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The assessment of soil health through a robust index system having a sufficient number of indicators is an important step toward sustainable crop production. The present study aimed at establishing a minimum data set (MDS) from soil functional and nutritional attributes using a dual index system to evaluate the soil health of farmlands under wheat (Triticum aestivum)–maize (Zea mays) crop rotation in Yanting County, Sichuan, China. Farms from 10 villages in the study area were selected, out of which three sites were considered healthy/ideal sites and used as a reference for the remaining seven targeted sites, and soil samples were collected at depth of 20 cm from these farms. The MDS indicators were selected by using principal component analysis (PCA) followed by Pearson’s correlation on 25 attributes. Based on significant values, eight attributes were retained in the final MDS, including the sucrase level, pH, wilting coefficient, water holding capacity, organic matter, NK ratio, total potassium, and available phosphorus. Based on the results, most of the farmland soils in Yanting County were in a healthy condition, accounting for 61.71% of the surveyed samples, followed by sub-healthy, degraded, and weak soils, accounting for 19.64%, 9.71%, and 8.93%, respectively. The values of most of the indicators at the targeted sites were significantly lower than those at ideal sites. Thus, specific steps should be taken by adding soil organic matter, combined with other fertilizers, to enhance the microbial biomass, enzymatic activities, and other biological activities in the soil.

This paper discusses amplify-and-forward relay-assisted air-to-ground unmanned aerial vehicle communication over a recently proposed single-shadowing-based composite fading scenario. Included are the results derived from the Fluctuating Beckmann faded co-channel interference at the receiver node and relay. Maximal ratio combining based diversity scheme is considered. The power splitting at the receiver for energy harvesting has been assimilated. The utilization of characteristic function leads to the derivation of outage, success probabilities, and capacity with outage expressions. These expressions represent the impact of path-loss, aerial vehicle-relay, relay-receiver distances, and channel characteristics of desired and interference signals. Utilizing these expressions, numerical outcomes are presented and evaluated.

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of selenium nanoparticle (Se-NP) supplementation on the growth performance, carcass composition, antioxidant status, hepatic enzyme activities, and immunity of Cirrhinus mrigala. For this purpose, fish with an average initial weight of 7.44 ± 0.04 g were fed five experimental diets containing 0 (control), 0.25, 0.5, 1, and 2 mg kg-1 Se-NPs diets for 90 days. The analysed selenium (Se) contents of the diets were 0.35, 0.64, 0.92, 1.43, and 2.39 mg kg-1. Twenty five fish were randomly distributed in each of 5 aquarium (36 × 23.7 × 24.3 inches) in triplicate. The results showed that supplementation with Se up to 0.92 mg/kg significantly increased (p

α-MnO2/epoxy nanocomposite shows great potential for structural and tribological applications. The properties of epoxy nanocomposites depended on weight percent (wt.%) loading of reinforcement material and curing temperature. Therefore, the current study examines how neat epoxy’s density and microhardness were affected by the weight percent (0.5, 0.75, and 1.0 wt. %) loading of nano α-MnO2 and curing temperatures (24°C, 50°C, 80°C, 100°C, and 140°C). The samples were created using a procedure called the solution mixing method. Phase and surface morphology of the nanocomposite were analyzed by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy, respectively. The density of the samples was measured using mass and volume relationship. Density analysis indicated that the density of the nanocomposite increased with increasing wt.% loading of α-MnO2 and decreasing with curing temperature. According to the microhardness study, the nanocomposite samples exhibited lower microhardness with higher wt.% loading of α-MnO2 and an increasing curing temperature. At the indentation load, however, none of the samples developed indentation fractures. The probability plot of the microhardness data at the 95% confidence level showed that the sample’s hardness statistics were unaffected by load and the position of the indentation mark. Analysis of variance results indicated that the wt.% loading of α-MnO2 had a significant effect on the density and microhardness of the nanocomposite, with contributions of 77.7% and 74.75%, respectively, and the effect of curing temperature was small compared to the loading of α-MnO2. The results also indicated that the optimal loading of α-MnO2 in epoxy was 0.5 wt.% and optimal curing temperature at room temperature.

