A time-series analysis of mortality and air temperature in Greater Beirut

The literature on the association between health and weather in the temperate to semi-arid cities of the Eastern Mediterranean is scarce. The quantification of the relationship between temperature and daily mortality can be useful for developing policy interventions such as heat-warning systems. A time-series analysis of total daily mortality and weather data for the city of Beirut was carried out. The study covered the period between 1997 and 1999. Poisson auto-regressive models were constructed, with mean daily temperature and mean daily humidity as explanatory variables. Delayed effects, up to 2 weeks, were accounted for. The regression models were used next to assess the effect of an average increase in temperature on yearly mortality. The association between temperature and mortality was found to be significant. A relatively high minimum-mortality temperature (TMM) of 27.5 degrees C was calculated. A 1 degrees C rise in temperature yielded a 12.3% increase (95% confidence interval: 5.7-19.4%) and 2.9% decrease (95% confidence interval: 2-3.7%) in mortality, above and below TMM, respectively. Lag temperature variables were found to be significant below TMM but not above it. Where the temperature change was less than 0.5 degrees C, annual above-TMM losses were offset by below-TMM gains, within a 95% confidence interval. TMM for Beirut fell within the range usually associated with warm climates. However, the mild below-TMM and steep above-TMM slopes were more typical of cities with temperate to cold climates. Our findings suggest that heat-related mortality at moderately high temperatures can be a significant public health issue in countries with warm climates. Moreover, at the projected climate change over the next 50 years, heat-related losses are unlikely to be offset by cold-related gains.     

Retrieval of textured images through the use of quantization and modal analysis

This paper proposes a new method for textured image retrieval, by the modal analysis of quantized spectral point patterns as the modal correspondence method of Shapiro and Brady, to match point sets by comparing the eigenvectors of a pairwise point proximity matrix taken from the power spectrum peaks. A variant of the Carcassoni, Ribeiro and Hancock method for performing recognition is taken into account. For choosing image features to represent an image, a quantization scheme is applied. This quantization scheme acts in the spectral space given by the Fourier transform of each image. Its goal is to find a small set which represents an image efficiently, where the most important features are presented. The proposed technique is invariant to rotation and is robust in the presence of noise and damaged images. The techniques here presented are compared, and the commonly used retrieval performance measurement—precision and recall—is used as evaluation of the query results.     

Prior detection of genetic algorithm significant parameters: Coupling factorial design technique to genetic algorithm

This work presents an extension of a previous proposed procedure [Costa, C.B.B., Wolf Maciel, M.R., Maciel Filho, R., 2005. Factorial design technique applied to genetic algorithm parameters in a batch cooling crystallization optimization. Computers and Chemical Engineering 29, 2229-2241] to be adopted as a prior analysis in optimization problems to be solved using genetic algorithm (GA). Chemical engineering problems are commonly highly non-linear and possess a large number of variables, sometimes with significant interactions among them. Such characteristics make the optimization problems really difficult to be solved by deterministic methods. GA is an increasing tool for solving this sort of problems. However, no systematic approach to establish the best set of GA parameters for any problem was found in the literature and a relatively easy to use and meaningful approach is proposed and proved to be of general application. The proposed approach consists of applying factorial design, a well-established statistical technique to identify the most meaningful information about the influences of factors on a specific problem, as a support tool to identify the GA parameters with significant effect on the optimization problem. This approach is very useful in conducting further optimization works, since it discharges GA parameters that are not statistically significant for the evolutionary search for the optimum, saving time and computation burden in evolutionary optimization studies.     

Food security: perspectives from the Arab World

Editorial

Acknowledgement of reviewers     

支出猛超收益增幅美IT大公司烧钱过了头

面对激烈竞争,老牌IT公司应该确定多少投资金额才会得到资本市场的支持。微软和Google的不同历史背景意味着投资人会有不同的衡量标准     

水溶性非淀粉多糖的提取纯化技术进展

近几年来,植物水溶性非淀粉多糖(NSPS)在食品和医药产品中的应用取得了很大的发展,已经成为能深入研究的有趣课题。水溶性NSPS具有独特的流变特性,能够与水形成粘度由低到高的溶液,可用于饮料、烘焙、冷冻等各种食品中,以改善质地,稳定食品混合物。水溶性NSP在制药工业中也被广泛用作药物输送的封装基质,以及作为具有预防作用的生物活性材料,如抗癌和抗糖尿病。水溶性NSP在促进肠道微生物群生长和支持短链脂肪酸生产方面的益生元作用是迄今为止最有价值的科学发现。由于其使用需求不断增加,为了获得更高的得率,降低成本,缩短提取时间,扩大提取工艺规模,探索并应用了先进新颖的提取技术,包括采用超声波和微波提取水溶性NSP,克服了传统提取方法的一些局限性。为了减少损失和降低脱蛋白对提取水溶性NSP生物活性的负面影响,人们探索了绿色脱蛋白技术,如使用冻融技术替代常用的化学方法。绿色的水溶性NSP脱蛋白纯化方法将使提取的物质更安全地用于食品和医药产品中。     

