Selection algorithm for parameters to characterize uterine EHG signals for the detection of preterm labor

This article proposes a selection method that can be applied to choose the best parameters to classify contractions in the uterine electrohysterography (EHG) signal for the detection of preterm labor. Several types of parameters have historically been extracted from the electrohysterogram. These can be divided into three classes: linear parameters, nonlinear parameters and parameters related to the electrohyterogram propagation. Frequency band enhancement EHG characterization has also been extensively studied. Our work is divided in two parts. The first part is to implement and compute all the parameters already extracted from the EHG that have been published in the literature. These parameters were computed both on the original EHG and on different frequency bands obtained using wavelet packet decomposition. In the second part, we will use a new parameters selection method to eliminate all parameters that are not efficient and pertinent for classification. Our results indicate a set of 13 linear parameters, 3 nonlinear parameters and 2 propagation parameters that are potentially most useful to discriminate between pregnancy and labor contractions, either on different frequency bands or directly on original EHG.     

Effect of growth factors on the production of mycelium-based biofoam

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - Mycelium-based biofoam has the potential to become an alternative to petroleum-polymeric based-foam by utilising fungal mycelium and lignocellulosic...     

Antibiofilm formation and anti‐adhesive (to HEp‐2 cells) effects of rosemary water extract against some food‐related pathogens

The present work aimed to determine the bioactive compounds in two rosemary water extracts (RWE1 and RWE2) and to assess their antimicrobial, anti‐adhesive and antibiofilm potentials against the food‐related Bacillus and Pseudomonas species at concentrations; 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 mg mL^?1. Phenolic compounds and isoflavones in the RWEs were determined using HPLC. The concentrations of most bioactive compounds of RWE1 (benzoic, ellagic, gallic and rosmarinic acids, daidzein and genistein) were higher than that of RWE2. The MIC₉₀ of RWE1 and RWE2 against all tested bacteria was 12 and 16 mg mL^?1, respectively. The anti‐adhesive and antibiofilm doses were higher than MIC₉₀. RWE1 and RWE2 showed potential reduction in the bacterial cell adhesion to HEp‐2 cells – 17.5–64.7 and 12.2–52.9%, respectively. In conclusion, this study emphasises the effective use of RWE as a natural anti‐adhesive and antibiofilm agent against Bacillus and Pseudomonas, without difficult extraction procedure.     

A novel approach for measuring hyperspectral similarity

Hyperspectral measures are used to capture the degree of similarity between two spectra. Spectral angle mapper (SAM) is an example of such measures. SAM similarity values range from 0 to 1. These values do not indicate whether the two spectra are similar or not. A static similarity threshold is imposed to recognize similar and dissimilar spectra. Adjusting such threshold is a troublesome process. To overcome this problem, the proposed approach aims to develop learnable hyperspectral measures. This is done through using hyperspectral measures values as similarity patterns and employing a classifier. The classifier acts as an adaptive similarity threshold. The derived similarity patterns are flexible, as they are able to capture the specific notion of similarity that is appropriate for each spectral region. Two similarity patterns are proposed. The first pattern is the cosine similarity vector for the second spectral derivative pair. The second pattern is a composite vector of different similarity measures values. The proposed approach is applied on full hyperspectral space and subspaces. Experiments were conducted on a challenging benchmark dataset. Experimental results showed that, classifications based on second patterns were far better than first patterns. This is because first patterns were concerned only with the geometrical features of the spectral signatures, while second patterns combined various discriminatory features such as: orthogonal projections information, correlation coefficients, and probability distributions produced by the spectral signatures. The proposed approach results are statistically significant. This implies that using simple learnable measures outperforms complex and manually tuned techniques used in classification.     

Handling Mobility Management and QoS Aspects in All-IP Networks

It is well-known that all-IP networks will be more dynamic and should be more flexible than current networks. Deploying these networks requires, however, overcoming many challenges. One of the main challenges is how to provide Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees in such highly dynamic mobile environments. Addressing this challenge is the main focus of this paper, which provides an insight into how mobility management and QoS solutions can be coupled with each other. Moreover, the paper describes in detail the QoS-aware Mobile IP Fast Authentication Protocol (QoMIFA), which is capable of handling mobility management and simultaneously reserving resources, thus, satisfying the requirements of all-IP mobile communication networks. The paper evaluates also the performance of QoMIFA compared to the well-known Simple QoS signaling protocol (Simple QoS) by means of simulation studies modeled in the network simulator 2 (ns2). The evaluation comprises the investigation of the impact of the network load on both protocols. Our simulation results show that QoMIFA is capable of achieving fast and smooth handoffs in addition to its capability of reserving resources very quickly. With respect to the time required to reserve resources for uplink traffic, QoMIFA is up to 80% faster than Simple QoS. If the resources are reserved for downlink traffic, QoMIFA performs up to 93% better. Considering the number of dropped packets per handoff, QoMIFA reduces the packets lost per handoff by 22% up to 76% on uplink and by 55% up to 93% on downlink as compared to Simple QoS. A main advantage of QoMIFA is that it minimizes the packets sent as best-effort (without QoS guarantees) after handoffs. QoMIFA reduces the best-effort packets transmitted on downlink by approximately 94% compared to Simple QoS and eliminates these packets on uplink.     

