Search results for: efficient score function

Authors: Sultan Ayoub Meo

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Environmental pollution is a highly challenging global concern of the 21st century and is a major cause of various communicable and non-communicable diseases. We investigate the impact of air pollution on "lung function, fractional exhaled nitric oxide, and cognitive function"in a group of one hundred young students studying in a traffic-polluted school. The students wereselected based on their age, gender, height, weight, and ethnicity. After the clinical history, one hundred students were recruited from the schoolnear and away from the polluted areas. The lung and cognitive functions were recorded. The results revealed that lung and cognitive function parameters were reduced in groups of students studying in a school located in a traffic-polluted area compared to thosestudying in a schoolsituated away from the traffic-polluted area. Environmental pollution impairs students' lung and cognitive functions studying in schools located within traffic-polluted areas. The health officials and policymakers establish strategies to minimize environmental pollution and its allied health hazards. Prof. Sultan Ayoub Meo, MD, Ph.D Professor, Department of Physiology, College of Medicine, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia Email. [email protected] / [email protected]

Keywords: environmental pOllution, lung physiology, cognitive functions, air pollution

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Authors: Vijay Reena Durai, Krithica Srinivasan

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Introduction: The two fundamental skills involved in the growth and wellbeing of any child can be categorized into visual motor and perceptual skills. Visual stress is a disorder which is characterized by visual discomfort, blurred vision, misspelling words, skipping lines, letters bunching together. There is a need to understand the deficits in perceptual skills among children with visual stress. Aim: To estimate the association between visual stress and visual perceptual skills Objective: To compare visual perceptual skills of children with and without visual stress Methodology: Children between 8 to 15 years of age participated in this cross-sectional study. All children with monocular visual acuity better than or equal to 6/6 were included. Visual perceptual skills were measured using test for visual perceptual skills (TVPS) tool. Reading speed was measured with the chosen colored overlay using Wilkins reading chart and pattern glare score was estimated using a 3cpd gratings. Visual stress was defined as change in reading speed of greater than or equal to 10% and a pattern glare score of greater than or equal to 4. Results: 252 children participated in this study and the male: female ratio of 3:2. Majority of the children preferred Magenta (28%) and Yellow (25%) colored overlay for reading. There was a significant difference between the two groups (MD=1.24±0.6) (p<0.04, 95% CI 0.01-2.43) only in the sequential memory skills. The prevalence of visual stress in this group was found to be 31% (n=78). Binary logistic regression showed that odds ratio of having poor visual perceptual skills was OR: 2.85 (95% CI 1.08-7.49) among children with visual stress. Conclusion: Children with visual stress are found to have three times poorer visual perceptual skills than children without visual stress.

Keywords: visual stress, visual perceptual skills, colored overlay, pattern glare

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Authors: K. D. Candido, A. Lissounov, I. Knezevic, N. Knezevic

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Background: The most commonly performed pain procedures in the USA is Lumbar Epidural Steroid Injections (LESI). There are three main types of these procedures: transforaminal (TF), interlaminar (IL) and caudal injections. It is expected for TF injections to have better outcomes than IL injections, based on the recently published systematic review. The studies presented in that review used a midline IL approach, but those with parasagittal IL approach were not taken into consideration. Our aim is to emphasize the efficacy of the lateral parasagittal (paramedian) IL approach in this review. Methods: We included five studies in this systematic review, which compared Parasagittal-IL (PIL) with either Midline-IL (MIL) or TF LESI. Total of 296 patients who had undergone different types of LESI were observed across the five studies, and the average pain and functional improvements were calculated and compared among groups. Results: Pain and function improvements with PIL approach is superior on 12 months follow up to MIL approach (53.4% vs. 14.7%) and (55% vs. 27.7%), respectively. A 12 months follow-up results between PIL and TF shows a near equivalent effectiveness for pain (58.9% vs. 63.2%) and function improvement (47.3% vs. 48.1%). An average follow-up of 17.1 days have shown better short-term pain relief for PIL than TF approach (45.8% vs. 19.2%), respectively. Number of repeated injections is lower for PIL injections than MIL. Number of weeks between 1st and 2nd injections: PIL averaged 15.8 weeks and MIL averaged 9.7 weeks. Third LESI injection is more common in TF group (30%) than PIL group (18.8%). Conclusion: Higher complication rates are associated with TF injections for which FDA7 issued an official warning. We have recorded better outcomes in pain and function improvement of Parasagittal-IL LESI as compared to midline-IL injection, in the presented systematic review. Parasagittal and TF injections have equivalent efficacy in Pain and Function improvements thus we advocate for Parasagittal-IL approach consideration as an alternative for TF injections.