In the modern world, research in the field of thermal enhancement is going to increasing due to their diverse applications in the field of chemical industries and engineering domains. In the current study, the hydrodynamic or magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) instability of Hartmann flow in the porous medium is considered. Here, the special nature of magnetic field known as the transverse magnetic field is used in the current analysis. The investigation of hydrodynamic stability of electrically conductive for Hartmann flow in channel along with applied magnetize field is analyzed. The fluid layers are penetrated by a constant magnetize field and flow is considered through porous medium. Reynolds number (Re) is utilized to main system of hydrodynamic stability equations. A Chebyshev collocation technique is applied through numerical method to analyze magnetohydrodynamic instability system. The obtained flow equations represent system of ODEs. The current analysis makes use of a unique type of magnetic field known as the transverse magnetic field. The instabilities of nanofluids that contains nanoparticles with water as based fluid for with physical parameters are compared and discussed for growth rate and neutral graphs. These flow equations are solved numerically by using “Cheybeshev Collocation Method”. The mathematical technique “QZ (Qualitat and Zuverlassigkeit)” is applied to find out eigenvalues from comprehensive Orr-sommerfeld technique by using MATLAB software. Different embedded physical parameters Reynolds number (Re), Hartmann number (Ha) wave number (k) are compared and discussed for growth rate and neutral graphs. The instabilities of Hartmann flow in porous medium different embedded physical parameters are compared and discussed using growth rate and neutral graphs. It predicted that the flow become stable due to the magnetic field, Reynolds number and wave number the fluids transportation. The outcomes of current study are utilized in drug-delivery systems, photodynamic therapy and delivery of antitumor.

The vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) is a famous problem in logistics and transportation that has many applications in real life. The objective of the problem is to find the minimum distance covered by a set of vehicles that set to start together from the warehouse and visit some prefixed customers within certain time frames. In this paper, an efficient optimization algorithm, called modified football game algorithm (MFGA), is proposed to solve the VRPTW as an NP-hard problem. MFGA imitates the behavior of football players during a game to find the best positions to score a goal under the supervision of a team coach. In the presented algorithm, a new method is presented to create an initial solution for the VRPTW problem. In addition, a more efficient method has been designed to create a new location for the player, which makes the algorithm more efficient. The performance of the proposed MFGA is validated against Solomon’s VRPTW benchmark instances. Experimental results confirm that MFGA produces competitive results compared to several state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of various solution quality indicators. The proposed algorithm obtains 17 best-known solutions (BKSs) and improves 12 BKSs in the literature.

The fixed fleet heterogeneous open vehicle routing problem (HFFOVRP) is one of the most practical versions of the vehicle routing problem (VRP) defined because the use of rental vehicles reduces the cost of purchasing and routing for shipping companies nowadays. Also, applying a heterogeneous fleet is recommended due to the physical limitations of the streets and efforts to reduce the running costs of these companies. In this paper, a mixed-integer linear programming is proposed for HFFOVRP. Because this problem, like VRP, is related to NP-hard issues, it is not possible to use exact methods to solve real-world problems. Therefore, in this paper, a hybrid algorithm based on the ant colony algorithm called MACO is presented. This algorithm uses only global updating pheromones for a more efficient search of feasible space and considers a minimum value for pheromones on the edges. Also, pheromones of some best solutions obtained so far are updated, based on the quality of the solutions at each iteration, and three local search algorithms are used for the intensification mechanism. This method was tested on several standard instances, and the results were compared with other algorithms. The computational results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than these methods in cost and CPU time. Besides, not only has the algorithm been able to improve the quality of the best-known solutions in nine cases but also the high-quality solutions are obtained for other instances.

In biotechnology and biosensors bioconvection along with microorganisms play a important role. This article communicates a theoretic numerical analysis concerning the bioconvective Sutterby nanofluid flow over a stretchable wedge surface. Bioconvection is a remarkable occurrence of undercurrents fluid that is produced owing to the turning of microbes. It is considered for hydrodynamics unsteadiness and forms classified in interruption of inclined swimming microbes. Bioconvection is perceived practically in many uses for example pharmaceutical products, bio sensing applications, biomedical, bio-micro systems, biotechnology advancements and refining of mathematical models. Additionally, unsteady parameter influences are taken into account. Furthermore, no mass flux as well as heat sink/source consequences are measured in existing analysis. The similarity transformation are established for the non-linear PDEs of microorganism's field, nanofluid concentration, energy, momentum and mass for bioconvection flow of Sutterby nanofluid. Then, altered non-linear ODEs are resolved by utilizing the bvp4c technique. Moreover, nanofluids are declining in thermal and concentration fields and the greater number of Peclet number declines the field of microorganisms. Acquired numerical data displays that temperature field of nanofluid increases for more thermophoretic and unsteady parameters.

