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The growing importance of renewable generation connected to distribution grids requires an increased coordination between transmission system operators (TSOs) and distribution system operators (DSOs) for reactive power management. This work proposes a practical and effective interaction method based on sequential optimizations to evaluate the reactive flexibility potential of distribution networks and to dispatch them along with traditional synchronous generators, keeping to a minimum the information exchange. A modular optimal power flow (OPF) tool featuring multi-objective optimization is developed for this purpose. The proposed method is evaluated for a model of a real German 110 kV grid with 1.6 GW of installed wind power capacity and a reduced order model of the surrounding transmission system. Simulations show the benefit of involving wind farms in reactive power support reducing losses both at distribution and transmission level. Different types of setpoints are investigated, showing the feasibility for the DSO to fulfill also individual voltage and reactive power targets over multiple connection points. Finally, some suggestions are presented to achieve a fair coordination, combining both TSO and DSO requirements.
The transfer of historically grown monolithic software architectures into modern service-oriented architectures creates a lot of loose coupling points. This can lead to an unforeseen system behavior and can significantly impede those continuous modernization processes, since it is not clear where bottlenecks in a system arise. It is therefore necessary to monitor such modernization processes with an adaptive monitoring concept to be able to correctly record and interpret unpredictable system dynamics. This contribution presents a generic QoS measurement framework for service-based systems. The framework consists of an XML-based specification for the measurement to be performed – the Information Model (IM) – and the QoS System, which provides an execution platform for the IM. The framework will be applied to a standard business process of the German insurance industry, and the concepts of the IM and their mapping to artifacts of the QoS System will be presented. Furtherm ore, design and implementation of the QoS System’s parser and generator module and the generated artifacts are explained in detail, e.g., event model, agents, measurement module and analyzer module.
Cloud computing has become well established in private and public sector projects over the past few years, opening ever new opportunities for research and development, but also for education. One of these opportunities presents itself in the form of dynamically deployable, virtual lab environments, granting educational institutions increased flexibility with the allocation of their computing resources. These fully sandboxed labs provide students with their own, internal network and full access to all machines within, granting them the flexibility necessary to gather hands-on experience with building heterogeneous microservice architectures. The eduDScloud provides a private cloud infrastructure to which labs like the microservice lab outlined in this paper can be flexibly deployed at a moment’s notice.
In the context of modern mobility, topics such as smart-cities, Car2Car-Communication, extensive vehicle sensor-data, e-mobility and charging point management systems have to be considered. These topics of modern mobility often have in common that they are characterized by complex and extensive data situations. Vehicle position data, sensor data or vehicle communication data must be preprocessed, aggregated and analyzed. In many cases, the data is interdependent. For example, the vehicle position data of electric vehicles and surrounding charging points have a dependence on one another and characterize a competition situation between the vehicles. In the case of Car2Car-Communication, the positions of the vehicles must also be viewed in relation to each other. The data are dependent on each other and will influence the ability to establish a communication. This dependency can provoke very complex and large data situations, which can no longer be treated efficiently. With this work, a model is presented in order to be able to map such typical data situations with a strong dependency of the data among each other. Microservices can help reduce complexity.
Portable-micro-Combined-Heat-and-Power-units are a gateway technology bridging conventional vehicles and Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV). Being a new technology, new software has to be created that can be easily adapted to changing requirements. We propose and evaluate three different architectures based on three architectural paradigms. Using a scenario-based evaluation, we conclude that a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) using microservices provides a higher quality solution than a layered or Event-Driven Complex-Event-Processing (ED-CEP) approach. Future work will include implementation and simulation-driven evaluation.
The transfer of historically grown monolithic software architectures into modern service-oriented architectures creates a lot of loose coupling points. This can lead to an unforeseen system behavior and can significantly impede those continuous modernization processes, since it is not clear where bottlenecks in a system arise. It is therefore necessary to monitor such modernization processes with an adaptive monitoring concept in order to be able to correctly record and interpret unpredictable system dynamics. For this purpose, a general measurement methodology and a specific implementation concept are presented in this work.
Background
Uncomplicated urinary tract infections (UTI) are common in general practice and usually treated with antibiotics. This contributes to increasing resistance rates of uropathogenic bacteria. A previous trial showed a reduction of antibiotic use in women with UTI by initial symptomatic treatment with ibuprofen. However, this treatment strategy is not suitable for all women equally. Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (UU, bearberry extract arbutin) is a potential alternative treatment. This study aims at investigating whether an initial treatment with UU in women with UTI can reduce antibiotic use without significantly increasing the symptom burden or rate of complications.
Methods
This is a double-blind, randomized, and controlled comparative effectiveness trial. Women between 18 and 75 years with suspected UTI and at least two of the symptoms dysuria, urgency, frequency or lower abdominal pain will be assessed for eligibility in general practice and enrolled into the trial. Participants will receive either a defined daily dose of 3 × 2 arbutin 105 mg for 5 days (intervention) or fosfomycin 3 g once (control). Antibiotic therapy will be provided in the intervention group only if needed, i.e. for women with worsening or persistent symptoms. Two co-primary outcomes are the number of all antibiotic courses regardless of the medical indication from day 0–28, and the symptom burden, defined as a weighted sum of the daily total symptom scores from day 0–7. The trial result is considered positive if superiority of initial treatment with UU is demonstrated with reference to the co-primary outcome number of antibiotic courses and non-inferiority of initial treatment with UU with reference to the co-primary outcome symptom burden.
