The relationship between curvilinear structure enhancement and ridge detection methods

\ua9 2020, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. Curvilinear structure detection and quantification is a large research area with many imaging applications in fields such as biology, medicine, and engineering. Curvilinear enhancement is often used as a pre-processing stage for ridge detection, but there has been little investigation into the relationship between enhancement and ridge detection. In this paper, we thoroughly evaluate the pair-wise combinations of different curvilinear enhancement and ridge detection methods across two highly varied datasets, as well as samples of three other datasets. In particular, we present the approaches complementing one another and the gained insights, which will aid researchers in designing generic ridge detectors

Knowledge and Attitude of Pediatric Nurses in Saudi Arabia Regarding Child Abuse

Hanan F Alharbi,1 Fatchima L Moussa2 1Department of Maternity and Child Health Nursing, College of Nursing, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; 2Department of Medical Surgical Nursing, College of Nursing, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi ArabiaCorrespondence: Hanan F Alharbi, Department of Maternity and Child Health Nursing, College of Nursing, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tel +966118240404, Email [email protected]: Child abuse, especially when caused by the child’s parents or caregivers, can be either physical, psychological, and/or sexual. Pediatric nurses should be able to identify cases of child abuse, provide appropriate care, and address the issue. Nurses’ knowledge, attitudes in child abuse are essential in safeguarding the well-being and safety of those children. This study aimed to investigate pediatric nurses’ knowledge and attitude about child abuse and actions taken to address such abuse.Methods: Seventy pediatric nurses working in one educational hospital in Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia participated in the study. This study followed a quantitative design. A self-administrative questionnaire was distributed to pediatric nurses. A convenience sampling was followed to include the nurses who met the criteria. An adopted validated questionnaire was used for collecting data about nurses’ knowledge and attitudes regarding child abuse. The data was analyzed by SPSS with a descriptive analysis, independent t-tests or ANOVA test, and regression analysis.Results: The descriptive results indicate that participants had adequate knowledge for identifying a child as a probable victim of child abuse. All participants agreed that an important role for nurses in managing and preventing child abuse is present. The study also indicated a favorable attitude of pediatric nurses toward child abuse. Linear regression analysis showed that nurses age between 31 and 40 years were positively associated with nurses’ knowledge of child abuse, nurses with fewer years of experience and nurses with experience in dealing with a victim of child abuse had a more favorable attitude.Conclusion: The study concludes that pediatric nurses have adequate knowledge and a positive attitude toward child abuse. Middle age was positively associated with nurses’ knowledge of child abuse, while years of experience and experience in dealing with child abuse was inversely associated with nurses’ attitude.Keywords: child abuse, awareness, knowledge, child neglect, child abus

Digital Literacy Enhancement Status in Kenya’s Competency-Based Curriculum

International audienceDigital literacy (DL) is a one of the competency recommended for educators to be embedded in the Kenyan Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) in preparation for learners for the 21st century skills. The Ministry of Education deployed devices to lower primary at a ratio of 1 to 1. The aim of the research was to determine the level and frequency of embedding the digital literacy abilities after the teachers and school leaders in a 3-day preparation and 8 weeks of implementation with virtual support through Communities of learning.The methodology was a self-administered survey which evaluated the seven abilities based on the level and frequency of implementation. The dot product of level and frequency were determined as a percentage. The analysis explored the average percentages and the relationship between level and frequency of implementation.The findings revealed that there was a correlation between the level and the frequency of implementation. All abilities where at developing stage on average. The mode and mean on levels and frequency were on average similar apart from few cases where it was above. All the abilities had a bell curve on implementation with access, integrate and evaluate skewed to the right.It can be concluded that despite the deployment of devices there is still very low implementation of DL and there is a significant relationship between the level and frequency of implementation. There is need to interrogate possible factors to low implementation beyond devices and educator preparation with virtual support

Evaluating the resistance mechanism of Atriplex leucoclada (Orache) to salt and water stress; a potential crop for biosaline agriculture

The development of food and forage crops that flourish under saline conditions may be a prospective avenue for mitigating the impacts of climate change, both allowing biomass production under conditions of water-deficit and potentially expanding land-use to hitherto non-arable zones. Here, we examine responses of the native halophytic shrub Atriplex leucoclada to salt and drought stress using a factorial design, with four levels of salinity and four drought intensities under the arid conditions. A. leucoclada plants exhibited morphological and physiological adaptation to salt and water stress which had little effect on survival or growth. Under low salinity stress, water stress decreased the root length of A. leucoclada; in contrast, under highly saline conditions root length increased. Plant tissue total nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium content decreased with increasing water stress under low salinity. As salt stress increased, detrimental effects of water deficit diminished. We found that both salt and water stress had increased Na+ and Cl– uptake, with both stresses having an additive and beneficial role in increasing ABA and proline content. We conclude that A. leucoclada accumulates high salt concentrations in its cellular vacuoles as a salinity resistance mechanism; this salt accumulation then becomes conducive to mitigation of water stress. Application of these mechanisms to other crops may improve tolerance and producitivity under salt and water stress, potentially improving food security