Abstract:Introduction: Bezoars are non-dissolved hard masses of undigested or partially digested food or foreign material that are trapped in the gastrointestinal tract. Bezoars are broadly classified into four groups, viz; phytobezoars, trichobezoar, lactobezoars, and pharmacobezoars. One of the common sub-types of phytobezoars is amlookobezoar (diospyrobezoar). Aims: To describe the clinical profile and treatment outcome of a series of patients of amlookobezoar presenting with small bowel obstruction.Methods: This prospective observational case-series study includes five patients of both sexes presenting with small bowel obstruction (SBO) caused due to amlookobezoar. All patients were evaluated with respect to detailed history, physical examination and radiological assessment to confirm the diagnosis. Radiological assessment included X-ray abdomen, USG and CECT abdomen. Results: We had total of five cases of SBO caused due to amlookobezoars. The age of these patients ranged from 8-years to 22-years with male-female ratio of 4:1. All the 5 patients in this series presented with the features of SBO in the autumn months. None of our patients had any other significant predisposing factor for bezoar formation except that all of these patients had taken significant amount of amlooks (persimmon fruit) 3-10days earlier. Four patients eventually required the exploratory laparotomy. All the four patients had soft to firm bezoars stuck up in distal or mid-ileum. Fortunately in all these 4 patients, we were able to manually breakdown the amlookobezoars and milk them down beyond the ileocaecal level without the need for any enterotomy, gut resection or creation of stoma. In all of the 4 operated patients, the postoperative period was almost uneventful. Conclusion: Though uncommon, but amlookobezoars should be considered as differential diagnosis in a case of small bowel obstruction. Amlookobezoars commonly affects young adolescent males in the autumn months and often needs a laparotomy with fragmentation and milking down of amlookobezoars.

The heterogeneous fixed fleet open vehicle routing problem with time windows is a very significant type of the vehicle routing problem (VRP) that aims to find the minimum fixed and variable cost of transportation for a heterogeneous fleet with a fixed number in which the capacity of every vehicle and usage of the vehicles should not be ignored. Also, in this problem, each customer has a special time window for servicing and each vehicle starts its route from the warehouse and ends up in one of the customers. We propose a mixed integer linear programming model of this problem. Since this problem, as well as open VRP and VRP with fixed heterogeneous fleet are hard NP problem, an improved tabu search algorithm is proposed to solve the problem. Our proposed algorithm uses a modified sweep algorithm to generate some initial solutions. Besides, a variable tabu list and some new mechanisms for intensification and diversification mechanisms are used. Numerical results are presented to show the correctness of our model and finally, the efficiency of the proposed algorithm is compared with an exact algorithm, classic tabu search and simulated annealing. The obtained results prove the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

Purpose: To report a case of diffuse xanthogranuloma presenting as bilateral anterior uveitis in a neonate. Observations: A neonate was brought by the parents with complaints of redness, watering, and photophobia in both eyes for 10 days. Examination under anesthesia revealed the presence of bilateral hyphema, fibrinous membrane, corneal haze, and raised intraocular pressure (IOP). Ultrasound Biomicroscopy revealed diffuse bilateral iris thickening. The child was managed medically with topical glaucoma medications, topical steroids, and cycloplegics. The child responded well with the resolution of hyphema, anterior chamber inflammation, and reduction of IOP. Conclusion and importance: In neonates and infants presenting with bilateral uveitis, spontaneous hyphema, and secondary glaucoma, even in the absence of a well-defined iris lesion, diffuse juvenile xanthogranuloma should be considered as a differential diagnosis.

An experiment was conducted during the rainy (kharif) season of 2019 and 2020 at ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi to identify the potential genotypes having good horticultural traits along with strong and durable resistance against ToLCV disease of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.). A diverse set of 30 tomato genotypes carrying different Ty genes were screened out at phenotypic and genotypic level. First appearance/symptom of tomato leaf curl virus (ToLCV) disease was recorded in Pusa 120 only after 16 days of transplanting (DAT). Within 30 days of transplanting most of the genotypes, viz. Pusa 120, DT12, DT16, DT6 and Pusa Sheetal recorded 80 to 100 PDI (per cent disease incidence) and they were rated as highly susceptible to ToLCV. While at 90 DAT ToLCV incidence (≤15%) was observed in DT2, DT8, DT17, DT20 and DT30 and were categorized a resistant. None of the genotype was found as highly resistant. Four genotypes, viz. DT2, DT10, DT20 and DT30 showed presence of both resistant genes Ty-2 and Ty-3 at genotypic level. These promising genotypes will be useful as parental material to develop lines/hybrids carrying multiple genes against both monopartite and bipartite viruses for strong and durable resistance against ToLCV disease.