Discussion
The trial’s aim is to investigate whether initial treatment with UU is a safe and effective alternative treatment strategy in women with UTI. In that case, the results might change the existing treatment strategy in general practice by promoting delayed prescription of antibiotics and a reduction of antibiotic use in primary care.
Research question: In order to reduce fan aggression surrounding rivalry games, team sport organizations often try to placate fans by downplaying the importance of the game (e.g. ‘the derby is not a war’). Drawing on the intergroup conflict literature, this research derives dual identity statements and examines their effectiveness in reducing fan aggressiveness compared to the managerial practice of downplaying rivalry.
Research methods: Three field experimental studies (one face-to-face survey and two online surveys) tested the hypotheses. Established rivalries in the German soccer league Bundesliga served as the empirical setting of the studies. The data were analyzed using ANCOVA and linear regression analyses.
Results and findings: Dual identity statements reduce fan aggressiveness compared to both downplay statements and a no-statement control condition, independent of team identification and trait aggression. Importantly, the managerial practice of downplaying rivalry appears to be counterproductive. It produces even higher levels of fan aggressiveness than making no statement, an effect caused by psychological reactance.
Implications: Sport organizations should not alienate their fan base by attempting to play down the importance of rivalry, which is an integral part of fan identity. Instead, they should strengthen the supporters’ unique identity (as fans of a particular team) while at the same time facilitating identification with the rival at a superordinate level (e.g. as joint fans of a region).
Marketing, get ready to rumble — How rivalry promotes distinctiveness for brands and consumers
(2018)
Scholars typically advise brands to stay away from public conflict with competitors as research has focused on negative consequences - e.g., price wars, escalating hostilities, and derogation. This research distinguishes between rivalry between firms (inter-firm brand rivalry) and rivalry between consumers (inter-consumer brand rivalry). Four studies and six samples show both types of rivalry can have positive consequences for both firms and consumers. Inter-firm brand rivalry boosts perceived distinctiveness of competing brands independent of consumption, attitude, familiarity, and involvement. Inter-consumer brand rivalry increases consumer group distinctiveness, an effect mediated by brand identification and rival brand disidentification. We extend social identity theory by demonstrating that: 1) outside actors like firms can promote inter-consumer rivalry through inter-firm rivalry and 2) promoting such conflict can actually provide benefits to consumers as well as firms. The paper challenges the axiom “never knock the competition,” deriving a counter-intuitive way to accomplish one of marketing's premier objectives.
This study is concerned with the early stages of hydrogen embrittlement on an atomistic scale. We employed density functional theory to investigate hydrogen diffusion through the (100), (110) and (111) surfaces of γ-Fe. The preferred adsorption sites and respective energies for hydrogen adsorption were established for each plane, as well as a minimum energy pathway for diffusion. The H atoms adsorb on the (100), (110) and (111) surfaces with energies of ∼4.06 eV, ∼3.92 eV and ∼4.05 eV, respectively. The barriers for bulk-like diffusion for the (100), (110) and (111) surfaces are ∼0.6 eV, ∼0.5 eV and ∼0.7 eV, respectively. We compared these calculated barriers with previously obtained experimental data in an Arrhenius plot, which indicates good agreement between experimentally measured and theoretically predicted activation energies. Texturing austenitic steels such that the (111) surfaces of grains are preferentially exposed at the cleavage planes may be a possibility to reduce hydrogen embrittlement.
The effect of magnetism on hydrogen adsorption and subsurface diffusion through face-centred cubic (fcc) γ-Fe(0 0 1) was investigated using spin-polarised density functional theory (s-DFT). The non-magnetic (NM), ferromagnetic (FM), and antiferromagnetic single (AFM1) and double layer (AFMD) structures were considered. For each magnetic state, the hydrogen preferentially adsorbs at the fourfold site, with adsorption energies of 4.07, 4.12, 4.03 and 4.05 eV/H atom for the NM, FM, AFM1 and AFMD structures. A total barrier of 1.34, 0.90, 1.32 and 1.25 eV and a bulk-like diffusion barrier of 0.6, 0.2, 0.4 and 0.3 eV were calculated for the NM, FM, AFM1 and AFMD magnetic states. The Fe atoms nearest to the H atom exhibited a reduced magnetic moment, whereas the next-nearest neighbour Fe atoms exhibited a non-negligible local perturbation in the magnetic moment. The presence of magnetically ordered structures has a minimal influence on the minimum energy path for H diffusion through the lattice and on the adsorption of H atoms on the Fe(0 0 1) surface, but we computed a significant reduction of the bulk-like diffusion barriers with respect to the non-magnetic state of fcc γ-Fe.
