewable resources are most effective for sustainable development of society and economically efficient for small-scale power generation. However, grid integration is challenging because of the randomness of the source effects on power system parameters. This work proposes power quality enhancement by incorporating Static VAR Compensator (SVC) in a grid-integrated renewable hybrid power system. SVC is one of the shunt type Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) devices that is adopted in this system for the compensation of reactive power requirement. The proposed hybrid system for the Rohingya Refugee camp is energized by a wind and solar based sources. The objective is to enhance the overall bus voltage profile by minimizing both real and reactive power losses as well as boost the power transmission capability of the entire system. Different case studies have been considered by changing the source availability and generation supply for load flow analysis using ETAP software. Moreover, critical system parameters such as bus voltage, power transfer capacity, and power losses have been reported during the inactive time of one or both renewable sources. The results obtained without SVC have been compared against the ones with the presence of SVC. Our analysis reveals that, as a result of using SVC, the voltage profile improves by 2.9-3.3%, branch loss reduces by 2.1-2.4%, and power transfer capability enhances by 7.5-9 units.

AI-Driven Stroke Rehabilitation Systems and Assessment: A Systematic Review.

Post-stroke therapy restores lost skills. Traditionally, patients are supported by skilled therapists who monitor their progress and evaluate the program's effectiveness. Due to a shortage of qualified therapists, rehabilitation facilities are both expensive and inadequate. Furthermore, evaluations may be subjective and prone to errors. These limitations motivate the researchers to devise automated systems with minimal human intervention, therapist-like assessment, and broader outreach. This article reviews seminal works from 2013 onwards, qualitatively and quantitatively adapting the PRISMA approach to examine the potential of robot-assisted, virtual reality-based rehabilitation and automated assessments through data-driven learning. Extensive experimentation on KIMORE and UI-PRMD datasets reveal high agreement between automated methods and therapists. Our investigation shows that deep learning with spatio-temporal skeleton data and dynamic attention outperforms others, with an RMSE as low as 0.55. Fully automated rehabilitation is still in development, but, being an active research topic, it could hasten objective assessment and improve outreach.

The Effect of Socio-Demographic Factors in Health-Seeking Behaviors among Bangladeshi Residents during the First Wave of COVID-19.

Background: Socio-demographic variability among nations and cultures highly influences health-seeking behavior (HSB) in managing endemic or pandemic diseases. The present study aimed to investigate the influence of socio-demographic factors on HSB among Bangladeshi residents during the first wave of COVID-19. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was performed with Bangladeshi residents (60% male and 40% female; age range: 10−60 years or above) from May to July 2020. Information was collected from the participants who resided in slum areas or did not have internet access through face-to-face surveys, maintaining spatial distancing and proper preventive measures. A self-reported and structured questionnaire, including socio-demographic and HSB, was undertaken, and the data was analyzed using a convenience sampling method. Finally, among the 947 participants, 20 were selected using a stratified random sampling technique for in-depth-interview (IDI). The linear regression analysis was performed to determine the influence of socio-demographic factors on HSB. Results: Only about 4.2% of respondents did not wear masks, but nearly half of the participants (46.6%) did not use hand gloves. The mean score of HSB was 9.98 (SD = 2.01) out of 16, with a correct overall rate of 62.4%. As per regression analysis, higher HSBs were found among participants who reported older age (>50 years) (9.96 ± 2.45), educated unemployed students (10.1 ± 1.95), higher education (10.5 ± 1.76), and higher-income (10.4 ± 1.59); in contrast, participants living in slum areas (8.18 ± 2.34) and whose source of income was business (8.46 ± 2.04) exhibited lower HSBs. Females, compared to men, showed better HSB in every aspect, apart from online food ordering. Qualitative data showed that the younger generation is more aware because of their access to information and persuaded the older generations to follow health-seeking protocols. The results also showed that some lower-income slum-dwellers have access to information and healthcare through their employers. IDIs also found cultural, religious, and mental-health affect people's adherence to health-seeking guidelines and regulations. Conclusions: The findings suggest that socio-demographic factors significantly influenced HSBs during COVID-19 in the Bangladeshi population. Authorities can use these observations to systematically manage future endemics or pandemics.

Graph Convolutional Networks for Assessment of Physical Rehabilitation Exercises.

Health professionals often prescribe patients to perform specific exercises for rehabilitation of several diseases (e.g., stroke, Parkinson, backpain). When patients perform those exercises in the absence of an expert (e.g., physicians/therapists), they cannot assess the correctness of the performance. Automatic assessment of physical rehabilitation exercises aims to assign a quality score given an RGBD video of the body movement as input. Recent deep learning approaches address this problem by extracting CNN features from co-ordinate grids of skeleton data (body-joints) obtained from videos. However, they could not extract rich spatio-temporal features from variable-length inputs. To address this issue, we investigate Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) for this task. We adapt spatio-temporal GCN to predict continuous scores(assessment) instead of discrete class labels. Our model can process variable-length inputs so that users can perform any number of repetitions of the prescribed exercise. Moreover, our novel design also provides self-attention of body-joints, indicating their role in predicting assessment scores. It guides the user to achieve a better score in future trials by matching the same attention weights of expert users. Our model successfully outperforms existing exercise assessment methods on KIMORE and UI-PRMD datasets.

Role of Citrus medica L. Fruits Extract in Combatting the Hematological and Hepatic Toxic Effects of Carbofuran.