Abstract L-Histidine immobilized montmorillonite is prepared and used as an adsorbent for removal of As(III) from aqueous solutions. The L-Histidine immobilized montmorillonite is characterized by FTIR, XRD, TGA and PZC techniques that confirmed the successful insertion of Histidine into interlayer of montmorillonite structure. The various parameters such as pH, reaction time, temperature, concentration of As(III) and adsorbent dosage are optimized to obtain maximum As(III) adsorption. It is observed that usually the removal of As(III) is increased with increasing the amount of adsorbent, contact time, temperature and till pH 6. The results showed that all these adsorption parameters greatly influenced the adsorption process. The various adsorption isotherm models including Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin and Dubinin-Radishkevich (DR) as well as kinetics models are applied to the adsorption data. The Langmuir isotherm and pseudo-second order kinetics model are well-fitted to the adsorption data. Further, the probability distribution function (PDF) is applied that verified the adsorption data well while the Akaike’s Information Criterion (AICcorrected) and Absolute Average Relative Deviation (AARD) statistical models supported the best fit adsorption isotherms. The PDF model have provided a good statistical identification of adsorption parameters, adsorption rates and maxima whereas AICcorrected and AARD models revealed the well-fitting of Langmuir adsorption isotherm model in correlating the equilibrium data. Thermodynamic parameters (ΔH, ΔS, ΔG) proved the endothermic and spontaneous nature of adsorption process along with entropical changes occurring at solid-solution interface. The results showed that L-Histidine immobilized montmorillonite is an excellent material for As(III) adsorption with maximum adsorption capacity of 87.7 mg g−1.

Outage and Success performances of an amplify-andforward relay-assisted D2D communication system over a κ-μ shadowed fading wireless link are presented here. Co-channel interference (CCI) is assumed to affect the D2D signals at relay and destination nodes. The system is analyzed with two scenarios, namely, with diversity combining and without diversity combining. Selection combining (SC) based diversity scheme is incorporated at the D2D receiver to combat fading conditions. The expressions for success and outage probabilities are presented by using the characteristic function approach. The expressions are functions of path-loss exponents, wireless link length between relay and D2D source node, wireless link length between the receiver node and relay, distances between interferers and the relay node, CCI distances from various devices of the system, fading channel. The numerical analysis for various scenarios is presented and analyzed.

This analysis articulately presents the impact of heat transfer along with associated characteristics inside an equilateral triangular enclosure. Aiming to focus on the significance of heat transfer, four heaters (w1,w2,w3,w4) and three cold walls (C1,C2,C3) are brought into notice in equilateral enclosure. The bottom wall of the enclosure moves with uniform velocity (U0̄) in its own axis while the inclined and corner cold walls of the enclosure are fixed. The position of heaters is considered in four quadrants of cylindrical wall while the segments are placed at the corners of enclosure. Mathematical expressions are developed for heaters and cold walls. The computational model is considered in two-dimensional triangular domain. Water liquid is treated as a working fluid (Pr=6.9). Buoyancy effect is incorporated into Navier–Stokes equations using Boussinesq estimation. The governing equations are explored numerically by using Finite Volume Method based ANSYS-Fluent implicit solver software. Comparison has been made for the current results with published work in limiting case. Excellent matched has been seen. The findings show that the heat transfer rate is noted maximum in third quadrant of cylindrical wall (w4) when compared with other walls against Reynolds number. The temperature is noted maximum at the top corner near the segment C3 when Reynolds number increases. The results have it possible applications in thermal insulation of buildings, heating and cooling processes in machineries, furnaces and controlling of fire in buildings etc.

