Search results for: rivers pattern

Authors: N. E. Gallagher, C. E. Neville, N. Lyner, J. Yarnell, C. C. Patterson, J. E. Gallacher, Y. Ben-Shlomo, A. Fehily, J. V. Woodside

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Hearing loss is highly prevalent in older people and can reduce quality of life substantially. Emerging research suggests that potentially modifiable risk factors, including risk factors previously related to cardiovascular disease risk, may be associated with a decreased or increased incidence of hearing loss. This has prompted investigation into the possibility that certain nutrients, foods or dietary patterns may also be associated with incidence of hearing loss. The aim of this study was to determine any associations between dietary patterns and hearing loss in men enrolled in the Caerphilly study. The Caerphilly prospective cohort study began in 1979-1983 with recruitment of 2512 men aged 45-59 years. Dietary data was collected using a self-administered, semi-quantitative, 56-item food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) at baseline (1979-1983), and 7-day weighed food intake (WI) in a 30% sub-sample, while pure-tone unaided audiometric threshold was assessed at 0.5, 1, 2 and 4 kHz, between 1984 and 1988. Principal components analysis (PCA) was carried out to determine a posteriori dietary patterns and multivariate linear and logistic regression models were used to examine associations with hearing level (pure tone average (PTA) of frequencies 0.5, 1, 2 and 4 kHz in decibels (dB)) for linear regression and with hearing loss (PTA>25dB) for logistic regression. Three dietary patterns were determined using PCA on the FFQ data- Traditional, Healthy, High sugar/Alcohol avoider. After adjustment for potential confounding factors, both linear and logistic regression analyses showed a significant and inverse association between the Healthy pattern and hearing loss (P<0.001) and linear regression analysis showed a significant association between the High sugar/Alcohol avoider pattern and hearing loss (P=0.04). Three similar dietary patterns were determined using PCA on the WI data- Traditional, Healthy, High sugar/Alcohol avoider. After adjustment for potential confounding factors, logistic regression analyses showed a significant and inverse association between the Healthy pattern and hearing loss (P=0.02) and a significant association between the Traditional pattern and hearing loss (P=0.04). A Healthy dietary pattern was found to be significantly inversely associated with hearing loss in middle-aged men in the Caerphilly study. Furthermore, a High sugar/Alcohol avoider pattern (FFQ) and a Traditional pattern (WI) were associated with poorer hearing levels. Consequently, the role of dietary factors in hearing loss remains to be fully established and warrants further investigation.

Keywords: ageing, diet, dietary patterns, hearing loss

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Authors: Martial Amou

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This study was carried out to assess the situation of households’ livelihood under a changing climate pattern in the Zio district of Togo, West Africa. The study examined three important aspects: (i) assessment of households’ livelihood situation under a changing climate pattern, (ii) farmers’ perception and understanding of local climate change, (iii) determinants of adaptation strategies undertaken in cropping pattern to climate change. To this end, secondary sources of data, and survey data collected from 235 farmers in four villages in the study area were used. Adapted conceptual framework from Sustainable Livelihood Framework of DFID, two steps Binary Logistic Regression Model and descriptive statistics were used in this study as methodological approaches. Based on Sustainable Livelihood Approach (SLA), various factors revolving around the livelihoods of the rural community were grouped into social, natural, physical, human, and financial capital. Thus, the study came up that households’ livelihood situation represented by the overall livelihood index in the study area (34%) is below the standard average households’ livelihood security index (50%). The natural capital was found as the poorest asset (13%) and this will severely affect the sustainability of livelihood in the long run. The result from descriptive statistics and the first step regression (selection model) indicated that most of the farmers in the study area have clear understanding of climate change even though they do not have any idea about greenhouse gases as the main cause behind the issue. From the second step regression (output model) result, education, farming experience, access to credit, access to extension services, cropland size, membership of a social group, distance to the nearest input market, were found to be the significant determinants of adaptation measures undertaken in cropping pattern by farmers in the study area. Based on the result of this study, recommendations are made to farmers, policy makers, institutions, and development service providers in order to better target interventions which build, promote or facilitate the adoption of adaptation measures with potential to build resilience to climate change and then improve rural livelihood.

Keywords: climate change, rural livelihood, cropping pattern, adaptation, Zio District

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Authors: Sakineh Abbasi Bourondaragh

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The aim of this research is effectiveness of integrative behavioral couples therapy on the communication patterns of couples applying for divorce. We selected (N=20) reports from Tabriz Family Judicial Complex (FJC) of couples which have conflict in their marital relationships. All of reports were released during 2012. First, they were randomly divided into two experimental and control groups and all the couples were given pre-test. They participated in twelve therapy sessions. Then the experimental group was exposed to an experimental intervention, but the control group was not received experimental intervention. The subjects were treated. At the end of treatment, a post-test was performed about subjects (each of two groups).The results showed that integrative behavioral couple therapy could increase and improve communication patterns. The findings also showed that integrative behavioral couples therapy had increased mutual constructive pattern and decreased demand/withdraw pattern and mutual avoidance pattern of CPQ sub-scale. Steady change indicator showed that the difference is clinically meaningful.