Citrus medica L. is rich in numerous vital bioactive constituents, though it is an underutilized among the citrus genus. Therefore, the aim of the present investigation was to evaluate the protective role of the C. medica fruit (CMF) methanol extract against carbofuran (CF)-induced toxicity in experimental rats. In addition, this work aims at detecting and measuring polyphenolic compounds by means of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and evaluation of the antioxidant activity of this extract. For this, studies dealing with serum hematological and biochemical parameters, liver endogenous antioxidants, as well as hepatic histo-architectural features have been carried out to assess the protective ability of CMF against CF-induced toxicity. Additionally, total phenol, flavonoid, and antioxidant capability were measured and the antioxidant action was investigated using DPPH and nitric oxide radical scavenging assays as well as reducing power assessments. HPLC results revealed the presence of benzoic acid, cinnamic acid, gallic acid, quercetin, and salicylic acid in CMF extract. Furthermore, results showed that CMF has considerable total phenol, flavonoid, and antioxidant capability and exhibits significant free radical scavenging and reducing potentialities. On the other hand, CF intoxication of rats significantly altered the hematological and serum biochemical parameters with hepatocytes disruption. Carbofuran also caused an upsurge in malondialdehyde (MDA) level and a decline in hepatic cellular antioxidant enzymes levels in rats compared to the control group. Co-administration of CMF amended the anomalies and improved the histo-architectural arrangement of hepatocytes in treated groups. CMF also inhibited the alteration of endogenous antioxidant enzymes and MDA levels as compared to the carbofuran treated group and returned them to their normal state. Taken all together, results from this investigation highlight the protective role of CMF against CF-induced toxicity which might be attributed to the polyphenolic constituents of the extract.

The influence of electrolyte concentration on nanofractures fabricated in a 3D-printed microfluidic device by controlled dielectric breakdown.

A three-dimensional-printed microfluidic device made of a thermoplastic material was used to study the creation of molecular filters by controlled dielectric breakdown. The device was made from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene by a fused deposition modeling three-dimensional printer and consisted of two V-shaped sample compartments separated by 750 µm of extruded plastic gap. Nanofractures were formed in the thin piece of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene by controlled dielectric breakdown by application voltage of 15-20 kV with the voltage terminated when reaching a defined current threshold. Variation of the size of the nanofractures was achieved by both variation of the current threshold and by variation of the ionic strength of the electrolyte used for breakdown. Electrophoretic transport of two proteins, R-phycoerythrin (RPE; <10 nm in size) and fluorescamine-labeled BSA (f-BSA; 2-4 nm), was used to monitor the size and transport properties of the nanofractures. Using 1 mM phosphate buffer, both RPE and f-BSA passed through the nanofractures when the current threshold was set to 25 µA. However, when the threshold was lowered to 10 µA or lower, RPE was restricted from moving through the nanofractures. When we increased the electrolyte concentration during breakdown from 1 to 10 mM phosphate buffer, BSA passed but RPE was blocked when the threshold was equal to, or lower than, 25 µA. This demonstrates that nanofracture size (pore area) is directly related to the breakdown current threshold but inversely related to the concentration of the electrolyte used for the breakdown process.

General perception and self-practice of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) among undergraduate pharmacy students of Bangladesh.

BACKGROUND: Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is a combination of herbal medicine, traditional therapies, and mind-body intervention. This descriptive study was designed to assess the knowledge, attitudes, perception and self-use of CAM among Bangladeshi undergraduate pharmacy students. The study also evaluated their opinions about its integration into the pharmacy course curriculum. METHODS: It was a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study conducted on 250 pharmacy students of five reputed public universities of Bangladesh. RESULTS: This study revealed that majority of the pharmacy students were using or had previously used at least one type of CAM. Among the students, 59% had used homeopathy followed by Ayurveda (30%), meditation (29%), massage (13%), Unani (9%), yoga (6%) and acupuncture (2%). Students' attitudes towards CAM were influenced by family and friends, books and journals, the internet and to a lesser degree by health practitioners. A significant (p < 0.05) number of students had knowledge about CAM. A majority of the students (90%) had positive, while 10% had negative attitudes towards CAM. Lack of knowledge and trained professionals were found to be the major interruptions to CAM use. 84.45% acknowledged the importance of knowledge about CAM for them as future healthcare practitioners. Furthermore, the majority of the students also believed that ideas and methods of CAM would be beneficial for conventional medicine. CONCLUSIONS: From the findings of the study, it can be recommended that an approach should be taken to educate the students about the fundamentals of CAM use so that it may fulfill the professional needs of our future pharmacists.

Studies on the anti-diarrheal properties of leaf extract of Desmodium puchellum.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the pharmacological activity against diarrhea of methanol and petroleum ether extract of Desmodium puchellum (Family: Fabaceae) leaves. METHODS: The extract was evaluated for castor oil-induced diarrhea and enteropooling as well as intestinal motility in rats. Both of the extracts were given to the rats at 200 mg/kg orally. Loperamide was used as a standard drug for diarrhea. RESULTS: The diarrheal severity was reduced significantly (P<0.05) by methanol and petroleum ether extracts by 31.95% and 28.33%, respectively, whereas 54.75% inhibition was found for standard drug loperamide at 5 mg/kg. The two extracts also significantly (P<0.05) reduced the intestinal volume in case of castor oil induced enteropooling. CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that both fractions contain some biologically active ingredients that are active for anti-diarrheal actions whereas methanol fraction has better potential.