BackgroundDigital misinformation, primarily on social media, has led to harmful and costly beliefs in the general population. Notably, these beliefs have resulted in public health crises to the detriment of governments worldwide and their citizens. However, public health officials need access to a comprehensive system capable of mining and analyzing large volumes of social media data in real time. ObjectiveThis study aimed to design and develop a big data pipeline and ecosystem (UbiLab Misinformation Analysis System [U-MAS]) to identify and analyze false or misleading information disseminated via social media on a certain topic or set of related topics. MethodsU-MAS is a platform-independent ecosystem developed in Python that leverages the Twitter V2 application programming interface and the Elastic Stack. The U-MAS expert system has 5 major components: data extraction framework, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic model, sentiment analyzer, misinformation classification model, and Elastic Cloud deployment (indexing of data and visualizations). The data extraction framework queries the data through the Twitter V2 application programming interface, with queries identified by public health experts. The LDA topic model, sentiment analyzer, and misinformation classification model are independently trained using a small, expert-validated subset of the extracted data. These models are then incorporated into U-MAS to analyze and classify the remaining data. Finally, the analyzed data are loaded into an index in the Elastic Cloud deployment and can then be presented on dashboards with advanced visualizations and analytics pertinent to infodemiology and infoveillance analysis. ResultsU-MAS performed efficiently and accurately. Independent investigators have successfully used the system to extract significant insights into a fluoride-related health misinformation use case (2016 to 2021). The system is currently used for a vaccine hesitancy use case (2007 to 2022) and a heat wave–related illnesses use case (2011 to 2022). Each component in the system for the fluoride misinformation use case performed as expected. The data extraction framework handles large amounts of data within short periods. The LDA topic models achieved relatively high coherence values (0.54), and the predicted topics were accurate and befitting to the data. The sentiment analyzer performed at a correlation coefficient of 0.72 but could be improved in further iterations. The misinformation classifier attained a satisfactory correlation coefficient of 0.82 against expert-validated data. Moreover, the output dashboard and analytics hosted on the Elastic Cloud deployment are intuitive for researchers without a technical background and comprehensive in their visualization and analytics capabilities. In fact, the investigators of the fluoride misinformation use case have successfully used the system to extract interesting and important insights into public health, which have been published separately. ConclusionsThe novel U-MAS pipeline has the potential to detect and analyze misleading information related to a particular topic or set of related topics.

BackgroundAlthough social media has the potential to spread misinformation, it can also be a valuable tool for elucidating the social factors that contribute to the onset of negative beliefs. As a result, data mining has become a widely used technique in infodemiology and infoveillance research to combat misinformation effects. On the other hand, there is a lack of studies that specifically aim to investigate misinformation about fluoride on Twitter. Web-based individual concerns on the side effects of fluoridated oral care products and tap water stimulate the emergence and propagation of convictions that boost antifluoridation activism. In this sense, a previous content analysis–driven study demonstrated that the term fluoride-free was frequently associated with antifluoridation interests. ObjectiveThis study aimed to analyze “fluoride-free” tweets regarding their topics and frequency of publication over time. MethodsA total of 21,169 tweets published in English between May 2016 and May 2022 that included the keyword “fluoride-free” were retrieved by the Twitter application programming interface. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling was applied to identify the salient terms and topics. The similarity between topics was calculated through an intertopic distance map. Moreover, an investigator manually assessed a sample of tweets depicting each of the most representative word groups that determined specific issues. Lastly, additional data visualization was performed regarding the total count of each topic of fluoride-free record and its relevance over time, using Elastic Stack software. ResultsWe identified 3 issues by applying the LDA topic modeling: “healthy lifestyle” (topic 1), “consumption of natural/organic oral care products” (topic 2), and “recommendations for using fluoride-free products/measures” (topic 3). Topic 1 was related to users’ concerns about leading a healthier lifestyle and the potential impacts of fluoride consumption, including its hypothetical toxicity. Complementarily, topic 2 was associated with users’ personal interests and perceptions of consuming natural and organic fluoride-free oral care products, whereas topic 3 was linked to users’ recommendations for using fluoride-free products (eg, switching from fluoridated toothpaste to fluoride-free alternatives) and measures (eg, consuming unfluoridated bottled water instead of fluoridated tap water), comprising the propaganda of dental products. Additionally, the count of tweets on fluoride-free content decreased between 2016 and 2019 but increased again from 2020 onward. ConclusionsPublic concerns toward a healthy lifestyle, including the adoption of natural and organic cosmetics, seem to be the main motivation of the recent increase of “fluoride-free” tweets, which can be boosted by the propagation of fluoride falsehoods on the web. Therefore, public health authorities, health professionals, and legislators should be aware of the spread of fluoride-free content on social media to create and implement strategies against their potential health damage for the population.