Keywords: parasagital approach, lumbar, back pain, epidural steroid injection

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Authors: Olga Kruzhkova, Irina Vorobyeva, Roman Porozov

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Vandalism is a common phenomenon, but its definition is still not clearly defined. In the public sense, vandalism is the blatant cases of pogroms in cemeteries, destruction of public places (regardless of whether these actions are authorized), damage to significant objects of culture and history (monuments, religious buildings). From a legal point of view, only such an act can be called vandalism, which is aimed at 'desecrating buildings or other structures, damaging property on public transport or in other public places'. The key here is the notion of public property that is being damaged. In addition, the principal is the semantics of messages, expressed in a kind of sign system (drawing, inscription, symbol), which initially threatens public order, the calmness of citizens, public morality. Because of this, the legal qualification of vandalism doesn’t include a sufficiently wide layer of environmental destructions that are common in modern urban space (graffiti and other damage to private property, broken shop windows, damage to entrances and elevator cabins), which in ordinary consciousness are seen as obvious facts of vandalism. At the same time, the understanding of vandalism from the position of psychology implies an appeal to the question of the limits of the activity of the subject of vandalism and his motivational basis. Also recently, the discourse on the positive meaning of some forms of vandalism (graffiti, street-art, etc.) has been activated. But there is no discussion of the role and significance of vandalism in public and individual life, although, like any socio-cultural and socio-psychological phenomenon, vandalism is not groundless and meaningless. Our aim of the study was to identify and describe the functions of vandalism as a socio-cultural and socio-psychological phenomenon of the life of the urban community, as well as personal determinants of its manifestations. The study was conducted in the spatial environment of the Russian megalopolis (Ekaterinburg) by photographing visual results of vandal acts (6217 photos) with subsequent trace-assessment and image content analysis, as well as diagnostics of personal characteristics and motivational basis of vandal activity of possible subjects of vandalism among youth. The results of the study allowed to identify the functions of vandalism at the socio-environmental and individual-subjective levels. The socio-environmental functions of vandalism include the signaling function, the function of preparing of social changes, the constructing function, and the function of managing public moods. The demonstrative-protest function, the response function, the refund function, and the self-expression function are assigned to the individual-subjective functions of vandalism. A two-dimensional model of vandal functions has been formed, where functions are distributed in the spaces 'construction reconstruction', 'emotional regulation/moral regulation'. It is noted that any function of vandal activity at the individual level becomes a kind of marker of 'points of tension' at the social and environmental level. Acknowledgment: The research was supported financially by Russian Science Foundation, (Project No. 17-18-01278).

Keywords: destruction, urban environment, vandal behavior, vandalism, vandalism functions

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Authors: K. Prasanth, S. Hafeezullah Khan, B. Haribalakrishnan, D. Arun, S. Jayapriya, S. Dhivya, N. Vijayarangan

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The main goal of our approach is to find the optimum positions for the sensor nodes, reinforcing the communications in points where certain lack of connectivity is found. Routing is the major problem in sensor network’s data transfer between nodes. We are going to provide an efficient routing technique to make data signal transfer to reach the base station soon without any interruption. Clustering and routing are the two important key factors to be considered in case of WSN. To carry out the communication from the nodes to their cluster head, we propose a parameterizable protocol so that the developer can indicate if the routing has to be sensitive to either the link quality of the nodes or the their battery levels.

Keywords: clusters, routing, wireless sensor networks, three phases, sensor networks

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Authors: Chrysoula Karathanasi, Senad Karavdic, Angela Odero, Michèle Baumann

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It is not only the economic determinants that impact on life conditions, but maintaining a good level of life satisfaction (LS) may also be an important challenge currently. In Luxembourg, university students receive financial aid from the government. They are then registered at the Centre for Documentation and Information on Higher Education (CEDIES). Luxembourg is built on migration with almost half its population consisting of foreigners. It is upon this basis that our research aims to analyze the associations with mental health factors (health satisfaction, psychological quality of life, worry), perceived financial situation, career attitudes (adaptability, optimism, knowledge, planning) and LS, for non-Luxembourgish and native postgraduate students. Between 2012 and 2013, postgraduates registered at CEDIES were contacted by post and asked to participate in an online survey with either the option of English or French. The study population comprised of 644 respondents. Our statistical analysis excluded: those born abroad who had Luxembourgish citizenship, or those born in Luxembourg who did not have citizenship. Two groups were formed one consisting 147 non-Luxembourgish and the other 284 natives. A single item measured LS (1=not at all satisfied to 10=very satisfied). Bivariate tests, correlations and multiple linear regression models were used in which only significant relationships (p<0.05) were integrated. Among the two groups no differences were found between LS indicators (7.8/10 non-Luxembourgish; 8.0/10 natives) as both were higher than the European indicator of 7.2/10 (for 25-34 years). In the case of non-Luxembourgish students, they were older than natives (29.3 years vs. 26.3 years) perceived their financial situation as more difficult, and a higher percentage of their parents had an education level higher than a Bachelor's degree (father 59.2% vs 44.6% for natives; mother 51.4% vs 33.7% for natives). In addition, the father’s education was related to the LS of postgraduates and the higher was the score, the greater was the contribution to LS. Whereas for native students, when their scores of health satisfaction and career optimism were higher, their LS’ score was higher. For both groups their LS was linked to mental health-related factors, perception of their financial situation, career optimism, adaptability and planning. The higher the psychological quality of life score was, the greater the LS of postgraduates’ was. Good health and positive attitudes related to the job market enhanced their LS indicator.

Keywords: career attributes, father's education level, life satisfaction, mental health

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Authors: Lokesh Varshney, R. K. Saket

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This paper presents reliability indices evaluation of the rotor core magnetization of the induction motor operated as a self-excited induction generator by using probability distribution approach and Monte Carlo simulation. Parallel capacitors with calculated minimum capacitive value across the terminals of the induction motor operating as a SEIG with unregulated shaft speed have been connected during the experimental study. A three phase, 4 poles, 50Hz, 5.5 hp, 12.3A, 230V induction motor coupled with DC Shunt Motor was tested in the electrical machine laboratory with variable reactive loads. Based on this experimental study, it is possible to choose a reliable induction machine operating as a SEIG for unregulated renewable energy application in remote area or where grid is not available. Failure density function, cumulative failure distribution function, survivor function, hazard model, probability of success and probability of failure for reliability evaluation of the three phase induction motor operating as a SEIG have been presented graphically in this paper.

