Search results for: recurrent nerve palsy

Authors: Bachir Kacimi, Fatiha Teklal, Arezki Djebbar

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Forming processes induce residual deformations on the reinforcement and sometimes lead to mesoscopic defects, which are more recurrent than macroscopic defects during the manufacture of complex structural parts. This study deals with the influence of the fabric shear and buckles defects, which appear during draping processes of composite, on the impact behavior of a glass fiber reinforced polymer. To achieve this aim, we produced several specimens with different amplitude of deformations (shear) and defects on the fabric using a specific bench. The specimens were manufactured using the contact molding and tested with several impact energies. The results and measurements made on tested specimens were compared to those of the healthy material. The results showed that the buckle defects have a negative effect on elastic parameters and revealed a larger damage with significant out-of-plane mode relatively to the healthy composite material. This effect is the consequence of a local fiber impoverishment and a disorganization of the fibrous network, with a reorientation of the fibers following the out-of-plane buckling of the yarns, in the area where the defects are located. For the material with calibrated shear of the reinforcement, the increased local fiber rate due to the shear deformations and the contribution to stiffness of the transverse yarns led to an increase in mechanical properties.

Keywords: Defects, Forming, Impact, Induced properties, Textiles

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Authors: Cheng-yu Hsieh, Bo Zhang, Ahmed Hambaba

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Stock market prediction has long been an area of interest for both expert analysts and investors, driven by its complexity and the noisy, volatile conditions it operates under. This research examines the efficacy of combining the Patch Time Series Transformer (PatchTST) with wavelet transforms, specifically focusing on Haar and Daubechies wavelets, in forecasting the adjusted closing price of the S&P 500 index for the following day. By comparing the performance of the augmented PatchTST models with traditional predictive models such as Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, and Transformers, this study highlights significant enhancements in prediction accuracy. The integration of the Daubechies wavelet with PatchTST notably excels, surpassing other configurations and conventional models in terms of Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Mean Squared Error (MSE). The success of the PatchTST model paired with Daubechies wavelet is attributed to its superior capability in extracting detailed signal information and eliminating irrelevant noise, thus proving to be an effective approach for financial time series forecasting.

Keywords: deep learning, financial forecasting, stock market prediction, patch time series transformer, wavelet transform

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Authors: Uzoma Emmanuel Igboji

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This paper examines the influence of public debts (external and internal) on economic growth and development in Nigeria from (1980-2015). The study uses aggregate GDP as a proxy for economic growth, per capital income as a proxy for standard of living and Government expenditure on health as a proxy for human capital development, while Foreign Direct Investment, Unemployment rate, and Oil revenue were used as control variables. The study made use of ex-post facto research design with the data extracted from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Statistical Bulletin and the World Bank database. It adopted a multiple regression analysis of the ordinary least square (OLS) method with the help of E-View version 3.0. The results revealed that external debt has a negative and insignificant effect on GDP, per capital income and human capital development. The study concluded that external debts were being channeled to meet the recurrent expenditures of the nation’s economy at the expense of productive investment that could stimulate growth and poverty alleviation. It, however, recommended that government should ensure that the bulk of the total borrowings are mostly sourced from within the domestic economy so that the repayment of the principal and interest will serve as a crowd in-effect rather that crowd out-effect which in turn further accelerates the country’s economic growth and development.

Keywords: economic growth, external debt, internal debt, Nigeria

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Authors: Bipasha Sen, Aditya Agarwal

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Multilingual automatic speech recognition (ASR) system is a single entity capable of transcribing multiple languages sharing a common phone space. Performance of such a system is highly dependent on the compatibility of the languages. State of the art speech recognition systems are built using sequential architectures based on recurrent neural networks (RNN) limiting the computational parallelization in training. This poses a significant challenge in terms of time taken to bootstrap and validate the compatibility of multiple languages for building a robust multilingual system. Complex architectural choices based on self-attention networks are made to improve the parallelization thereby reducing the training time. In this work, we propose Reed, a simple system based on 1D convolutions which uses very short context to improve the training time. To improve the performance of our system, we use raw time-domain speech signals directly as input. This enables the convolutional layers to learn feature representations rather than relying on handcrafted features such as MFCC. We report improvement on training and inference times by atleast a factor of 4x and 7.4x respectively with comparable WERs against standard RNN based baseline systems on SpeechOcean's multilingual low resource dataset.

Keywords: convolutional neural networks, language compatibility, low resource languages, multilingual automatic speech recognition

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Authors: Abdullah Bal, Sevdenur Bal

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This paper purposes a new type of hardware application for training of cellular neural networks (CNN) using optical joint transform correlation (JTC) architecture for image feature extraction. CNNs require much more computation during the training stage compare to test process. Since optoelectronic hardware applications offer possibility of parallel high speed processing capability for 2D data processing applications, CNN training algorithm can be realized using Fourier optics technique. JTC employs lens and CCD cameras with laser beam that realize 2D matrix multiplication and summation in the light speed. Therefore, in the each iteration of training, JTC carries more computation burden inherently and the rest of mathematical computation realized digitally. The bipolar data is encoded by phase and summation of correlation operations is realized using multi-object input joint images. Overlapping properties of JTC are then utilized for summation of two cross-correlations which provide less computation possibility for training stage. Phase-only JTC does not require data rearrangement, electronic pre-calculation and strict system alignment. The proposed system can be incorporated simultaneously with various optical image processing or optical pattern recognition techniques just in the same optical system.