We report the unambiguous detection of phenyl groups covalently attached to functionalised graphene using non-linear spectroscopy. Sum-frequency generation was employed to probe graphene on a gold surface after chemical functionalisation using a benzene diazonium salt. We observe a distinct resonance at 3064 cm1 which can clearly be assigned to an aromatic C–H stretch by comparison with a self-assembled monolayer on a gold substrate formed from benzenethiol. Not only does sum-frequency generation spectroscopy allow one to characterise functionalised graphene with higher sensitivity and much better specificity than many other spectroscopic techniques, but it also opens up the possibility to assess the coverage of graphene with functional groups, and to determine their orientation relative to the graphene surface.
Mastitis is one of the most important diseases threatening modern dairy herds. The idea of fighting the disease through colonising the udder with lactic acid bacteria (LAB), thereby building a beneficial biofilm, is the base for a probiotic approach towards mastitis control. The purpose of this study was to screen 13 LAB strains (eleven wild strains, two ATCC strains) inhibitory to the growth of mastitis-causing pathogens for their in vitro ability to form a biofilm and to adhere to bovine glandular mammary epithelium in order to assess their probiotic potential. Furthermore, we aimed to gain knowledge about the chemical nature of the adhesins involved by subjecting the bacteria to various chemical and enzymatical pre-treatments. The biofilms were grown on hydrophilic glass and on hydrophobic polypropylene in de Man, Rogosa and Sharpe (MRS) broth and afterwards quantified with a crystal violet assay. Biofilm formation was observed in all strains. However, the extent strongly depended on the strain, surface charge and medium. The adhesion assay also revealed a strong strain dependency, but this trait was also present in all of the investigated LAB isolates. Depending on the strain, chemical or enzymatical pre-treatment revealed carbohydrate molecules as well as proteins and lipids to be crucial for the adhesion of LAB to epithelial cells. The seven strains showing the strongest biofilm formation and/or adhesion represent promising candidates for further investigation in order to develop a probiotic remedy for the treatment of mastitis. Still, their safety for consumers and patients as well as their capability to colonise the udder remain to be investigated in in vivo studies.
Material tests were performed on a rediscovered Klimt-artwork “Trompetender Putto”. We performed studies on the red colored spots, mainly taken from non-restored parts. MIMOS II Fe-57 Mössbauer spectroscopy (novelty in art-pigment analysis) mainly reveals haematite and crystallized goethite in red colors. Electron microscopy can identify various layers of the original and overpainting of an artwork. The number of layers fluctuates between three and four chemically painted areas. The portable X-ray fluorescence analysis enables to reduce the pigment list to containing mercury (cinnabar), lead, zinc, iron and titanium. Infrared-lightirradiation visualizes the different age of the pigments.
Objective
We aimed to investigate the proportion of young patients not returning to work (NRTW) at 1 year after ischemic stroke (IS) and during follow-up, and clinical factors associated with NRTW.
Methods
Patients from the Helsinki Young Stroke Registry with an IS occurring in the years 1994–2007, who were at paid employment within 1 year before IS, and with NIH Stroke Scale score ≤15 points at hospital discharge, were included. Data on periods of payment came from the Finnish Centre for Pensions, and death data from Statistics Finland. Multivariate logistic regression analyses assessed factors associated with NRTW 1 year after IS, and lasagna plots visualized the proportion of patients returning to work over time.
Results
We included a total of 769 patients, of whom 289 (37.6%) were not working at 1 year, 323 (42.0%) at 2 years, and 361 (46.9%) at 5 years from IS. When adjusted for age, sex, socioeconomic status, and NIH Stroke Scale score at admission, factors associated with NRTW at 1 year after IS were large anterior strokes, strokes caused by large artery atherosclerosis, high-risk sources of cardioembolism, and rare causes other than dissection compared with undetermined cause, moderate to severe aphasia vs no aphasia, mild and moderate to severe limb paresis vs no paresis, and moderate to severe visual field deficit vs no deficit.
Conclusions
NRTW is a frequent adverse outcome after IS in young adults with mild to moderate IS. Clinical variables available during acute hospitalization may allow prediction of NRTW.
Background: Discovery of antibiotics have helped to manage the devastating diseases. Presently, the antibiotic era is threatened by the emergence of high level of antibiotic resistance of important pathogens. Misuse of antibiotics poses a serious risk to infectious disease control. It is necessary to improve public awareness to bring a change in the behavior of consumers. Therefore, present study was undertaken to assess the existing knowledge, attitude and practices related to antibiotic usage among university students.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among students from Mumbai University, India during May-June 2017. 300 students were approached to participate in the study of which 250 agreed to participate (males: 117; females: 133). Pretested questionnaire was distributed and collected data was analyzed using IBM SPSS version 23.
Results: Substantial number (33% and 40%) participants were unaware about the differences in antibiotic-anti-inflammatory drugs and antibiotic-antipyretics respectively. 28% of the participants thought it is right to stop antibiotics only based on symptoms improvement. Sixty eight percent and seventy nine percent participants believed that antibiotics should always be prescribed to treat flu like symptoms and pneumonia respectively.
Conclusions: Participants demonstrated poor knowledge about antibiotics. Similarly, their attitude and practice toward antibiotic use was associated with misconceptions. An educational intervention can be introduced to make them aware about rational antibiotic practices.
