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Guided by the behavioral model of health service use, this study examined the effect of South Asians' perceptions of healthcare, religious belief, and socioeconomic status on their perceived benefits and risks of COVID‐19 vaccines (N = 245). Cross‐sectional survey was used. Logistic regressions results showed that higher levels of perceived involvement in South Asian community health and trust in the healthcare system were associated with higher odds of reporting perceived vaccine benefits. Permanent residents, students (vs. unemployed), and Pakistani (vs. Indians) also perceived the vaccine as beneficial. On the other hand, believing that the body was sacred and being Buddhist (vs. Hindu) were associated with higher odds of perceiving severe vaccination risk. Those who believed that God would cure COVID‐19 and those with higher education tended to perceive the vaccine as having a limited effect. Implications on designing culturally appropriate COVID‐19 vaccines messages in interethnic settings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a significant technology on the internet with its widespread adoption in almost every place we could think of, like homes, hospitals, industries, companies, and so on. This adoption in virtually every device had made them smart, thereby reducing the human intervention to handle them. These devices become smart by gathering the sensed information and communicating with other devices or servers to take the appropriate decisions based on acquired data. However, these devices are deployed in batches with default usernames and passwords, making them vulnerable to attacks as seen in recent pasts like the Mirai botnet attack. Most of the attacks could have been avoided if these devices were equipped with a decent lightweight secure authentication scheme. One of the most common authentication procedures is using traditional public key infrastructure (PKI), which suffers from a single point of failure. Moreover, the complex procedures of PKI make them unfit for low‐powered IoT devices. Identity‐based cryptography (IBC), a lightweight cryptosystem, could be a good fit for these devices. But, even IBC suffers from a single point of failure and key escrow problem because of the private key generator (PKG). Blockchain has proved its mettle in eliminating a single point of failure with its robust distributed ledger technology. This article presents a novel authentication scheme for IoT devices based on identity‐based cryptography using a blockchain network. Blockchain is used as a distributed PKG, eliminating a single point of failure and key escrow problem of PKGs. Further, the proposed work is implemented in Hyperledger Fabric, which is an open‐source blockchain platform that efficiently performs the addition, updating, and deletions operation for effective authentication and communication of IoT devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most ecological management applications use wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to collect data regularly, with great temporal redundancy. As a result, a significant amount of energy is used transmitting redundant data, making it tremendously problematic to attain a satisfactory network lifetime, which is a bottleneck in enduring such environmental monitoring applications. A two‐vector data prediction model that is based on normalized quantile regression (NQR) is proposed to proficiently accomplish energy reduction in synchronous data collecting cycles. The introduced NQR algorithm provides high‐accuracy data prediction. With accurate estimates and reduced data transmission, energy usage is reduced. Furthermore, it extends the network's lifetime. In intracluster transmissions, NQR uses a two‐vector data‐prediction algorithm to coordinate the estimated sensor's reading, and, as a result, it will minimize cumulative inefficiencies from uninterrupted predictions. NQR algorithm can be integrated with both homogeneous and heterogeneous WSNs. When compared to state‐of‐art methods, the suggested NQR methodology is shown to have high energy efficiency, greater prediction accuracy, and more positive predictions with high data quality, which help the network to last longer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acid‐free approach has been demonstrated for Friedel‐Crafts‐type reaction of (het)arenes with carbonyls using neutral ionic liquid (NIL). Methodology is enabled to afford a densely functionalized bis(indolyl)methanes in good to excellent yields. This conditions is also compatible to the synthesis of 3,3‐di(indol‐3‐yl)indolin‐2‐ones, bis(4‐hydroxycoumarines) and triarylmethanes (total 40 examples; up to 98% yields). Gram‐scale reactions and recycling study were carried out to demonstrate the practicality of present methodology. DFT studies illustrate the catalytic cycle involving simultaneous activation of C=O and indole C−H bond by NIL followed by C−C bond formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meta‐analysis is the synthesis of findings from research projects, which enables an estimate of the average or pooled effect across various studies. This study presents findings from the intention to treat analysis for a series of educational evaluations in England using a two‐stage meta‐analysis with standardised outcome data and individual participant data meta‐analyses. The research estimates the overall impact of educational trials on pupils eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) and the attainment gap in literacy and mathematics performance between FSM and non‐FSM pupils based on analysis of 88 trials and data from over half a million pupils. For the meta‐analyses, frequentist and Bayesian multilevel models were used to estimate the individual and pooled effect size across categories of explanatory variables such as age groups (key stages in England) and aspects of the type of interventions (one‐to‐one, small group, whole class). Results indicated that the overall impact of interventions on the literacy outcomes of FSM pupils was positive, with a pooled effect size of 0.06 (0.03, 0.08). However, for mathematics, no overall effect on FSM pupils was observed. Analysis of the attainment gap indicated that literacy outcomes for FSM pupils were improved by interventions marginally more than for non‐FSM pupils (pooled attainment gap 0.01 (−0.01, 0.04)). The risk of bias assessment showed that estimates were consistent across different methodological approaches. Overall, evidence from this study can be used to identify, test and scale educational interventions in schools to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The improvement in imputation accuracy diminished across different methods of selecting SNPs with increased panel density. 5 O'Brien, A.C., Judge, M.M., Fair, S. & Berry, D.P. (2019) High imputation accuracy from informative low-to-medium density single nucleotide polymorphism genotypes is achievable in sheep1. Genomic technologies have not penetrated enough in livestock, especially in developing nations where animals from a particular breed/population cannot be concurrently genotyped mainly due to financial constraints. [Extracted from the article]

Abstract: A combined experimental and theoretical investigation of Ag‐Pt sub‐nanometer clusters as heterogeneous catalysts in the CO→CO2 reaction (COox) is presented. Ag9Pt2 and Ag9Pt3 clusters are size‐selected in the gas phase, deposited on an ultrathin amorphous alumina support, and tested as catalysts experimentally under realistic conditions and by first‐principles simulations at realistic coverage. In situ GISAXS/TPRx demonstrates that the clusters do not sinter or deactivate even after prolonged exposure to reactants at high temperature, and present comparable, extremely high COox catalytic efficiency. Such high activity and stability are ascribed to a synergic role of Ag and Pt in ultranano‐aggregates, in which Pt anchors the clusters to the support and binds and activates two CO molecules, while Ag binds and activates O2, and Ag/Pt surface proximity disfavors poisoning by CO or oxidized species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]