Hydrodynamics instability is studied for an electrical conducting fluid against small disturbance between the channels by using normal magnetized force. Chebyshev collocation technique is used to determine the stability of three-dimensional Hartmann flow problem. The distinctive case of the perturbations is calculated. It is also considered that perturbations intensity be determined by just on quantified by different parameters. We have considered one of the flow stabilities conditions to analyze our problem. QZ (Qualitat and Zuverlassigkeit) technique is applied to investigate the problem to draw stability curves. αc,βc are critical wave numbers in streamwise and span-wise respectively and for a big range of Hartmann value (Ha), we obtained critical Reynolds number (Rec). It is found that Couette flow is destabilized for a specific value of Magnetize force while with greater or lesser magnitude than the particular one will stabilize the flow. Disturbances with particular oblique angle θ will grow while the others will decay for the three-dimensional disturbance. We observed from over results that for Ha(>2.0) Rec, increases steadily and when Ha more than 3.886, Rec decreases fast to the minimum. It is also established that for drop down from Ha = 3.886 and Rec becomes very large. For distinct Hartmann values, there exist two Rec numbers due to closed contour. The outcomes of current study are utilized in drug-delivery systems and photodynamic therapy.

Localized drug delivery is a promising approach to treat bone infections. An ideal scaffold should provide a good regeneration environment and must be able to treat possible infections during healing. In this work, Strontium (Sr) and Iron (Fe) co-substituted whitlockite (WH) is prepared and comprehensively evaluated for the localized drug delivery application. Strontium and iron are added in varying ratios to study the effect of foreign metal concentration on crystallinity, phase purity, and drug delivery of WH. The prepared bioceramics were analyzed using x-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and Scanning electron microscope (SEM/EDS). The XRD and FTIR analysis confirmed that the strontium and iron addition did not form secondary CaP phases. The in-vitro release study of the prepared samples showed a sustained release for 25 days in all samples. Results demonstrated in the present study confirm the potential of prepared bioceramics for drug delivery and biomedical applications.

Background:The Public Health Empowerment Program (PHEP) is a 3-month training program for frontline public health staff to improve surveillance quality and strengthen the early warning system capacities. Studies evaluating the program and its impact on the health systems in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) are lacking. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the level of PHEP graduates’ engagement in field epidemiology activities, assess their perceived skills and capacity to perform these activities and assess the extent to which PHEP helped the graduates to perform field epidemiology activities.Methods:A descriptive evaluation study was conducted based on levels 3 and 4 of Kirkpatrick’s model for evaluating training programs to assess the change in graduates’ behavior and the direct results of the program. Data were collected using two online surveys targeting PHEP graduates and programs’ directors/ technical advisers.Results:A total of 162 PHEP graduates and 8 directors/ technical advisers participated in the study. The majority of PHEP graduates reported that they are often involved in activities such as responding to disease outbreaks effectively (87.7%) and monitoring surveillance data collection (75.3%). High proportions of PHEP graduates rated their skills as good in performing most of field epidemiology activities. The majority of graduates reported that the PHEP helped them much in conducting, reviewing, and monitoring surveillance data collection (92%), responding effectively to public health events and disease outbreaks (91.4%), and communicating information effectively with agency staff and with the local community (85.2%).Conclusion:PHEP appears to be an effective program for improving the public health workforce’s skills and practices in epidemiological competencies in the EMR. PHEP strengthened the engagement of the graduates in most field epidemiology activities, especially during COVID-19.

Significant progress has been made in the field of gene therapy, but effective treatments for brain tumors remain challenging due to their complex nature. Current treatment options have limitations, especially due to their inability to cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and precisely target cancer cells. Therefore options that are safer, more effective, and capable of specifically targeting cancer cells are urgently required as alternatives. This current study aimed to develop highly biocompatible natural biopolymeric chitosan nanoparticles (CNPs) as potential gene delivery vehicles that can cross the BBB and serve as gene or drug delivery vehicles for brain disease therapeutics. The efficiency of the CNPs was evaluated via in vitro transfection of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP)-tagged plasmid in HEK293-293 and brain cancer MG-U87 cell lines, as well as within in vivo mouse models. The CNPs were prepared via a complex coacervation method, resulting in nanoparticles of approximately 260 nm in size. In vitro cytotoxicity analysis revealed that the CNPs had better cell viability (85%) in U87 cells compared to the chemical transfection reagent (CTR) (72%). Moreover, the transfection efficiency of the CNPs was also higher, as indicated by fluorescent emission microscopy (20.56% vs. 17.79%) and fluorescent-activated cell sorting (53% vs. 27%). In vivo assays using Balb/c mice revealed that the CNPs could efficiently cross the BBB, suggesting their potential as efficient gene delivery vehicles for targeted therapies against brain cancers as well as other brain diseases for which the efficient targeting of a therapeutic load to the brain cells has proven to be a real challenge.