The properties of these carbon nanostructures are determined by the structure and orientation of the graphitic domains during pyrolysis of carbon precursors. In this work, we investigated systematically the impact of creep stress during the stabilization process on the cyclization and molecular orientation of polyacrylonitrile as well as the graphitized structure after high temperature carbonization. Therefore, polyacrylonitrile (PAN) is electrospun and then stabilized with and without application of creep stress at different temperatures. The effect of creep stress on cyclization was monitored via Fourier transform IR spectroscopy (FTIR) and it was found that the degree of cyclization varies with the application of creep stress during the initial stages of cyclization at low temperatures (190°C and 210°C) in contrast to cyclization done at higher temperature (230°C). Herman molecular orientation factor was evaluated by polarized FTIR for PAN nanofibers cyclized with and without creep stress at 230°C-10 h. Subsequently, carbonization was performed at 1000°C and 1200°C for nanofibers cyclized at 230°C-10 h. Our results from XRD and Raman spectroscopy shows that the degree of graphitization and ordering of graphitic domains was enhanced for PAN nanofibers that were creep stressed during the cyclization process, even though both PAN nanofibers cyclized with creep stress and without creep stress showed the same amount of cyclized material. This increased degree of graphitization can be tracked to application of creep stress during the stabilization process which obviously favors the formation of sp2-hybridized carbon planes in the carbonization process. This finding highlights the impact of mechanical stress linking the cyclization of PAN nanofibers to graphitization.
Our results will pave the way for a deeper understanding of mechano-chemical processes to fabricate well-aligned graphitic domains which improves the mechanical and electrical properties of CNFs.
One of the main concerns of this publication is to furnish a more rational basis for discussing bioplastics and use fact-based arguments in the public discourse. Furthermore, “Biopolymers – facts and statistics” aims to provide specific, qualified answers easily and quickly for decision-makers in particular from public administration and the industrial sector. Therefore, this publication is made up like a set of rules and standards and largely foregoes textual detail. It offers extensive market-relevant and technical facts presented in graphs and charts, which means that the information is much easier to grasp. The reader can expect comparative market figures for various materials, regions, applications, process routes, agricultural land use, water use or resource consumption, production capacities, geographic distribution, etc.
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are popular for indexing library records. We studied the possibility of assigning LCSH automatically by training classifiers for terms used frequently in a large collection of abstracts of the literature on hand and by extracting headings from those abstracts. The resulting classifiers reach an acceptable level of precision, but fail in terms of recall partly because we could only train classifiers for a small number of LCSH. Extraction, i.e., the matching of headings in the text, produces better recall but extremely low precision. We found that combining both methods leads to a significant improvement of recall and a slight improvement of F1 score with only a small decrease in precision.
Knowledge and attitude towards voluntary blood donation among students from Mumbai University
(2018)
Background: Blood is scarce; its demand far outweighs the supply. In addition to limited supply, the issue of safety especially with regard to the risk of transfusion transmissible infection is also an issue of utmost concern especially in the developing countries. Blood transfusion services in India have gained special significance in recent years and forms a vital part of national health care system. Voluntary Non-Remunerated Blood Donation (VNRBD) is the safest of all types of blood donations. One of the potential sources that can be tapped for blood donation is the young and physically fit students from educational institutions across India. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among students from Mumbai University, India during May–June 2017. Two hundred and fifty students were approached to participate in the study of which 201 agreed to participate (males: 104; females: 97). Pretested questionnaire was distributed and collected data was analyzed using IBM SPSS version 23. Results: High number of participants agreed about encouraging general public about voluntary blood donation (96%; 193/201), lack of awareness about VBD in general public (82%; 164/201). But not a single participant was able to respond to the knowledge part of the questionnaire with 100% accuracy. Almost all the participants had correct knowledge about blood groups (98%; 196/201) and blood matching need (195/201; 97%). Conclusions: Participants showed good attitude but demonstrated poor knowledge about voluntary blood donation. Details about blood donation should be incorporated in the undergraduate curriculum and periodic awareness programs should be organized for students.
Background: Concerns about practice of self-medication (SM) world across are based on associated risks such as adverse reactions, disease masking, increased morbidity, wastage of resources and antibiotic resistance. SM is likely to differ between rural and urban areas of India. Systematically retrieved evidence on these differences are required in order to design targeted measures for improvement. Methods: We conducted a cross sectional study among the general population in urban (Matunga) and rural (Tala) areas of Maharashtra, India to explore SM practices and its associated factors. Face to face interviews were conducted using the validated study questionnaire. Data was analyzed by using descriptive and analytical statistical methods. Results: A total of 1523 inhabitants from 462 households were interviewed between [June/2015] and [August /2015], 778 (51%) of them in rural and 745 (49%) in urban areas. Overall self-medication prevalence was 29.1% (urban; 51.5%, rural; 7.7%, OR 12.7, CI 9.4-17.2) in the study participants. Participants having chronic disease (OR: 3.15, CI: 2.07-4.79) and from urban areas (OR:15.38, CI:8.49-27.85) were more likely to self-medicate. Self-medication practices were characterized by having old prescription (41.6%) as the main reason, fever (39.4%) as top indication and NSAIDs (Non-Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Agents) as the most self-medicated category of drugs (40.7%). Conclusions: The present study documented that the prevalence of self-medication is associated with place of residence, and health status of the study participants. Self-medication is still a major issue in western Maharashtra, India and is majorly an urban phenomenon. Status of implementation of existing regulations should be reconsidered.