Keywords: CNN training, image processing, joint transform correlation, optoelectronic hardware

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Authors: Asif Arsalan

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The mortality rate of type 2 diabetes increasing day by day at an alarming rate. Changing lifestyle and environment have contributory effect in increase rate of type 2 diabetes mellitus. This study introduces a new method in physiotherapy field of treating a disease like diabetes, and gives the new way to control the diabetes without medicines.50 patients were selected on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria and were assigned to receive either TENS (group A) on the bilateral ST36 acupoints at a frequency of 25 Hz with intensity of 9 mA or placebo (group B) treatment for 5 minutes for 7 days. The blood glucose level was measured at both pre and post stimulation. Stimulation was given after 3 hours of food on every day regularly on stipulated time.There was significant improvement (P<0.05) in random blood sugar level of type 2 diabetes mellitus. It has been found TENS on bilateral ST36 acupoints have an effect to control plasma glucose level for type 2 diabetic mellitus patients and can be used without having any side effect. This study gives new idea to treat the type 2 diabetes conservatively with the TENS. As there are some study that TENS had been used to treat nausea, spasticity etc. condition by stimulating the acupoint but it is the very first time that TENS has been used to treat diabetes like disease. This study help the physiotherapy community to spread the physiotherapy treatment in other branches of the medical field and this gives a new identity for the physiotherapy. This also gives the benefit to patients to take a safe and cost effective treatment for the diabetes, and make the new use of TENS to treat other condition rather than pain.

Keywords: acupoint, plasma glucose level, type 2 diabetic mellitus, TENS

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Authors: Nurul Bin Ibrahim

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Advancements in neural networks have offered valuable insights into Fluid Dynamics, notably in addressing turbulence-related challenges. In this research, we introduce multiple applications of models of neural networks, namely Feed-Forward and Recurrent Neural Networks, to explore the relationship between jet formations and stratified turbulence within stochastically excited Boussinesq systems. Using machine learning tools like TensorFlow and PyTorch, the study has created models that effectively mimic and show the underlying features of the complex patterns of jet formation and stratified turbulence. These models do more than just help us understand these patterns; they also offer a faster way to solve problems in stochastic systems, improving upon traditional numerical techniques to solve stochastic differential equations such as the Euler-Maruyama method. In addition, the research includes a thorough comparison with the Statistical State Dynamics (SSD) approach, which is a well-established method for studying chaotic systems. This comparison helps evaluate how well neural networks can help us understand the complex relationship between jet formations and stratified turbulence. The results of this study underscore the potential of neural networks in computational physics and fluid dynamics, opening up new possibilities for more efficient and accurate simulations in these fields.

Keywords: neural networks, machine learning, computational fluid dynamics, stochastic systems, simulation, stratified turbulence

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Authors: Yu-Chih Wang, Chia-Yu Lai, Hsiao-Tien Liu, Yi-Ju Chen, Shao-Bin Cheng

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Liver transplant has been one of the curative treatment options for hepatocellular carcinomaunder certain oncological conditions. Two of the most validated criteria are from Milan in1996 and USCF in 2001, suggesting number and size limits of tumor without vascularinvasion or distant metastasis. We performed a retrospective cohort study of hepatocellular carcinoma patients undergoing livertransplant between August 2003 and December 2020 in our institute. Clinical andpathological characteristic, survival outcome, and recurrent pattern were analysed.UCSF criteria was applied for living donor transplantation, and Milan criteria was applied for deceased donor transplantation. Of 180 total patients, 52 cases(28.8%) with diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma, including26 living donor(LD) and 26 deceased donor(DD) liver transplant. Complete pathologicalremission was significantly more in the DD group(p=0.009). Pathological reports showed that30.8% of DD group exceeded Milan criteria, and 19.2% of LD group exceeded UCSFcriteria.After a median follow-up of 52.2 months, the 1-year, 3-year and 5-year overall survival was 87.6%, 74.1%, and 71.8%, respectively.Meanwhile, progression-free survival was 93.1%, 85.7%, and 81.6% for 1, 3, and 5-year, respectively, similar to that in Mazzaferro et al, 1996. We concluded that Liver transplant could be applied cautiously in expanded criteria for patent withhepatocellular carcinoma.

Keywords: liver transplant, milan criteria, UCSF criteria, living donor transplantation, deceased donor transplantation

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Authors: Naser Shagerdi Esmaeli, Mohsen Hamidpour

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Purposes: The activation of coagulation in patients with cancer contributes significantly to morbidity and mortality rates and may play a fundamental role in the host response to growing tumor’s. Patients with cancer are clearly at high risk for the development of venous thromboembolism (VTE), particularly during chemotherapy and surgery. This situation is aggravated by the use of venous access catheters and possibly growth factors. Methods: Data derived from large, randomized, controlled trials have been used to determine the true incidence of this complication of cancer and its treatment. The incidence based on the analyses of these randomized controlled trials varies from 1% for limited stage patients with breast cancer treated with tamoxifen to 60% for patients with any type of cancer who are subjected to orthopedic surgery and do not receive prophylactic therapy. Results: In view of the morbidity and mortality attributable to VTE in cancer, widespread utilization of prophylactic anticoagulation therapy, which has proven safe and effective in a variety of situations, should be considered. While migratory thrombophlebitis is a clear indicator of an underlying neoplasm, the risk of cancer in patients with the more typical form of VTE has been the subject of intense debate over recent years. Conclusion: Some investigators have suggested that the relative risk of being diagnosed with occult cancer within six months of an episode of VTE (particularly recurrent VTE) could be up to 10-fold. However, the cost-effectiveness of aggressive screening for cancer in patients with VTE has not yet been defined adequately.