Keywords: integrative behavioral couple therapy, communication patterns, cognitive sciences, Family Judicial Complex

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Authors: Hermann Dornhackl, Konstantin Kadletz, Robert Luh, Paul Tavolato

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In this paper we describe the use of formal methods to model malware behaviour. The modelling of harmful behaviour rests upon syntactic structures that represent malicious procedures inside malware. The malicious activities are modelled by a formal grammar, where API calls’ components are the terminals and the set of API calls used in combination to achieve a goal are designated non-terminals. The combination of different non-terminals in various ways and tiers make up the attack vectors that are used by harmful software. Based on these syntactic structures a parser can be generated which takes execution traces as input for pattern recognition.

Keywords: malware behaviour, modelling, parsing, search, pattern matching

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Authors: Sung-Bok Choi, Hyun-Jun Shin, Hyoung-Kyu Song

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This paper proposes a single relay selection scheme in cooperative communication. Decode and forward scheme is considered when a source node wants to cooperate with a single relay for data transmission. To use the proposed single relay selection scheme, the source node make a little different pattern signal which is not complex pattern and broadcasts it. The proposed scheme does not require the channel state information between the source node and candidates of the relay during the relay selection. Therefore, it is able to be used in many fields.

Keywords: relay selection, cooperative communication, df, channel codes

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Authors: Yong-Sung Kim, Je-Seok Shin, Ho-Jun Jo, Jin-O Kim

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Home Energy Management System (HEMS) which makes the residential consumers contribute to the demand response is attracting attention in recent years. An aim of HEMS is to minimize their electricity cost by controlling the use of their appliances according to electricity price. The use of appliances in HEMS may be affected by some conditions such as external temperature and electricity price. Therefore, the user’s usage pattern of appliances should be modeled according to the external conditions, and the resultant usage pattern is related to the user’s comfortability on use of each appliances. This paper proposes a methodology to model the usage pattern based on the historical data with the copula function. Through copula function, the usage range of each appliance can be obtained and is able to satisfy the appropriate user’s comfort according to the external conditions for next day. Within the usage range, an optimal scheduling for appliances would be conducted so as to minimize an electricity cost with considering user’s comfort. Among the home appliance, electric heater (EH) is a representative appliance which is affected by the external temperature. In this paper, an optimal scheduling algorithm for an electric heater (EH) is addressed based on the method of branch and bound. As a result, scenarios for the EH usage are obtained according to user’s comfort levels and then the residential consumer would select the best scenario. The case study shows the effects of the proposed algorithm compared with the traditional operation of the EH, and it also represents impacts of the comfort level on the scheduling result.

Keywords: load scheduling, usage pattern, user’s comfort, copula function, branch and bound, electric heater

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Authors: Elragig Aiman, Dreiwi Hanan, Townley Stuart, Elmabrook Idriss

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In this paper, we reconsider the analysis of the Oregonator model. We highlight an error in this analysis which leads to an incorrect depiction of the parameter region in which diffusion driven instability is possible. We believe that the cause of the oversight is the complexity of stability analyses based on eigenvalues and the dependence on parameters of matrix minors appearing in stability calculations. We regenerate the parameter space where Turing patterns can be seen, and we use the common Lyapunov function (CLF) approach, which is numerically reliable, to further confirm the dependence of the results on diffusion coefficients intensities.

Keywords: diffusion driven instability, common Lyapunov function (CLF), turing pattern, positive-definite matrix

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Authors: Yangrae Cho, Jinseok Kim, Yongtae Park

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Mobile app service ecosystem has been abruptly emerged, explosively grown, and dynamically transformed. In contrast with product markets in which product sales directly cause increment in firm’s income, customer’s usage is less visible but more valuable in service market. Especially, the market situation with cutthroat competition in mobile app store makes securing and keeping of users as vital. Although a few service firms try to manage their apps’ usage patterns by fitting on S-curve or applying other forecasting techniques, the time series approaches based on past sequential data are subject to fundamental limitation in the market where customer’s attention is being moved unpredictably and dynamically. We therefore propose a new conceptual approach for detecting usage pattern of mobile app service with Hidden Markov Model (HMM) which is based on the dual stochastic structure and mainly used to clarify unpredictable and dynamic sequential patterns in voice recognition or stock forecasting. Our approach could be practically utilized for app service firms to manage their services’ lifecycles and academically expanded to other markets.

Keywords: mobile app service, usage pattern, Hidden Markov Model, pattern detection

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Authors: Igor Belykh

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Anti-scatter grids used in radiographic imaging for the contrast enhancement leave specific artifacts. Those artifacts may be visible or may cause Moiré effect when a digital image is resized on a diagnostic monitor. In this paper, we propose an automated grid artifacts detection and suppression algorithm which is still an actual problem. Grid artifacts detection is based on statistical approach in spatial domain. Grid artifacts suppression is based on Kaiser bandstop filter transfer function design and application avoiding ringing artifacts. Experimental results are discussed and concluded with description of advantages over existing approaches.

