A Role of Siddha Medicine in the Management of Vathasthambam: A Case Report

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Vathasthambam is commonly affects middle age individual and characterized by aggravated Vatham, penetrating or boring pain, low back pain radiating to the posterior aspect of the thigh, swelling, numbness and bow like stiffness. Based on the similarities of its clinical manifestations Vathasthambam can be correlated with Sciatica. This case reported a 30-year-old male patient who has 10-days history of Vathasthambam like symptoms following trauma. The patient received Siddha internal and external therapies with an integrated Siddha treatment protocol for 15 days. The patient was treated with internal medicines namely, pavalamalli ilai kudineer, Mudakku and Thripala chooranams along with external therapies including ennai seelai, Thokkanam and vedhu. Clinical outcomes were assessed before and after treatment using pain intensity, tenderness, walking distance, Straight Leg Raise (SLR) test and other relevant clinical examinations and selected Siddha diagnostic parameters. These observations indicate improvement in symptoms and clinical findings during the treatment period. However, as an uncontrolled single case, spontaneous recovery, regression to the mean, and placebo effects cannot be excluded. Therefore, the findings should be interpreted as preliminary and hypothesis generating rather than evidence of treatment efficacy. Controlled clinical studies using standardized outcome measures and appropriate safety required. After 15 days of treatment, the recorded symptom score improved from 11 to 1, and the SLR and Slump tests became negative. This case suggests that Siddha therapeutic interventions may effective in the management of Vathasthambam, providing significant pain relief and functional improvement without any observed adverse effects. However further well-designed clinical studies with large sample sizes are required to establish efficacy and safety of this intervention. However, the report does not provide a structured adverse event monitoring method. The case therefore supports the feasibility of documenting an integrated Siddha treatment protocol in a patient with Vathasthambam, but it cannot establish efficacy of safety.

The Role of Opinion Leaders in Advancing Teenage Education Through Behaviour Change Communication: Evidence from Mount Elgon Sub-County, Bungoma County, Kenya

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Behaviour Change Communication (BCC) plays an important role in influencing knowledge, attitudes and behaviours that affect educational outcomes among teenagers. Within rural communities, opinion leaders can serve as important communication actors because of their familiarity with local contexts and the trust placed in them by community members. However, limited empirical evidence exists on how opinion leadership communication approaches contribute to advancing teenage education in rural settings such as Mt. Elgon Sub-County. This study examined the perceived effectiveness of opinion leadership communication approaches used by Restore A Dream Africa (RADA) in advancing teenage education in Mt. Elgon Sub-County, Bungoma County, Kenya. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative data were collected using structured questionnaires administered to students, parents/guardians and teachers, while qualitative data were obtained through interviews with community leaders and RADA staff and focus group discussions with students and parents/guardians. Quantitative data were analyzed using frequencies and percentages, while qualitative data were organized thematically. The findings indicated that opinion leaders were perceived to play an important role in advancing teenage education through encouraging teenagers to remain in school, influencing education-related decisions, providing trusted educational information and helping to change attitudes towards teenage education. Questionnaire findings showed generally positive perceptions of opinion leaders, with agreement across the four indicators ranging from 73.6% to 78.7%. Community leaders were particularly identified as important links between RADA, parents and teenagers through community meetings, sensitization activities and direct engagement with families and young people. Religious leaders also communicated educational messages through sermons, worship settings and informal community discussions. The study concludes that opinion leadership communication approaches were perceived to provide an important mechanism through which BCC messages could be communicated, interpreted and reinforced within the community. The study recommends strengthening the involvement of trusted community and religious leaders in education-focused communication initiatives and enhancing their collaboration with RADA, parents, schools and teenagers to support continued school participation.

From Gatekeepers to Gatekeeping Systems: Rethinking Journalism Theory in the Age of Algorithms and Generative AI

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Gatekeeping has remained one of the foundational theoretical approaches for explaining how information becomes news. From Kurt Lewin’s conceptualisation of gates and channels to David Manning White’s study of the newspaper wire editor, traditional gatekeeping theory located considerable power in human actors who selected, rejected and organised information before it reached audiences. The contemporary news environment, however, complicates this model. News selection is increasingly distributed across journalists, newsroom analytics, search engines, social media platforms, recommender systems and generative artificial intelligence. This paper re-examines gatekeeping theory through an interdisciplinary synthesis of journalism studies, platform studies, artificial intelligence research and communication theory. Drawing on a structured conceptual review of more than 29 major scholarly contributions, it argues that contemporary journalism is moving from identifiable gatekeepers towards interconnected gatekeeping systems. Within these systems, editorial judgement has not disappeared; rather, it interacts continuously with computational selection, platform infrastructures, audience behaviour and generative systems capable of producing, summarising and reorganising information. The paper proposes a five-layer model of contemporary gatekeeping comprising source, editorial, algorithmic, platform and generative gates. It further distinguishes between selection power, traditionally exercised by editors, and visibility power, increasingly exercised through technological infrastructures. The study concludes that gatekeeping theory remains valuable but requires conceptual expansion from the question of who controls the gate to the broader question of how interconnected human and computational systems determine what information becomes visible, credible and socially consequential.