Keywords: residual magnetism, magnetization curve, induction motor, self excited induction generator, probability distribution, Monte Carlo simulation

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Authors: Mohamed Amine Aiche, Elkhansa Yahia, Leila Mallem, Mohamed Salah Boulakoud

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Exposure to endocrine disrupting (ED) during life may cause long-term health effects, the population is exposed to chemicals present in air, water, food and in a variety of consumer and personal care products. Previous research indicates that a wide range of pesticides may act as endocrine disrupters. The azole fungicides propiconazole and propineb have been shown to react through several endocrine disrupting mechanisms, and to induce various endocrine disrupting effects. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of two fungicides; propiconazole and propineb tested separately and in combination, on liver function. The experimental was applied on male Wistar rats dosed orally with Propiconazole 60 mg/kg/day, Propineb 100 mg/kg/day and their mixture 30 mg Propiconazole/kg/day + 50 mg Propineb /kg/day for 4 weeks, for result, a significant increase in liver weights in both treated groups with propineb, propiconazole and their mixture by reference with controls group. Also, highly significant mean values of markers of liver function such as transaminases (ALT/AST) and the activity of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) in all treated groups. The antioxidant activity showed a significant decrease in the hepatic glutathione content (GSH) and glutathione peroxidase (GPX) in all treated groups.

Keywords: endocrine disrupting, pesticide mixture, propineb, propiconazole, liver, oxidative stress

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Authors: Magdalena Barbara Kaziuk, Waldemar Kosiba

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Background: Obesity, particularly abdominal type, lead to accelerated progress of atherosclerosis and thus affects the functioning of various human organs. Non-HDL cholesterol includes residual risk of the cardiovascular diseases which persists in patients after achieved recommended level of LDL cholesterol. The maintenance of normal body mass index plays a particularly important role in both the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. Materials and Methods: The study covered 96 patients (55 females, 42 males, age 66,9 +/-10,2 years). The nutritional status was determined with the Waist to Height Ratio (WHtR) and the Waist to Hip Ratio (WHR). A function of the kidney was evaluated by calculating the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) using the MDRD formula. Non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-HDL) is simply the difference between the total cholesterol concentration and the HDL cholesterol concentration. Results: The higher was level of non-HDL cholesterol, the lower eGFR had studied subjects (p<0.001). Significant correlation was found between higher WHtR and lower the eGFR (p=0.002). Also underweight (30% of patient) led to obtaining lower values of eGFR in subjects over 65 years old. The poorer nutrition the lower was glomerular filtration rate. Conclusions: Nutritional statuses of patients have a significant impact on the level of kidney function. Not only accumulated excess fat in the abdominal area, but also its deficiency affects the deterioration in renal filtration. Higher level of non-HDL not only raises the residual risk of the heart disease but also influences on kidney by worsening eGFR. Proper diet in connection with physical activity should lead to achieving good nutrition in these patients and protect their kidney function.

Keywords: nutrition, non-HDL cholesterol, glomerular filtration rate, lifestyle

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Authors: T. K. Tee, M. N. A. Azman, S. Mohamed, M. Muhammad, M. M. Mohamad, J. Md Yunos, M. H. Yee, W. Othman

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Buzan mind mapping is an efficient system of note-taking that makes revision a fun thing to do for students. Tony Buzan has been teaching children all over the world for the past thirty years and has proved that mind maps are the magic formula in the classroom for everyone. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the importance of Buzan mind mapping as a note-taking technique for the secondary school students. This paper also examines the mind mapping technique, advantages and disadvantages of hand-drawn mind maps. Samples of students’ mind maps were presented and discussed.

Keywords: Buzan mind mapping, note-taking technique, hand-drawn, mind maps

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Authors: Shuhua Lai, Kairui Chen

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In this paper, we present a fast and efficient mesh coarsening algorithm for 3D triangular meshes. Theis approach can be applied to very complex 3D meshes of arbitrary topology and with millions of vertices. The algorithm is based on the clustering of the input mesh elements, which divides the faces of an input mesh into a given number of clusters for clustering purpose by approximating the Centroidal Voronoi Tessellation of the input mesh. Once a clustering is achieved, it provides us an efficient way to construct uniform tessellations, and therefore leads to good coarsening of polygonal meshes. With proliferation of 3D scanners, this coarsening algorithm is particularly useful for reverse engineering applications of 3D models, which in many cases are dense, non-uniform, irregular and arbitrary topology. Examples demonstrating effectiveness of the new algorithm are also included in the paper.