Keywords: venous thromboembolism, malignancy, cancer, tumor, heparin

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Authors: Theodore Gautier Le Jeune Bikoko, Jean Claude Tchamba, Sofiane Amziane

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This study focuses on the problem of collapsed buildings within the city of Douala over the past ten years, and more precisely, within the period from 2011 to 2020. It was carried out in a bid to ascertain the real causes of this phenomenon, which has become recurrent in the leading economic city of Cameroon. To achieve this, it was first necessary to review some works dealing with construction materials and technology as well as some case histories of structural collapse within the city. Thereafter, a statistical study was carried out on the results obtained. It was found that the causes of building collapses in the city of Douala are: Neglect of administrative procedures, use of poor quality materials, poor composition and confectioning of concrete, lack of Geotechnical study, lack of structural analysis and design, corrosion of the reinforcement bars, poor maintenance in buildings, and other causes. Out of the 46 cases of structural failure of buildings within the city of Douala, 7 of these were identified to have had no geotechnical study carried out, giving a percentage of 15.22%. It was also observed that out of the 46 cases of structural failure, 6 were as a result of lack of proper structural analysis and design, giving a percentage of 13.04%. Subsequently, recommendations and suggestions are made in a bid to placing particular emphasis on the choice of materials, the manufacture and casting of concrete, as well as the placement of the required reinforcements. All this guarantees the stability of a building.

Keywords: collapse buildings, Douala, structural collapse, Cameroon

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Authors: Joanna Estkowska

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The Sensory Integration Method is aimed primarily at children with learning disabilities. It can also be used as a complementary method in treatment of children with cerebral palsy, autistic, mentally handicapped, blind and deaf. Autism is holistic development disorder that manifests itself in the specific functioning of a child. The most characteristic are: disorders in communication, difficulties in social relations, rigid patterns of behavior and impairment in sensory processing. In addition to these disorders may occur abnormal intellectual development, attention deficit disorders, perceptual disorders and others. This study was focused on the application sensory integration techniques in science education of autistic students. The lack of proper sensory integration causes problems with complicated processes such as motor coordination, movement planning, visual or auditory perception, speech, writing, reading or counting. Good functioning and cooperation of proprioceptive, tactile and vestibular sense affect the child’s mastery of skills that require coordination of both sides of the body and synchronization of the cerebral hemispheres. These include, for example, all sports activities, precise manual skills such writing, as well as, reading and counting skills. All this takes place in stages. Achieving skills from the first stage determines the development of fitness from the next level. Any deficit in the scope of the first three stages can affect the development of new skills. This ultimately reflects on the achievements at school and in further professional and personal life. After careful analysis symptoms from the emotional and social spheres appear to be secondary to deficits of sensory integration. During our research, the students gained knowledge and skills in the classroom of experience by learning biology, chemistry and physics with application sensory integration techniques. Sensory integration therapy aims to teach the child an adequate response to stimuli coming to him from both the outside world and the body. Thanks to properly selected exercises, a child can improve perception and interpretation skills, motor skills, coordination of movements, attention and concentration or self-awareness, as well as social and emotional functioning.

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder, science education, sensory integration, special educational needs

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Authors: Kong Ngai Pei

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The argument scheme approach to argumentation has two components. One is to identify the recurrent patterns of inferences used in everyday discourse. The second is to devise critical questions to evaluate the inferences in these patterns. Although this approach is intuitive and contains many insightful ideas, it has been noted to be not free of problems. One is that due to its disavowing the probability calculus, it cannot give the exact strength of an inference. In order to tackle this problem, thereby paving the way to a more complete normative account of argument strength, it has been proposed, the most promising way is to combine the scheme-based approach with Bayesian networks (BNs). This paper pursues this line of thought, attempting to combine three common schemes, Appeal to Ignorance, Composition, and Division, with BNs. In the first part, it is argued that most (if not all) formulations of the critical questions corresponding to these schemes in the current argumentation literature are incomplete and not very informative. To remedy these flaws, more thorough and precise formulations of these questions are provided. In the second part, how to use graphical idioms (e.g. measurement and synthesis idioms) to translate the schemes as well as their corresponding critical questions to graphical structure of BNs, and how to define probability tables of the nodes using functions of various sorts are shown. In the final part, it is argued that many misuses of these schemes, traditionally called fallacies with the same names as the schemes, can indeed be adequately accounted for by the BN models proposed in this paper.

Keywords: appeal to ignorance, argument schemes, Bayesian networks, composition, division

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Authors: Ali Golestani, Vahid Naseri, Hossein Taheri

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Recently, some of studies examined the effect of exercise on neurotrophic factors influencing the growth, protection, plasticity and function in central and peripheral nerve cells. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of continuous and interval aerobic exercises with moderate intensity on serum levels of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) and aerobic capacity in obese children. 21 obese students with an average age of 13.6 ± 0.5 height 171 ± 5 and BMI 32 ± 1.2 were divided randomly to control, continuous aerobic and interval aerobic groups. Training protocol included continuous or interval aerobic exercises with moderate intensity 50-65%MHR, three times per week for 10 weeks. 48 hours before and after executing of protocol, blood samples were taken from the participants and their GDNF serum levels were measured by ELISA. Aerobic power was estimated using Shuttle-run test. T-test results indicated a small increase in their GDNF serum levels, which was not statistically significant (p =0.11). In addition, the results of ANOVA did not show any significant difference between continuous and interval aerobic training on the serum levels of their GDNF but their aerobic capacity significantly increased (p =0.012). Although continuous and interval aerobic exercise improves aerobic power in obese children, they had no significant effect on their serum levels of GDNF.

