Assessment of personal hygiene knowledge, and practices in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates

There is little information available about incidences and causes of foodborne illnesses that can help the government develop policies, which prevent them in the UAE. This study includes a group of multinational subjects (males and females), residing in Al Ain, UAE, and of an age ranging between 15 and 55 years. A questionnaire designed to assess “Knowledge” and “Practice” of public hygiene measures was piloted in a group of subjects from the public (n = 600). Data shows that 100% of highly educated subjects with postgraduate degrees (Master and PhD) have the proper information about food safety. However, only 70% of them always wash their hands before and after eating, while 80% always wash their hands after using toilets and frequently using warm water and soap. 29% of the total participants were inflicted with foodborne illness, and 85% read articles about food safety and personal hygiene. Most of the subjects in this study are Muslims, and they mainly depended on their daily attitude, which affects their personal hygiene because they must wash before praying. Data generally referred that awareness programs or training are needed, even for the highly educated members of the public. Further research is needed to explain the differences between reports of actual and usual behaviors.     

Viscometric and Volumetric Properties of 10 Regular Binary Systems at 308.15 K and 313.15 K

The densities and kinematic viscosities of 10 binary subsystems of the regular quinary system, benzene (1) + toluene (2) + ethylbenzene (3) + heptane (4) + cyclooctane (5), were measured at 308.15 K and 313.15 K over the entire composition range. The viscosity-composition data reported herein were utilized to examine the predictive capability of some viscosity models, namely, the predictive version of the McAllister model, a group contribution method (GC-UNIMOD), a generalized corresponding states principle (GCSP), and the Allan and Teja correlation. The results of testing showed that the McAllister model outperformed all other models except for systems containing cyclooctane. The results also showed an overall average absolute deviation (%AAD) of 1.25% for systems that did not contain cyclooctane.     

MAGELLAN: Map Acquisition of GEographic Labels by Legend ANalysis

A system named MAGELLAN (denoting Map Acquisition of GEographic Labels by Legend ANalysis) is described that utilizes the symbolic knowledge found in the legend of the map to drive geographic symbol (or label) recognition. MAGELLAN first scans the geographic symbol layer(s) of the map. The legend of the map is located and segmented. The geographic symbols (i.e., labels) are identified, and their semantic meaning is attached. An initial training set library is constructed based on this information. The training set library is subsequently used to classify geographic symbols in input maps using statistical pattern recognition. User interaction is required at first to assist in constructing the training set library to account for variability in the symbols. The training set library is built dynamically by entering only instances that add information to it. MAGELLAN then proceeds to identify the geographic symbols in the input maps automatically. MAGELLAN can be fine-tuned by the user to suit specific needs. Recognition rates of over 93% were achieved in an experimental study on a large amount of data. Received January 5, 1998 / Revised March 18, 1998     

The impact of changing solar screen rotation angle and its opening aspect ratios on Daylight Availability in residential desert buildings

In desert sunny clear-sky regions solar penetration can become excessive. This can cause non-uniform daylight distribution, glare and high solar heat gain, affecting both visual and thermal comfort. Shading devices, such as solar screens, were usually used to diffuse and prevent direct solar penetration into spaces. This paper investigates the impact of changing solar screen axial rotation angle and screen opening aspect ratio on daylighting performance in a typical residential living room space under the desert sunny clear-sky. The larger aim is to arrive at efficient solar screen designs that suit the different orientations.The study was divided into three consecutive phases. In phase one, the effect of the two parameters on Daylight Availability was tested. The solar screen was axially rotated by three different angles at 10° increments. Also, the aspect ratio of the screen opening in both horizontal and vertical directions was changed systematically. Simulation was conducted using the annual Daylight Dynamic Performance Metrics (DDPMs). In phase two, the Annual Daylight Glare Probability (DGP) metric was evaluated for the cases that were found adequate in phase one. In the third phase, the annual solar energy transmittance through the screen was calculated for the cases that achieved acceptable performance in the two previous phases in order to identify the more energy efficient screens.Solar screens with openings having horizontal aspect ratios were found to be the most effective, while those with vertical aspect ratios were achieved the lowest performance. In the North orientation, since almost all the cases that were tested in this research provided acceptable daylighting performance, the designer now have a variety of options to choose from. Preference should be given to screen openings of horizontal aspect ratios, especially the 12:1 and 18:1 (H:V) screens that achieved the best performance where 92% of the space was “daylit” in comparison with only 53% of the base case. In the East orientation, it is advisable to use the 12:1 (H:V) screen opening ratio, as it was found acceptable in the two daylighting testing phases and achieved the best performance in regards to annual transmittance of solar radiation. For the South orientation, there were also many acceptable choices. However, the 3:1 screen aspect ratio is recommended as it assists in saving energy by reducing the annual transmitted solar radiation (60% reduction) while achieving acceptable daylighting performance.     

Effect of needle orientation during arteriovenous access puncture on needed compression time after hemodialysis: A randomized controlled trial

Background

There are two techniques for puncturing an arteriovenous fistula: one where the needle is inserted bevel up and then rotated to a bevel down position, and another where the needle is inserted bevel down. The aim of this study was to compare these two methods of needle insertion on minimum compression time required for hemostasis after needle removal.

Methods

This was a prospective, randomized, cross-over, blinded, single-center, routine care study. Each patient's average post-dialysis puncture site compression time was determined during a 2-week baseline period while using bevel-up access puncture. Subsequently, minimum post-dialysis puncture-site compression time was determined during each of two sequential follow-up periods, during which fistula puncture was done with needles inserted bevel up or down, respectively. The order of treatments (bevel up or bevel down insertion) was randomized. During each follow-up period, the minimum compression time necessary to avoid bleeding on needle removal was determined by progressively shortening the compression time. Puncture-associated pain was also assessed as prepump and venous pressures and ability to achieve desired blood flow rate during the dialysis session.