Keywords: coarsening, mesh clustering, shape approximation, mesh simplification

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Authors: Yuchao Yao

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As two of the main characteristics of Chinese demographic trends, increasing divorce rates and decreasing fertility rates both shaped the population structure in the recent decade. Figuring out to what extent can be having a child make a difference in the divorce rate of a couple will not only draw a picture of Chinese families but also bring about a new perspective to evaluate the Chinese child-breeding policies. Based on China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) Data 2010-2018, this paper provides a systematic evaluation of how children influence a couple’s marital stability through a series of empirical models. Using survival analysis and propensity score matching (PSM) model, this paper finds that the number and age of children that a couple has mattered in consolidating marital relationship, and these effects vary little over time; during the last decade, newly having children can in fact decrease the possibility of divorce for Chinese couples; the such decreasing effect is largely due to the birth of a second child. As this is an inclusive attempt to study and compare not only the effects but also the causality of children on divorce risk in the last decade, the results of this research will do a good summary of the status quo of divorce in China. Furthermore, this paper provides implications for further reforming the current marriage and child-breeding policies.

Keywords: divorce risk, fertility, China, survival analysis, propensity score matching

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Authors: Jinlai Bian, Zailin Yang, Guanxixi Jiang, Xinzhu Li

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The problem of elastic wave propagation in inhomogeneous medium has always been a classic problem. Due to the frequent occurrence of earthquakes, many economic losses and casualties have been caused, therefore, to prevent earthquake damage to people and reduce damage, this paper studies the dynamic response around the circular inclusion in the whole space with inhomogeneous modulus, the inhomogeneity of the medium is reflected in the shear modulus of the medium with the spatial position, and the density is constant, this method can be used to solve the problem of the underground buried pipeline. Stress concentration phenomena are common in aerospace and earthquake engineering, and the dynamic stress concentration factor (DSCF) is one of the main factors leading to material damage, one of the important applications of the theory of elastic dynamics is to determine the stress concentration in the body with discontinuities such as cracks, holes, and inclusions. At present, the methods include wave function expansion method, integral transformation method, integral equation method and so on. Based on the complex function method, the Helmholtz equation with variable coefficients is standardized by using conformal transformation method and wave function expansion method, the displacement and stress fields in the whole space with circular inclusions are solved in the complex coordinate system, the unknown coefficients are solved by using boundary conditions, by comparing with the existing results, the correctness of this method is verified, based on the superiority of the complex variable function theory to the conformal transformation, this method can be extended to study the inclusion problem of arbitrary shapes. By solving the dynamic stress concentration factor around the inclusions, the influence of the inhomogeneous parameters of the medium and the wavenumber ratio of the inclusions to the matrix on the dynamic stress concentration factor is analyzed. The research results can provide some reference value for the evaluation of nondestructive testing (NDT), oil exploration, seismic monitoring, and soil-structure interaction.

Keywords: circular inclusions, complex variable function, dynamic stress concentration factor (DSCF), inhomogeneous medium

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Authors: Lai Tzu-Hsuan, Lai Jung-Nien, Lin Jaung-Geng, Kao Shung-Te, Hsuan-Kuang Jung

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Background: Whether acupuncture therapy contributes to preserving residual renal function (RRF) remains largely unknown. This case series evidenced the potential beneficial effects of acupuncture for preserving RRF in five patients with the end-stage renal disease under hemodialysis (HD) treatment. Participants: Five patients on HD receiving eight sessions of weekly 30-min interdialytic acupuncture (Inter-A) with residual urine volume (rUV) and residual glomerular filtration rate (rGFR) recorded once every two weeks were included for analysis. Outcomes: Changes in rUV and rGFR calculated using 24-hour urine collection data were analyzed to assess RRF. Variations in hemoglobin, urea Kt/V and serum albumin levels measured monthly were analyzed to evaluate HD adequacy. Results: After eight Inter-A sessions, mean (standard deviation (SD)) rUV and rGFR increased from 612 (184) ml/day and 1.48 (.94) ml/min/1.73 m2 at baseline to 803(289) ml/day and 2.04(1.17) ml/min/1.73m2 at 2- and 4-week follow-up, respectively. The mean percentage difference increased by 31% in rUV and 38% in rGFR. Routine measurements on HD adequacy also showed improvement. Conclusions: Acupuncture might be an optional add-on treatment for HD population with poor control of water; however, further well-designed controlled trials are warranted.

Keywords: end-stage renal disease, hemodialysis, acupuncture, residual renal function, residual urine volume

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Authors: Leila Momenzadeh, Alexander V. Evteev, Elena V. Levchenko, Tanvir Ahmed, Irina Belova, Graeme Murch

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In this work, the phonon thermal conductivity of f.c.c. Al is investigated in detail in the temperature range 100 – 900 K within the framework of equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations making use of the Green-Kubo formalism and one of the most reliable embedded-atom method potentials. It is found that the heat current auto-correlation function of the f.c.c. Al model demonstrates a two-stage temporal decay similar to the previously observed for f.c.c Cu model. After the first stage of decay, the heat current auto-correlation function of the f.c.c. Al model demonstrates a peak in the temperature range 100-800 K. The intensity of the peak decreases as the temperature increases. At 900 K, it transforms to a shoulder. To describe the observed two-stage decay of the heat current auto-correlation function of the f.c.c. Al model, we employ decomposition model recently developed for phonon-mediated thermal transport in a monoatomic lattice. We found that the electronic contribution to the total thermal conductivity of f.c.c. Al dominates over the whole studied temperature range. However, the phonon contribution to the total thermal conductivity of f.c.c. Al increases as temperature decreases. It is about 1.05% at 900 K and about 12.5% at 100 K.

