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This conceptual paper draws on a wide range of research and policy literature, providing a contemporary view of issues, factors and practices that affect education for digitally excluded populations. Concern for how education for digitally excluded populations can be supported is focal to this paper, with different sections offering key related perspectives. From an analysis of issues, factors and practices, actions for policy, practice and research are identified. Given a key finding that power issues can have major effects on plans, implementation processes and outcomes when addressing needs of education for digitally excluded populations, the paper concludes by offering frameworks to support and enable key discussions, to involve representatives from an excluded population as well as those from policy (government and industry), practitioners (teachers and learners) and researchers.

Background: General anesthesia with multimodal analgesia is the standard anesthetic management during modified radical mastectomy. In this study, a combined ultrasound-guided pectoral nerve block (PECS I) and serratus anterior plane (SAP) block were used for surgical stress response attenuation and post-operative analgesia. Aims and Objectives: This study aimed to compare the efficacy of combined PECS I and SAP block to intravenous (IV) multimodal analgesia in attenuating surgical stress response and post-operative analgesia in patients who underwent modified radical mastectomy with axillary clearance. The primary objective was to estimate the intraoperative fentanyl requirement to reduce autonomic response due to surgical stimulus. The intraoperative vitals, post-operative numeric rating scale pain score, post-operative analgesic use in the recovery room, and incidence of post-operative nausea vomiting were the secondary objectives. Materials and Methods: Thirty-six consenting patients were randomized into two groups. After induction of general anesthesia, Group B patients received ultrasound-guided PECS I and SAP block whereas Group C patients received IV analgesics only. Intraoperative fentanyl dosage to keep the systolic blood pressure (SBP) and heart rate (HR) within 20% of baseline were noted in the both groups. Intraoperative vitals, post-operative pain score, analgesic requirement, and incidence of post-operative nausea, and vomiting were also recorded in the both groups. Results: Surgical stress response attenuation was achieved with a lower dosage of fentanyl in Group B compared to Group C (intraoperative fentanyl [mean±SD], 116.11±25.70 μg vs. 134.44±20.07 μg, P=0.023). Compared to Group C, intraoperative reduction in SBP and HR was higher in Group B (SBP reduction [mean±SD], 24.03±12.5 mm of Hg vs. 15.2±13.05 mm of Hg, P=0.045 and HR reduction [mean±SD], 18.61±6.6 beats/min vs. 10.73±10.03 beats/min, P=0.009, respectively). The apparently higher pain scores in the control group were statistically insignificant. Conclusion: A combined PECS I and SAP block attenuates intraoperative autonomic stress response due to the surgical stimulus with significantly less opioid requirement.

Using data of 1,457 Chinese A-share listed enterprises from 2012 to 2021, this study investigates the impact of regional digital finance development on inefficient corporate investments. Data for core explanatory variables, including Digital Finance and Breadth, were obtained from the Peking University Digital Finance Research Center, while firm-level variables’ data were sourced from CSMAR. The baseline results show that regional digital finance development significantly reduces inefficient corporate investments in China. These findings are further supported by a series of robustness tests. Additionally, we identify two mechanisms through which regional digital finance development mitigates inefficient corporate investments: alleviating financing constraints and increasing cash flow circulation. The mitigation effects of digital finance are more pronounced in state-owned firms, firms with strong governance, firms located in western regions, firms in areas with a high degree of marketization, and firms in innovative and competitive industries. Overall, this study offers significant insights for developing countries, suggesting that regional digital finance development can enhance firms’ resource allocation efficiency.