Keywords: aerobic power, continuous aerobic training, glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), interval aerobic training, obese children

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Authors: Yu-Chieh Huang, Pei-Shih Chen, Tao-Hsin Tung

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Background: Urinary tract infection is the most common bacterial infection to our best knowledge. Objective: This study is to investigate whether cranberry ingesting could improve the urinary tract infection. Methods: We searched the PubMed and Cochrane Library for relevant randomized controlled trials without language limitations between 9 March 1994 and June 30, 2017, with a priori defined inclusion and exclusion criteria. The search terms included (cranberry OR Vaccinium macrocarpon OR Vaccinium oxy-coccus OR Vaccinium microcarpum OR Vaccinium erythrocarpum OR Vaccinium) AND (urinary tract infection OR bacteriuria OR pyuria) AND (effect OR effective-ness OR efficacy) AND (random OR randomized). Results: There were 26 studies met the selection criteria included among 4709 eligible participants. We analyzed all trials in meta-analysis. The random-effects pooled risk ratio (RR) for the group using cranberry versus using placebo was 0.75; 95%CI[0.63, 0.880]; p-value=0.0002) and heterogeneity was 56%. Furthermore, we divided the subjects into different subgroup to analysis. Ingesting cranberry seemed to be more effective in some subgroups, including the patients with recurrent UTI (RR, 0.71; 95%CI[0.54,0.93]; p-value=0.002) (I²= 65%) and female population (RR, 0.73, 95%CI[0.58,0.92]; p-value=0.002) (I²= 59%). The prevention effect was not different between cranberry and trimethoprim (RR, 1.25, 95%CI[0.67, 2.33]; p-value=0.49) (I²= 68%). No matter the forms of cranberry were capsules or juice, the efficacy was useful. Conclusions: It is showed that cranberry ingesting is usefully associated with prevention UTI. There are more effective in prevention of UTI in some groups.

Keywords: cranberry, effectiveness, prevention, urinary tract infect

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Authors: Sulaiman Yunus

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The need for modeling response to urban fire disaster cannot be over emphasized, as recurrent fire outbreaks have gutted most cities of the world. This necessitated the need for a prompt and efficient response system in order to mitigate the impact of the disaster. Promptness, as a function of time, is seen to be the fundamental determinant for efficiency of a response system and magnitude of a fire disaster. Delay, as a result of several factors, is one of the major determinants of promptgness of a response system and also the magnitude of a fire disaster. Response Delay Model (RDM) intends to bridge the gap in urban fire disaster response system through incorporating and synchronizing the delay moments in measuring the overall efficiency of a response system and determining the magnitude of a fire disaster. The model identified two delay moments (pre-notification and Intra-reflex sequence delay) that can be elastic and collectively plays a significant role in influencing the efficiency of a response system. Due to variation in the elasticity of the delay moments, the model provides for measuring the length of delays in order to arrive at a standard average delay moment for different parts of the world, putting into consideration geographic location, level of preparedness and awareness, technological advancement, socio-economic and environmental factors. It is recommended that participatory researches should be embarked on locally and globally to determine standard average delay moments within each phase of the system so as to enable determining the efficiency of response systems and predicting fire disaster magnitudes.

Keywords: delay moment, fire disaster, reflex sequence, response, response delay moment

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Authors: Thanooja Naushad, Meena Natarajan, Tushar Vasant Kulkarni

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Background: The Lacey Assessment of Preterm Infants (LAPI) is used in clinical practice to identify premature babies at risk of neuromotor impairments, especially cerebral palsy. This study attempted to find the validity of the Lacey assessment of preterm infants to predict neuromotor outcomes of premature babies at 12 months corrected age and to compare its predictive ability with the brain ultrasound. Methods: This prospective cohort study included 89 preterm infants (45 females and 44 males) born below 35 weeks gestation who were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit of a government hospital in Dubai. Initial assessment was done using the Lacey assessment after the babies reached 33 weeks postmenstrual age. Follow up assessment on neuromotor outcomes was done at 12 months (± 1 week) corrected age using two standardized outcome measures, i.e., infant neurological international battery and Alberta infant motor scale. Brain ultrasound data were collected retrospectively. Data were statistically analyzed, and the diagnostic accuracy of the Lacey assessment of preterm infants (LAPI) was calculated -when used alone and in combination with the brain ultrasound. Results: On comparison with brain ultrasound, the Lacey assessment showed superior specificity (96% vs. 77%), higher positive predictive value (57% vs. 22%), and higher positive likelihood ratio (18 vs. 3) to predict neuromotor outcomes at one year of age. The sensitivity of Lacey assessment was lower than brain ultrasound (66% vs. 83%), whereas specificity was similar (97% vs. 98%). A combination of Lacey assessment and brain ultrasound results showed higher sensitivity (80%), positive (66%), and negative (98%) predictive values, positive likelihood ratio (24), and test accuracy (95%) than Lacey assessment alone in predicting neurological outcomes. The negative predictive value of the Lacey assessment was similar to that of its combination with brain ultrasound (96%). Conclusion: Results of this study suggest that the Lacey assessment of preterm infants can be used as a supplementary assessment tool for premature babies in the neonatal intensive care unit. Due to its high specificity, Lacey assessment can be used to identify those babies at low risk of abnormal neuromotor outcomes at a later age. When used along with the findings of the brain ultrasound, Lacey assessment has better sensitivity to identify preterm babies at particular risk. These findings have applications in identifying premature babies who may benefit from early intervention services.