Keywords: aluminum, gGreen-Kubo formalism, molecular dynamics, phonon thermal conductivity

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Authors: Wan Azuati Wan Omar, Selva Rani John Jasudass, Siti Rohaiza Md. Saad

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Introduction & objective: The objectives of this study were to assess patient’s knowledge of appropriate sublingual glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) use as well as to investigate how patients commonly store and carry their sublingual GTN tablets. Methodology: This was a cross-sectional survey, using a validated researcher-administered questionnaire. The study involved cardiac patients receiving sublingual GTN attending the outpatient and inpatient departments of Taiping Hospital, a non-academic public care hospital. The minimum calculated sample size was 92, but 100 patients were conveniently sampled. Respondents were interviewed on 3 areas, including demographic data, knowledge and use of sublingual GTN. Eight items were used to calculate each subject’s knowledge score and six items were used to calculate use score. Results: Of the 96 patients who consented to participate, majority (96.9%) were well aware of the indication of sublingual GTN. With regards to the mechanism of action of sublingual GTN, 73 (76%) patients did not know how the medication works. Majority of the patients (66.7%) knew about the proper storage of the tablet. In relation to the maximum number of sublingual GTN tablets that can be taken during each angina episode, 36.5% did not know that up to 3 tablets of sublingual GTN can be taken during each episode of angina. Fifty four (56.2%) patients were not aware that they need to replace sublingual GTN every 8 weeks after receiving the tablets. Majority (69.8%) of the patients demonstrated lack of knowledge with regards to the use of sublingual GTN as prevention of chest pain. Conclusion: Overall, patients’ knowledge regarding the self administration of sublingual GTN is still inadequate. The findings support the need for more frequent reinforcement of patient education, especially in the areas of preventive use, storage and drug stability.

Keywords: glyceryl trinitrate, knowledge, adherence, patient education

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Authors: Muna Tabuni

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The paper contains an investigation on the special properties of the zeros of the analytic representations of finite quantum systems. These zeros and their paths completely define the finite quantum system. The present paper studies the construction of the analytic representation from its zeros. The analytic functions of finite quantum systems are introduced. The zeros of the analytic theta functions and their paths have been studied. The analytic function f(z) have exactly d zeros. The analytic function has been constructed from its zeros.

Keywords: construction, analytic, representation, zeros

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Authors: Fatemeh Abdollahi, Munn-Sann Lye, Jamshid Yazdani Charati, Mehran Zarghami

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Background: The negative consequences of intimate partner violence (IPV) on children have not been studied extensively. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of different types of IPV and its association with children’s growth and developmental problems. Methods: In a descriptive-analytical study, 596 mothers of one-year-old children referred to the primary health centers in Gonbad-e- Kavoos city were recruited (2018). The data were collected using the World Health Organization Domestic Violence, Ages and Stages Questionnaire-12 and the socio-economic, obstetrics, demographic and anthropometric characteristics related questionnaire. BMI Z-Score was categorized into three grades; thin (Z<-2), normal (-2≤Z<1), and overweight-obese (Z≥1). The data were analyzed using descriptive analysis, chi-square test, and regression. Results: The prevalence of physical, psychological, and sexual IPV was 7.4%, 29.5%, and 2.4%, respectively. Most of the children were of normal weight at one-year-old (91.7%). Similarly, the prevalence of overweight and obese was 13.3% and 8%, respectively. 2% of children had developmental problems at age one. There was a significant relationship between the father’s education and occupation and IPV and children’s delay in growth, respectively. There was no significant difference between BMI Z-Score and developmental disabilities in the children in women exposed and not exposed to all types of IPV. Conclusions: The prevalence of psychological IPV was common. IPV and children’s growth problems were influenced by the father’s socio-economic status. Preventing psychological IPV as a forerunner of other types of IPV and improving the economic situation may help in the reduction of these difficulties.

Keywords: children, development, growth, intimate partner violence

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Authors: Laura Piedra-Munoz, Angeles Godoy-Duran, Emilio Galdeano-Gomez, Juan C. Perez-Mesa

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Spain is very sensitive to water management issues due to its climatic characteristics and the deficit of this resource in many areas of its territory. This study examines the characteristics of the family farms that are more efficient in the use of water, focusing on a semi-arid area located in Almeria, southeast of Spain. In the case of irrigated agriculture, water usage efficiency usually indicates water productivity in terms of yield (kg/m³), or in economic terms (euros/m³). These two water usage indicators were considered to analyse water usage efficiency according to other studies on water efficiency in the horticultural area under analysis. This work also takes into account other water usage characteristics such as water supplied, innovative irrigation practices, water-efficient technology, and water-saving practices. The results show that the most water efficient farms have technical advisors and use irrigation on demand, that measures the water needs of the crops and are considered the most technological irrigation system. These farms are more technological and less labor intensive. They are also aware of water scarcity and the need to conserve the environment. This approach allow managers to identify the principal factors and best practices related to water efficiency in order to promote and implement them in inefficient farms and promote sustainability.

