Search results for: classification rule

Authors: Christopher B. Obida, George A. Blackburn, James D. Whyatt, Kirk T. Semple

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In many regions of the world, especially in developing countries, river network data are outdated or completely absent, yet such information is critical for supporting important functions such as flood mitigation efforts, land use and transportation planning, and the management of water resources. In this study, a method was developed for delineating river networks using Sentinel 1 imagery. Unsupervised classification was applied to multi-temporal Sentinel 1 data to discriminate water bodies from other land covers then the outputs were combined to generate a single persistent water bodies product. A thinning algorithm was then used to delineate river centre lines, which were converted into vector features and built into a topologically structured geometric network. The complex river system of the Niger Delta was used to compare the performance of the Sentinel-based method against alternative freely available water body products from United States Geological Survey, European Space Agency and OpenStreetMap and a river network derived from a Shuttle Rader Topography Mission Digital Elevation Model. From both raster-based and vector-based accuracy assessments, it was found that the Sentinel-based river network products were superior to the comparator data sets by a substantial margin. The geometric river network that was constructed permitted a flow routing analysis which is important for a variety of environmental management and planning applications. The extracted network will potentially be applied for modelling dispersion of hydrocarbon pollutants in Ogoniland, a part of the Niger Delta. The approach developed in this study holds considerable potential for generating up to date, detailed river network data for the many countries where such data are deficient.

Keywords: Sentinel 1, image processing, river delineation, large scale mapping, data comparison, geometric network

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Authors: Nuray Ocakli

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19th century was the era of changes and transformations for the Ottoman Empire. The first sultan of this century, Mahmud II (1808-1839), was the architect of Ottoman modernization and fundamental changes. The most radical of these was abolishing the Janissary corps and the traditional Ottoman military band, Mehteran. Mahmud II introduced modernized military corps as well as western style royal and military music. Mahmut II invited the Italian composer Giuseppe Donizetti to establish a modern military band for the new army and to compose the Sultan’s royal anthem. In 1828, Donizetti composed the first western-style Ottoman anthem, Mahmudiyye anthem. During the 19th and early 20th century, four other western style Ottoman anthems (Aziziyye, Mecidiyye, Hamidiyye, and Resadiyye) were composed but the last anthem adopted in the reign of Mehmet VI (r. 1918-1922) was again Mahmudiyye anthem. This paper aims to analyze the Mahmudiyye anthem composed as royal anthem in 1828 but adopted as national anthem in 1918. Research questions of this paper are as follows: What were the characteristics of the Mahmudiyye anthem making it the best choice of the last sultan for the last national anthem? Are there specific reasons of the last sultan to adopt Mahmudiyye anthem or not to adopt any of the other four anthems? The musical characteristics of the anthem are analyzed based on the Cerulo’s empirical research. Cerulo examined the musical structures of 124 western style anthems from 150 countries in the 1580-1976 period. Cerulo’s research categorizes musical codes of the anthems as basic and embellished related with the level of sociopolitical control. Musical analysis of the anthem indicates that the basic musical code of the anthem implies a high level of socio-political control during the reign of both Mahmut II and Mehmet VI. Historical analysis of each sultans’ reign shows that both sultans were autocratic. Mahmut II designed authoritarian government policies to suppress possible reactions against his reforms. On the other hand, authoritarian policies of Mehmet VI are related with the domestic and international political conditions following the World War I. Historical analysis of the research questions show that compared to the other western style Ottoman anthems, Mahmudiyye anthem remained the only neutral anthem symbolizing modernization and westernization of the empire. Other anthems were all the symbols of failed ideologies such as Ottomanism, pan-Islamism, and pan-Turkism. In the early 20th century, there were a few common things remained among the diverse communities of the Ottoman Empire: The land they shared as homeland and the idea of modernization to save the homeland. For this reason, the last sultan Mehmet VI adopted Mahmudiyye anthem as the memory of a unified empire under the rule of a powerful and modernist sultan. The last sultan’s reign lasted just for four years, and the Ottoman Empire disintegrated in 1922, but his adaptation of the Mahmudiyye anthem indicates his unifying policies, his attitudes to save the empire and the caliphate.

Keywords: Mahmudiyye anthem, musical code, national anthem, Ottoman Empire, royal anthem

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Authors: Saoussen Dhib, Chris M. Mannaerts, Zoubeida Bargaoui, Ben H. P. Maathuis, Petra Budde

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In this study, a new method to delineate rain areas in northern Tunisia is presented. The proposed approach is based on the blending of the geostationary Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) infrared channel (IR) with the low-earth orbiting passive Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI). To blend this two products, we need to apply two main steps. Firstly, we have to identify the rainy pixels. This step is achieved based on a classification using MSG channel IR 10.8 and the water vapor WV 0.62, applying a threshold on the temperature difference of less than 11 Kelvin which is an approximation of the clouds that have a high likelihood of precipitation. The second step consists on fitting the relation between IR cloud top temperature with the TMI rain rates. The correlation coefficient of these two variables has a negative tendency, meaning that with decreasing temperature there is an increase in rainfall intensity. The fitting equation will be applied for the whole day of MSG 15 minutes interval images which will be summed. To validate this combined product, daily extreme rainfall events occurred during the period 2007-2009 were selected, using a threshold criterion for large rainfall depth (> 50 mm/day) occurring at least at one rainfall station. Inverse distance interpolation method was applied to generate rainfall maps for the drier summer season (from May to October) and the wet winter season (from November to April). The evaluation results of the estimated rainfall combining MSG and TMI was very encouraging where all the events were detected rainy and the correlation coefficients were much better than previous evaluated products over the study area such as MSGMPE and PERSIANN products. The combined product showed a better performance during wet season. We notice also an overestimation of the maximal estimated rain for many events.

Keywords: combination, extreme, rainfall, TMI-MSG, Tunisia

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Authors: Nikhil A. Gavhane, Sachin Shah, Ishant S. Mahajan, Pawan D. Bahekar

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Introduction: Millions of people are affected with dengue fever every year, which drives up healthcare expenses in many low-income countries. Organ failure and other serious symptoms may result. Another worldwide public health problem is sickle cell anaemia, which is most prevalent in Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe. Dengue epidemics have reportedly occurred in locations with a high frequency of sickle cell disease, compounding the health problems in these areas. Aims and Objectives: This study examines dengue infection in sickle cell disease-afflicted pre-schoolers. Method:This Retrospective cohort study examined paediatric patients. Young people with sickle cell disease (SCD), dengue infection, and a control group without SCD or dengue were studied. Data on demographics, SCD consequences, medical treatments, and laboratory findings were gathered to analyse the influence of SCD on dengue severity and clinical outcomes, classified as severe or non-severe by the 2009 WHO classification. Using fever or admission symptoms, the research estimated acute illness duration. Result: Table 1 compares haemoglobin genotype-based dengue episode features in SS, SC, and controls. Table 2 shows that severe dengue cases are older, have longer admission delays, and have particular symptoms. Table 3's multivariate analysis indicates SS genotype's high connection with severe dengue, multiorgan failure, and acute pulmonary problems. Table 4 relates severe dengue to greater white blood cell counts, anaemia, liver enzymes, and reduced lactate dehydrogenase. Conclusion: This study is valuable but confined to hospitalised dengue patients with sickle cell illness. Small cohorts limit comparisons. Further study is needed since findings contradict predictions.