Attachment strength and biofilm forming ability of Bacillus cereus on green-leafy vegetables: cabbage and lettuce

The present study was designed to investigate the ability of six Bacillus cereus strains to attach and form biofilm on cabbage and lettuce surfaces. These six strains were; a reference strain DSMZ 345 and five biofilm-producing strains (aquatic strains; TUB8, TUB30, TUB31, TUB32 and TUB33) isolated from drinking-water distribution network. Hydrophobicity, biofilm formation ability, attachment strength (S_R) of spores and vegetative cells of the six B. cereus strains were also determined. Due to their high hydrophobicity, spores of all strains had high ability to attach polystyrene and did not affect by dilution of tryptone soy broth (TSB, 1:20 v/v) in the in vitro experiment. Significant (p < 0.05) enhancement in vitro biofilm formation by vegetative cells of B. cereus was recorded in the diluted TSB. The highest biofilm formation on cabbage and lettuce surfaces was obtained by spores and vegetative cells of all tested strains on the 4^th hour of the incubation period. These populations were significantly (p < 0.05) increased by elongating incubation time from 4 h to 24 h except DSMZ 345 and TUB8. Biofilm formation behavior obtained by B. cereus spores and vegetative cells on the polystyrene surface was different compared with that recorded on produce surface. The S_R of both spores and vegetative cells of the studied strains to the lettuce surface was higher than that of the cabbage surface. The hydrophobicity, biofilm formation and S_R of spores and vegetative cells of the biofilm-producing strains were higher than that of the reference strain DSMZ 345. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) exposed random distribution of cells either on the surface or cut edge, without clear obvious affinity for the surface structures. Increasing in the presence of large clusters of cells on leaf surfaces was demonstrated after 4 and 24 h.In conclusion, use of aquatic environmental isolates is more useful for studying biofilm formation than the reference strain. Lettuce surface supported the attachment of B. cereus spores and vegetative cells compared with the cabbage surface. Further investigations are required to improve our knowledge of biofilm formation mechanisms by the human pathogenic microorganisms, especially by using the environmental and clinical isolates. To ensure safety level of green-leafy vegetables, biofilm formation after harvest should be considered as critical control point during handling of these vegetables.     

Effect of Li-Substitution on the Resistivity and Magnetoresistance of LaMnO y

The temperature dependence of the resistivity (??) and magneto-resistance (MR) effect of La_1?x Li _x MnO _y (x=0.05, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2 & 0.25 at.%) fixed valence doped compounds were studied between 80 and 320 K. X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) at room temperature shows that the samples are single phase. The resistivity of all samples with and without magnetic field shows a metal?Csemiconductor (M?CS) transition for all compositions. In addition, the replacement of the Li-substitution results in a reduction of the transition temperature T _ms and increases ??. In the magnetic field of 0.5 Tesla a large negative magnetoresistance (MR=50%) was observed, which is encouraging for potential application of colossal magnetoresistance (CMR) material at low fields. We determine the activation energy (E _?? ) in the semiconductor region.     

Manganese in apatites,chemical, ligand-field and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy studies

Hydroxapatites precipitated with different amounts of carbonate and Mn²⁺ were studied. Infrared spectra, X-ray diffraction lattice parameters and thermal behaviour indicate that the presence of Mn²⁺ does not have any effect on the formation and properties of the carbonate apatites obtained. Interaction of apatite with a Mn²⁺-containing aqueous solution reveals that the molar uptake of Mn²⁺ by the apatite is higher than the Ca²⁺ released by it. Ligand-field and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy results show that in Mn²⁺-doped Cd₅(PO₄)₃Cl, Mn²⁺ replaces Ca²⁺ in the apatite lattice, but in precipitated carbonate apatite it is in an MnO phase. The conclusion that Mn²⁺ in precipitated carbonate apatites is not incorporated in the apatite crystal is discussed in the light of the size differences between Mn²⁺ and Ca²⁺.