Telemedicine: an ICT based healthcare approach to ensure health service for all

Background: Despite enormous efforts, healthcare service is still a daunting challenge area of Bangladesh healthcare systems. Bangladesh suffers from both a shortage of and geographic mal-distribution of human resource for health, as well as inadequate resources. Considering the challenges, telemedicine can be a blessing especially to the people living in hard-to-reach and rural areas. The current study was conducted on to measure the outcomes of providing telemedicine service at the field level.Methods: The study was conducted in Nagarkanda Upazilla of Faridpur district. Mixed method approaches including user experience and perception survey, case study and in-depth interview were adopted in order to bring a comprehensive scenario.Results: Around 50% of the users used to visit telemedicine center frequently. For quality of service provided from telemedicine service point, there were few benchmarks like service provider’s behavior, waiting time, accessibility, distance, cost of treatment, willingness to pay and referral mechanism. Telemedicine service centers were found situated within the reach of people (within 1-2 km of 83.30% km). 97% participants rated service provider’s behavior as good. Cost of treatment including diagnosis, prescription and medication was found within 501-3000 BDT for 60% of participants.Conclusions: Although the studied telemedicine service was not comprehensive in nature, it still helped to save time, reduce cost and most of all increased access to healthcare services.

Role of Hepatic Glucocorticoid Receptor in Metabolism in Models of 5αR1 Deficiency in Male Mice

Inhibition of 5α-reductases impairs androgen and glucocorticoid metabolism and induces insulin resistance in humans and rodents. The contribution of hepatic glucocorticoids to these adverse metabolic changes was assessed using a liver-selective glucocorticoid receptor (GR) antagonist, A-348441. Mice lacking 5α-reductase 1 (5αR1-KO) and their littermate controls were studied during consumption of a high-fat diet, with or without A-348441(120 mg/kg/d). Male C57BL/6 mice (age, 12 weeks) receiving dutasteride (1.8 mg/kg/d)) or vehicle with consumption of a high-fat diet, with or without A-348441, were also studied. In the 5αR1-KO mice, hepatic GR antagonism improved diet-induced insulin resistance but not more than that of the controls. Liver steatosis was not affected by hepatic GR antagonism in either 5αR1KO mice or littermate controls. In a second model of 5α-reductase inhibition using dutasteride and hepatic GR antagonism with A-348441 attenuated the excess weight gain resulting from dutasteride (mean ± SEM, 7.03 ± 0.5 vs 2.13 ± 0.4 g; dutasteride vs dutasteride plus A-348441; P < 0.05) and normalized the associated hyperinsulinemia after glucose challenge (area under the curve, 235.9 ± 17 vs 329.3 ± 16 vs 198.4 ± 25 ng/mL/min; high fat vs high fat plus dutasteride vs high fat plus dutasteride plus A-348441, respectively; P < 0.05). However, A-348441 again did not reverse dutasteride-induced liver steatosis. Thus, overall hepatic GR antagonism improved the insulin resistance but not the steatosis induced by a high-fat diet. Moreover, it attenuated the excessive insulin resistance caused by pharmacological inhibition of 5α-reductases but not genetic disruption of 5αR1. The use of dutasteride might increase the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus and reduced exposure to glucocorticoids might be beneficial.

REVITALIZING AREA STUDIES: BUILDING THEMATIC RESONANCE THROUGH RECONCILIATION

Area Studies has garnered a lot of criticisms over the past several decades. This, of course, is to be expected as the initial foundation of the study itself is polemical, and very much colonial. Many have seen area studies as antiquated, unable to rise to the challenges of globalization. Indeed, as a project that relies upon “areas” conventionally demarcated, globalization poses as the threat/potential double-bind that can make or break area studies. Stepping up to the challenge, area studies have been in dialogue with other disciplines such as diaspora studies, postcolonial studies and cultural studies that have become prominent critics of area studies. These flirtations have been fruitful for more alternatives and possibilities come to fore. In the same vein, the nature of this writing is to build a dialogue between area-based knowledge and the travelling ideas spurred by globalization, and in doing so, hoping that such dialogue will produce thematic issue that connects localities, history, and knowledge production. This paper proposes the discourse of reconciliation as a thematic issue to reconnect and re-integrate different “areas” in the larger project of Area Studies.

A Linguistic Steganalysis Approach Base on Source Features of Text and Immune Mechanism

Linguistic steganalysis is a technique that discovering potentially hidden information embedded through using linguistically in plain text using. Varieties of syntax and multi-meanings of semantics for linguistics augment the difficulty of linguistic steganalysis intensely, thereby it is a challenge area. In this paper, we propose a novel steganalysis method for linguistics based on immune. This method has two attributions: i). basis statistical features of text are employed for blind steganalysis ii). immune technique is chosen to build a two-level detection mechanism to detect two categories of stego text respectively, one of which is Success-Stego-text and another is False-Stego-text. Appropriate detections are generated and preferable features are signed. Experiments prove the approach has higher accuracy than current steganalysis algorithms. Especially when the segment size of text is greater than 3kB, the accuracies of detecting for natural text and stego text are both more than 95%.