Keywords: cluster analysis, family farms, Spain, sustainability, water-use efficiency

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Authors: Bechir Hbibi, Lamine Mili

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Understanding the condition of comatose patients can be difficult, but it is crucial to their optimal treatment. Consequently, numerous scoring systems have been developed around the world to categorize patient states based on physiological assessments. Although validated and widely adopted by medical communities, these scores still present numerous limitations and obstacles. Even with the addition of additional tests and extensions, these scoring systems have not been able to overcome certain limitations, and it appears unlikely that they will be able to do so in the future. On the other hand, physiological tests are not the only way to extract ideas about comatose patients. EEG signal analysis has helped extensively to understand the human brain and human consciousness and has been used by researchers in the classification of different levels of disease. The use of EEG in the ICU has become an urgent matter in several cases and has been recommended by medical organizations. In this field, the EEG is used to investigate epilepsy, dementia, brain injuries, and many other neurological disorders. It has recently also been used to detect pain activity in some regions of the brain, for the detection of stress levels, and to evaluate sleep quality. In our recent findings, our aim was to use multifractal analysis, a very successful method of handling multifractal signals and feature extraction, to establish a state of awareness scale for comatose patients based on their electrical brain activity. The results show that this score could be instantaneous and could overcome many limitations with which the physiological scales stock. On the contrary, multifractal analysis stands out as a highly effective tool for characterizing non-stationary and self-similar signals. It demonstrates strong performance in extracting the properties of fractal and multifractal data, including signals and images. As such, we leverage this method, along with other features derived from EEG signal recordings from comatose patients, to develop a scale. This scale aims to accurately depict the vigilance state of patients in intensive care units and to address many of the limitations inherent in physiological scales such as the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) and the FOUR score. The results of applying version V0 of this approach to 30 patients with known GCS showed that the EEG-based score similarly describes the states of vigilance but distinguishes between the states of 8 sedated patients where the GCS could not be applied. Therefore, our approach could show promising results with patients with disabilities, injected with painkillers, and other categories where physiological scores could not be applied.

Keywords: coma, vigilance state, EEG, multifractal analysis, feature extraction

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Authors: Hamida Qumber Ali, Waseem Muhammad Arain, Shama Siddiqui, Sayeed Ghani

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We present an implementing of RMAC in TinyOS 1.x. RMAC is a cross layer and Duty-cycle MAC protocols that was proposed to provide energy efficient transmission services for wireless sensor networks. The protocol has a unique and efficient packet transmission scheduling mechanism that enables it to overcome delivery latency and overcome traffic congestion. Design details and implementation challenges are divulged. Experiments are conducted to show the correctness of our implementation with numerous assumptions. Simulations are performed to compare the performance of RMAC and SMAC. Our results show that RMAC outperforms SMAC in energy efficiency and delay.

Keywords: MAC protocol, performance, RMAC, wireless sensor networks

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Authors: Shafiullah Soomro

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Active contour is one of the image segmentation techniques and its goal is to capture required object boundaries within an image. In this paper, we propose a novel image segmentation method by using an active contour method based on anisotropic diffusion feature enhancement technique. The traditional active contour methods use only pixel information to perform segmentation, which produces inaccurate results when an image has some noise or complex background. We use Perona and Malik diffusion scheme for feature enhancement, which sharpens the object boundaries and blurs the background variations. Our main contribution is the formulation of a new SPF (signed pressure force) function, which uses global intensity information across the regions. By minimizing an energy function using partial differential framework the proposed method captures semantically meaningful boundaries instead of catching uninterested regions. Finally, we use a Gaussian kernel which eliminates the problem of reinitialization in level set function. We use several synthetic and real images from different modalities to validate the performance of the proposed method. In the experimental section, we have found the proposed method performance is better qualitatively and quantitatively and yield results with higher accuracy compared to other state-of-the-art methods.

Keywords: active contours, anisotropic diffusion, level-set, partial differential equations

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Authors: Sifat Rahman Ahona, Rifat Tasnim, Naima Hassan

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Data aggregation is a helpful technique for reducing the data communication overhead in wireless sensor network. One of the important tasks of data aggregation is positioning of the aggregator points. There are a lot of works done on data aggregation. But, efficient positioning of the aggregators points is not focused so much. In this paper, authors are focusing on the positioning or the placement of the aggregation points in wireless sensor network. Authors proposed an algorithm to select the aggregators positions for a scenario where aggregator nodes are more powerful than sensor nodes.

Keywords: aggregation point, data communication, data aggregation, wireless sensor network

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Authors: Abdullah Almilaibary, Jeremy Jolley, Mark Hayter

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Background: Despite recent progress in enhancing the accessibility of HIV-related health services worldwide, opportunities to diagnose patients are often missed due to genuine barriers at different levels. The aim of the study is to explore the factors that affect the utilization of HIV testing services by young people aged 17-25 in Saudi Arabia. Methods: A non-experimental descriptive cross-sectional design was used to predict factors that influenced HIV testing among Umm- Al Qura University students aged 17-25 years. A newly developed self-completed online questionnaire was used and the study sample was drawn using a convenience sampling technique. The questionnaire consisted of 52 items divided into three scales: 12 items for HIV/AIDS-related knowledge, 3 items for risk perception, and 37 items for attitudes toward HIV testing. Five experts in the field of HIV/AIDS validated the contents of the questionnaire and agreed that the items included were related to the construct being measured. The reliability of the questionnaire was also assessed using a test/re-test strategy with 27 participants recruited from the population under study. The reliability assessment revealed that the questionnaire was consistent as Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.80 for HIV/ADS knowledge, 0.88 for risk perception and 0.78 for attitudes towards HIV testing. The data were collected between 14th of July and 14th of October 2014. Results: 394 participants completed the questionnaires: 116 (29.4%) male and 278 (70%) female. 50.5% of the participants were aged 20 to 22 years, 34.8% were 17-19 years and 14.7% were aged between 23-25 years; about 93% of the participants were single. Only 20 (6%) participants had previously been tested for HIV. The main reasons for not being tested for HIV were: exposure to HIV was considered unlikely (48%), HIV test was not offered (36%) and unawareness of HIV testing centres (16%). On HIV/AIDS-related knowledge, the male participants scored higher than the females as the mean score for males was (M = 6.4, SD = 2.4) while for females it was (M 5.7, SD 2.5). In terms of risk perception, female participants appeared to have lower levels of risk perception than male participants, with the mean score for males being (M 11.7, SD 2.5) and (M 10.5, SD 2.4) for females. The female participants showed slightly more positive attitudes towards HIV testing than male participants: the mean score for males was (M = 108.14, SD = 17.9) and was (M = 111.32, SD = 17.3) for females. Conclusions: The data reveal that misconceptions about HIV/AIDS in Saudi Arabia are still a challenge. Although the attitudes towards HIV testing were reasonably positive, the utilization of the HIV test was low. Thus, tailoring HIV/AIDS preventive strategies in Saudi Arabia should focus on the needs of young people and other high risk groups in the country.