Keywords: dengue, chills, headache, severe myalgia, vomiting, nausea, prostration

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Authors: Ramin Zargarbashi, Hamid Rabie, Behnam Panjavi, Hooman Kamran, Seyedarad Mosalamiaghili, Zohre Erfani, Seyed Peyman Mirghaderi, Maryam Salimi

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Background: Posterior shoulder dislocation is one of the disabling complications of brachial plexus birth injury (BPBI), and various treatment options, including capsule and surrounding muscles release for open reduction, humeral derotational osteotomy, and tendon transfers, have been recommended to manage it. In the present study, we aimed to determine the clinical outcome of open reduction with soft tissue release, tendon transfer, and glenoid osteotomy inpatients with BPBI and posterior shoulder dislocation or subluxation. Methods: From 2018 to 2020, 33 patients that underwent open reduction, glenoid osteotomy, and tendon transfer were included. The glenohumeral deformity was classified according to the Waters radiographic classification. Functional assessment was performed using the Mallet grading system before and at least two years after the surgery. Results: The patients were monitored for 26.88± 5.47 months. Their average age was 27.5±14 months. Significant improvement was seen in the overall Mallet score (from 13.5 to 18.91 points) and its segments, including hand to mouth, hand to the neck, global abduction, global external rotation, abduction degree, and external rotation degree. Hand-to-back score and the presence of trumpet sign were significantly decreased in the post-operation phase (all p values<0.001). The above-mentioned variables significantly changed for both infantile and non-infantile dislocations. Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that open reduction along with glenoid osteotomy improves retroversion, and muscle strengthening with different muscle transfers is an effective technique for BPBI.

Keywords: birth injuries, nerve injury, brachial plexus birth palsy, Erb palsy, tendon transfer

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Authors: Lesibana Rafapa

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Accounts exist of circumcision-anchored cultural initiation in central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, North Africa, and West Africa -straddling states like Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. This attests to the continent-wide spread of this cultural practice. In this paper, the writer relates the cultural aspect of circumcision-subsuming initiation among black African cultural groups across the continent to the notion that African cultures are varied yet subscribe to a common central concept. The premise of the paper is that the common practice of initiation for both male and female children that have to be initiated by adults to the tradition and customs of a people coincides with such a central concept. The practice of traditional initiation is as broad as to encompass aspects of spirituality, morality, and social organisation, in the nature of the central concept of which it is a trans-sectional part. Cultural initiation, sometimes referred to as traditional circumcision, constitutes culture-determined rites of passage for the initiates. The study’s aim, the findings of which are presented in this paper, was to probe gender equality in the development and promotion of the cultural practice of initiation. The researcher intended to demonstrate how in South Africa, female circumcision is treated equally or marginalised in efforts of the democratic government to regulate and strengthen the practice of circumcision as part of its broader liberation programme meant to reverse politico-cultural bondage experienced during apartheid rule that the present black regime helped bring to an end. It is argued that the failure to regard female circumcision as equal to its male counterpart is a travesty of the black government’s legislation and policies espousing equality and the protection and empowerment of vulnerable and previously marginalised population groups that include black women. The writer did a desk-top study of the history and characteristics of female circumcision among the black Northern Sotho, VaTsonga, and VhaVenda cultural groups of the Limpopo Province, stretching north to the border of South Africa with Zimbabwe, as well as literature on how political and other authorities exert efforts to preserve and empower the practice. The findings were that male initiation is foregrounded and totalised to represent the practice of initiation as a whole, at the expense of its female counterpart facing marginalisation and unequal regard. It is outlined in this paper how such impoverishment of an otherwise woman-empowering cultural practice deprives hitherto black cultures that suffered brutal repression during apartheid of a fuller recovery much needed in the democratic era. The writer applies some aspects of postcolonial theory and some tropes of feminism in the discussion of an uneven status of cultural circumcision at the hands of present day powers that be.

Keywords: African cultures, female circumcision, gender equality, women empowerment

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Authors: Sokkhey Phauk, Takeo Okazaki

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The challenging task in educational institutions is to maximize the high performance of students and minimize the failure rate of poor-performing students. An effective method to leverage this task is to know student learning patterns with highly influencing factors and get an early prediction of student learning outcomes at the timely stage for setting up policies for improvement. Educational data mining (EDM) is an emerging disciplinary field of data mining, statistics, and machine learning concerned with extracting useful knowledge and information for the sake of improvement and development in the education environment. The study is of this work is to propose techniques in EDM and integrate it into a web-based system for predicting poor-performing students. A comparative study of prediction models is conducted. Subsequently, high performing models are developed to get higher performance. The hybrid random forest (Hybrid RF) produces the most successful classification. For the context of intervention and improving the learning outcomes, a feature selection method MICHI, which is the combination of mutual information (MI) and chi-square (CHI) algorithms based on the ranked feature scores, is introduced to select a dominant feature set that improves the performance of prediction and uses the obtained dominant set as information for intervention. By using the proposed techniques of EDM, an academic performance prediction system (APPS) is subsequently developed for educational stockholders to get an early prediction of student learning outcomes for timely intervention. Experimental outcomes and evaluation surveys report the effectiveness and usefulness of the developed system. The system is used to help educational stakeholders and related individuals for intervening and improving student performance.

Keywords: academic performance prediction system, educational data mining, dominant factors, feature selection method, prediction model, student performance

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Authors: Dina Kon Mushid, Kabutakapua Kakanda, Dibu Dave Mbako

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The failure of material usually involves elastoplastic deformation and fracturing. Continuum mechanics can effectively deal with plastic deformation by using a yield function and the flow rule. At the same time, it has some limitations in dealing with the fracture problem since it is a theory based on the continuous field hypothesis. The lattice model can simulate the fracture problem very well, but it is inadequate for dealing with plastic deformation. Based on the discretized virtual internal bond model (DVIB), this paper proposes a lattice model that can account for plasticity. DVIB is a lattice method that considers material to comprise bond cells. Each bond cell may have any geometry with a finite number of bonds. The two-body or multi-body potential can characterize the strain energy of a bond cell. The two-body potential leads to the fixed Poisson ratio, while the multi-body potential can overcome the limitation of the fixed Poisson ratio. In the present paper, the modified Stillinger-Weber (SW), a multi-body potential, is employed to characterize the bond cell energy. The SW potential is composed of two parts. One part is the two-body potential that describes the interatomic interactions between particles. Another is the three-body potential that represents the bond angle interactions between particles. Because the SW interaction can represent the bond stretch and bond angle contribution, the SW potential-based DVIB (SW-DVIB) can represent the various Poisson ratios. To embed the plasticity in the SW-DVIB, the plasticity is considered in the two-body part of the SW potential. It is done by reducing the bond stiffness to a lower level once the bond reaches the yielding point. While before the bond reaches the yielding point, the bond is elastic. When the bond deformation exceeds the yielding point, the bond stiffness is softened to a lower value. When unloaded, irreversible deformation occurs. With the bond length increasing to a critical value, termed the failure bond length, the bond fails. The critical failure bond length is related to the cell size and the macro fracture energy. By this means, the fracture energy is conserved so that the cell size sensitivity problem is relieved to a great extent. In addition, the plasticity and the fracture are also unified at the bond level. To make the DVIB able to simulate different Poisson ratios, the three-body part of the SW potential is kept elasto-brittle. The bond angle can bear the moment before the bond angle increment is smaller than a critical value. By this method, the SW-DVIB can simulate the plastic deformation and the fracturing process of material with various Poisson ratios. The elastoplastic SW-DVIB is used to simulate the plastic deformation of a material, the plastic fracturing process, and the tunnel plastic deformation. It has been shown that the current SW-DVIB method is straightforward in simulating both elastoplastic deformation and plastic fracture.

