Design and Implementation of an Algorithm for Cardiac Pathologies Detection on Mobile Phone

The development and the design of telemedicine services have taken a great consideration and care in the domain of wireless communication nowadays. The set of these researches is concerned with old people and lack of infrastructures of reception for those who are at risk or tend to have deterioration in their health condition. Thus, several works of research contributed to develop telemedicine services. They notably focus on the conception and the development of communication architectures between the actors of these systems, monitoring and the development of human??s quality is based on the storage of the collected data at home and analytical tools, and processing of these large quantities of data. Therefore, it is useful to detect and prevent the occurrence of critical situations of a remote person, the transmission of the messages and alarms to concerned actors to be ready to intervene in a case of emergency. Many works and systems undertaken in this field carry out the complete analysis and synthesis of signals on large servers (great capacities, better resolutions??). Moreover, these systems would have required large means and a large infrastructure in their deployment (installation, configuration??), which generates the disadvantage of the excessive expenditure. In this paper, we suggest to introduce and implement this complete treatment for revealing critical situations and pathologies on a simple mobile phone by respecting theirs constraints. The principal objective is to permit a taking off for medical and social dependant people as aged ones, handicapped, in order to the adaptation with their environment domestically and make up their incapacities. In this case, it is indispensable to make a diagnostic in a real time and well manage the patient??s computerized data between the various medical actors with the permanent security insurance of highly risky patients. Furthermore, the need to make a speed diagnostic of patients and to detect their health state, their parameters (medical information) of analyses with efficacy, allows us to gain time while monitoring the cardiac patient. It concerns the implementation of services on mobile terminals for transferring medical information and results of ECG analysis (calculated parameters) in a real time with ensuring the mobility, the permanent security and the reliability insurance in covered zone by the mobile network, PLMN (GSM/GPRS??). Our attention has been focused on the choice of a relevant work. It concerns an application on a mobile terminal (MIDlet) for detecting some cardiac pathologies and monitoring patient in a non-hospital setting. This paper recalls a complete architecture of an economic wireless transmission system with the implementation of an effective algorithm, adapted to the mobile terminal, allowing to the doctor to have the results of the ECG analysis. Thus, the stakes of setting up such systems are numerous, so much for patients, medical staff and the society in general.     

Temperature and voltage aging effects on electrical conduction mechanism in epoxy-BaTiO3 composite dielectric used in embedded capacitors

The electrical conduction mechanism in an embedded capacitor with epoxy-BaTiO₃ composite dielectric and Cu electrodes is investigated in this paper. Leakage current was measured across the dielectric by performing a voltage sweep from 0 to 100 V. The voltage sweep was performed at temperatures ranging from 25 °C to 125 °C. Various electrical conduction models such as Schottky, Poole-Frenkel, and ionic hopping were evaluated by comparing the functional dependence of leakage current on temperature and voltage for each mechanism which was considered. It was observed that the conduction mechanism was most consistent with Schottky emission. The contact potential barrier corresponding to Schottky emission was found to be 1.29 eV.The effect of combined temperature and voltage aging on the conduction mechanism was investigated by aging the embedded capacitor dielectric at 125 °C and 100 V for 1680 h. To investigate the difference between combined temperature and voltage aging and temperature aging alone, some capacitors were aged only by temperature at 125 °C for 1680 h. Measurements of leakage current as a function of temperature and voltage were performed at frequent intervals during the aging. It was observed that the value of leakage current did not increase during temperature and voltage aging unlike pure BaTiO₃ dielectrics.     

Increased dissolution rates of tranilast solid dispersions extruded with inorganic excipients

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of Neusilin® (NEU) a synthetic magnesium aluminometasilicate as an inorganic drug carrier co-processed with the hydrophilic surfactants Labrasol and Labrafil to develop Tranilast (TLT)-based solid dispersions using continuous melt extrusion (HME) processing. Twin-screw extrusion was optimized to develop various TLT/excipient/surfactant formulations followed by continuous capsule filling in the absence of any downstream equipment. Physicochemical characterization showed the existence of TLT in partially crystalline state in the porous network of inorganic NEU for all extruded formulations. Furthermore, in-line NIR studies revealed a possible intermolecular H-bonding formation between the drug and the carrier resulting in the increase of TLT dissolution rates. The capsules containing TLT-extruded solid dispersions showed enhanced dissolution rates and compared with the marketed Rizaben^® product.     

Detection and diagnosis of plant-wide oscillations using GA based factorization

The degradation in the performance of the plant is observed in form of oscillations in time trends of measurements. These disturbances propagate throughout the plant and also affect the performance of healthy loops. Thus, it becomes increasingly important to detect all the loops that lead to plant-wide oscillations. In this paper, spectral decomposition based on Evolutionary Algorithms is proposed for the detection of plant-wide oscillations. The key feature of the proposed technique is that it retains causal basis spectrum like shapes consisting of narrow band peaks by searching the solution space globally. Two industrial case studies are presented to demonstrate the efficiency of GA based Evolutionary Algorithms over existing techniques like independent component analysis (ICA) and non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) in detecting plant-wide oscillations. Results show that the proposed technique outperforms ICA and NMF with respect to reconstruction error.     

