This qualitative research aimed to study the effectiveness of the local health constitution in controlling the spread of COVID-19. It reports the role of local communities, government agencies, and healthcare providers in implementing and enforcing local health constitutions and how their engagement can be improved to enhance surveillance. We also reported factors that influence compliance and strategies for improving compliance. We also evaluated the long-term sustainability of local health institutions beyond the pandemic. The population and sample group consisted of key members of the local health constitution teams at the provincial, sub-district, and village levels in the rural area of Ubon Ratchathani. Participants were purposively selected and volunteered to provide information. It included health science professionals, public health volunteers, community leaders, and local government officials, totaling 157 individuals. The study was conducted from December 2022 to September 2023. Our research shows that local health constitutions can better engage and educate communities to actively participate in pandemic surveillance and prevention. This approach is a learning experience for responding to emergencies, such as new infectious diseases that may arise in the future. This simplifies the work of officials, as everyone understands the guidelines for action. Relevant organizations contribute to disease prevention efforts, and there is sustainable improvement in work operations.
This research investigates the effects of drying on some selected vegetables, which are Telfaria occidentalis, Amaranthu scruentus, Talinum triangulare, and Crussocephalum biafrae. These vegetables were collected fresh, sliced into smaller sizes of 0.5 cm, and dried in a convective dryer at varying temperatures of 60.0 °C, 70.0 °C and 80.0 °C respectively, for a regulated fan speed of 1.50 ms‒1, 3.00 ms‒1 and 6.00 ms‒1, and for a drying period of 6 hours. It was discovered that the drying rate for fresh samples was 4.560 gmin‒1 for Talinum triangulare, 4.390 gmin‒1for Amaranthu scruentus, 4.580 gmin‒1 for Talinum triangulare, and 4.640 gmin‒1 for Crussocephalum biafrae at different controlled fan speeds and regulated temperatures when the mass of the vegetable samples at each drying time was compared to the mass of the final samples dried for 6 hours. The samples are considered completely dried when the drying time reaches a certain point, as indicated by the drying rate and moisture contents tending to zero. According to drying kinetics, the rate of moisture loss was extremely high during the first two hours of drying and then steadily decreased during the remaining drying duration. The rate at which moisture was removed from the vegetable samples after the drying process at varying regulated temperatures was noted to be in this trend: 80.0 °C > 70.0 °C > 60.0 °C and 6.0 ms‒1 > 3.0 ms‒1 > 1.5 ms‒1 for regulated fan speed. It can be stated here that the moisture contents has significant effects on the drying rate of the samples of vegetables investigated because the drying rate decreases as the regulated temperatures increase and the moisture contents decrease. The present investigation is useful in the agricultural engineering and food engineering industries.
There are diverse effects in consequence of exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF). The interactions of fields and the exposed body tissues are related to the nature of exposure, tissue comportment, field strength and signal frequency. These interactions can crop different effects.
The wave effect and the shyness phenomenon in Alnus acuminata (Kunth) are crown parameters rarely studied, but important in the quality of the wood of standing trees, therefore, a morphometric modeling of the crowns of Alnus acuminata in homogeneous forests in the Sierra Norte de Puebla was carried out. In 20 rectangular sites of 1,000 m2, the following were evaluated: total height (TA), normal diameter (ND), crown diameter (CD) and crown cover (CC). The Kruskal Wallis test was applied to data that did not meet the assumption of normality; for those that did, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used, with Tukey mean comparison tests (α ≤ 0.05). The forest value index was 14.99, so its two-dimensional structure is normal based on DN, AT and CC. Its average slenderness index was 93.52, which makes the tree not very stable to mechanical damage. The life-space index was 38.92, which is high indicating that trees with low intraspecific competition developed better. At the canopy level, a pattern following an upward, oscillatory and constant wave effect was observed in groups of 10 trees. The shyness phenomenon showed an average crack opening of 27.39 cm between canopies, so this phenomenon is well defined for the species. It is concluded that in the crowns of Alnus acuminata, the wave effect is observed as a consequence of inequality in the acquisition of resources, and one way to minimize this inequality is through the phenomenon of botanical shyness.
By reviewing US state-level panel data on infrastructure spending and on per capita income inequality from 1950 to 2010, this paper sets out to test whether an empirical link exists between infrastructure and inequality. Panel regressions with fixed effects show that an increase in the growth rate of spending on highways and higher education in a given decade correlates negatively with Gini indices at the end of the decade, thus suggesting a causal effect from growth in infrastructure spending to a reduction in inequality through better access to education and opportunities for employment. More significantly, this relationship is more pronounced with inequality at the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution. In addition, infrastructure expenditures on highways are shown to be more effective at reducing inequality. By carrying out a counterfactual experiment, the results show that those US states with a significantly higher bottom Gini coefficient in 2010 had underinvested in infrastructure during the previous decade. From a policy-making perspective, new innovations in finance for infrastructure investments are developed, for the US, other industrially advanced countries and also for developing economies.
Synthesis of macro-mesoporous Titania (Titanium dioxide-TiO2) nanospheres was successfully achieved using a modified template-free methodology to incorporate macroporous channels into a mesoporous TiO2 framework to form mixed macro-mesoporous TiO2 spheres (MMPT), which were doped with carbon dots (C-dots) to form improved nanocomposites (C-dots@MMPT). Elemental composition, surface bonding and optical properties of these nanocomposites were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and ultraviolet-visible absorption spectroscopy (UV-VIS). Evaluation of photocatalytic activity for each (C-Dots@MMPT) sample was performed via degrading the Methylene Blue (MB) dye compared with bare samples (MMPT) under visible light irradiation using 300 Watt halogen lamp.
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