Public health centers (PHCs, hokenjo in Japanese) are local government authorities responsible for public health in Japan. PHCs have an important role in tuberculosis (TB) control. Typically, their responsibilities include 1) the recommendation to admit infectious TB patients to an isolation ward, 2) health checkups with chest X-ray of those in a close contact with infectious TB patients, and 3...

the amphiphilic graft copolymer using chitosan (cs) as hydrophilic segment and poly (l-lactic acid) (plla) as hydrophobic segment, was prepared through a protection-graft-de protection route. chitosan is a polysaccharide comprising of copolymers of glucosamine and n-acetyl glucosamine. chitosan is the deacetylated derivative of chitin, which is one of the most abundant natural polysaccharides c...

Photonic crystals (PCs) have emerged as one of the most widely used platforms for controlling light-matter interaction in solid-state systems. They rely on Bragg scattering from wavelength-sized periodic modulation in the dielectric environment for manipulating the electromagnetic field. A complementary approach to manipulate light-matter interaction is offered by artificial media known as meta...

An intense interest in negative index metamaterials (NIMs) [1-2] has been witnessed over the last years. Metal based NIMs [3-11] have been demonstrated at both microwave and infrared frequencies with a motivation mainly coming from the unusual physical properties and potential use in many technological applications [12-21]; however, they usually have large optical losses in their metallic compo...

This study aimed to explore selected risk factors for spousal physical violence (SPV) in women frequenting primary health care clinics (PHCs) in Saudi Arabia. A cross-sectional study design was conducted in six PHCs, where one-on-one, private interviews with 200 women were conducted using a standardized World Health Organization (WHO) violence against women questionnaire (v.10.0). SPV was repor...

The three-dimensional collagen framework of human liver parenchyma in surgical specimens from patients with chronic active hepatitis (CAH), viral or alcoholic cirrhoses (LC) was observed by scanning electron microscopy after cell-maceration by the method of Ohtani (1988). In control livers, the tubular sheaths of collagen fibers housing the sinusoid were shown to form a labyrinthine network, wh...

A mode and polarization converter is proposed and optimized for 3D photonic integrated circuits based on photonic crystals (PhCs). The device converts the index-guided TE mode of a W1 solid-core (SC) waveguide to the band-gap-guided TM mode of a W1 hollow-core (HC) waveguide in 3D PhCs, and vice versa. The conversion is achieved based on contra-directional mode coupling. For a 25 μm-long device...

In this paper, we discuss on light management in silicon thin film solar cells, using photonic crystals (PhC) structures. We particularly focus on photovoltaic devices including amorphous silicon absorbers patterned as 2D PhCs. Physical principles and design rules leading to the optimized configuration of the patterned cell are discussed by means of optical simulations performed on realistic th...

This study was carried out to analyse drug-prescribing practices in primary healthcare centres (PHCs) in the Gaza Strip. We retrospectively evaluated 2569 prescriptions from 22 PHCs during January-December 2014. Systematic random sampling was applied. Analysis followed the World Health Organization recommended core prescribing indicators. The mean number of drugs prescribed per encounter was 2 ...

Nigeria is scaling up prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV interventions to primary health care centres (PHCs). This retrospective study of PMTCT was at two PHCs in Northwest Nigeria with the main outcome measure being HIV infection rate of exposed infants at 6 weeks of life. Of 10,289 women who had antenatal HIV test, 74 had positive results. This gave a prevalence of 0.7%...