Keywords: lattice model, discretized virtual internal bond, elastoplastic deformation, fracture, modified stillinger-weber potential

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Authors: Ana Paula Soares, Alexandrina Lages, Helena Oliveira, Francisco-Javier Gutiérrez-Domínguez, Marisa Lousada

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From an early age, exposure to a spoken language allows us to implicitly capture the structure underlying the succession of the speech sounds in that language and to segment it into meaningful units (words). Statistical learning (SL), i.e., the ability to pick up patterns in the sensory environment even without intention or consciousness of doing it, is thus assumed to play a central role in the acquisition of the rule-governed aspects of language and possibly to lie behind the language difficulties exhibited by children with development language disorder (DLD). The research conducted so far has, however, led to inconsistent results, which might stem from the behavioral tasks used to test SL. In a classic SL experiment, participants are first exposed to a continuous stream (e.g., syllables) in which, unbeknownst to the participants, stimuli are grouped into triplets that always appear together in the stream (e.g., ‘tokibu’, ‘tipolu’), with no pauses between each other (e.g., ‘tokibutipolugopilatokibu’) and without any information regarding the task or the stimuli. Following exposure, SL is assessed by asking participants to discriminate between triplets previously presented (‘tokibu’) from new sequences never presented together during exposure (‘kipopi’), i.e., to perform a two-alternative-forced-choice (2-AFC) task. Despite the widespread use of the 2-AFC to test SL, it has come under increasing criticism as it is an offline post-learning task that only assesses the result of the learning that had occurred during the previous exposure phase and that might be affected by other factors beyond the computation of regularities embedded in the input, typically the likelihood two syllables occurring together, a statistic known as transitional probability (TP). One solution to overcome these limitations is to assess SL as exposure to the stream unfolds using online techniques such as event-related potentials (ERP) that is highly sensitive to the time-course of the learning in the brain. Here we collected ERPs to examine the neurofunctional correlates of SL in preschool children with DLD, and chronological-age typical language development (TLD) controls who were exposed to an auditory stream in which eight three-syllable nonsense words, four of which presenting high-TPs and the other four low-TPs, to further analyze whether the ability of DLD and TLD children to extract-word-like units from the steam was modulated by words’ predictability. Moreover, to ascertain if the previous knowledge of the to-be-learned-regularities affected the neural responses to high- and low-TP words, children performed the auditory SL task, firstly, under implicit, and, subsequently, under explicit conditions. Although behavioral evidence of SL was not obtained in either group, the neural responses elicited during the exposure phases of the SL tasks differentiated children with DLD from children with TLD. Specifically, the results indicated that only children from the TDL group showed neural evidence of SL, particularly in the SL task performed under explicit conditions, firstly, for the low-TP, and, subsequently, for the high-TP ‘words’. Taken together, these findings support the view that children with DLD showed deficits in the extraction of the regularities embedded in the auditory input which might underlie the language difficulties.

Keywords: development language disorder, statistical learning, transitional probabilities, word segmentation

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Authors: Chao Ma

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In this paper, the evaluation criteria of authenticity evaluation system model are taken as the foundation so as to discuss the establishment problems about decentralization supervision system and mechanism of historical cultural town and village. The filtration of fitting towns and village's authenticity is conducted from the level, characteristic index and authentic assessment of evaluation model, thereby, supervising subject -interest related- coordinate organization can be taken as the venation in the management level, thus supervision mechanism of town and village's cultural inheritance can be combed, and the cultural inheritance management system and mechanism which is suitable to historical and cultural Chinese town and village will be provided. As the settlement with strong self-organizing characteristic, town and village don't recognize the management system as deeply as city. Therefore, it is necessary to establish town and village cultural evaluation system based on authenticity evaluation criteria. In this paper, authenticity evaluation system is established by taking this village's value evaluation criteria and protection as the cores, and the classification of participating options is beneficial to distribute local limited resources, protect hierarchically and accord with the local characters of town and village, build the evaluation system to run through the whole process of cultural inheritance, moreover, provide abundant information resources and make sure the value judgment criteria, thus supervision and management can be strengthened to effectively guard risk. By the above judgement and filtration of participating options, the management object with clear functions and supervision and coordination organization are established, thereby, the managerial logic of interest-related persons' decentralization can be clarified, evaluation system can be established, and the more targeted decentralization supervision system and mechanism of historical and cultural village will be built ultimately. Taking this method as a fundamental in cultural protection of town and village, not only can it be carried forward in the mass media, but also can cultivate the identity sense of indigenous people to come back historical and cultural villages, and resist the replacement of city culture.

Keywords: authenticity, rural culture, inheritance, supervision

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Authors: Ballari Bagchi

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The dynamism ingrained in the process of urban-rural integration is manifested in the emergence of rurban settlements, referring to areas that combine the characteristics of agricultural activities found in rural zones with those of suburban living areas and industrialised zones. The concept of rurbanisation refers to the idea of introducing urban conveniences and opportunities, to rural areas in an attempt to stem rural urban migration. In the backdrop of the worldwide problem of disharmonised urban-rural dependence and the associated problems in urban and rural areas, the present study seeks to explore the potentialities of few settlements having a blend of rural and urban characteristics in the urban field of Koch Bihar. The prime concern of the present paper is three-fold: (i) to identify the rurban centres, (ii) to analyse the spatial integration of these identified centres with the rural areas situated in the urban periphery, and (iii) to suggest the necessities to be introduced in these settlements. The methodology applied here includes rurban index, gravity model, and functional classification of rurban centres, correlation and regression analysis and cartographic representation of data collected through primary and secondary sources. The investigation has identified a number of settlements potentially viable to be termed as rurban centres which may render services to the other less equipped rural areas in all aspects of life and thereby would lessen the burden on Koch Bihar urban centre. The levels of infrastructure of these settlements should be such that it might even attract the urban population in a reverse direction. The villages belonging to the lower rung of these service settlements would require metalled road connection with these intermediate settlements in addition to their connection with the core town. That is to say, a proper policy needs to be adopted in this regard to furnish these settlements with required infrastructures for serving their own population as well as the population of other villages. As a consequence of that, the idea of a well-coordinated settlement hierarchy may emerge in future.