Tumor Detection with PET and CT: A Comparative Physical Review

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Positron emission tomography (PET) is an important molecular imaging modality in oncology because it provides functional and metabolic information that complements the anatomical information obtained from computed tomography (CT). However, the ability of PET to detect tumors is fundamentally determined by several physical characteristics of the imaging system, including spatial resolution, sensitivity, image contrast, noise, photon attenuation, scatter, random coincidences, and partial-volume effects. This review aims to examine the physical basis of PET for tumor detection and to compare its principal imaging characteristics with those of CT. A comparative narrative review was conducted using relevant literature on PET physics, detector instrumentation, image formation, image-quality determinants, tumor detectability, and the physical principles of CT. The reviewed evidence indicates that PET provides high sensitivity to radiotracer distribution and functional abnormalities, making it particularly valuable for detecting metabolically active tumors. However, its relatively limited spatial resolution and susceptibility to attenuation, scatter, noise, and partial-volume effects can restrict the detection and accurate characterization of small or low-contrast lesions. In contrast, CT provides superior anatomical detail and spatial resolution through X-ray attenuation measurements but offers substantially less direct functional information. The evidence therefore indicates that PET and CT possess complementary physical capabilities: PET is primarily advantageous for functional and metabolic tumor characterization, whereas CT is superior for anatomical localization and structural delineation. Understanding these physical differences is essential for interpreting the respective strengths and limitations of PET and CT in tumor detection and for optimizing their complementary use in hybrid PET/CT imaging.

Evaluation of the Role of Local Government in Strengthening Flash Flood Disaster Mitigation Capacity in Teluk Wondama Regency

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Teluk Wondama Regency remains highly exposed to flash-flood hazards, particularly along the Wasior-Wondiboy-Rasiei corridor, where settlements, public services, transport networks, and government functions are concentrated. The 2010 Wasior flash flood demonstrated the severity of potential consequences, while current evidence indicates that mitigation capacity still requires systematic strengthening. This study evaluates the role of local government in flash-flood mitigation, identifies enabling and constraining factors, and formulates strategies to strengthen mitigation capacity. A qualitatively oriented mixed-methods approach was applied within an evaluative case-study design. Data were obtained from disaster-management, development-planning, spatial-planning, environmental, program, and budget documents; semi-structured interviews with nine purposively selected informants; field observations in Wasior, Wondiboy, and Rasiei; and descriptive quantitative scoring of 30 indicators across six mitigation-capacity dimensions. The local government has performed roles as regulator and planner, coordinator, facilitator, service implementer, development controller, and community enabler; however, these roles have not yet formed a fully integrated mitigation system. The overall capacity score was 54 of 120, equivalent to 45.0 on a 0-100 scale and categorized as less adequate. Policy-planning and spatial planning-watershed management each scored 50, whereas technical systems-early warning-evacuation and community capacity each scored 40. The principal finding is a persistent gap between normative capacity and operational functionality. Priority strategies include updating risk and disaster-management plans, strengthening inter-agency coordination, operationalizing the emergency operations center and sub-watershed-based early warning, testing evacuation networks, controlling risk-prone land use, sustaining preventive financing, and institutionalizing community preparedness.

Water Demand Management in the Island of Crete, Greece

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The supply and demand management of water resources in Crete is necessary to avoid water shortages in the island predicted in the future due to climate change. Water demand management in Crete should aim not simply to reduce water consumption, but to ensure that available water is used efficiently, economically and sustainably. Several studies related to water resources in Crete have been reviewed and the water consumption in several sectors has been estimated. The island is sufficient in water resources under average meteorological conditions while climate change is foreseen to reduce water precipitation in the coming decades resulting in water shortages. Agriculture is by far the greatest water consumer in the island using around 80% of the total water use. Crete’s tourism industry is growing fast while its share in total water demand is around 3%. Several technical and non-technical measures can be used to reduce the water demand in Crete. The efficient use of water in agriculture and tourism can reduce significantly the total water consumption which was estimated at 610.94 hm3 in 2016. A 10% reduction in water consumption in these two sectors can reduce the total annual water consumption in the island by 8.15 % or by 49.78 hm3/year. Appropriate water pricing, use of financial tools, awareness raising and education of several water-related stakeholders would contribute in the decrease of water demand in Crete. The results of the current study could be used from policy makers, local and regional authorities as well as from water-related organizations in the island.