Keywords: grid, computed radiography, pattern recognition, image processing, filtering

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Authors: Rahul Magazine, Shobitha Rao

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The aim of this study was to study the prescribing pattern of drugs in patients with ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) managed at a tertiary care hospital. This observational study was conducted at Kasturba Hospital, Karnataka, India. Data of patients admitted from January 2010 to December 2012 was collected. A total of 150 patients of ARDS were included. Data included patients’ age, gender, clinical disorders precipitating ARDS, and prescribing pattern of drugs. The mean age of the study population was 42.92±13.91 years. 48% of patients were less than 40 years of age. Infection was the cause of ARDS in 81.3% of subjects. Antibiotics were prescribed in all the subjects and beta-lactams were prescribed in 97.3%. 41.3% were prescribed corticosteroids, 39.3% diuretics and 89.3% intravenous fluids. Infection was the commonest etiology for ARDS, and beta-lactams were the commonest antibiotics prescribed. Corticosteroids and diuretics were prescribed in a significant number of patients. Most of the patients received intravenous fluids.

Keywords: acute respiratory syndrome, beta lactams, corticosteroids, Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS)

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Authors: Anisuzzaman Khan, A. J. K. Masud

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Bangladesh is the largest delta in the world predominantly comprising large network of rives and wetlands. Wetlands in Bangladesh are represented by inland freshwater, estuarine brakishwater and tidal salt-water coastal wetlands. Bangladesh possesses enormous area of wetlands including rivers and streams, freshwater lakes and marshes, haors, baors, beels, water storage reservoirs, fish ponds, flooded cultivated fields and estuarine systems with extensive mangrove swamps. The past, present, and future of Bangladesh, and its people’s livelihoods are intimately connected to its relationship with water and wetlands. More than 90% of the country’s total area consists of alluvial plains, crisscrossed by a complex network of rivers and their tributaries. Floodplains, beels (low-lying depressions in the floodplain), haors (deep depression) and baors (oxbow lakes) represent the inland freshwater wetlands. Over a third of Bangladesh could be termed as wetlands, considering rivers, estuaries, mangroves, floodplains, beels, baors and haors. The country’s wetland ecosystems also offer critical habitats for globally significant biological diversity. Of these the deeply flooded basins of north-east Bangladesh, known as haors, are a habitat of wide range of wild flora and fauna unique to Bangladesh. The haor basin lies within the districts of Sylhet, Sunamgonj, Netrokona, Kishoregonj, Habigonj, Moulvibazar, and Brahmanbaria in the Northeast region of Bangladesh comprises the floodplains of the Meghna tributaries and is characterized by the presence of numerous large, deeply flooded depressions, known as haors. It covers about around 8,568 km2 area of Bangladesh. The topography of the region is steep at around foothills in the north and slopes becoming mild and milder gradually at downstream towards south. Haor is a great reservoir of aquatic biological resources and acts as the ecological safety net to the nature as well as to the dwellers of the haor. But in reality, these areas are considered as wastelands and to make these wastelands into a productive one, a one sided plan has been implementing since long. The programme is popularly known as Flood Control, Drainage and Irrigation (FCDI) which is mainly devoted to increase the monoculture rice production. However, haor ecosystem is a multiple-resource base which demands an integrated sustainable development approach. The ongoing management approach is biased to only rice production through FCDI. Thus this primitive mode of action is diminishing other resources having more economic potential ever thought.

Keywords: freshwater wetlands, biological diversity, biological resources, conservation and sustainable development

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Authors: Atsuko Okazaki, Jurg Ott

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Some genetic diseases (‘digenic traits’) are due to the interaction between two DNA variants. For example, certain forms of Retinitis Pigmentosa (a genetic form of blindness) occur in the presence of two mutant variants, one in the ROM1 gene and one in the RDS gene, while the occurrence of only one of these mutant variants leads to a completely normal phenotype. Detecting such digenic traits by genetic methods is difficult. A common approach to finding disease-causing variants is to compare 100,000s of variants between individuals with a trait (cases) and those without the trait (controls). Such genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have been very successful but hinge on genetic effects of single variants, that is, there should be a difference in allele or genotype frequencies between cases and controls at a disease-causing variant. Frequent pattern mining (FPM) methods offer an avenue at detecting digenic traits even in the absence of single-variant effects. The idea is to enumerate pairs of genotypes (genotype patterns) with each of the two genotypes originating from different variants that may be located at very different genomic positions. What is needed is for genotype patterns to be significantly more common in cases than in controls. Let Y = 2 refer to cases and Y = 1 to controls, with X denoting a specific genotype pattern. We are seeking association rules, ‘X → Y’, with high confidence, P(Y = 2|X), significantly higher than the proportion of cases, P(Y = 2) in the study. Clearly, generally available FPM methods are very suitable for detecting disease-associated genotype patterns. We use fpgrowth as the basic FPM algorithm and built a framework around it to enumerate high-frequency digenic genotype patterns and to evaluate their statistical significance by permutation analysis. Application to a published dataset on opioid dependence furnished results that could not be found with classical GWAS methodology. There were 143 cases and 153 healthy controls, each genotyped for 82 variants in eight genes of the opioid system. The aim was to find out whether any of these variants were disease-associated. The single-variant analysis did not lead to significant results. Application of our FPM implementation resulted in one significant (p < 0.01) genotype pattern with both genotypes in the pattern being heterozygous and originating from two variants on different chromosomes. This pattern occurred in 14 cases and none of the controls. Thus, the pattern seems quite specific to this form of substance abuse and is also rather predictive of disease. An algorithm called Multifactor Dimension Reduction (MDR) was developed some 20 years ago and has been in use in human genetics ever since. This and our algorithms share some similar properties, but they are also very different in other respects. The main difference seems to be that our algorithm focuses on patterns of genotypes while the main object of inference in MDR is the 3 × 3 table of genotypes at two variants.