Keywords: Hinterland, rurban, settlement hierarchy, urban-rural integration

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Authors: Etibar Guliyev, Durdana Jafarli

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The breakdown of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the 9/11 attacks resulted in the global changes created a totally new geopolitical situation for the Muslim populated republics of the former Soviet Union. Located between great powers such as China and Russia, as well as theocratic states like Iran and Afghanistan, the newly independent Central Asian states were facing a dilemma to choose a new politico-ideological course for development. Policies dubbed Perestroyka and Glasnost leading to the collapse of the world’s once superpower brought about a considerable rise in the national and religious self-consciousness of the Muslim population of the USSR where the religion was prohibited under the strict communist rule. Moreover, the religious movements prohibited during the Soviet era acted as a part of national straggle to gain their freedom from Moscow. The policies adopted by the Central Asian countries to manage the religious revival and extremism in their countries vary dramatically from each other. As Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are located between Russia and China and hosting a considerable number of the Russian population, these countries treated Islamic revival more tolerantly trying benefit from it in the nation-building process. The importance of the topic could be explained with the fact that it investigates an alternative way of management of religious activities and movements. The recent developments in the Middle East, Syria and Iraq in particular, and the fact that hundreds of fighters from the Central Asian republics joined the ISIL terrorist organization once again highlights the implications of the proper regulation of religious activities not only for domestic, but also for regional and global politics. The paper is based on multiple research methods. The process trace method was exploited to better understand the Russification and anti-religious policies to which the Central Asian countries were subject during the Soviet era. The comparative analyse method was also used to better understand the common and distinct features of the politics of religion of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and the rest of the Central Asian countries. Various legislation acts, as well as secondary sources were investigated to this end. Mostly constructivist approach and a theory suggesting that religion supports national identity when there is a third cohesion that threatens both and when elements of national identity are weak. Preliminary findings suggest that in line with policies aimed at gradual reduction of Russian influence, as well as in the face of ever-increasing migration from China, the mentioned countries incorporated some Islamic elements into domestic policies as a part and parcel of national culture. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan did not suppress religious activities, which was case in neighboring states, but allowed in a controlled way Islamic movements to have a relatively freedom of action which in turn led to the less violent religious extremism further boosting national identity.

Keywords: identity, Islam, nationalism, terrorism

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Authors: Eugene Allevato

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Developing a responsible personal worldview is central to sustainable development, but achieving quality education to promote transformative learning for sustainability is thus far, poorly understood. Most programs involving education for sustainable development rely on changing behavior, rather than attitudes. The emphasis is on the scientific and utilitarian aspect of sustainability with negligible importance on the intrinsic value of nature. Campus sustainability projects include building sustainable gardens and implementing energy-efficient upgrades, instead of focusing on educating for sustainable development through exploration of students’ values and beliefs. Even though green technology adoption maybe the right thing to do, most schools are not targeting the root cause of the environmental crisis; they are just providing palliative measures. This study explores the under-examined factors that lead to pro-environmental behavior by investigating the environmental perceptions of both college business students and personnel of green organizations. A mixed research approach of qualitative, based on structured interviews, and quantitative instruments was developed including 30 college-level students’ interviews and 40 green organization staff members involved in sustainable activities. The interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed for analysis. Categorization of the responses to the open‐ended questions was conducted with the purpose of identifying the main types of factors influencing attitudes and correlating with behaviors. Overall the findings of this study indicated a lack of appreciation for nature, and inability to understand interconnectedness and apply critical thinking. The results of the survey conducted on undergraduate students indicated that the responses of business and liberal arts students by independent t-test were significantly different, with a p‐value of 0.03. While liberal arts students showed an understanding of human interdependence with nature and its delicate balance, business students seemed to believe that humans were meant to rule over the rest of nature. This result was quite intriguing from the perspective that business students will be defining markets, influencing society, controlling and managing businesses that supposedly, in the face of climate change, shall implement sustainable activities. These alarming results led to the focus on green businesses in order to better understand their motivation to engage in sustainable activities. Additionally, a probit model revealed that childhood exposure to nature has a significantly positive impact in pro-environmental attitudes to most of the New Ecological Paradigm scales. Based on these findings, this paper discusses educators including Socrates, John Dewey and Paulo Freire in the implementation of eco-pedagogy and transformative learning following a curriculum with emphasis on critical and systems thinking, which are deemed to be key ingredients in quality education for sustainable development.

Keywords: eco-pedagogy, environmental behavior, quality education for sustainable development, transformative learning

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Authors: Kefi Rahmadio, Filipus Armando Ginting, Richard Nainggolan

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This research shows the formation of the West Buru Basin and the potential utilization of this West Buru Basin as a geothermal potential. The research area is West Buru Island which is part of the West Buru Basin. The island is located in Maluku Province, with its capital city named Namlea. The island is divided into 10 districts, namely District Kepalamadan, Airbuaya District, Wapelau District, Namlea District, Waeapo District, Batabual District, Namrole District, Waesama District, Leksula District, and Ambalau District. The formation in this basin is Permian-Quarter. They start from the Formation Ghegan, Dalan Formation, Mefa Formation, Kuma Formation, Waeken Formation, Wakatin Formation, Ftau Formation and Leko Formation. These formations are composing this West Buru Basin. Determination of prospect area in the geothermal area with preliminary investigation stage through observation of manifestation, topographic shape and structure are found around prospect area. This is done because there is no data of earth that support the determination of prospect area more accurately. In Waepo area, electric power generated based on field observation and structural analysis, geothermal area of ​Waeapo was approximately 6 km², with reference to the SNI 'Classification of Geothermal Potential' (No.03-5012-1999), an area of ​​1 km² is assumed to be 12.5 MWe. The speculative potential of this area is (Q) = 6 x 12.5 MWe = 75 MWe. In the Bata Bual area, the geothermal prospect projected 4 km², the speculative potential of the Bata Bual area is worth (Q) = 4 x 12.5 MWe = 50 MWe. In Kepala Madan area, based on the estimation of manifestation area, there is a wide area of ​​prospect in Kepala Madan area about 4 km². The geothermal energy potential of the speculative level in Kepala Madan district is (Q) = 4 x 12.5 MWe = 50 MWe. These three areas are the largest geothermal potential on the island of West Buru. From the above research, it can be concluded that there is potential in West Buru Island. Further exploration is needed to find greater potential. Therefore, researchers want to explain the geothermal potential contained in the West Buru Basin, within the scope of West Buru Island. This potential can be utilized for the community of West Buru Island.