Explaining the road accident risk: Weather effects

This research aims to highlight the link between weather conditions and road accident risk at an aggregate level and on a monthly basis, in order to improve road safety monitoring at a national level. It is based on some case studies carried out in Work Package 7 on “Data analysis and synthesis” of the EU-FP6 project “SafetyNet – Building the European Road Safety Observatory”, which illustrate the use of weather variables for analysing changes in the number of road injury accidents. Time series analysis models with explanatory variables that measure the weather quantitatively were used and applied to aggregate datasets of injury accidents for France, the Netherlands and the Athens region, over periods of more than 20 years. The main results reveal significant correlations on a monthly basis between weather variables and the aggregate number of injury accidents, but the magnitude and even the sign of these correlations vary according to the type of road (motorways, rural roads or urban roads). Moreover, in the case of the interurban network in France, it appears that the rainfall effect is mainly direct on motorways – exposure being unchanged, and partly indirect on main roads – as a result of changes in exposure. Additional results obtained on a daily basis for the Athens region indicate that capturing the within-the-month variability of the weather variables and including it in a monthly model highlights the effects of extreme weather. Such findings are consistent with previous results obtained for France using a similar approach, with the exception of the negative correlation between precipitation and the number of injury accidents found for the Athens region, which is further investigated. The outlook for the approach and its added value are discussed in the conclusion.     

Weibull Statistics in Dielectric Strength of Oil-impregnated Pressboard under Ramped AC and DC Voltages

AC and DC breakdown tests were performed on large populations of oil-impregnated pressboard samples. The effect of voltage ramp rate on dielectric strength has been investigated. A statistical analysis of breakdown data was carried out using the Weibull distribution. The 90% confidence intervals of Weibull graphs were calculated. The study shows that dielectric strength and shape parameter change versus ramp rate. The variations are attributed to the size and number of defects. Discharges occur from the oil to the oil-pressboard interface and lead to breakdown. DC dielectric strength is larger than that corresponding to AC voltage. This is ascribed to the dissipated energy difference under the two types of field and the fatigue produced by the alternating voltage. This phenomenon is related to space charge. Under DC stress, dielectric strength is higher under negative polarity. It is assigned to the different quantities of space charge accumulated under the two polarities.     

Chemical composition and antimicrobial activity of the essential oils from four Ruta species growing in Algeria

Antimicrobial properties of plants essential oils have been investigated in order to suggest them as potential tools to overcome the microbial drug resistance and the increasing incidence of food borne diseases problems. The aim of this research is to study the antibacterial and antifungal effects of four traditional plants essential oils, Ruta angustifolia, Ruta chalepensis, Ruta graveolens and Ruta tuberculata, against standard bacterial and fungal strains. The chemical compounds of the oils were examined by GC/MS. Results revealed a powerful antifungal activity against filamentous fungi. Aspergillus fumigatus and Cladosporium herbarum are the most sensitive strains to these oils with MIC values less than 3.5 μg ml⁻¹ for certain oils, reaching 7.8 μg ml⁻¹ for other. GC/MS essay exhibited ketones as the most abundant constituent of these oils except for R. tuberculata essential oil which has a completely different composition, monoterpenes alcohols being the most abundant. These compositions explain their potential antifungal activity.     

GC and GC/MS Analysis of Essential Oil Composition of the Endemic Soqotraen Leucas virgata Balf.f. and Its Antimicrobial and Antioxidant Activities

Leucas virgata Balf.f. (Lamiaceae) was collected from the Island Soqotra (Yemen) and its essential oil was obtained by hydrodistillation. The chemical composition of the oil was investigated by GC and GC-MS. Moreover, the essential oil was evaluated for its antimicrobial activity against two Gram-positive bacteria, two Gram-negative bacteria, and one yeast species by using broth micro-dilution assay for minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) and antioxidant activity by measuring the scavenging activity of the DPPH radical. The investigation led to the identification of 43 constituents, representing 93.9% of the total oil. The essential oil of L. virgata was characterized by a high content of oxygenated monoterpenes (50.8%). Camphor (20.5%) exo-fenchol (3.4%), fenchon (5.4%), and borneol (3.1%) were identified as the main components. Oxygenated sesquiterpenes were found as the second major group of compounds (21.0%). β-Eudesmol (6.1%) and caryophyllene oxide (5.1%) were the major compounds among oxygenated sesquiterpenes. The results of the antimicrobial assay showed that the oil exhibited a great antibacterial activity against the tested S. aureus, B. subtilis, and E. coli. No activity was found against P. aeruginosa and C. albicans. Moreover, the DPPH-radical scavenging assay exhibited only a moderate antioxidant activity (31%) for the oil at the highest concentration tested (1 mg/mL).