Background: Oral cancer is among the top three types of cancers in India. Severe alcoholism, use of tobacco in the form of cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, and betel nut chewing are the most common risk factors for oral cancer. Often individuals with pre cancer even notice the alterations, such as reduced mouth opening in oral submucous fibrosis (OSMF), but they are not aware about the causes and consequences of these changes. Awareness about causes and features of oral cancers can be very helpful in prevention, control and early diagnosis of oral cancer.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among students from Mumbai University, India during May-June 2017. Five hundred students were approached to participate in the study of which 400 agreed to participate. Pretested questionnaire was distributed and collected data was analyzed using IBM SPSS version 23.
Results: There were 199 (49%) males and 201 (50%) females in the study and response rate was (80%). Respondents had good knowledge about oral cancer. Seventy four percent (268/362) respondents correctly identified smoking, and tobacco chewing as possible causes of oral cancer. Almost all (96%; 348/362) respondents correctly responded that oral cancer does not spread from person to person through touch or speaking. Seventy two percent (260/362) respondents believed that oral cancer is curable. Significantly higher number of male (98%) compared to female participants answered correctly to questions regarding spread of disease and occurrence of oral cancer in AIDS patients.
Conclusions: Participants showed good knowledge about oral cancer. Female participants showed lesser knowledge compared to male counterparts. Details about oral cancer should be incorporated in the undergraduate curriculum and periodic awareness programs should be organized for students.
Background: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a common sexually transmitted infection (STI) that may cause cervical cancer and other malignancies including those of the vulva, anus, vagina, penis, head and neck. In most Asian countries including India, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women. Awareness about HPV and cervical cancer, use of vaccines can be very helpful in prevention, control and early diagnosis of cervical cancer. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among students from Mumbai University, India during May - June 2017. Two hundred students were approached to participate in the study of which 142 were selected to participate (males: 54; females: 88). Pretested questionnaire was distributed and collected data was analyzed using IBM SPSS version 23. Results: Participants had fair knowledge (61% average) about HPV, whereas knowledge about symptoms, prevention and spread of HPV was very poor i.e. 18%. Knowledge about HPV vaccine was 50% and 78% participants had positive attitude for HPV vaccine. Conclusions: This study showed the lacunas in the pharmacy curriculum and urgent need to create awareness of HPV among bachelor of pharmacy students from Mumbai University.
Medical devices are health care products distinguished from drugs for regulatory purposes in most countries based on mechanism of action. Unlike drugs, medical devices operate via physical or mechanical means and are not dependent on metabolism to accomplish their primary intended effect. Developing new medical devices requires clinical investigations and approval process goes through similar process like drugs. Medical device approvals in the period of 2010 to 2014 were searched from USFDA website. Disease burden data in the similar period was searched from centers for disease control and prevention website. Collected data was analyzed to know number of approved devices, top therapy areas, and mechanism of action of these devices. Out of a total of 200 medical devices approvals in the time period of 2010 to 2014, maximum number of devices (51; 25.5%) were approved in the year 2011, cardiovascular (78; 39%) was the top therapy area. Highest number (180; 90%) of approved medical devices belonged to the category III and maximum number (73; 36.5%) of approved medical devices had ―mechanical‖ mechanism of action. The top 3 causes of deaths in USA during 2010 to 2014 were heart disease, cancer and followed by respiratory infection. There was a match between the top diseases and the medical device approvals for top 2 diseases in USA i.e. heart disease, and cancer. With respect to respiratory infections and ailments which was the 3rd leading cause of death only one device was approved out of 200 approvals in total.
Background: Epilepsy is a chronic disorder of the brain that affects people worldwide. The overall prevalence (3.0-11.9 / 1,000) and incidence (0.2-0.6/1,000) of epilepsy in India are comparable to the rates of high-income countries. The high prevalence of negative attitudes towards epilepsy has been highlighted by several studies. Pharmacy students represent a better-educated section of society regarding drugs and have the potential to create awareness, and influence attitudes towards the disease. Thus, it is important that they have the appropriate and updated knowledge and appropriate attitude towards epilepsy and antiepileptic drugs. Objective of the present study was to determine the Mumbai University pharmacy student’s awareness about epilepsy, so as to know the kind of education and awareness strategies that would be applicable to them.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among students from Mumbai University, India during May-June 2017. Two hundred and fifty students were approached to participate in the study of which 213 agreed to participate (males: 107; females: 106). Pretested questionnaire was distributed and collected data was analyzed using IBM SPSS version 23.
Results: Response rate for this study was 85.2% (213/250). Ninety six percent (204/213) of the participants had heard or read about epilepsy. Overall knowledge was poor (40.2%) and attitude was fair (75.3%). None of the participants were aware about recent research regarding hereditary nature of epilepsy. Only 2 (0.98%) students were aware how to perform the first aid in epilepsy. Only 6.8% participants felt that epileptics should participate in sports.