Keywords: West Buru basin, West Buru island, potential, Waepo, Bata Bual, Kepala Madan

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Authors: Mustafa Al Sukar, Azzam Sleit, Abdullatif Abu-Dalhoum, Bassam Al-Kasasbeh

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Use and abuse of drugs by teens is very common and can have dangerous consequences. The drugs contribute to physical and sexual aggression such as assault or rape. Some teenagers regularly use drugs to compensate for depression, anxiety or a lack of positive social skills. Teen resort to smoking should not be minimized because it can be "gateway drugs" for other drugs (marijuana, cocaine, hallucinogens, inhalants, and heroin). The combination of teenagers' curiosity, risk taking behavior, and social pressure make it very difficult to say no. This leads most teenagers to the questions: "Will it hurt to try once?" Nowadays, technological advances are changing our lives very rapidly and adding a lot of technologies that help us to track the risk of drug abuse such as smart phones, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), Internet of Things (IoT), etc. This technique may help us to early discovery of drug abuse in order to prevent an aggravation of the influence of drugs on the abuser. In this paper, we have developed a Decision Support System (DSS) for detecting the drug abuse using Artificial Neural Network (ANN); we used a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) feed-forward neural network in developing the system. The input layer includes 50 variables while the output layer contains one neuron which indicates whether the person is a drug addict. An iterative process is used to determine the number of hidden layers and the number of neurons in each one. We used multiple experiment models that have been completed with Log-Sigmoid transfer function. Particularly, 10-fold cross validation schemes are used to access the generalization of the proposed system. The experiment results have obtained 98.42% classification accuracy for correct diagnosis in our system. The data had been taken from 184 cases in Jordan according to a set of questions compiled from Specialists, and data have been obtained through the families of drug abusers.

Keywords: drug addiction, artificial neural networks, multilayer perceptron (MLP), decision support system

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Authors: Alma Ramić, Mirjana Skočibušić, Renata Odžak, Tomica Hrenar, Ines Primožič

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In an attempt to identify a new class of antimicrobial agents, the antimicrobial potential of Cinchona alkaloid derivatives was evaluated. The bark of the Cinchona trees is the source of a variety of alkaloids, among which the best known are quinine, quinidine, cinchonine and cinchonidine. They are very useful as organocatalysts in stereoselective synthesis. On the other hand, quinine is traditionally used in the treatment of malaria. Furthermore, Cinchona alkaloids possess various analgesic, anti-inflammatory and anti–arrhythmic properties as well. In this work we present the synthesis of twenty quaternary derivatives of pseudo−enantiomeric Cinchona alkaloid derivatives to evaluate their antibacterial activity. Quaternization of quinuclidine moiety was carried out with groups diverse in their size. The structures of compounds were systematically modified to obtain drug-like properties with proper physical and chemical properties and avoiding toxophore. All compounds were prepared in good yields and were characterized by standard analytical spectroscopy methods (1D and 2D NMR, IR, MS). The antibacterial activities of all compounds were evaluated against series of recent clinical isolates of antibiotic susceptible Gram-positive and resistant Gram-negative pathogens by determining their zone of inhibition and minimum inhibitory concentrations. All compounds showed good to strong broad-spectrum activity, equivalent or better in comparison with standard antibiotics used. Furthermore, seven compounds exhibited significant antibacterial efficiency against Gram-negative isolates. To visualize the results, principal component analysis was used as an additional classification tool. Cytotoxicity of compounds with different cell lines in human cell culture was determined. Based on these results, substituted quaternary Cinchona scaffold can be considered as promising new class of antimicrobials and further investigations should be performed. Supported by Croatian Science Foundation, Project No 3775 ADESIRE.

Keywords: antibacterial efficiency, cinchona alkaloids, cytotoxicity, pseudo‐enantiomers

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Authors: Biniam Seifu Debelo, Bheema Lingaiah Thamineni, Hanumesh Kumar Dasari, Ahmed Ali Dawud

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Background: One of the most frequent neurological conditions in newborns is neonatal seizures, which may indicate severe neurological dysfunction. They may be caused by a broad range of problems with the central nervous system during or after pregnancy, infections, brain injuries, and/or other health conditions. These seizures may have very subtle or very modest clinical indications because patterns like oscillatory (spike) trains begin with relatively low amplitude and gradually increase over time. This becomes very challenging and erroneous if clinical observation is the primary basis for identifying newborn seizures. Objectives: In this study, a diagnosis system using deep convolutional neural networks is proposed to determine and classify the severity level of neonatal seizures using multichannel neonatal EEG data. Methods: Clinical multichannel EEG datasets were compiled using datasets from publicly accessible online sources. Various preprocessing steps were taken, including converting 2D time series data to equivalent waveform pictures. The proposed models underwent training, and their performance was evaluated. Results: The proposed CNN was used to perform binary classification with an accuracy of 92.6%, F1-score of 92.7%, specificity of 92.8%, and precision of 92.6%. To detect newborn seizures, this model is utilized. Using the proposed CNN model, multiclassification was performed with accuracy rates of 88.6%, specificity rates of 92.18%, F1-score rates of 85.61%, and precision rates of 88.9%. A multiclassification model is used to classify the severity level of neonatal seizures. The results demonstrated that the suggested strategy can assist medical professionals in making accurate diagnoses close to healthcare institutions. Conclusion: The developed system was capable of detecting neonatal seizures and has the potential to be used as a decision-making tool in resource-limited areas with a scarcity of expert neurologists.

Keywords: CNN, multichannel EEG, neonatal seizure, severity identification

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Authors: Rashima Mahajan, Dipali Bansal, Shweta Singh

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Real time non-invasive Brain Computer Interfaces have a significant progressive role in restoring or maintaining a quality life for medically challenged people. This manuscript provides a comprehensive review of emerging research in the field of cognitive/affective computing in context of human neural responses. The perspectives of different emotion assessment modalities like face expressions, speech, text, gestures, and human physiological responses have also been discussed. Focus has been paid to explore the ability of EEG (Electroencephalogram) signals to portray thoughts, feelings, and unspoken words. An automated workflow-based protocol to design an EEG-based real time Brain Computer Interface system for analysis and classification of human emotions elicited by external audio/visual stimuli has been proposed. The front end hardware includes a cost effective and portable Emotive EEG Neuroheadset unit, a personal computer and a set of external stimulators. Primary signal analysis and processing of real time acquired EEG shall be performed using MATLAB based advanced brain mapping toolbox EEGLab/BCILab. This shall be followed by the development of MATLAB based self-defined algorithm to capture and characterize temporal and spectral variations in EEG under emotional stimulations. The extracted hybrid feature set shall be used to classify emotional states using artificial intelligence tools like Artificial Neural Network. The final system would result in an inexpensive, portable and more intuitive Brain Computer Interface in real time scenario to control prosthetic devices by translating different brain states into operative control signals.

Keywords: brain computer interface, electroencephalogram, EEGLab, BCILab, emotive, emotions, interval features, spectral features, artificial neural network, control applications

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Authors: Cristy Stagnar, Nina Hubig, Diana Ivankovic

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The epigenome is a compelling candidate for mediating long-term responses to environmental effects modifying disease risk. The main goal of this research is to develop a machine learning-based DNA methylation score, which will be valuable in delineating the unique contribution of paternal epigenetic modifications to the germline impacting childhood health outcomes. It will also be a useful tool in validating self-reports of nonsmoking and in adjusting epigenome-wide DNA methylation association studies for this early-life exposure. Using secondary data from two population-based methylation profiling studies, our DNA methylation score is based on CpG DNA methylation measurements from cord blood gathered from children whose fathers smoked pre- and peri-conceptually. Each child’s mother and father fell into one of three class labels in the accompanying questionnaires -never smoker, former smoker, or current smoker. By applying different machine learning algorithms to the accessible resource for integrated epigenomic studies (ARIES) sub-study of the Avon longitudinal study of parents and children (ALSPAC) data set, which we used for training and testing of our model, the best-performing algorithm for classifying the father smoker and mother never smoker was selected based on Cohen’s κ. Error in the model was identified and optimized. The final DNA methylation score was further tested and validated in an independent data set. This resulted in a linear combination of methylation values of selected probes via a logistic link function that accurately classified each group and contributed the most towards classification. The result is a unique, robust DNA methylation score which combines information on DNA methylation and early life exposure of offspring to paternal smoking during pregnancy and which may be used to examine the paternal contribution to offspring health outcomes.