Keywords: brain ultrasound, lacey assessment of preterm infants, neuromotor outcomes, preterm

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Authors: Mangala M. Pai, B. V. Murlimanju, Latha V. Prabhu, P. J. Jiji , Vandana Blossom

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Background:To study the morphological parameters of the axis vertebra in anatomical specimens. Methods: The present study was designed to obtain the morphometric data of axis vertebra. The superior and inferior articular facets of the axis were macroscopically observed for their shapes and the different parameters were measured using the digital Vernier caliper. It included 20 dried axis bones, which were obtained from the anatomy laboratory. Results: The morphometric data obtained in the present study are represented in the tables. The side wise comparison of the length and width of the articular facets of the axis vertebra were done. The present study observed that, there is no statistically significant difference observed among the parameters of right and left side articular facets (p>0.05). The superior and inferior articular facets were observed to have variable shapes. The frequencies of different shapes of superior and inferior articular facets are represented in figures. All the shapes of the inferior and superior articular facets were symmetrical over the right and left sides. Among the superior articular facets, the constrictions were absent in 13 cases (65%), 2 (10%) exhibited a single constriction, 3 (15%) had 2 constrictions and 2 (10%) were having 3 constrictions. The constrictions were absent in 11 (55%) of the inferior articular facets, 3 (15%) of them had 1 constriction, 3 (15%) were having 2 constrictions, 2 (10%) exhibited 3 constrictions and 1 (5%) of them had 4 constrictions. The constrictions of the inferior and superior articular facets were symmetrical over the right and left sides. Conclusion: We believe that the present study has provided additional information on the morphometric data of the axis vertebra. The data are important to the neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons and radiologists. The preoperative assessment of the axis vertebra may prevent dangerous complications like spinal cord and nerve root compression during the surgical intervention.

Keywords: axis, articular facet, morphology, morphometry

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Authors: Özlem Ateş Sönmezoğlu, Begüm Terzi, Ahmet Yıldırım, Ramazan Özbey

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The basic criteria which determine durum wheat quality is its suitability for pasta processing that is pasta making quality. Bright yellow color is a desired property in pasta products. Durum wheat pasta making quality is affected by grain pigment content and oxidative enzymes which affect adversely bright yellow color. Of the oxidative enzymes, lipoxygenase LOX is the most effective one on oxidative bleaching of yellow pigments in durum wheat products. Thus, wheat cultivars that are high in yellow pigments but low in LOX enzyme activity should be preferred for the production of pasta with high color quality. The aim of this study was to reduce lipoxygenase activities of the backcross durum wheat lines that were previously improved for their protein quality. For this purpose, two advanced lines with different parents (TMB2 and TMB3) were used recurrent parents. Also, Gediz-75 wheat with low LOX enzyme activity was used as the gene source. In all of the generations, backcrossed plants carrying the targeted gene region (Lpx-B1.1) were selected using SSR markers by marker assisted selection method. As a result, the study will be completed in three years instead of six years required in a classical backcross breeding study, leading to the development of high-quality candidate varieties. This research has been financially supported by TÜBİTAK (Project No: 112T910).

Keywords: durum wheat, lipoxygenase, LOX, Lpx-B1.1, MAS, Triticum durum

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Authors: Noor Taleb Ismael, Areej Abd Al Kareem Al Titi, Ala'a Fayez Jaber

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Objectives: To investigate self-perceived functional performance among adults with IDD who are Jordanian residential care and rehabilitation centers residents. Also, to investigate their functional abilities (i.e., motor, and cognitive). In addition, to determine the motor and cognitive predictors of their functional performance. Methods: The study utilized a cross-sectional descriptive design; the sample included 180 individuals with IDD (90 males and 90 females) aged 18 to 75 years. The inclusion criteria encompassed: 1) Adults with a confirmed IDD by their physician’s professional and 2) residents in Jordanian Residential Care and Rehabilitation Centers affiliated with the Jordanian Ministry of Social Development. The exclusion criteria were: 1) bedridden or totally dependent on their care providers; 2) who had an accident or acquired neurological conditions. Researchers conducted semi-structured interviews to complete the outcome measures that include the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM), the Functional Independence Measure (FIM), the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), the Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE), and the sociodemographic questionnaire. Data analyses consisted of descriptive statistics, analysis of frequencies, correlation, and regression analyses. Result: Individuals with IDD showed low functional performance in all daily life areas, including self-care, productivity, and leisure; there was severe cognitive impairment and poor independence and functional performance. (COPM Performance M= 1.433, SD±.57021, COPM Satisfaction M= 1.31, SD±.54, FIM M= 3.673, SD± 1.7918). Two predictive models were validated for the COPM performance and FIM total scores. First, significant predictors of high self-perceived functional performance on COPM were high scores on FIM Motor sub scores, FIM cognitive sub scores, young age, and having a high school educational level (R2=0.603, p=0.012). Second, significant predictors of high functional capacity on FIM were a high score on the COPM performance subscale, a high MMSE score, and having a cerebral palsy (CP) diagnosis (R2=0.671, p<0.001). Conclusions: Evaluating functional performance and associated factors is important in rehabilitation to provide better services and improve health and QoL for individuals with IDD. This study suggested conducting future studies targeting integrated individuals with IDD who live with their families in the communities.