Keywords: digenic traits, DNA variants, epistasis, statistical genetics

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Authors: Jaishree Ranganathan, MuthuPriya Shanmugakani Velsamy, Shamika Kulkarni, Angelina Tzacheva

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Emotions play an important role in everyday life. An-alyzing these emotions or feelings from social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and forums based on user comments and reviews plays an important role in various factors. Some of them include brand monitoring, marketing strategies, reputation, and competitor analysis. The opinions or sentiments mined from such data helps understand the current state of the user. It does not directly provide intuitive insights on what actions to be taken to benefit the end user or business. Actionable Pattern Mining method provides suggestions or actionable recommendations on what changes or actions need to be taken in order to benefit the end user. In this paper, we propose automatic classification of emotions in Twitter data using Recurrent Neural Network - Gated Recurrent Unit. We achieve training accuracy of 87.58% and validation accuracy of 86.16%. Also, we extract action rules with respect to the user emotion that helps to provide actionable suggestion.

Keywords: emotion mining, twitter, recurrent neural network, gated recurrent unit, actionable pattern mining

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Authors: M. N. Kadir, M. M. H. Oliver, T. Naher

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The study assesses the areal extent of riverine flood in the flood-prone area of Faridpur District of Bangladesh using hydrological model and Geographic Information System (GIS). In the context of preparing the inundation map, flood frequency analysis was carried out to assess flooding for different flood magnitudes. Flood inundation maps were prepared based on DEM, and discharge at the river using Delft-3D model. LANDSAT satellite images have been used to develop a land cover map in the study area. The land cover map was used for mapping of cropland area. By incorporating the inundation maps on the land cover map, agricultural damage was assessed. Present monetary values of crop damage were collected through field survey from actual flood of the study area. Two different inundation maps were produced from the model for the year 2000 and 2016. In the year 2000, the floods began in the month of July, whereas in the case of the year 2016 is started in August. Under both cases, most of the areas were found to have been flooded in the month of September followed by flood recession. In order to prepare the land cover maps, four categories of LCs were considered viz., cropland, water body, trees, and rivers. Among the 755791 acres area of Faridpur District, the croplands were categorized to be 334,589 acres, followed by water bodies (279900 acres), trees (101930 acres) and rivers 39372 (acres). Damage assessment data revealed that 40% of the total cropland area had been affected by the flood in the year 2000, whereas only 19% area was affected by the 2016 flood. The study concluded that September is the critical month for cropland protection since the highest flood is expected at this time of the year in Faridpur. The northwestern and the southwestern part of the district was categorized as most vulnerable to flooding.

Keywords: agricultural damage, Delft-3d, flood management, land cover map

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Authors: Shaojian Li

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The traditional Chinese patterns, as an integral part of Chinese culture, possess unique values in history, culture, and art. However, with the passage of time and societal changes, many of these traditional patterns are at risk of being lost, damaged, or forgotten. To undertake the digital preservation and protection of these traditional patterns, this paper will collect and organize images of traditional Chinese patterns. It will provide exhaustive and comprehensive semantic annotations, creating a resource library of traditional Chinese pattern images. This will support the digital preservation and application of traditional Chinese patterns.

Keywords: digitization of cultural heritage, traditional Chinese patterns, digital humanities, database construction

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Authors: Eman Ghoneim

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The Arabian deserts include some of the driest areas on Earth. Yet, its landforms reserved a record of past wet climates. During humid phases, the desert was green and contained permanent rivers, inland deltas and lakes. Some of their water would have seeped and replenished the groundwater aquifers. When the wet periods came to an end, several thousand years ago, the entire region transformed into an extended band of desert and its original fluvial surface was totally covered by windblown sand. In this work, radar and thermal infrared images were used to reveal numerous hidden surface/subsurface features. Radar long wavelength has the unique ability to penetrate surface dry sands and uncover buried subsurface terrain. Thermal infrared also proven to be capable of spotting cooler moist areas particularly in hot dry surfaces. Integrating Radarsat images and GIS revealed several previously unknown paleoriver and lake basins in the region. One of these systems, known as the Kufrah, is the largest yet identified river basin in the Eastern Sahara. This river basin, which straddles the border between Egypt and Libya, flowed north parallel to the adjacent Nile River with an extensive drainage area of 235,500 km2 and massive valley width of 30 km in some parts. This river was most probably served as a spillway for an overflow from Megalake Chad to the Mediterranean Sea and, thus, may have acted as a natural water corridor used by human ancestors to migrate northward across the Sahara. The Gilf-Kebir is another large paleoriver system located just east of Kufrah and emanates from the Gilf Plateau in Egypt. Both river systems terminate with vast inland deltas at the southern margin of the Great Sand Sea. The trends of their distributary channels indicate that both rivers drained to a topographic depression that was periodically occupied by a massive lake. During dry climates, the lake dried up and roofed by sand deposits, which is today forming the Great Sand Sea. The enormity of the lake basin provides explanation as to why continuous extraction of groundwater in this area is possible. A similar lake basin, delimited by former shorelines, was detected by radar space data just across the border of Sudan. This lake, called the Northern Darfur Megalake, has a massive size of 30,750 km2. These former lakes and rivers could potentially hold vast reservoirs of groundwater, oil and natural gas at depth. Similar to radar data, thermal infrared images were proven to be useful in detecting potential locations of subsurface water accumulation in desert regions. Analysis of both Aster and daily MODIS thermal channels reveal several subsurface cool moist patches in the sandy desert of the Arabian Peninsula. Analysis indicated that such evaporative cooling anomalies were resulted from the subsurface transmission of the Monsoonal rainfall from the mountains to the adjacent plain. Drilling a number of wells in several locations proved the presence of productive water aquifers confirming the validity of the used data and the adopted approaches for water exploration in dry regions.