Keywords: epigenome, health outcomes, paternal preconception environmental exposures, supervised machine learning

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Authors: Ranjit Kumar Sahu, Ramakar Jha

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Urban Water Management is the practice of managing freshwater, waste water, and storm water as components of a basin-wide management plan. It builds on existing water supply and sanitation considerations within an urban settlement by incorporating urban water management within the scope of the entire river basin. The pervasive problems generated by urban development have prompted, in the present work, to study the spatial extent of urbanization in Golden Triangle of Odisha connecting the cities Bhubaneswar (20.2700° N, 85.8400° E), Puri (19.8106° N, 85.8314° E) and Konark (19.9000° N, 86.1200° E)., and patterns of periodic changes in urban development (systematic/random) in order to develop future plans for (i) urbanization promotion areas, and (ii) urbanization control areas. Remote Sensing, using USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) Landsat8 maps, supervised classification of the Urban Sprawl has been done for during 1980 - 2014, specifically after 2000. This Work presents the following: (i) Time series analysis of Hydrological data (ground water and rainfall), (ii) Application of SWMM (Storm Water Management Model) and other soft computing techniques for Urban Water Management, and (iii) Uncertainty analysis of model parameters (Urban Sprawl and correlation analysis). The outcome of the study shows drastic growth results in urbanization and depletion of ground water levels in the area that has been discussed briefly. Other relative outcomes like declining trend of rainfall and rise of sand mining in local vicinity has been also discussed. Research on this kind of work will (i) improve water supply and consumption efficiency (ii) Upgrade drinking water quality and waste water treatment (iii) Increase economic efficiency of services to sustain operations and investments for water, waste water, and storm water management, and (iv) engage communities to reflect their needs and knowledge for water management.

Keywords: Storm Water Management Model (SWMM), uncertainty analysis, urban sprawl, land use change

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Authors: F. Fatoye, C. E. Mbada, T. Gebrye, A. O. Ogunsola, C. Fatoye, O. Oyewole

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Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) such as low back pain (LBP), cervical spondylosis (CSPD), sprain, osteoarthritis (OA), and post immobilization stiffness (PIS) have a major impact on individuals, health systems and society in terms of morbidity, long-term disability, and economics. This study estimated the direct and indirect costs of common MSDs in Osun State, Nigeria. A review of medical charts for adult patients attending Physiotherapy Outpatient Clinic at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex, Osun State, Nigeria between 2009 and 2018 was carried out. The occupational class of the patients was determined using the International Labour Classification (ILO). The direct and indirect costs were estimated using a cost-of-illness approach. Physiotherapy related health resource use, and costs of the common MSDs, including consultation fee, total fee charge per session, costs of consumables were estimated. Data were summarised using descriptive statistics mean and standard deviation (SD). Overall, 1582 (Male = 47.5%, Female = 52.5%) patients with MSDs population with a mean age of 47.8 ± 25.7 years participated in this study. The mean (SD) direct costs estimate for LBP, CSPD, PIS, sprain, OA, and other conditions were $18.35 ($17.33), $34.76 ($17.33), $32.13 ($28.37), $35.14 ($44.16), $37.19 ($41.68), and $15.74 ($13.96), respectively. The mean (SD) indirect costs estimate of LBP, CSPD, PIS, sprain, OA, and other MSD conditions were $73.42 ($43.54), $140.57 ($69.31), $128.52 ($113.46), sprain $140.57 ($69.31), $148.77 ($166.71), and $62.98 ($55.84), respectively. Musculoskeletal disorders contribute a substantial economic burden to individuals with the condition and society. The unacceptable economic loss of MSDs should be reduced using appropriate strategies. Further research is required to determine the clinical and cost effectiveness of strategies to improve health outcomes of patients with MSDs. The findings of the present study may assist health policy and decision makers to understand the economic burden of MSDs and facilitate efficient allocation of healthcare resources to alleviate the burden associated with these conditions in Nigeria.

Keywords: economic burden, low back pain, musculoskeletal disorders, real-world

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Authors: Zubair Ahmed, Andrea Barbieri

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The need to reduce energy consumption has prompted a considerable research effort for developing alternative energy-efficient lighting systems to replace conventional light sources (i.e., incandescent and fluorescent lamps). Organic light emitting device (OLED) technology offers the distinctive possibility to fabricate large area flat devices by vacuum or solution processing. Lanthanide β-diketonates complexes, due to unique photophysical properties of Ln(III) ions, have been explored as emitting layers in OLED displays and in solid-state lighting (SSL) in order to achieve high efficiency and color purity. For such applications, the excellent photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) and stability are the two key points that can be achieved simply by selecting the proper organic ligands around the Ln ion in a coordination sphere. Regarding the strategies to enhance the PLQY, the most common is the suppression of the radiationless deactivation pathways due to the presence of high-frequency oscillators (e.g., OH, –CH groups) around the Ln centre. Recently, a different approach to maximize the PLQY of Ln(β-DKs) has been proposed (named 'Escalate Coordination Anisotropy', ECA). It is based on the assumption that coordinating the Ln ion with different ligands will break the centrosymmetry of the molecule leading to less forbidden transitions (loosening the constraints of the Laporte rule). The OLEDs based on such complexes are available, but with low efficiency and stability. In order to get efficient devices, there is a need to develop some new Ln complexes with enhanced PLQYs and stabilities. For this purpose, the Ln complexes, both visible and (NIR) emitting, of variant coordination structures based on the various fluorinated/non-fluorinated β-diketones and O/N-donor neutral ligands were synthesized using a one step in situ method. In this method, the β-diketones, base, LnCl₃.nH₂O and neutral ligands were mixed in a 3:3:1:1 M ratio in ethanol that gave air and moisture stable complexes. Further, they were characterized by means of elemental analysis, NMR spectroscopy and single crystal X-ray diffraction. Thereafter, their photophysical properties were studied to select the best complexes for the fabrication of stable and efficient OLEDs. Finally, the OLEDs were fabricated and investigated using these complexes as emitting layers along with other organic layers like NPB,N,N′-Di(1-naphthyl)-N,N′-diphenyl-(1,1′-biphenyl)-4,4′-diamine (hole-transporting layer), BCP, 2,9-Dimethyl-4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline (hole-blocker) and Alq3 (electron-transporting layer). The layers were sequentially deposited under high vacuum environment by thermal evaporation onto ITO glass substrates. Moreover, co-deposition techniques were used to improve charge transport in the devices and to avoid quenching phenomena. The devices show strong electroluminescence at 612, 998, 1064 and 1534 nm corresponding to ⁵D₀ →⁷F₂(Eu), ²F₅/₂ → ²F₇/₂ (Yb), ⁴F₃/₂→ ⁴I₉/₂ (Nd) and ⁴I1₃/₂→ ⁴I1₅/₂ (Er). All the devices fabricated show good efficiency as well as stability.