Keywords: functional performance, intellectual and developmental disabilty, cognitive abilities, motor abilities

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Authors: Bin Mohamed Ebrahim, Aminesh Singla, Henry Pleass

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Aim: There is an ongoing gap in renal transplantation between organs available for donation and recipients on the waiting list. Live donors with pre-existing or a history of renal calculi were thought to be a relative contraindication due to safety concerns for donors. We aim to review current literature assessing outcomes of donors who were found to have a history of renal calculi. Methods: Ovid and Embase were searched between 1960 to 2021 using key terms and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) – nephrolithiasis, renal stones, renal transplantation and renal graft. Articles included conference proceedings and journal articles and were not excluded based on patient numbers. Studies were excluded if the specific organ was not identified, duplicated reports found or if post-transplant outcomes were not recorded. Outcomes were donor’s renal function or renal calculi recurrence postoperatively. Results: Upon reviewing 344 articles, 14 manuscripts met inclusion criteria. A total of 152 live donors were identified as having pre-existing or with a history of renal calculi at pre-operative workup. The mean stone size was 2.6 4mm (1 – 16) with a mean follow-up duration of 31.8 months (1 – 96). Seven studies had both outcomes. None showed renal complications or stone recurrence. The remaining studies contained 2 out of 84 patients having recurrent nephrolithiasis. Conclusion: Data suggests minimal morbidity involved for live renal donors with a history of nephrolithiasis. This should encourage surgeons to continue recruiting such donors for kidney transplantation.

Keywords: renal transplantation, renal graft, nephrolithiasis, renal calculi, live donor

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Authors: Abdelrahman Abdelrahman, Lawrence Nip, Seun Ikotun, Iman Satar, Anur Miah

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Introduction: Incision and drainage of an abscess is a common procedure performed by the general surgeon. Pus swabs are often obtained routinely for MC&S.Our study aimed to investigate whether swabs taken at our local institution had any impact on the overall management plan for uncomplicated abscesses. Methods: We retrospectively assessed all patients presenting to University Hospital Lewisham with an abscess between October 2020 – April 2021. Exclusion criteria were recurrent abscesses, patients admitted with sepsis, known inflammatory bowel disease, immunocompromised, and those managed non-operatively. Results: We identified 131 patients who met the inclusion criteria. Two thirds were performed in theatre under general anaesthetic and the other one third under local. 63% of patients had a pus swab collected. Of these, 96% were not followed up by the requesting doctor, and there was no further patient contact. In the other 4%, the organisms cultured were flagged as atypical such as MRSA. In these cases, microbiology advice was that if the patient was clinically well and adequate drainage was achieved, then no furtherantibiotics were required. All patients were discharged before any microbiology results had come back with no subsequent change in the management plan. Average cost of pus swab = £10.10 – potentially cost saving of £1656.4 annually. Conclusion: Our study reveals that the majority of pus swabs taken from uncomplicated abscessesare not followed up by requesting doctor with no impact on the overall management plan. We, therefore, do not recommend the routine use of pus swabs for uncomplicated abscesses.

Keywords: pus swabs, uncomplated abscess, Pus MCS, follow up of uncomplicated abscess

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Authors: Assaad Ghazouani, Hedia Teraoui

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The purpose of this article is to try to see if the FDI actually contributes to technology transfer in Tunisia or are there other sources that can guarantee this transfer? The answer to this problem was gradual as we followed an approach using economic theory, the reality of Tunisia and econometric and statistical tools. We examined the relationship between technology transfer and FDI in Tunisia over a period of 40 years from 1970 to 2010. We estimated in two stages: first, a growth equation, then we have learned from this regression residue (proxy technology), secondly, we regressed on European FDI, exports of manufactures, imports of goods from the European Union in addition to other variables to test the robustness of the results and describing the level of infrastructure in the country. It follows from our study that technology transfer does not originate primarily and exclusively in the FDI and the latter is econometrically weakly with technology transfer and spill over effect of FDI does not seem to occur according to our results. However, the relationship between technology transfer and imports is negative and significant. Although this result is cons-intuitive, is recurrent in the literature of panel data. It has also given rise to intense debate on the microeconomic modelling as well as on the empirical applications. Technology transfer through trade or foreign investment has become a catalyst for growth recognized by numerous empirical studies in particular. However, the relationship technology transfer FDI is more complex than it appears. This complexity is due, primarily, but not exclusively to the close link between FDI and the characteristics of the host country. This is essentially the host's responsibility to establish general conditions, transparent and conducive to investment, and to strengthen human and institutional capacity necessary for foreign capital flows that can have real effects on growth.