Investigating The Influence of TikTok English Video Clips on Improving Listening Skills of EFL Sophomores

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Listening comprehension plays a pivotal role in English language acquisition, many EFL learners often struggle with real world listening skills due to limited exposure to authentic materials. With the rapid growth of social media, TikTok has emerged as an engaging, accessible platform offering authentic, bite sized video content that can potentially support language learning. This study investigated the influence of TikTok English video clips on improving the listening skills of EFL sophomores at Nguyen Tat Thanh University quantitavely. It aims to examine how regular integration of TikTok video clips enhances learners’ listening performance, comprehension strategies, and motivation. Its participants were 35 sophomores. The qualitative data indicated that students hold positive perceptions toward using TikTok, highlighting its benefits in exposing them to natural speech rates, diverse accents, and contemporary vocabulary in low stress environments. Pedagogical implications are also discussed to offer practical recommendations for incorporating short form video platforms into tertiary EFL listening curricula.

Data-Driven Robust MPC for an Industrial Evaporator under Model Uncertainty and Sensor Degradation

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Model predictive control is attractive for industrial processes because constraints and multivariable interactions can be handled explicitly, but its performance depends on the credibility of the prediction model and the measurements supplied to the controller. This article develops a data-driven robust MPC framework for an industrial evaporator in which model uncertainty and sensor degradation are treated jointly. The open DaISy industrial evaporator benchmark (code 96-010) supplies the data basis: 6305 samples, three manipulated inputs and three measured outputs. Publicly reproducible system-identification results for this benchmark report a first experiment of 3300 samples, an order-eight prediction-error model, and five-step output mean-square errors of 0.0576, 0.1564 and 0.0193. These error scales are used to define relative residual uncertainty for a closed-loop benchmark-constrained surrogate. The controller combines a trust-weighted state estimate with scenario-based robust prediction across a finite uncertainty ensemble. Bias, drift, precision loss and dropout are injected into the sensor channels, and at the same time plant matrices are perturbed independently across Monte Carlo trials. In 200 composite-degradation scenarios with 12% plant-model uncertainty, the proposed robust MPC reduces mean normalized tracking RMSE from 0.2750 for nominal MPC to 0.2421, and reduces normalized performance-envelope exceedance from 14.12% to 6.02%. The improvement is obtained at a 6.75% increase in average control effort. The results show that a practical data-driven robust MPC architecture should not treat identification error and sensor integrity as separate problems; both must enter the online state estimate and the predictive optimization layer.

The Impact of Green Finance and Cultural Preservation on Sustainable Development in Vietnam

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This paper evaluates the impact of Green Finance (GF) and Cultural Preservation (CP) on Sustainable Development (SD) in Vietnam, while examining the mediating role of Cultural Preservation and the moderating role of Community Awareness/Supportive Policies (MO). Utilizing a quantitative research design with a empirical survey sample of residents, enterprises, and local authorities across key heritage and ecotourism regions, the analysis was executed through a multi-stage statistical pipeline: Cronbach’s Alpha reliability analysis, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The empirical findings reveal that both Green Finance and Cultural Preservation exert significant direct positive effects on Sustainable Development. Crucially, Cultural Preservation acts as a vital partial mediator, transforming green financial capital into sustainable economic, environmental, and social values. Based on these insights, managerial implications and policy recommendations are proposed to promote green financial mechanisms intrinsically linked to cultural heritage preservation in Vietnam.

Succession Planning Practices and Administrators’ Performance in Selected Government Aided Secondary Schools in Rakai District, Uganda

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This study examined the affiliation midst succession planning practices and administrators’ performance across Government aided Secondary educational schools in Rakai District. Specifically, this study sought to: examine the relationship between succession culture and administrators’ performance; analyze the relationship between bench building and administrators’ performance; analyze the relationship between talent development and administrators’ performance in selected Government-Aided Secondary Schools in Rakai District, Uganda. The study adopted a mixed-methods research approach employing a correlational research design. The study population comprised 121 teachers. A sample of 88 respondents was selected using simple random sampling technique. Data were collected using structured questionnaires and interview guides. The validity of the questionnaire was established through expert judgment, yielding a Content Validity Index (CVI) of 0.88, the reliability of the questionnaire was determined using Cronbach’s Alpha, with coefficients overall reliability coefficient of 0.844, demonstrating a high level of internal consistency. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson Product Moment Correlation, while qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. The results revealed a moderate positive and statistically significant relationship between succession culture and administrators’ performance (r = .500, p = .000). The study further established a strong positive and statistically significant relationship between bench building and administrators’ performance (r = .749, p = .000). In addition, talent development demonstrated a moderate positive and statistically significant relationship with administrators’ performance (r = .487, p = .000). The findings indicate that succession planning practices consequently with bench building emerged as the strongest predictor of administrators’ performance. The study concluded that succession culture, bench building, and talent development are important determinants of administrators’ performance. This study recommends that the Ministry of Education and Sports, District Education Authorities, Boards of Governors, and school administrators institutionalize succession planning succession culture, establishing structured bench-building mechanisms, and investing in continuous talent development through mentoring, coaching, leadership training, and professional development programmes.