Conclusions: The findings of this study show that, even with extensive curriculum covering diseases, drugs and relevant laws of land, the knowledge and attitude scores were low. There is a need to have focused education and campaigns to increase the knowledge and attitude towards epilepsy.
Background: Pharmacovigilance (PV); also known as drug safety surveillance, is the science of enhancing patient care and patient safety regarding the use of medicines by collecting, monitoring, assessing, and evaluating information from healthcare providers and patients. Pharmacists are pivotal players in adverse drug event (ADE) monitoring and reporting. However, most pharmacists are unaware or not knowledgeable about the guidelines used by their respective countries’ drug regulatory bodies. It is the need of the hour to train pharmacy students on the concept of pharmacovigilance.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among pharmacy students from Mumbai University, India during May-June 2017. On the basis of the eligibility criterion 352 students were selected for the present study. Four hundred students were approached to participate in the study of which 201 agreed to participate (males: 179; females: 173). Pretested questionnaire was distributed and collected data was analyzed using IBM SPSS version 23.
Results: Overall pharmacovigilance knowledge (44%) and perception (58%) was low among the participants of the present study. Seventy four percent of the participants felt that adverse drug reaction (ADR) reporting should be made compulsory for healthcare professionals. And only 21% agreed that the topic of Pharmacovigilance is well covered in pharmacy curriculum.
Conclusions: Pharmacy council of India, pharmacy teacher’s association and respective pharmacy college should take necessary steps to increase the knowledge and create awareness regarding pharmacovigilance and adverse drug reaction reporting among pharmacy students.
Food protein hydrolysates are often produced in unspecific industrial batch processes. The hydrolysates composition underlies process-related fluctuations and therefore the obtained peptide fingerprint and bioactive properties may vary. To overcome this obstacle and enable the production of specific hydrolysates with selected peptides, a ceramic capillary system was developed and characterized for the continuous production of a consistent peptide composition. Therefore, the protease Alcalase was immobilized on the surface of aminosilane modified yttria stabilized zirconia capillaries with a pore size of 1.5 μm. The loading capacity was 0.3 μg enzyme per mg of capillary with a residual enzyme activity of 43%. The enzyme specific peptide fingerprint produced with this proteolytic capillary reactor system correlated with the degree of hydrolysis, which can be controlled over the residence time by adjusting the flow rate. Common food proteins like casein, sunflower and lupin protein isolates were tested for continuous hydrolysis in the developed reactor system. The peptide formation was investigated by high-performance liquid chromatography. Various trends were found for the occurrence of specific peptides. Some are just intermediately occurring, while others cumulate by time. Thus, the developed continuous reactor system enables the production of specific peptides with desired bioactive properties.
This paper deals with new job profiles in libraries, mainly systems librarians (German: Systembibliothekare), IT librarians (German: IT-Bibliothekare) and data librarians (German: Datenbibliothekare). It investigates the vacancies and requirements of these positions in the German-speaking countries by analyzing one hundred and fifty published job advertisements of OpenBiblioJobs between 2012-2016. In addition, the distribution of positions, institutional bearers, different job titles as well as time limits, scope of work and remuneration of the positions are evaluated. The analysis of the remuneration in the public sector in Germany also provides information on demands for a bachelor's or master's degree.
The average annual increase in job vacancies between 2012 and 2016 is 14.19%, confirming the need and necessity of these professional library profiles.
The higher remuneration of the positions in data management, in comparison to the systems librarian, proves the prerequisite of the master's degree and thus indicates a desideratum due to missing or few master's degree courses. Accordingly, the range of bachelor's degree courses (or IT-oriented major areas of study with optional compulsory modules in existing bachelor's degree courses) for systems and IT librarians must be further expanded. An alternative could also be modular education programs for librarians and information scientists with professional experience, as it is already the case for music librarians.
Toward a service-based workflow for automated information extraction from herbarium specimens
(2018)
Over the past years, herbarium collections worldwide have started to digitize millions of specimens on an industrial scale. Although the imaging costs are steadily falling, capturing the accompanying label information is still predominantly done manually and develops into the principal cost factor. In order to streamline the process of capturing herbarium specimen metadata, we specified a formal extensible workflow integrating a wide range of automated specimen image analysis services. We implemented the workflow on the basis of OpenRefine together with a plugin for handling service calls and responses. The evolving system presently covers the generation of optical character recognition (OCR) from specimen images, the identification of regions of interest in images and the extraction of meaningful information items from OCR. These implementations were developed as part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft funded a standardised and optimised process for data acquisition from digital images of herbarium specimens (StanDAP-Herb) Project.