Keywords: electroluminescence, lanthanides, paramagnetic NMR, photoluminescence

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Authors: Adel Francis

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Most of scheduling methods and software apply the critical path logic. This logic schedule activities, apply constraints between these activities and try to optimize and level the allocated resources. The extensive use of this logic produces a complex an erroneous network hard to present, follow and update. Planning and management building projects should tackle the coordination of works and the management of limited spaces, traffic, and supplies. Activities cannot be performed without the resources available and resources cannot be used beyond the capacity of workplaces. Otherwise, workspace congestion will negatively affect the flow of works. The objective of the space planning is to link the spatial and temporal aspects, promote efficient use of the site, define optimal site occupancy rates, and ensures suitable rotation of the workforce in the different spaces. The Chronographic scheduling modelling belongs to this category and models construction operations as well as their processes, logical constraints, association and organizational models, which help to better illustrate the schedule information using multiple flexible approaches. The model defined three categories of areas (punctual, surface and linear) and four different layers (space creation, systems, closing off space, finishing, and reduction of space). The Chronographical modelling is a more complete communication method, having the ability to alternate from one visual approach to another by manipulation of graphics via a set of parameters and their associated values. Each individual approach can help to schedule a certain project type or specialty. Visual communication can also be improved through layering, sheeting, juxtaposition, alterations, and permutations, allowing for groupings, hierarchies, and classification of project information. In this way, graphic representation becomes a living, transformable image, showing valuable information in a clear and comprehensible manner, simplifying the site management while simultaneously utilizing the visual space as efficiently as possible.

Keywords: building projects, chronographic modelling, CPM, critical path, precedence diagram, scheduling

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Authors: Waldir Roque, Gustavo Oliveira, Moises Santos, Tatiana Simoes

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Increasing the oil recovery factor of an oil reservoir has been a concern of the oil industry. Usually, the production placement zones are defined after some analysis of geological and petrophysical parameters, being the rock porosity, permeability and oil saturation of fundamental importance. In this context, the determination of hydraulic flow units (HFUs) renders an important step in the process of reservoir characterization since it may provide specific regions in the reservoir with similar petrophysical and fluid flow properties and, in particular, techniques supporting the placement of production zones that favour the tracing of directional wells. A HFU is defined as a representative volume of a total reservoir rock in which petrophysical and fluid flow properties are internally consistent and predictably distinct of other reservoir rocks. Technically, a HFU is characterized as a rock region that exhibit flow zone indicator (FZI) points lying on a straight line of the unit slope. The goal of this paper is to provide a trustful indication for oil production placement zones for the best-fit HFUs. The FZI cloud of points can be obtained from the reservoir quality index (RQI), a function of effective porosity and permeability. Considering log and core data the HFUs are identified and using the discrete rock type (DRT) classification, a set of connected cell clusters can be found and by means a graph centrality metric, the maximum closeness (MaxC) cell is obtained for each cluster. Considering the MaxC cells as production zones, an extensive analysis, based on several oil recovery factor and oil cumulative production simulations were done for the SPE Model 2 and the UNISIM-I-D synthetic fields, where the later was build up from public data available from the actual Namorado Field, Campos Basin, in Brazil. The results have shown that the MaxC is actually technically feasible and very reliable as high performance production placement zones.

Keywords: hydraulic flow unit, maximum closeness centrality, oil production simulation, production placement zone

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Authors: Ezat Vahidian, Babak Eshrati

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Introduction: Elder abuse, a very complex issue with diverse definitions and names, has been very slow to capture the public eye and public policy since it is manifested at many levels. It requires the involvement of different types of professionals. While elder abuse is not a new phenomenon, the speed of population ageing world-wide is likely to lead to an increase in its incidence and prevalence. Elder abuse has devastating consequences for older persons such as poor quality of life, psychological distress, and loss of property and security. It is also associated with increased mortality and morbidity. Elder abuse is a problem that manifests itself in both rich and poor countries and at all levels of society. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine the prevalence of elder abuse and effects of social factor on it in Markazi Province. Materials and methods: The society of the study was all of the elders in Markazi Province that were available by geographical address in the table of rural and urban household societies. The study was cross sectional and multi phases in sampling the first one was classification according rural and urban area and the second one was cluster sampling with equal cluster. Estimation of samples were 472 persons and increased by design effect to 1110 persons. Collection data was done by questionnaire and analyzed by SPSS and chi 2 exam. Results: This study showed 70 persons were abused (42/8% male and 57/2% female) mean of ages was 74/7 years. 64% were marred and 31% were widows. There were not any significant meaningful association between elder abuse and area of living (pv=0.299),occupation (p.v=0.104), education (pv=0.358) and age (P.value=0.104) there were significant meaningful association between physical impairment (pv=0.08), and movement impairment (P.value=0.008). Conclusion: Results verify that maltreatment occurred in the aged persons. Analysis of data indicated that elder abuse exist in every socioeconomic group with any context of education in urban area and rural area and in men and women. Prevalence of elder abuse was 6.3% (70 persons) that verify the data of developed countries with limited sample.

Keywords: elder abuse, education, occupation, area of living

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Authors: Rajashree Naik, Laxmi Kant Sharma

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Sambhar lake is the largest inland Salt Lake of India, declared as a Ramsar site on 23 March 1990. Due to high salinity and alkalinity condition its biodiversity richness is contributed by haloalkaliphilic flora and fauna along with the diverse land cover including waterbody, wetland, salt crust, saline soil, vegetation, scrub land and barren land which welcome large number of flamingos and other migratory birds for winter harboring. But with the gradual increase in the irrational salt extraction activities, the ecological diversity is at stake. There is an urgent need to assess the ecosystem. Advanced technology like remote sensing and GIS has enabled to look into the past, compare with the present for the future planning and management of the natural resources in a judicious way. This paper is a research work intended to present a vegetation in typical inland lake environment of Sambhar wetland using satellite data of NASA’s EO-1 Hyperion sensor launched in November 2000. With the spectral range of 0.4 to 2.5 micrometer at approximately 10nm spectral resolution with 242 bands 30m spatial resolution and 705km orbit was used to produce a vegetation map for a portion of the wetland. The vegetation map was tested for classification accuracy with a pre-existing detailed GIS wetland vegetation database. Though the accuracy varied greatly for different classes the algal communities were successfully identified which are the major sources of food for flamingo. The results from this study have practical implications for uses of spaceborne hyperspectral image data that are now becoming available. Practical limitations of using these satellite data for wetland vegetation mapping include inadequate spatial resolution, complexity of image processing procedures, and lack of stereo viewing.