Keywords: technology transfer, foreign direct investment, economics, finance

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Authors: Li-Ting Kung, Hui-Zhu Chen, Hsin-Tzu Lee, Wan-Yin Hsu

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Patients with spinal cord injury combined with diabetic nephropathy may under a lot of painful conditions due to complications related to the illness itself or treatments, such as recurrent pressure ulcers, autonomic and peripheral neuropathy, as well as dialysis, for long term. This case report illustrated the nursing experience of transferring a spine cord injure patient who received hemodialysis due to adverse lifestyle-induced diabetic nephropathy to the hospice ward. Nursing care was provided in this patient from July 25th to August 30th, 2015. The tool of 'Gordon’s 11-item functional health assessment' and clinical observation, interviews as well as physical examination were used as data collections. Based on results of health assessment as above, the patient’s health problems were identified as the following: impaired skin integrity, chronic pain, and hopeless. Besides to relieve the symptom of pain due to disease or the treatment of hemodialysis and provide wound care, the first author also played a role to assist the patient to achieve his goal of receiving the hospice palliative care. Finally, with much effort of nurses to communicate with medical teams between the surgical and hospice wards, the patient was transferred to the hospice ward to have fulfilled his last wish of having a good death. We hope this nursing experience can be applied to other similar cases in the future.

Keywords: diabetic nephropathy, hospice care, palliative care, spinal cord injury

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Authors: Nashed Atef Nashed Farag

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Introduction: Reporting adverse events following vaccination remains a challenge. WHO has mandated pharmacovigilance centers around the world to submit Adverse Events Following Immunization (AEFI) reports from different countries to a large electronic database of adverse drug event data called Vigibase. Despite sufficient information about AEFIs on Vigibase, they are not available to the general public. However, the WHO has an alternative website called VigiAccess, an open-access website that serves as an archive for reported adverse reactions and AEFIs. The aim of the study was to establish a reporting model for a number of commonly used vaccines in the VigiAccess system. Methods: On February 5, 2018, VigiAccess comprehensively searched for ESSI reports on the measles vaccine, oral polio vaccine (OPV), yellow fever vaccine, pneumococcal vaccine, rotavirus vaccine, meningococcal vaccine, tetanus vaccine, and tuberculosis vaccine (BCG). These are reports from all pharmacovigilance centers around the world since they joined the WHO Drug Monitoring Program. Results: After an extensive search, VigiAccess found 9,062 AEFIs from the measles vaccine, 185,829 AEFIs from the OPV vaccine, 24,577 AEFIs from the yellow fever vaccine, 317,208 AEFIs from the pneumococcal vaccine, 73,513 AEFIs from the rotavirus vaccine, and 145,447 AEFIs from meningococcal cal vaccine, 22,781 EI FI vaccines against tetanus and 35,556 BCG vaccines against AEFI. Conclusion: The study found that among the eight vaccines examined, pneumococcal vaccines were associated with the highest number of AEFIs, while measles vaccines were associated with the fewest AEFIs.

Keywords: surgical approach, anatomical approach, decompression, axillary nerve, quadrangular space adverse events following immunization, cameroon, COVID-19 vaccines, nOPV, ODK vaccines, adverse reactions, VigiAccess, adverse event reporting

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Authors: B. Lokuketagoda, M. Weerakoon, U. Madushan, A. N. Senaratne, K. Y. Abeywardena

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Ransomware has become a common threat in past few years and the recent threat reports show an increase of growth in Ransomware infections. Researchers have identified different variants of Ransomware families since 2015. Lack of knowledge of the user about the threat is a major concern. Ransomware detection methodologies are still growing through the industry. Email is the easiest method to send Ransomware to its victims. Uninformed users tend to click on links and attachments without much consideration assuming the emails are genuine. As a solution to this in this paper R-Killer Ransomware detection tool is introduced. Tool can be integrated with existing email services. The core detection Engine (CDE) discussed in the paper focuses on separating suspicious samples from emails and handling them until a decision is made regarding the suspicious mail. It has the capability of preventing execution of identified ransomware processes. On the other hand, Sandboxing and URL analyzing system has the capability of communication with public threat intelligence services to gather known threat intelligence. The R-Killer has its own mechanism developed in its Proactive Monitoring System (PMS) which can monitor the processes created by downloaded email attachments and identify potential Ransomware activities. R-killer is capable of gathering threat intelligence without exposing the user’s data to public threat intelligence services, hence protecting the confidentiality of user data.

Keywords: ransomware, deep learning, recurrent neural networks, email, core detection engine

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Authors: Lindsay Fink, Sarha Smith-Moyo, Leanne W. Charlesworth

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In recent years, the number of individuals experiencing homelessness has increased in the United States. This paper analyzes 2019 data from 16 different emergency shelters in Monroe County, located in Upstate New York. The data were collected through the County’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), and individuals were de-identified and de-duplicated for analysis. The purpose of this study is to explore the basic characteristics of the homeless population in Monroe County, and the dynamics of shelter use. The results of this study showed gender as a significant factor when analyzing the relationship between demographic variables and recorded reasons for shelter entry. Results also indicated that age and ethnicity did not significantly influence odds of re-entering a shelter, but did significantly influence reasons for shelter entry. Overall, the most common recorded cause of shelter entry in 2019 in the examined county was eviction by primary tenant. Recommendations to better address recurrent shelter entry and potential chronic homelessness include more consideration for the diversity existing within the homeless population, and the dynamics leading to shelter stays, including enhanced funding and training for shelter staff, as well as expanded access to permanent supportive housing programs.