Keywords: radarsat, SRTM, MODIS, thermal infrared, near-surface water, ancient rivers, desert, Sahara, Arabian peninsula

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Authors: Mohammad Javad Seddighi, Avar Almukhtar

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The occurrence of natural disasters, such as floods and earthquakes, can cause significant damage to heritage sites and surrounding areas. In Iran, the city of Bam was devastated by an earthquake in 2003, which had a major impact on the rivers and watercourses around the city. This study aims to investigate the environmental design techniques and sustainable hazard mitigation strategies that can be employed to preserve heritage sites in the face of natural disasters, using the Bam experience as a case study. The research employs a mixed-methods approach, combining both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods. The study begins with a comprehensive literature review of recent publications on environmental design techniques and sustainable hazard mitigation strategies in heritage conservation. This is followed by a field study of the rivers and watercourses around Bam, including the Adoori River (Talangoo) and other watercourses, to assess the current conditions and identify potential hazards. The data collected from the field study is analysed using statistical methods and GIS mapping techniques. The findings of this study reveal the importance of sustainable hazard mitigation strategies and environmental design techniques in preserving heritage sites during natural disasters. The study suggests that these techniques can be used to prevent the outbreak of another natural disaster in Bam and the surrounding areas. Specifically, the study recommends the establishment of a comprehensive early warning system, the creation of flood-resistant landscapes, and the use of eco-friendly building materials in the reconstruction of heritage sites. These findings contribute to the current knowledge of sustainable hazard mitigation and environmental design in heritage conservation.

Keywords: natural disasters, heritage conservation, sustainable hazard mitigation, environmental design, landscape architecture, flood management, disaster resilience

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Authors: Geno Paul S. Cumla, Jan Mariel M. Gentiles, M. Brenda Gajelan-Samson

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Eutrophication is a process where in there is a surplus of nutrients present in a lake or river. Harmful cyanobacteria, hypoxia, and primarily algae, which contain toxins, grow because of the excess nutrients. Algal blooms can cause fish kills, limiting the light penetration which reduces growth of aquatic organisms, causing die-offs of plants and produce conditions that are dangerous to aquatic and human life. The main cause for eutrophication is the presence of excessive amounts of phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N). Nitrogen is necessary for the production of the plant tissues and is usually used to synthesize proteins. Nitrate is a compound that contains nitrogen, and at elevated levels it can cause harmful effects. Excessive amounts of phosphorus, displaced through human activity, is the major cause of algae growth and as well as degraded water quality. To accomplish this study the Assessment of Soluble inorganic nitrogen (SIN), Assessment of Soluble reactive phosphate (SRP), Determination of Chlorophyll a (Chl-a) concentration, and Determination of Dominating Taxa were done. The study addresses the high probability of algal blooms in Maqueda Bay by assessing the biotic and abiotic factors of Antiao and Jiabong rivers. The data predicts the overgrowth of algae and to create awareness to prevent the event from taking place. The study assesses the adverse effects that could be prevented by understanding and controlling algae. This should predict future cases of algal blooms and allow government agencies which require data to create programs to prevent and assess these issues.

Keywords: eutrophication, chlorophyll a, nitrogen, phosphorus, red tide, Kjeldahl method, spectrophotometer, assessment of soluble inorganic nitrogen, SIN, assessment of soluble reactive phosphate, SRP

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Authors: Maryam Ghavam Sadri, Kimia Moiniafshari

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Objectives: The prevalence of Autism in the world has taken on a growing trend. Autism is a neuro-developmental disorder that is identified at the age of three. Studies have been shown that nutritional management can control nutritional deficiencies in Autism. This review study aimed to assess the role of nutritional management strategies for Autism in children has been made. Methods: This review study was accomplished by using the keywords related to the topic, 68 articles were found (2000-2015) and finally 15 articles with criteria such as including dietary pattern, nutritional deficiencies and Autism controlling were selected. Results: The studies showed that intake of vitamins D, E, and calcium because of restricted diet (casein and gluten free) in autistic children is less than typically developing children (TYP) (p value ≤ 0.001) and as a result of restrictions on the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, vitamin C and magnesium intake is less than TYP children (p value ≤ 0.001). Autistic children also get omega-3 less than TYP children. Studies have shown that food sources rich in omega-3 can improve behavioral indicators, especially in reducing hyperactivity (95% CI = -2.2 - 5.2). Zinc deficiency in these children leads to a high serum level of mercury, lead and cadmium. As a result of the repetitive dietary pattern, Sodium intake in autistic children is more than TYP children (p value < 0.001).Because of low food variety in autistic children, healthy eating index (HEI) is less than TYP children (p value = 0.008).Food selectivity in Autism due to repetitive and restricted dietary pattern and nutritional deficiencies. Conclusion: Because of restricted (casein and gluten free) and repetitive dietary pattern, the intake of some micronutrients are denied in autistic children. The nutritional strategy programs appear to help controlling of Autism.