Volvariella volvacea, commonly referred to as paddy straw mushroom, is renowned for its remarkable medicinal and nutritional properties. This mushroom, part of the family Pluteaceae, thrives in tropical and subtropical regions and is highly esteemed for its distinctive flavor and substantial health benefits. The fruiting body of V. volvacea is a rich source of bioactive compounds, including antioxidant enzymes, terpenes, polypeptides, sugars, phenolics, and flavonoids. These compounds exhibit an extensive range of therapeutic activities such as anti-tumor, anti-microbial, antioxidant, anti-malarial, anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, and anti-allergic effects. Nutritionally, V. volvacea is an excellent source of carbohydrates, proteins, fibers, ascorbic acid, and essential minerals. It also boasts a comprehensive profile of amino acids, including valine, arginine, glutamine, serine, aspartic acid, leucine, isoleucine, tyrosine, asparagine, lysine, cystine, proline, glycine, tryptophan, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, and histidine. This review emphasizes the significant medicinal and nutritional potential of V. volvacea, advocating its inclusion as a functional food to enhance human health and well-being. By highlighting its diverse bioactive compounds and therapeutic benefits, this review aims to foster greater recognition and utilization of paddy straw mushroom in both dietary and medicinal applications.

Background: Acute febrile encephalopathy (AFE) in spite of being a common clinical condition is less known to the general population thereby resulting in delay in seeking medical attention with detrimental consequences. The causes can range from infectious central nervous system (CNS) and systemic diseases to non-infectious conditions such as neuroleptic malignant syndrome, poisoning, and drug overdose. Early diagnosis and prompt medical management can result in good clinical outcome in terms of morbidity and mortality. Aims and Objectives: The aims and objectives are to study the clinical profile, etiology, seasonal variation, and outcome in patients admitted as case of AFE in a tertiary care hospital. Materials and Methods: All patients of AFE fulfilling the inclusion and exclusion criteria admitted in the departments of neurology and general medicine in Batra Hospital and Medical Research Centre (BHMRC) New Delhi, a tertiary care hospital were subjected to study analysis. The patients underwent detailed history, examination, baseline, and special investigations such as cerebrospinal fluid and magnetic resonance imaging brain whenever needed. Patients of AFE were studied according to the prevalence, etiological diagnosis, and seasonal variations. The final outcome at discharge was based on modified Rankin scale (mRs). Results: About 122 serially admitted patients diagnosed with AFE were found eligible and included in the study. About 47 (45%) patients had acute pyogenic CNS infection while as 36 (35%) had non-pyogenic CNS infection followed by malarial, tubercular, and cryptococcal CNS infection. We found maximum number of cases (n=61, 50%) of AFE during monsoon followed by 36 patients (30%) in post-monsoon, 15 patients (12%) were in summer, and only 10 cases (8%) during winter. We found higher and statistically significant disability in CNS infection group, patients with delayed hospitalization (P=0.001), and lower Glasgow coma scale (0.00001). Conclusion: AFE being a condition with serious consequences, we conclude that clinical suspicion, sensitization, and swift response from the treating physicians are required to avoid worse outcomes associated with the delayed diagnosis and late hospitalization of these patients.

Background: Diabetes mellitus is a devastating disease worldwide, and its impact on human life is alarming. Medication noncompliance is a major cause leading to serious complications and a high burden on the entire healthcare system. Objective: To assess the non-compliance of Medicine and its associated factors in type-II Diabetes mellitus. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted between February 2019 and August 2019 among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus at the Endocrinology OPD of Dow Hospital Karachi. The Moriskey Medication Adherence Questionnaire-8 was used to assess non-compliance. A non-probability purposive technique was used for data collection, and all patients diagnosed with type II diabetes mellitus were included in this study. Results: 196 participants took part in the study. Most of the participants were male (57.7%), married (85.2%), and over 50 years old (39.3%). The study found that 11.2% of participants had high compliance with medication, while 19.9% had medium adherence and 68.9% had low compliance. In univariate analysis, younger age, presence of comorbid, and prescription of tablets were associated with a lower risk of low/moderate non-compliance. On multivariable analysis, having comorbidity and advice of tablets were found to be associated with lower odds of low to moderate levels of non-adherence. Conclusion: The findings of this study highlight the need to identify the value of measuring patient compliance to treatment plans related to diabetes for the maintenance and co-management of this disease.