Antitumor Activity of Fucus vesiculosus-Derived Phlorotannins through Activation of Apoptotic Signals in Gastric and Colorectal Tumor Cell Lines

Seaweeds are one of the largest producers of biomass in the marine environment and a source of multiple bioactive metabolites with valuable health benefits. Among these, phlorotannins have been widely recognized for their promising bioactive properties. The potential antitumor capacity of Fucus vesiculosus-derived phlorotannins remains, however, poorly explored, especially in gastrointestinal tract-related tumors. Therefore, this work aimed to evaluate the cytotoxic properties and possible mechanisms by which F. vesiculosus crude extract (CRD), phlorotannin-rich extract (EtOAc), and further phlorotannin-purified fractions (F1–F9) trigger cell death on different tumor cell lines of the gastrointestinal tract, using flow cytometry. The results indicate that F. vesiculosus samples exert specific cytotoxicity against tumor cell lines without affecting the viability of normal cells. Moreover, it was found that, among the nine different phlorotannin fractions tested, F5 was the most active against both Caco-2 colorectal and MKN-28 gastric cancer cells, inducing death via activation of both apoptosis and necrosis. The UHPLC-MS analysis of this fraction revealed, among others, the presence of a compound tentatively identified as eckstolonol and another as fucofurodiphlorethol, which could be mainly responsible for the promising cytotoxic effects observed in this sample. Overall, the results herein reported contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms behind the antitumor properties of F. vesiculosus phlorotannin-rich extracts.     

Optimization of a large scale industrial reactor by genetic algorithms

The present work aims to employ genetic algorithms (GAs) to optimize an industrial chemical process, characterized by being difficult to be optimized by conventional methods. The considered chemical process is the three phase catalytic slurry reactor in which the reaction of the hydrogenation of o-cresol producing 2-methyl-cyclohexanol occurs. In order to describe the dynamic behavior of the multivariable process, a non-linear mathematical model is used. Due to the high dimensionality and non-linearity of the model, a rigorous one, the solution of the optimization problem through conventional algorithms does not always lead to convergence. This fact justifies the use of an evolutionary method, based on the GAs, to deal with this process. In this way, in order to optimize the process, the GA code is coupled with the rigorous model of the reactor. The aim of the optimization through GAs is the searching of the process inputs that maximizes the productivity of 2-methyl-cyclohexanol subject to the environmental constraint of conversion. Many simulations are conducted in order to find the maximization of the objective function without violating the constraint. The results show that the GAs are used successfully in the process optimization. The selection of the most important GA parameters making use of a factorial design approach by fractional factorial design is proposed. A factorial design approach by a central composite design is also proposed in order to determine the best values of the GA parameters that lead to the optimal solution of the optimization problem.     

On the association between high temperature and mortality in warm climates

We conducted a time-series analysis of 1997-1999 data records of air temperature and all-cause mortality in Greater Beirut, using bi-linear Poisson auto-regressive models, and published our findings in the Science of the Total Environment [El-Zein, A., Tewtel-Salem, M., Nehme, G., 2004. A time-series analysis of mortality and air temperature in Greater Beirut. Sci. Total Environ. 330, 71-80]. We compared our results to those of Curriero et al. [Curriero, F.C., Heiner, K.S., Samet, J.M., Zeger, S.L., Strug, L., Patz, J.A., 2002. Temperature and mortality in 11 cities of the Eastern United States. Am. J. Epidemiol. 155(1) 80-87.], who subsequently reported that their original results were inaccurate and published new results [Curriero, F.C., Heiner, K.S., Samet, J.M., Zeger, S.L., Strug, L., Patz, J.A., 2002. Temperature and mortality in 11 cities of the Eastern United States. Am. J. Epidemiol. 155(1) 80-87; Curriero, F.C., Samet, J.M., Zeger, S.L., 2003. Letter to the Editor re. On the Use of Generalized Additive Models in Time-Series Studies of Air Pollution and Health" and "Temperature and Mortality in 11 Cities of the Eastern United States". Am. J. Epidemiol. 158(1) 93-94.]. In this letter, we report two changes in the interpretation of our findings as a result of the change in the results of Curriero et al. [Curriero, F.C., Heiner, K.S., Samet, J.M., Zeger, S.L., Strug, L., Patz, J.A., 2002. Temperature and mortality in 11 cities of the Eastern United States. Am. J. Epidemiol. 155(1) 80-87]. Their newly-reported results reinforce our conclusion that heat-related mortality can be a significant public health issue even in temperate to warm climates. However, our findings raise a question concerning the ability of socioeconomic indicators to explain differences in vulnerability to heat between high-income and low-income countries.