This formal guide serves as a tool for questioning adult witnesses and accused persons. The utilisation of this framework follows the standard procedure of questioning and is underpinned by a purpose-built set of flash cards. Starting with concrete sample phrasings for informing the person of their rights, tried-and-tested questions and queries follow and lead through the questioning like the central theme. In addition, you will find supplementary explanations for each flash card. This technique enables law-enforcement professionals to obtain comprehensive statements of high quality from individuals willing to testify, which in turn permits a subsequent evaluation of truthfulness of statements to be conducted. The entire technique of questioning is geared towards the most recent scientific consensus. We selected the flash card format in order to allow police officers, for instance, to be able to conduct a questioning at any time and in whichever context. The specified structure contributes to ensuring that the general legislative framework is upheld and that we achieve statements that are considered solid in court. The final section addresses FAQs about this questioning technique, as well as references to further reading for those wishing to delve deeper.
Background: Depletion of ovarian hormone in postmenopausal women has been associated with changes in the locomotor apparatus that may compromise walking function including muscle atrophy/weakness, weight gain, and bone demineralization. Therefore, handgrip strength (HGS), bone mineral density (BMD) and body composition [percentage body fat mass (%BFM), fat mass (FM), Fat-free mass (FFM) and body mass index (BMI)], may significantly vary and predict WB in postmenopausal women. Consequently, the study sought to 1. Explore body composition, BMD and muscle strength differences between premenopausal and postmenopausal women and 2. Explore how these variables [I.e., body composition, BMD and muscle strength] relate to WB in postmenopausal women.
Method: Fifty-one pre-menopausal (35.74 + 1.52) and 50 postmenopausal (53.32 + 2.28) women were selected by convenience sampling and studied. Six explanatory variables (HGS, BMD, %BFM, FFM, BMI and FM) were explored to predict WB in postmenopausal women: Data collected were analyzed using multiple linear regression, ANCOVA, independent t-test and Pearson correlation coefficient at p < 0.05.
Result: Postmenopausal women had higher BMI(t = + 1.72; p = 0.04), %BFM(t = + 2.77; p = .003), FM(t = + 1.77; p = 0.04) and lower HGS(t = − 3.05; p = 0.001),compared to the premenopausal women. The predicted main effect of age on HGS was not significant, F(1, 197) = 0.03, p = 0.06, likewise the interaction between age and %BFM, F(1, 197) = 0.02, p = 0.89; unlike the predicted main effect of %BFM, F(1, 197) = 10.34, p = .002, on HGS. HGS was the highest predictor of WB (t = 2.203; β=0.3046) in postmenopausal women and combined with T-score right big toe (Tscorert) to produce R2 = 0.11;F (2, 47)=4.11;p = 0.02 as the best fit for the predictive model. The variance (R2) change was significant from HGS model (R2 = 0.09;p = 0.03) to HGS + Tscorert model (R2 = 0.11;p = 0.02). The regression model equation was therefore given as: WB =5.4805 + 0.1578(HGS) + (− 1.3532) Tscorert.
Conclusion: There are differences in body composition suggesting re-compartmentalization of the body, which may adversely impact the (HGS) muscle strength in postmenopausal women. Muscle strength and BMD areassociated with WB, although, only contribute to a marginal amount of the variance for WB. Therefore, other factors in addition to musculoskeletal health are necessary to mitigate fall risk in postmenopausal women.
Scientific papers from all disciplines contain many abbreviations and acronyms. In many cases these acronyms are ambiguous. We present a method to choose the contextual correct definition of an acronym that does not require training for each acronym and thus can be applied to a large number of different acronyms with only few instances. We constructed a set of 19,954 examples of 4,365 ambiguous acronyms from image captions in scientific papers along with their contextually correct definition from different domains. We learn word embeddings for all words in the corpus and compare the averaged context vector of the words in the expansion of an acronym with the weighted average vector of the words in the context of the acronym. We show that this method clearly outperforms (classical) cosine similarity. Furthermore, we show that word embeddings learned from a 1 billion word corpus of scientific exts outperform word embeddings learned from much larger general corpora.
This paper summarizes the results of a comprehensive statistical analysis on a corpus of open access articles and contained figures. It gives an insight into quantitative relationships between illustrations or types of illustrations, caption lengths, subjects, publishers, author affiliations, article citations and others.
Against the background of climate change and finite fossil resources, bio-based plastics have been in the focus of research for the last decade and were identified as a promising alternative to fossil-based plastics. Now, with an evolving bio-based plastic market and application range, the environmental advantages of bio-based plastic have come to the fore and identified as crucial by different stakeholders. While the majority of assessments for bio-based plastics are carried out based on attributional life cycle assessment, there have been only few consequential studies done in this area. Also, the application of eco-design strategies has not been in the focus for the bio-based products due to the prevailing misconceptions of renewable materials (as feedstock for bio-based plastics) considered in itself as an ‘eco-design strategy’. In this paper, we discuss the life cycle assessment as well as eco-design strategies of a bio-based product taking attributional as well as consequential approaches into account.
The reuse of scientific raw data is a key demand of Open Science. In the project NOA we foster reuse of scientific images by collecting and uploading them to Wikimedia Commons. In this paper we present a text-based annotation method that proposes Wikipedia categories for open access images. The assigned categories can be used for image retrieval or to upload images to Wikimedia Commons. The annotation basically consists of two phases: extracting salient keywords and mapping these keywords to categories. The results are evaluated on a small record of open access images that were manually annotated.