Abstract Building energy management systems (BEMS) are integrated computerized systems that track and manage the energy use of many pieces of building-related machinery and equipment, including lighting, power systems, and HVAC systems. Modern buildings must have BEMSs in order to reduce energy usage while maintaining comfort. Not only for energy-saving purposes, BEMS is essential in enhancing the quality of the energy supply, which helps to gain a better understanding of how energy is used and the building's energy usage. When the dynamics of a building's energy usage are known, it is possible to determine which changes are most likely to reduce consumption. Numerous connected devices, operating modes, energy usage, and environmental factors can all be monitored and controlled in real-time using BEMS. Changing operating times and setting points to maximize comfort and efficiency is made simple by this. In this paper, we have primarily addressed the two significant issues of model optimization and electricity consumption forecasts. Future forecasting has been done using the LSTM based time series approach. We generated data on the amount of electricity consumed by a hospital facility and tested our suggested methodologies on actual data. The findings gained demonstrated that the strategies were successful with both types of data. On actual data, the trend in electricity consumption can be accurately predicted. Several model optimizers enhanced the suggested methods' performance as well. Our objective function gain accuracy result of 95%.

PURPOSEConflicts of interest (COIs) between oncologists and industry might considerably influence how the presentation of the research results is delivered, ultimately affecting clinical decisions and policy-making. Although there are many regulations on reporting COI in high-income countries (HICs), little is known about their reporting in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Oncology Transparency Under Scrutiny and Tracking (ONCOTRUST-1) is a pilot global survey to explore the knowledge and perceptions of oncologists regarding COI.MATERIALS AND METHODSWe designed an online 27-question–based survey in the English language to explore the perceptions and knowledge of oncologists regarding COI, with an emphasis on LMICs. Descriptive statistics and the Consensus-Based Checklist for Reporting of Survey Studies guidelines were used to report the findings.RESULTSONCOTRUST-1 surveyed 200 oncologists, 70.9% of them practicing in LMICs. Median age of the respondents was 36 (range, 26-84) years; 47.5% of them were women. Of the respondents, 40.5% reported weekly visits by pharmaceutical representatives to their institutions. Regarding oncologists' perceptions of COI that require disclosure, direct financial benefits, such as honoraria, ranked highest (58.5%), followed by gifts from pharmaceutical representatives (50%) and travel grants for attending conferences (44.5%). By contrast, personal or institutional research funding, sample drugs, consulting or advisory board, expert testimony, and food and beverage funded by pharmaceutical industry were less frequently considered as COI. Moreover, only 24% of surveyed oncologists could correctly categorize all situations representing a COI.CONCLUSIONThese findings underscore the importance of clear guidelines, education, and transparency in reporting COI in oncology. This hypothesis-generating pilot survey provided the rationale for ONCOTRUST-2 study, which will compare perceptions of COI among oncologists in LMICs and HICs.

PURPOSEOpen-access publishing expanded opportunities to give visibility to research results but was accompanied by the proliferation of predatory journals (PJos) that offer expedited publishing but potentially compromise the integrity of research and peer review. To our knowledge, to date, there is no comprehensive global study on the impact of PJos in the field of oncology.MATERIALS AND METHODSA 29 question-based cross-sectional survey was developed to explore knowledge and practices of predatory publishing and analyzed using descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression.RESULTSFour hundred and twenty-six complete responses to the survey were reported. Almost half of the responders reported feeling pressure to publish from supervisors, institutions, and funding and regulatory agencies. The majority of authors were contacted by PJos through email solicitations (67.8%), with fewer using social networks (31%). In total, 13.4% of the responders confirmed past publications on PJo, convinced by fast editorial decision time, low article-processing charges, limited peer review, and for the promise of academic boost in short time. Over half of the participants were not aware of PJo detection tools. We developed a multivariable model to understand the determinants to publish in PJos, showing a significant correlation of practicing oncology in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and predatory publishing (odds ratio [OR], 2.02 [95% CI, 1.01 to 4.03]; P = .04). Having previous experience in academic publishing was not protective (OR, 3.81 [95% CI, 1.06 to 13.62]; P = .03). Suggestions for interventions included educational workshops, increasing awareness through social networks, enhanced research funding in LMICs, surveillance by supervisors, and implementation of institutional actions against responsible parties.CONCLUSIONThe prevalence of predatory publishing poses an alarming problem in the field of oncology, globally. Our survey identified actionable risk factors that may contribute to vulnerability to PJos and inform guidance to enhance research capacity broadly.