Keywords: autism, food selectivity, nutrient intake, nutritional strategies

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Authors: Sidra Naeem, Ayesha Naeem, Sahar Rahim, Nadia Nawaz Qadri

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Citrus greening is a bacterial disease that causes considerable damage to citrus fruits worldwide. Efficient method for this disease detection must be carried out to minimize the production loss. This paper presents a pattern recognition system that comprises three stages for the detection of citrus greening from Orange leaves: segmentation, feature extraction and classification. Image segmentation is accomplished by adaptive thresholding. The feature extraction stage comprises of three visual descriptors i.e. shape, color and texture. From shape feature we have used asymmetry index, from color feature we have used histogram of Cb component from YCbCr domain and from texture feature we have used local binary pattern. Classification was done using support vector machines and k nearest neighbors. The best performances of the system is Accuracy = 88.02% and AUROC = 90.1% was achieved by automatic segmented images. Our experiments validate that: (1). Segmentation is an imperative preprocessing step for computer assisted diagnosis of citrus greening, and (2). The combination of shape, color and texture features form a complementary set towards the identification of citrus greening disease.

Keywords: citrus greening, pattern recognition, feature extraction, classification

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Authors: Ali Rabiee, Hessam Ghasemnejad

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Extensive experimental investigation on the effect of stitching pattern on tubular composite structures was conducted. The effect of stitching reinforcement through thickness on using glass flux yarn on energy absorption of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) was investigated under high speed loading conditions at axial loading. Keeping the mass of the structure at 125 grams and applying different pattern of stitching at various locations in theory enables better energy absorption, and also enables the control over the behaviour of force-crush distance curve. The study consists of simple non-stitch absorber comparison with single and multi-location stitching behaviour and its effect on energy absorption capabilities. The locations of reinforcements are 10 mm, 20 mm, 30 mm, 10-20 mm, 10-30 mm, 20-30 mm, 10-20-30 mm and 10-15-20-25-30-35 mm from the top of the specimen. The effect of through the thickness reinforcements has shown increase in energy absorption capabilities and crushing load. The significance of this is that as the stitching locations are closer, the crushing load increases and consequently energy absorption capabilities are also increased. The implementation of this idea would improve the mean force by applying stitching and controlling the behaviour of force-crush distance curve.

Keywords: through-thickness stitching, 3D enforcement​, energy absorption, tubular composite structures

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Authors: Seyed Mohammad Ali Zahedi

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This field experiment was conducted in Isfahan in 2011 in order to study the effect of plant density and planting pattern on growth, yield and quality of silage corn (SC 704) using a randomized complete block design with split plot layout and four replications. The main plot consisted of three planting patterns (60 and 75 cm single planting row and 75 cm double planting row referred to as 60S, 75S and 75T, respectively). The subplots consisted of four levels of plant densities (65000, 80000, 95000 and 110000 plants per hectare). Each subplot consisted of 7 rows, each with 10m length. Vegetative and reproductive characteristics of plants at silking and hard dough stages (when the plants were harvested for silage) were evaluated. Results of variance analysis showed that the effects of planting pattern and plant density were significant on leaf area per plant, leaf area index (at silking), plant height, stem diameter, dry weights of leaf, stem and ear in silking and harvest stages and on fresh and dry yield, dry matter percentage and crude protein percentage at harvest. There was no planting pattern × plant density interaction for these parameters. As row space increased from 60 cm with single planting to 75 cm with single planting, leaf area index and plant height increased, but leaf area per plant, stem diameter, dry weight of leaf, stem and ear, dry matter percentage, dry matter yield and crude protein percentage decreased. Dry matter yield reduced from 24.9 to 18.5 t/ha and crude protein percentage decreased from 6.11 to 5.60 percent. When the plant density increased from 65000 to 110000 plant per hectare, leaf area index, plant height, dry weight of leaf, stem and ear and dry matter yield increased from 19.2 to 23.3 t/ha, whereas leaf area per plant, stem diameter, dry matter percentage and crude protein percentage decreased from 6.30 to 5.25. The best results were obtained with 60 cm row distance with single planting and 110000 plants per hectare.

Keywords: silage corn, plant density, planting pattern, yield

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Authors: Sangeeta Dhamdhere, G. V. P. Rao

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Adolescent students need more energy, proteins, vitamins, and minerals because they grow to maturity in this age. Balanced diet plays important role in their wellbeing and health. The study conducted showed 48% students are not normal in their height and weight. 26% students found underweight, 18% overweight and 4% students found obese. The annual income group of underweight students was below 7 Lac and more than 90% students were staying at their home. The researcher has analysed the eating pattern of these students and concluded that there is need of awareness among the parents and students about balance diet and nutrition. The present research will help students improve their dietary habits and health, increase the number of attendees, and achieve academic excellence.