Keywords: attitude toward hiv testing, hiv testing, hiv/aids related knowledge, risk perception

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Authors: E. Yeşil, M. Özgök, M. Özdemir, B. Köse

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The aim of the present study was to compare nutritional status, tendency of depression and orthorexia nervosa in vegan, vegetarian and omnivorous. The sample consisted of 150 individuals (126 women, 24 men) who agreed to participate in the study between February and May of the year 2018. Fifty vegan, fifty vegetarian and fifty omnivore diet pattern were compared. In the first part, each participant was interviewed using a structured questionnaire to obtain demographic information about education, occupation and health conditions. In the second part Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was used. In the third part ORTO-11 was used. In the fourth part, 24 Hours Dietary Record was used in order to determine the nutritional status of individuals. The vegans and vegetarians were interviewed about their diets. The mean body mass index of the vegan, vegetarian and omnivore were, 21,24 ± 3,25; 22,2 ± 4,1 and 22,8 ± 4,3 respectively (p > 0,05). The daily energy intakes of the vegan, vegetarian and omnivore diet were 1792,57 ± 784,8 kcal; 1691,9 ± 742,2 kcal and 1697,9 ± 695,6 kcal (p > 0.05). The mean BDI of the vegan, vegetarian and omnivore diet were 6,2 ± 6,2, 9,8 ± 10,1 and 8,8 ± 8,1, respectively (p > 0,05). The mean ORTO-11 of the vegan, vegetarian and omnivore diet were 25,9 ± 4,2, 27,2 ± 5,9 and 26,4 ± 5,3 (p > 0,05). There was a statistically significant correlation between BDI and ORTO-11 in vegan diet group (p: 0,01 r: 0,333). There was a positive correlation between BMI and BDI in the vegetarian group (p: 0,01 r: 0,363). Also in the vegetarian group; there was a negative correlation between age and ORTO-11 (p: 0,01 r: -0,316). A statistically significant negative correlation was found between waist circumference and ORTO-11 (p: 0,05 r: -0,316) in the omnivore diet group. Also there was a negative correlation between age and BDI (p: 0,05 r: -0,338) in this group. As a conclusion, positive correlation was found between BDI and ORTO-11 score of vegan participants. There were no differences between three groups in BDI or ORTO-11 score.

Keywords: depression, orthorexia nervosa, vegan, vegetarian

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Authors: Evgeny E. Tereshatov

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Astatine-211 is considered one of the most promising radionuclides for Targeted Alpha Therapy. In order to develop reliable procedures to label biomolecules and utilize efficient delivery vehicle principles, one should understand the main chemical characteristics of astatine. The short half-life of 211At (~7.2 h) and absence of any stable isotopes of this element are limiting factors towards studying the behavior of astatine. Our team has developed a procedure for rapid and efficient isolation of astatine from irradiated bismuth material in nitric acid media based on 3-octanone and 1-octanol extraction chromatography resins. This process has been automated and it takes 20 min from the beginning of the target dissolution to the At-211 fraction elution. Our next step is to consider commercially available chromatography resins and their applicability in astatine purification in the same media. Results obtained along with the corresponding sorption mechanisms will be discussed.

Keywords: astatine-211, chromatography, automation, mechanism, radiopharmaceuticals

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Authors: Kevin V. Bui, Richard A. Claytor, Elizabeth M. Priolo, Weihui Li

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Oxygen deprivation masks operate through the use of restricting valves as a means to reduce respiratory flow where flow is inversely proportional to the resistance applied. This produces the same effect as higher altitudes where lower pressure leads to reduced respiratory flow. Both increased resistance with restricting valves and reduce the pressure of higher altitudes make breathing difficultier and force breathing muscles (diaphragm and intercostal muscles) working harder. The process exercises these muscles, improves their strength and results in overall better breathing efficiency. Currently, these oxygen deprivation masks are purely mechanical devices without any electronic sensor to monitor the breathing condition, thus not be able to provide feedback on the breathing effort nor to evaluate the lung function. That is part of the reason that these masks are mainly used for high-level athletes to mimic training in higher altitude conditions, not suitable for patients or customers. The design aims to improve the current method of oxygen deprivation mask to include a larger scope of patients and customers while providing quantitative biometric data that the current design lacks. This will be accomplished by integrating sensors into the mask’s breathing valves along with data acquisition and Bluetooth modules for signal processing and transmission. Early stages of the sensor mask will measure breathing rate as a function of changing the air pressure in the mask, with later iterations providing feedback on flow rate. Data regarding breathing rate will be prudent in determining whether training or therapy is improving breathing function and quantify this improvement.

