Education plays a vital role in the success of any community. Countries with increased literacy rate have improved their status on the world map. In recent years, the use of e-learning methodologies has been significant. However, majority of the previous methodologies are focused on the formal education or toddlers. The technoliteracy solutions for children are not suitable for adults and those designed specifically for adults are text dominant and require the users of these applications to be functional literate. Moreover, users' interest (sense of belonging) is not taken into consideration in existing solutions. To address the aforementioned issues, a user study is conducted to collect users' interests. Another highlight of our study is that we develop our system as a mobile device application to facilitate our target user group. Based on the collected interests, a 3D virtual learning environment is designed and developed for adult illiterate learners. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed environment, an experimental study is carried out with users. The results show that the proposed learning environment significantly improves adults learning.

PurposeIn recent years, data science has become a high-demand profession, thereby attracting transmuters (individuals who want to change their profession due to industry trends) to this field. The primary purpose of this paper is to guide transmuters in becoming data scientists.Design/methodology/approachAn exploratory study was conducted to uncover the challenges faced by data scientists according to their educational backgrounds. An extensive set of responses from 31 countries was received.FindingsThe results reveal that skill requirements and tool usage vary significantly with educational background. However, regardless of differences in academic background, the data scientists surveyed spend more time analyzing data than operationalizing insight.Research limitations/implicationsThe collected data are available to support replication in various scenarios, for example, for use as a roadmap for those with an educational background in art-related disciplines. Additional empirical studies can also be conducted specific to geographical location.Practical implicationsThe current work has categorized data scientists by their fields of study making it easier for universities and online academies to suggest required knowledge (courses) according to prospective students' educational background.Originality/valueThe conducted study suggests the required knowledge and skills for transmuters to acquire, based on their educational background, and reports a set of motivational factors attracting them to adopt the data science field.

Background Hypertension is highly prevalent and uncontrolled among hemodialysis patients. In Pakistan published data does not provide enough information about the management and factors associated with uncontrolled hypertension in hemodialysis patients. Objective This study was conducted to evaluate the factors influencing the pharmacotherapeutic management and control of hypertension in hemodialysis patients. Methods A prospective follow-up study was conducted on hemodialysis patients who were enrolled at study sites between 1 June 2020 and 31 December 2020. The predialysis blood pressure (BP) readings were recorded as mean SBP and DBP at baseline and for each of 6 months. Multivariate analyses were applied to analyze the factors associated with uncontrolled hypertension in hemodialysis patients. Results The average predialysis BP (SBP and DBP) of study participants at baseline visit was 158.41 and 87.22 mmHg respectively. After 6 months the study participants have 150.27 mmHg and 80.03 mmHg average predialysis SBP and DBP respectively. Only 28.1% of hemodialysis patients were on target BP after 6 months. Results of multivariate analysis have shown that the use of beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers (CCBs) were significantly associated with hypertension control at baseline [odds ratio (OR) = 1.432, P value = 0.034] (OR = 1.499, P value = 0.045) and at after 6 months (OR = 2.824, P value = 0.015) (OR = 1.883, P value = 0.032). Conclusion This study revealed that among the antihypertensive drugs, CCBs and beta-blockers provided better management in controlling hypertension among hemodialysis patients.

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