Keywords: balanced diet, nutrition, malnutrition, obesity, health education

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Authors: Bo Liu, Chi-Man Pun

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A novel technique for digital forgery detection by signal noise inconsistency is proposed in this paper. The forged area spliced from the other picture contains some features which may be inconsistent with the rest part of the image. Noise pattern and the level is a possible factor to reveal such inconsistency. To detect such noise discrepancies, the test picture is initially segmented into small pieces. The noise pattern and level of each segment are then estimated by using various filters. The noise features constructed in this step are utilized in energy-based graph cut to expose forged area in the final step. Experimental results show that our method provides a good illustration of regions with noise inconsistency in various scenarios.

Keywords: forgery detection, splicing forgery, noise estimation, noise

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Authors: Sajid Bin Doza

Abstract:

A town or a city contributes a lot to human mankind. City evolves memory, ambition, frustration and achievement. The city is something that offers life, as the character of the city is. A city is having confined image to the human being. Time place and matter generate this vive, city celebrates with its inhabitant, belongs and to care for each other. Apart from all these; although city and settlements are the contentious and changing phenomenon; the origin of the city in the very delta land started with unique and strategic sequences. Religious belief, topography, availability of resource and connection with commercial hub make the potential of the settlement. Ancient cities of Bengal are not the exception from these phenomenologies. From time immemorial; Bengal is enriched with numerous cities and notorious settlements. These cities and settlements were connected with other inland ports and Bengal became an important trade route, trailed by the Riverine connections. The delta land formation is valued for its geographic situation, consequences of this position; a new story or a new conception could be found in origin of an ancient city. However, the objective of this research is to understand the origin and spirit of the ancient city of Bengal, the research would also try to unfold the authentic and rational meaning of soul of the city, this research addresses the interest to elaborate the soul of the ancient sites of Riverine Delta. As rivers used to have the common character in this very landform; river supported community generated as well. River gives people wealth, sometimes fall us in sorrow. The river provides us commerce and trading. River gives us faith and religion. All these potentials have evolved from the Riverine excel. So the research would approach thoroughly to justify the riverine value as the soul for the ancient cities of Bengal. Cartographic information and illustration would be the preferred language for this research. Preferably, the historic mapping would be the unique folio of this study.

Keywords: memory of the city, riverine network, ancient cities, cartographic mapping, settlement pattern

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Authors: Janneth González, George Barreto, Ludis Morales, Angélica Sabogal

Abstract:

Sea anemone neurotoxins are peptides that interact with Na+ and K+ channels, resulting in specific alterations on their functions. Some of these neurotoxins (1ROO, 1BGK, 2K9E, 1BEI) are important for the treatment of nearly eighty autoimmune disorders due to their specificity for Kv1.3 channel. The aim of this study was to identify the common residues among these neurotoxins by computational methods, and establish whether there is a pattern useful for the future generation of a treatment for autoimmune diseases. Our results showed eight new key common residues between the studied neurotoxins interacting with a histidine ring and the selectivity filter of the receptor, thus showing a possible pattern of interaction. This knowledge may serve as an input for the design of more promising drugs for autoimmune treatments.

Keywords: neurotoxins, potassium channel, Kv1.3, computational methods, autoimmune diseases

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Authors: Aparna Saha, Tuhin Ahmed

Abstract:

West Bengal has a number of important rivers, each with its distinctive character and a story. Traditionally, cities have ‘divulged’ to rivers at the river edges and rivers have been an inseparable part of the urban experience. Considering the research aspect, the area is taken in Barrackpore, a small but important outgrowth of Kolkata Municipal Association, West Bengal. Barrackpore, at present, has ample inadequate public open spaces at the neighborhood level where people of different socio-cultural, economic, and religious backgrounds can come together and engage in various leisure activities, but there is no opportunity either, where people can learn about and explore the rich history of the settlement. Pertaining to these issues forms the backdrop of this research paper which has been conceptualized as a place from space that will bring people back to the river and increase community interactions and will also celebrate and commemorate towards the historical importance of the river and its edges. The entire precinct bordering the river represents the transition from pre-independence (Raj era) to Sepoy phase (Swaraj era), finally culminating into the Gandhian philosophy which is being projected into the already existing Gandhi Ghat. The ultimate aim of the paper entitled ‘Utsadhara- Rejuvenating the dead river edge into an urban activity space along the banks of river Hooghly’ is to create a socio-cultural space keeping the heritage identity intact through judicious use of the water body. Also, a balance is kept between the natural ecosystem and the cosmetic development of the surrounding open spaces. It can be duly achieved by the aforementioned methodology provided in the document, but mainly it would focus into preserving the historic ethnicity of the place by holding its character through various facts and figures as well as features. Most importantly the natural topography of the place is left intact. The second priority is given in terms of hierarchy of well connected public plazas, podiums where people from different socio-economic backgrounds irrespective of age and sex could socialize and reach towards venturing into a cordial relationship with one another. The third priority is to provide a platform for the common mass for showcasing their skills and talent through different art and craft forms which in turn would enhance their individual self and also the community as a whole through economic rise. Apart from this here some spaces are created in accordance to different age groups or class of people. The paper intends to see the river as a major multifunctional public space to attract people for different activities and re-establish the relationship of the river with the settlement. Hence, it is apprehended that the paper is not only intended to a simple riverfront conservation project but unlike others it is a place which is created for the people, by the people and of the people towards a holistic community development through a sustainable approach.