Keywords: chronic homelessness, homeless shelter stays, permanent supportive housing, shelter population dynamics

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Authors: Naim Izet Kajtazi

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Context: Frequently, the cause of raised intracranial pressure remains unresolved and rarely is related to spinal tumors, moreover less to spinal medulloblastoma without primary brain focus. Process: An 18-year-old woman had a 3-month history of headaches and impaired vision. Neurological examination revealed bilateral sixth cranial nerve palsies with bilateral papilloedema of grade III. No focal brain or spine lesion was found on imaging. Consecutive lumbar punctures showed high opening pressure and subsequent increasing protein level. The meningeal biopsy was negative. At one point, she developed an increasing headache, vomiting and back pain. Spine MRI showed diffuse nodular leptomeningeal enhancement with the largest nodule at T6–T7. Malignant cells were detected in cerebrospinal fluid. She underwent laminectomy with excisional biopsy, and pathology showed medulloblastoma WHO grade IV. Outcome: She was treated with chemotherapy and craniospinal irradiation and made a good recovery. Relevance: Primary spinal leptomeningeal medulloblastoma is extremely rare, especially without primary brain focus, but may cause increased intracranial pressure, even in the early microscopic phases, and it should be considered in the differential diagnosis if conventional and aggressive treatment of idiopathic intracranial hypertension fails. We assume that arachnoiditis from tumor seeding caused increased intracranial pressure. Appropriate neurosurgical intervention and surgical biopsy are mandated if a suspicious lesion is detected. Consider proper rescreening of the whole neuroaxis in refractory cases of intracranial hypertension.

Keywords: CNS infection, IIH, headache, primary spinal leptomeningeal medulloblastoma

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Authors: Sanjeev K. Singh, Maloy B. Mandal, Revand R.

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The physiology of baroreceptors and chemoreceptors present in large blood vessels of the heart is well known in regulation of cardiorespiratory functions. Since large blood vessels and peripheral blood vessels are of same mesodermal origin, therefore, involvement of the latter in regulation of cardiorespiratory system is expected. Role of perivascular nerves in mediating cardiorespiratory alterations produced after intra-arterial injection of a nociceptive agent (bradykinin) was examined in urethane anesthetized male rats. Respiratory frequency, blood pressure, and heart rate were recorded for 30 min after the retrograde injection of bradykinin/saline in the femoral artery. In addition, paw edema was determined and water content was expressed as percentage of wet weight. Injection of bradykinin produced immediate tachypnoeic, hypotensive and bradycardiac responses of shorter latency (5-8 s) favoring the neural mechanisms involved in it. Injection of equi-volume of saline did not produce any responses and served as time matched control. Paw edema was observed in the ipsilateral hind limb. Pretreatment with diclofenac sodium significantly attenuated the bradykinin-induced responses and also blocked the paw edema. Ipsilateral femoral and sciatic nerve sectioning attenuated bradykinin-induced responses significantly indicating the origin of responses from the local vascular bed. Administration of bradykinin in the segment of an artery produced reflex cardiorespiratory changes by stimulating the perivascular nociceptors involving prostaglandins. This is a novel study exhibiting the role of peripheral blood vessels in regulation of cardiorespiratory system.

Keywords: vasosensory reflex, cardiorespiratory changes, nociceptive agent, bradykinin, VR1 receptors

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Authors: Milagros Jaén-Vargas, Javier García Martínez, Karla Miriam Reyes Leiva, María Fernanda Trujillo-Guerrero, Francisco Fernandes, Sérgio Barroso Gonçalves, Miguel Tavares Silva, Daniel Simões Lopes, José Javier Serrano Olmedo

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Human Activity Recognition (HAR) is having a growing impact in creating new applications and is responsible for emerging new technologies. Also, the use of wearable sensors is an important key to exploring the human body's behavior when performing activities. Hence, the use of these dispositive is less invasive and the person is more comfortable. In this study, a database that includes three activities is used. The activities were acquired from inertial measurement unit sensors (IMU) and motion capture systems (MOCAP). The main objective is differentiating the performance from four Deep Learning (DL) models: Deep Neural Network (DNN), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and hybrid model Convolutional Neural Network-Long Short-Term Memory (CNN-LSTM), when considering acceleration, velocity and position and evaluate if integrating the IMU acceleration to obtain velocity and position represent an increment in performance when it works as input to the DL models. Moreover, compared with the same type of data provided by the MOCAP system. Despite the acceleration data is cleaned when integrating, results show a minimal increase in accuracy for the integrated signals.

Keywords: HAR, IMU, MOCAP, acceleration, velocity, position, feature maps

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Authors: Jingjie Li, Wenjie Hu

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Phraseological units in academic English texts have been a central focus in recent corpus linguistic research. A wide variety of phraseological units have been explored, including collocations, chunks, lexical bundles, patterns, semantic sequences, etc. This paper describes a special category of clause-level phraseological units, namely, Characteristic Sentence Stems (CSSs), with a view to describing their defining criteria and extraction method. CSSs are contiguous lexico-grammatical sequences which contain a subject-predicate structure and which are frame expressions characteristic of academic writing. The extraction of CSSs consists of six steps: Part-of-speech tagging, n-gram segmentation, structure identification, significance of occurrence calculation, text range calculation, and overlapping sequence reduction. Significance of occurrence calculation is the crux of this study. It includes the computing of both the internal association and the boundary independence of a CSS and tests the occurring significance of the CSS from both inside and outside perspectives. A new normalization algorithm is also introduced into the calculation of LocalMaxs for reducing overlapping sequences. It is argued that many sentence stems are so recurrent in academic texts that the most typical of them have become the habitual ways of making meaning in academic writing. Therefore, studies of CSSs could have potential implications and reference value for academic discourse analysis, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teaching and writing.

Keywords: characteristic sentence stem, extraction method, phraseological unit, the statistical measure

Procedia PDF Downloads 143