Bad breath, or halitosis, is a common medical condition that affects a significant portion of people worldwide. The cause of it is volatile molecules that might come from extra-oral or oral sources, both diseased and non-pathological. Halitosis can be caused by a variety of other factors, many of which are ignored, although poor dental hygiene is frequently the primary offender. These include disorders associated to the nose, throat, and bodily systems as a whole, which result in a production of odorous gasses released through the mouth. Halitosis can result from a number of illnesses, including tonsillitis, sinusitis, and some systemic conditions. In addition to these illnesses, halitosis can also be caused on by a few drugs and lifestyle behaviors including drinking alcohol and smoking. The majority of people who complain about halitosis seek therapy at a clinic because it has an adverse effect on their daily activities. However, some people with halitosis are not even aware that they have the condition. Numerous methods can be used to determine halitosis. Treatment and management of halitosis effectively require an understanding of its numerous causes. Key words: ENT, etiology, extra-oral, halitosis, pseudohalitosis, systemic

The main motivation in this article is to prove new integral identities and related results. In this paper, we deal with E`-convex function, Hermite-Hadamard type inequalities, and Katugampola fractional integrals. Firstly, we established the Hermite-Hadamard type inequalities for E`-convex function via Katugampola fractional integrals operators. After that we obtain several new identities and give new results of Holder's inequality, Jensen's integral inequality, Young's inequality, and Power mean inequality for E`-convex function by using Katugampola fractional integral operators. We make connections of our results with various results recognized in the literature.

The study of the problems of improving the mechanism of the management of the factors that slow down the development of the non-oil industry confirms the instability of the development rates of the Azerbaijani industry in 2005-2021, the disparities in the development of the industry in the production and processing areas, as well as in the regions. As a result of the study, the classification of internal and external factors that hinder the development of the non-oil industry is justified. Application of ISO standards in enterprises operating for the creation of a non-oil industry based on innovative economy, a new concept of regulation of production activities based on the data of technical projects, technical and economic justifications and project estimates were presented as the main direction of improving the management system of factors that hinder the development process of the non-oil industry. The relevance of the subject. In recent years, factors such as creating an inter-sector balance and effective use of natural and material resources have played an important role in ensuring economic stability in our country, but it is necessary to solve the economic and institutional regulation issues related to the development of the non-oil sector of the industry. Because ensuring the development of the non-oil sector has been set as a priority direction and main task of the state’s economic policy. The main goal in the implementation of the specified task is to increase the level of welfare of the population, transition to an export-oriented economy and improve the competitiveness of the economy. From this point of view, the relevance of the research of the subject is not in doubt. The purpose of the article. The main goal of the research is to create an effective management structure, which ensures the elimination of obstacles that slow down the development of this section of the industry, taking into account the role of the non-oil industrial sector in ensuring the sustainable development of the country’s economy and raising the standard of living of the population, through the formation and evaluation of a qualitatively new model of sustainable economic development of added value growth and structural changes in production areas and enterprises. Elucidation of practical aspects of using the concepts «technical structure of production», «organic structure of capital and turnover rate» to improve the management system of non-oil industries and enterprises, which are considered as objects of study of economic theory, is a priority direction of research. Research methods. The article was written on the basis of scientific research methods which includes theoretical analysis, systematic analysis, statistical analysis, generalization, comparative structural analysis, etc. Scientific innovation. In the article, based on the analysis of the production structure and current situation of the non-oil industry in 2005-2021, the classification of the obstacles that slow down the development of the industry was justified for the first time, and specific proposals for their elimination were put forward. Acknowledging the dependence of solving issues such as the application of ISO standards in the non-oil industry sector and the admission of the Republic of Azerbaijan to the World Trade Organization on the condition of ensuring the quality and safety of goods and services, determination of the technical structure of production on the basis of project-estimate documents and proposals for regulating the distribution of income (profit) according to the capital structure and turnover rate should be evaluated as innovative development directions of management in the industry.