Results

Forty-two patients were recruited. The baseline compression time after needle removal averaged 9.99 ± 2.7 min During the intervention periods, the minimum compression time was on average 10.8 min (9.23–12.4) when the access needles had been inserted bevel down versus 11.1 min (9.61–12.5) when the access needles had been inserted bevel up (p = 0.72). There was no difference in puncture-associated pain between the two insertion techniques, and no difference in prepump or venous pressures or ability to achieve the desired blood flow rate during the dialysis session.

Conclusion

Bevel-up and bevel-down needle orientation during arteriovenous fistula puncture are equivalent techniques in terms of achieving hemostasis on needle removal, and puncture-associated pain.     

Medical image watermarking for ownership & tamper detection

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Image watermarking can provide ownership identification as well as tamper protection. Transform domain based image watermarking has been proven to be more robust...     

Computerized Detection of Limbal Stem Cell Deficiency from Digital Cornea Images

Limbal Stem Cell Deficiency (LSCD) is an eye disease that can cause corneal opacity and vascularization. In its advanced stage it can lead to a degree of visual impairment. It involves the changing in the semispherical shape of the cornea to a drooping shape to downwards direction. LSCD is hard to be diagnosed at early stages. The color and texture of the cornea surface can provide significant information about the cornea affected by LSCD. Parameters such as shape and texture are very crucial to differentiate normal from LSCD cornea. Although several medical approaches exist, most of them requires complicated procedure and medical devices. Therefore, in this paper, we pursued the development of a LSCD detection technique (LDT) utilizing image processing methods. Early diagnosis of LSCD is very crucial for physicians to arrange for effective treatment. In the proposed technique, we developed a method for LSCD detection utilizing frontal eye images. A dataset of 280 eye images of frontal and lateral LSCD and normal patients were used in this research. First, the cornea region of both frontal and lateral images is segmented, and the geometric features are extracted through the automated active contour model and the spline curve. While the texture features are extracted using the feature selection algorithm. The experimental results exhibited that the combined features of the geometric and texture will exhibit accuracy of 95.95%, sensitivity of 97.91% and specificity of 94.05% with the random forest classifier of n = 40. As a result, this research developed a Limbal stem cell deficiency detection system utilizing features’ fusion using image processing techniques for frontal and lateral digital images of the eyes.     

A Novel Optimized Language-Independent Text Summarization Technique

A substantial amount of textual data is present electronically in several languages. These texts directed the gear to information redundancy. It is essential to remove this redundancy and decrease the reading time of these data. Therefore, we need a computerized text summarization technique to extract relevant information from group of text documents with correlated subjects. This paper proposes a language-independent extractive summarization technique. The proposed technique presents a clustering-based optimization technique. The clustering technique determines the main subjects of the text, while the proposed optimization technique minimizes redundancy, and maximizes significance. Experiments are devised and evaluated using BillSum dataset for the English language, MLSUM for German and Russian and Mawdoo3 for the Arabic language. The experiments are evaluated using ROUGE metrics. The results showed the effectiveness of the proposed technique compared to other language-dependent and language-independent summarization techniques. Our technique achieved better ROUGE metrics for all the utilized datasets. The technique accomplished an F-measure of 41.9% for Rouge-1, 18.7% for Rouge-2, 39.4% for Rouge-3, and 16.8% for Rouge-4 on average for all the dataset using all three objectives. Our system also exhibited an improvement of 26.6%, 35.5%, 34.65%, and 31.54% w.r.t. The recent model contributed in the summarization of BillSum in terms of ROUGE metric evaluation. Our model’s performance is higher than the compared models, especially in the metric results of ROUGE_2 which is bi-gram matching.     

"Mother-baby" biliary endoscopy: the University of Chicago experience

Recoverin is a calcium-binding protein expressed in retinal photoreceptors. It appears to delay the termination of the phototransduction cascade by blocking the phosphorylation of photoexcited rhodopsin. The goal of this study was to determine if recoverin mRNA and protein are expressed in cultured human Y79 retinoblastoma cells, so that this cell line could be used as a model to study the mechanism of recoverin gene expression in the retina. A cDNA encoding human recoverin was PCR cloned and used for prokaryotic expression of recoverin protein. Polyclonal antibodies raised against pure recombinant recoverin were used for western blotting and immunocytochemistry of Y79 cells grown as attachment cultures in the presence of the differentiating agents dibutyryl cyclic AMP (dbcAMP) or butyrate. Northern blot analysis was performed on mRNA extracted from Y79 cells that were also treated with the differentiating agents. In Y79 cell monolayer cultures, recoverin was immunolocalized to the cell cytoplasm, and immunoreactivity was increased dramatically by the addition of 2 mM butyrate to the culture medium. Butyrate treatment also caused an increase in the development of neurite-like cellular processes. Addition of 4 mM dbcAMP resulted in a moderate increase in both recoverin immunoreactivity and number of cellular processes. Western and northern blots of butyrate and dbcAMP-treated Y79 cell cultures demonstrated an increase in recoverin protein and RNA expression, respectively, comparable with that observed with immunocytochemistry. These data suggest that, under the influence of the differentiating agent butyrate, Y79 cells exhibit an increase in expression of the photoreceptor protein recoverin and a concomitant morphological differentiation toward a neuronal phenotype.