Keywords: oxygen deprivation mask, lung function, spirometer, Bluetooth

Procedia PDF Downloads 219

Authors: Shreya Goyal

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The study aims to build user-friendly software to understand patient arrival patterns and compute the number of potential patients who will visit a particular health facility for a given period by using a machine learning algorithm. The underlying machine learning algorithm used in this study is the Support Vector Machine (SVM). Accurate prediction of patient arrival allows hospitals to operate more effectively, providing timely and efficient care while optimizing resources and improving patient experience. It allows for better allocation of staff, equipment, and other resources. If there's a projected surge in patients, additional staff or resources can be allocated to handle the influx, preventing bottlenecks or delays in care. Understanding patient arrival patterns can also help streamline processes to minimize waiting times for patients and ensure timely access to care for patients in need. Another big advantage of using this software is adhering to strict data protection regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States as the hospital will not have to share the data with any third party or upload it to the cloud because the software can read data locally from the machine. The data needs to be arranged in. a particular format and the software will be able to read the data and provide meaningful output. Using software that operates locally can facilitate compliance with these regulations by minimizing data exposure. Keeping patient data within the hospital's local systems reduces the risk of unauthorized access or breaches associated with transmitting data over networks or storing it in external servers. This can help maintain the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive patient information. Historical patient data is used in this study. The input variables used to train the model include patient age, time of day, day of the week, seasonal variations, and local events. The algorithm uses a Supervised learning method to optimize the objective function and find the global minima. The algorithm stores the values of the local minima after each iteration and at the end compares all the local minima to find the global minima. The strength of this study is the transfer function used to calculate the number of patients. The model has an output accuracy of >95%. The method proposed in this study could be used for better management planning of personnel and medical resources.

Keywords: machine learning, SVM, HIPAA, data

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Authors: Matthew Baucum

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With the increasing popularity of fMRI as an experimental method, psychology and neuroscience can greatly benefit from advanced techniques for summarizing and synthesizing large amounts of data from brain imaging studies. One promising avenue is automated meta-analyses, in which natural language processing methods are used to identify the brain regions consistently associated with certain semantic concepts (e.g. “social”, “reward’) across large corpora of studies. This study builds on this approach by demonstrating how, in fMRI meta-analyses, individual voxels can be treated as vectors in a semantic space and evaluated for their “proximity” to terms of interest. In this technique, a low-dimensional semantic space is built from brain imaging study texts, allowing words in each text to be represented as vectors (where words that frequently appear together are near each other in the semantic space). Consequently, each voxel in a brain mask can be represented as a normalized vector sum of all of the words in the studies that showed activation in that voxel. The entire brain mask can then be visualized in terms of each voxel’s proximity to a given term of interest (e.g., “vision”, “decision making”) or collection of terms (e.g., “theory of mind”, “social”, “agent”), as measured by the cosine similarity between the voxel’s vector and the term vector (or the average of multiple term vectors). Analysis can also proceed in the opposite direction, allowing word cloud visualizations of the nearest semantic neighbors for a given brain region. This approach allows for continuous, fine-grained metrics of voxel-term associations, and relies on state-of-the-art “open vocabulary” methods that go beyond mere word-counts. An analysis of over 11,000 neuroimaging studies from an existing meta-analytic fMRI database demonstrates that this technique can be used to recover known neural bases for multiple psychological functions, suggesting this method’s utility for efficient, high-level meta-analyses of localized brain function. While automated text analytic methods are no replacement for deliberate, manual meta-analyses, they seem to show promise for the efficient aggregation of large bodies of scientific knowledge, at least on a relatively general level.

Keywords: FMRI, machine learning, meta-analysis, text analysis

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Authors: Muhammet Baldan, Emel Timuçin

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Molecular solubility prediction plays a crucial role in various fields, such as drug discovery, environmental science, and material science. In this study, we compare the performance of five machine learning algorithms—linear regression, support vector machines (SVM), random forests, gradient boosting machines (GBM), and neural networks—for predicting molecular solubility using the AqSolDB dataset. The dataset consists of 9981 data points with their corresponding solubility values. MACCS keys (166 bits), RDKit properties (20 properties), and structural properties(3) features are extracted for every smile representation in the dataset. A total of 189 features were used for training and testing for every molecule. Each algorithm is trained on a subset of the dataset and evaluated using metrics accuracy scores. Additionally, computational time for training and testing is recorded to assess the efficiency of each algorithm. Our results demonstrate that random forest model outperformed other algorithms in terms of predictive accuracy, achieving an 0.93 accuracy score. Gradient boosting machines and neural networks also exhibit strong performance, closely followed by support vector machines. Linear regression, while simpler in nature, demonstrates competitive performance but with slightly higher errors compared to ensemble methods. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the performance of machine learning algorithms for molecular solubility prediction, highlighting the importance of algorithm selection in achieving accurate and efficient predictions in practical applications.

Keywords: random forest, machine learning, comparison, feature extraction

Procedia PDF Downloads 42