Infrared ship target segmentation is the important basis of infrared guided weapon in the sea-air context. Typically, accurate infrared ship target segmentation relies on a large number of pixel-level labels. However, it is difficult to obtain them. To this end, we present a method of Semi-supervised Infrared Ship Target Segmentation with Dual Branch (SeISTS-DB), which utilizes a small amount of labeled data and a large amount of unlabeled data to train model and improve segmentation performance. There are three main contributions. First, we design a target segmentation branch to generate the pseudo labels for unlabeled data. It consists of a dual learning network and a segmentation network. The dual learning network generates pseudo labels with weights for unlabeled data. The segmentation network is trained using both labeled data and unlabeled data with pseudo labels to achieve target segmentation of infrared ship, obtaining the preliminary segmentation results. Secondly, we introduce an error segmentation pixel correction branch, which contains a student network and a teacher network, to modify the pixel category error of the preliminary segmentation map. Finally, the outputs of the two branches are combined to obtain the final segmentation result. The SeISTS-DB is compared with other fully-supervised and semi-supervised methods on the infrared ship images dataset. Experimental results demonstrate that when the labeled data accounts for 1/8 of the training data, the mean Intersection over Union (mIou) is respectively improved by 15.35% and 6.19% at most. Besides, it is also compared with other methods on the public IRSTD-1k dataset, when the proportion of labeled images is 1/8, the mIoU is respectively improved by 11.76% at most compared to the state-of-the-art semi-supervised methods, demonstrating its effectiveness.

Background: Multiple myeloma (MM) is the second most common hematological malignancy after non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The clinical spectrum varies from asymptomatic forms to manifestations of anemia, bone pains, and eventually spontaneous fractures, renal failure, and frequent infections. Aims and Objectives: The aims and objectives of the study are to assess the clinical and biochemical parameters in newly diagnosed cases of MM. Materials and Methods: This study was conducted in the Department of Clinical Hematology of a tertiary care hospital of North India. It was a prospective observational study over a period of 2-year duration. A total of 50 newly diagnosed patients of MM were enrolled and analyzed for clinical data. Results: Out of 50 MM patients, 68% were males and 32% were females. Mean±SD of age was 62.48±8.140 years. Forty patients (80%) had anemia (isolated anemia 4 patients), 22 patients had renal failure (44%), 20 patients (40%) had spontaneous fractures (isolated pathological fracture 6 patients), and 14 patients (28%) had bone pains (isolated bone pains 4 patients). Mean±SD of hemoglobin before the start of treatment was 8.69±2.85 g/dL. Twenty-six patients (52%) had associated comorbidity mainly hypertension (32%) and diabetes mellitus (8%), while 48% of patients had no history of previous comorbid illness. Immunoglobulin (Ig)G-λ type MM were 16 cases (32%), IgA-λ type were 6 cases (12%), IgG-κ were 10 cases (20%), IgA- κ were 4 cases (8%), Kappa type were 10 cases (20%), and biclonal 2 cases (4%). Twelve patients (24%) were in the International Staging System (ISS), 22 patients (44%) in ISS-II, and 16 patients (32%) in ISS-III disease stage. Conclusion: Treating physician should have a high index of suspicion for this disorder once elderly patients present with anemia, especially in combination with renal dysfunction and/spontaneous fractures for early diagnosis and treatment.