Keywords: holistic community development, public activity space, river-urban precinct, urban dead space

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Authors: H. Shafaattalab Dehghani, H. R. Zarei

Abstract:

The large karstic Bell spring with a discharge ranging between 250 and 5300 lit/ sec is one of the most important springs of Kermanshah Province. This spring supplies drinking water of Nodsheh City and its surrounding villages. The spring is located in the reservoir of Daryan Dam and its mouth would be submerged after impounding under a water column of about 110 m height. This paper has aimed to render an account of the karstification pattern around the spring under consideration with the intention of preventing Bell Spring from being submerged in Daryan Dam Reservoir. The studies comprise engineering geology and hydrogeology investigations. Some geotechnical activities included in these studies include geophysical studies, drilling, excavation of exploratory gallery and shaft and diving. The results depict that Bell is a single-conduit siphon spring with 4 m diameter and 85 m height that 32 m of the conduit is located below the spring outlet. To survive the spring, it was decided to plug the outlet and convey the water to upper elevations under the natural pressure of the aquifer. After plugging, water was successfully conveyed to elevation 837 meter above sea level (about 120 m from the outlet) under the natural pressure of the aquifer. This signifies the accuracy of the studies done and proper recognition of the karstification pattern of Bell Spring. This is a unique experience in karst problems in Iran.

Keywords: bell spring, Karst, Daryan Dam, submerged

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Authors: Amanina Iymia Jeffree, Reena Thriumani, Mohammad Iqbal Omar, Ammar Zakaria, Yumi Zuhanis Has-Yun Hashim, Ali Yeon Md Shakaff

Abstract:

Metabolite profiling is a strategy to be approached in the pattern recognition method focused on three types of cancer cell line that driving the most to death specifically lung, breast, and colon cancer. The purpose of this study was to discriminate the VOCs pattern among cancerous and control group based on metabolite profiling. The sampling was executed utilizing the cell culture technique. All culture flasks were incubated till 72 hours and data collection started after 24 hours. Every running sample took 24 minutes to be completed accordingly. The comparative metabolite patterns were identified by the implementation of headspace-solid phase micro-extraction (HS-SPME) sampling coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GCMS). The optimizations of the main experimental variables such as oven temperature and time were evaluated by response surface methodology (RSM) to get the optimal condition. Volatiles were acknowledged through the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) mass spectral database and retention time libraries. To improve the reliability of significance, it is of crucial importance to eliminate background noise which data from 3rd minutes to 17th minutes were selected for statistical analysis. Targeted metabolites, of which were annotated as known compounds with the peak area greater than 0.5 percent were highlighted and subsequently treated statistically. Volatiles produced contain hundreds to thousands of compounds; therefore, it will be optimized by chemometric analysis, such as principal component analysis (PCA) as a preliminary analysis before subjected to a pattern classifier for identification of VOC samples. The volatile organic compound profiling has shown to be significantly distinguished among cancerous and control group based on metabolite profiling.

Keywords: in vitro cancer cell line, metabolite profiling, pattern recognition, volatile organic compounds

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Authors: G. S. Sumanasekara, A. Balasuriya

Abstract:

Introduction: In Sri Lanka studies reveal higher trend in prevalence of diabetes. The office employees have sedentary life style and their eating patterns changed due to nutritional transition. Further overall, urban and rural pre diabetes is also increasing. Objectives - Study the general food pattern of office employees and its relation to overweight/obesity and prevalence of diabetes among them. Method: The data was collected from office employees between 30-60 years (n-400).Data analyzed using SPSS 16 version.The Study design was a descriptive cross sectional study. The study setting was Ministry of Economic Development. Anthropometric measurements and blood glucose assessed by trained nurses. Dietary pattern was studied through a food frequency questionairre thereby calculated daily nutrient intakes. Results: Mean age of office employees were 38.98 SD (7.033) CI=95%) and 245 females (61.2%) 155 males (38.8 %) ,Nationality includes Sinhala (67.5%), Tamil(20%), and Muslims (12.5%).Owerweight(7,1.8%), obese male(36,9%), obese female(66,16%)/ diabetes/obese(18,4.5%) out of 127(31.8%) who were above the normal BMI whereas 273(68.2) were within the normal. Mean BMI was 24.1593.Mean Blood sugar level was 104.646,SD(16.018).12% consume tobacco products,17.8 consumed alcohol.15.8% had nutrition training. Two main dietary patterns identified who were vegetarians and non vegetarians .Mean energy intake 1727.1, (SD 4.97), Mean protein consumption(11.33, SD 1.811), Mean fat consumption(24.07, SD 4.131),Mean CHO consumption (64.56, SD 4.54), Mean Fibre (30.05, SD 17.9), Mean cholesterol(16.85, SD 17.22), Energy intake was higher in non vegetarians and larger propotion of energy derived from proteins , and fat. Their carbohydrate and cholesterol intake was also higher. Tamils were mostly vegetarians. Mainly BMI were within normal range(18.5-23.5) whereas Muslims who had higher energy intakes showed BMI above the normal. Conclusion: Two distinct dietary patterns identified. Different ethnic groups consume different diets with different nutrient composition. Dietary pattern has a relation to overweight. Overweight related to high blood glucose levels but some overweight subjects do not show any relation.

Keywords: obesity, overweight, diabetes, dietary pattern, nutrition, BMI, non communicable disease

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