Keywords: Algal community, NASA’s EO-1 Hyperion, salt-tolerant species, wetland vegetation mapping

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Authors: Liang-Jen Wang, Sung-Chou Li, Yuan-Ming Yeh, Sheng-Yu Lee, Ho-Chang Kuo, Chia-Yu Yang

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Background: Dysbiosis in the gut microbial community might be involved in the pathophysiology of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The fungal component of the gut microbiome, namely the mycobiota, is a hyperdiverse group of multicellular eukaryotes that can influence host intestinal permeability. This study therefore aimed to investigate the impact of fungal mycobiome dysbiosis and intestinal permeability on ADHD. Methods: Faecal samples were collected from 35 children with ADHD and from 35 healthy controls. Total DNA was extracted from the faecal samples, and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions were sequenced using high-throughput next-generation sequencing (NGS). The fungal taxonomic classification was analysed using bioinformatics tools, and the differentially expressed fungal species between the ADHD and healthy control groups were identified. An in vitro permeability assay (Caco-2 cell layer) was used to evaluate the biological effects of fungal dysbiosis on intestinal epithelial barrier function. Results: The β-diversity (the species diversity between two communities), but not α-diversity (the species diversity within a community), reflected the differences in fungal community composition between ADHD and control groups. At the phylum level, the ADHD group displayed a significantly higher abundance of Ascomycota and significantly lower abundance of Basidiomycota than the healthy control group. At the genus level, the abundance of Candida (especially Candida albicans) was significantly increased in ADHD patients compared to the healthy controls. In addition, the in vitro cell assay revealed that C. albicans secretions significantly enhanced the permeability of Caco-2 cells. Conclusions: The current study is the first to explore altered gut mycobiome dysbiosis using the NGS platform in ADHD. The findings from this study indicated that dysbiosis of the fungal mycobiome and intestinal permeability might be associated with susceptibility to ADHD.

Keywords: ADHD, fungus, gut–brain axis, biomarker, child psychiatry

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Authors: Ebipatei Victoria Tunyan, T. A. Cao, Cheol Young Ock

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Detecting subjectively biased statements is a vital task. This is because this kind of bias, when present in the text or other forms of information dissemination media such as news, social media, scientific texts, and encyclopedias, can weaken trust in the information and stir conflicts amongst consumers. Subjective bias detection is also critical for many Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks like sentiment analysis, opinion identification, and bias neutralization. Having a system that can adequately detect subjectivity in text will boost research in the above-mentioned areas significantly. It can also come in handy for platforms like Wikipedia, where the use of neutral language is of importance. The goal of this work is to identify the subjectively biased language in text on a sentence level. With machine learning, we can solve complex AI problems, making it a good fit for the problem of subjective bias detection. A key step in this approach is to train a classifier based on BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) as upstream model. BERT by itself can be used as a classifier; however, in this study, we use BERT as data preprocessor as well as an embedding generator for a Bi-LSTM (Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory) network incorporated with attention mechanism. This approach produces a deeper and better classifier. We evaluate the effectiveness of our model using the Wiki Neutrality Corpus (WNC), which was compiled from Wikipedia edits that removed various biased instances from sentences as a benchmark dataset, with which we also compare our model to existing approaches. Experimental analysis indicates an improved performance, as our model achieved state-of-the-art accuracy in detecting subjective bias. This study focuses on the English language, but the model can be fine-tuned to accommodate other languages.

Keywords: subjective bias detection, machine learning, BERT–BiLSTM–Attention, text classification, natural language processing

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Authors: Gayathri Nagarajan, L. D. Dhinesh Babu

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Health care is one of the prominent industries that generate voluminous data thereby finding the need of machine learning techniques with big data solutions for efficient processing and prediction. Missing data, incomplete data, real time streaming data, sensitive data, privacy, heterogeneity are few of the common challenges to be addressed for efficient processing and mining of health care data. In comparison with other applications, accuracy and fast processing are of higher importance for health care applications as they are related to the human life directly. Though there are many machine learning techniques and big data solutions used for efficient processing and prediction in health care data, different techniques and different frameworks are proved to be effective for different applications largely depending on the characteristics of the datasets. In this paper, we present a framework that uses ensemble machine learning technique gradient boosted trees for data classification in health care big data. The framework is built on Spark platform which is fast in comparison with other traditional frameworks. Unlike other works that focus on a single technique, our work presents a comparison of six different machine learning techniques along with gradient boosted trees on datasets of different characteristics. Five benchmark health care datasets are considered for experimentation, and the results of different machine learning techniques are discussed in comparison with gradient boosted trees. The metric chosen for comparison is misclassification error rate and the run time of the algorithms. The goal of this paper is to i) Compare the performance of gradient boosted trees with other machine learning techniques in Spark platform specifically for health care big data and ii) Discuss the results from the experiments conducted on datasets of different characteristics thereby drawing inference and conclusion. The experimental results show that the accuracy is largely dependent on the characteristics of the datasets for other machine learning techniques whereas gradient boosting trees yields reasonably stable results in terms of accuracy without largely depending on the dataset characteristics.

Keywords: big data analytics, ensemble machine learning, gradient boosted trees, Spark platform

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Authors: Guo Yu, Haoming Ma, Peiru Zhou

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BACKGROUND: In addition to hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, and glycemic variability, a decrease in the time in the targeted blood glucose range (TIR) may be associated with an increased risk of death for critically ill patients. However, the relationship between the TIR and mortality may be influenced by the presence of diabetes and glycemic variability. METHODS: A total of 998 diabetic and non-diabetic patients with severe diseases in the ICU were selected for this retrospective analysis. The TIR is defined as the percentage of time spent in the target blood glucose range of 3.9–10.0 mmol/L within 24 hours. The relationship between TIR and in-hospital in diabetic and non-diabetic patients was analyzed. The effect of glycemic variability was also analyzed. RESULTS: The binary logistic regression model showed that there was a significant association between the TIR as a continuous variable and the in-hospital death of severely ill non-diabetic patients (OR=0.991, P=0.015). As a classification variable, TIR≥70% was significantly associated with in-hospital death (OR=0.581, P=0.003). Specifically, TIR≥70% was a protective factor for the in-hospital death of severely ill non-diabetic patients. The TIR of severely ill diabetic patients was not significantly associated with in-hospital death; however, glycemic variability was significantly and independently associated with in-hospital death (OR=1.042, P=0.027). Binary logistic regression analysis of comprehensive indices showed that for non-diabetic patients, the C3 index (low TIR & high CV) was a risk factor for increased mortality (OR=1.642, P<0.001). In addition, for diabetic patients, the C3 index was an independent risk factor for death (OR=1.994, P=0.008), and the C4 index (low TIR & low CV) was independently associated with increased survival. CONCLUSIONS: The TIR of non-diabetic patients during ICU hospitalization was associated with in-hospital death even after adjusting for disease severity and glycemic variability. There was no significant association between the TIR and mortality of diabetic patients. However, for both diabetic and non-diabetic critically ill patients, the combined effect of high TIR and low CV was significantly associated with ICU mortality. Diabetic patients seem to have higher blood glucose fluctuations and can tolerate a large TIR range. Both diabetic and non-diabetic critically ill patients should maintain blood glucose levels within the target range to reduce mortality.

Keywords: severe disease, diabetes, blood glucose control, time in targeted blood glucose range, glycemic variability, mortality

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