Staphylococcus aureus is recognized worldwide as one of the major agents of dairy cow intra-mammary infections. This microorganism can express a wide spectrum of pathogenic factors used to attach, colonize, invade and infect the host. The present study evaluated 120 isolates from eight different countries that were genotyped by RS-PCR and investigated for 26 different virulence factors to increase the knowledge on the circulating genetic lineages among the cow population with mastitis. New genotypes were observed for South African strains while for all the other countries new variants of existing genotypes were detected. For each country, a specific genotypic pattern was found. Among the virulence factors, fmtB, cna, clfA and leucocidins genes were the most frequent. The sea and sei genes were present in seven out of eight countries; seh showed high frequency in South American countries (Brazil, Colombia, Argentina), while sel was harboured especially in one Mediterranean country (Tunisia). The etb, seb and see genes were not detected in any of the isolates, while only two isolates were MRSA (Germany and Italy) confirming the low diffusion of methicillin resistance microorganism among bovine mastitis isolates. This work demonstrated the wide variety of S. aureus genotypes found in dairy cattle worldwide. This condition suggests that considering the region of interest might help to formulate strategies for reducing the infection spreading.
NOA is a search engine for scientific images from open access publications based on full text indexing of all text referring to the images and filtering for disciplines and image type. Images will be annotated with Wikipedia categories for better discoverability and for uploading to WikiCommons. Currently we have indexed approximately 2,7 Million images from over 710 000 scientific papers from all fields of science.
A nonblinded, positively controlled, noninferiority trial was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of an alternative, nonantibiotic therapy with Masti Veyxym® to reduce ineffective antibiotic usage in the treatment of nonsevere clinical mastitis (CM) in cows with longer lasting udder diseases. The solely intramammary treatment with Masti Veyxym® (three applications, 12 hr apart) and the combined treatment with Masti Veyxym® and antibiotics as usual on the farm according to label of the respective product were compared with the reference treatment of solely antibiotic therapy. The matched field study was conducted on eight free-stall dairy farms located in Eastern Germany. Cases of mild-to-moderate CM in cows with longer lasting high somatic cell counts in preceding dairy herd improvement test days and with previous CM cases in current lactation were randomly allocated to one of the three treatment groups. A foremilk sample of the affected quarter was taken before treatment and again approximately 14 days and 21 days after the end of therapy for cyto-bacteriological examination. Primary outcomes were clinical cure (CC) and no CM recurrence within 60 days after the end of treatment (no R60). Bacteriological cure (BC) and quarter somatic cell count (QSCC) cure were chosen as secondary outcomes although low probabilities of BC and QSCC cure for selected cows were expected. The study resulted in the following findings: the pathogens mostly cultured from pretreatment samples were Streptococcus uberis, followed by Staphylococcus aureus and coagulase-negative staphylococci. There were no significant differences between the two test treatments in comparison with the reference treatment regarding all outcome variables. The sole therapy with Masti Veyxym® resulted in a numerically lower likelihood of BC without significant differences to the reference treatment. The combined therapy group showed a numerically higher nonrecurrence rate than the two other treatment groups and noninferiority compared to the reference treatment was proven. Having regard to the selection criteria of cows in this study, the findings indicated that sole treatment with Masti Veyxym® in nonsevere CM cases may constitute an alternative therapy to reduce antibiotics. However, noninferiority evaluations were mostly inconclusive. Further investigations with a larger sample size are required to confirm the results and to make a clear statement on noninferiority.
Background: Given both the increase of nursing home residents forecast and challenges of current interprofessional interactions, we developed and tested measures to improve collaboration and communication between nurses and general practitioners (GPs) in this setting. Our multicentre study has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (FK 01GY1124).
Methods: The measures were developed iteratively in a continuous process, which is the focus of this article. In part 1 “exploration of the situation”, interviews were conducted with GPs, nurses, nursing home residents and their relatives focusing on interprofessional interactions and medical care. They were analysed qualitatively. Based on these results, in part 2 “development of measures to improve collaboration”, ideas for improvement were developed in nine focus groups with GPs and nurses. These ideas were revisited in a final expert workshop. We analysed the focus groups and expert workshop using mind mapping methods, and finally drew up the compilation of measures. In an exploratory pilot study "study part 3" four nursing homes chose the measures they wanted to adopt. These were tested for three months. Feasibility and acceptance of the measures were evaluated via guideline interviews with the stakeholders which were analysed by content analyses.
Results: Six measures were generated: meetings to establish common goals, main contact person, standardised pro re nata medication, introduction of name badges, improved availability of nurse/GP and standardised scheduling/ procedure for nursing home visits. In the pilot study, the measures were implemented in four nursing homes. GPs and nurses reviewed five measures as feasible and acceptable, only the designation of a “main contact person” was not considered as an improvement.
Conclusions: Six measures to improve collaboration and communication could be compiled in a multistep qualitative process respecting the perspectives of involved stakeholders. Five of the six measures were positively assessed in an exploratory pilot study. They could easily be transferred into the daily routine of other nursing homes, as no special models have to exist in advance. Impact of the measures on patient oriented outcomes should be examined in further research.
Trial registration: Not applicable.