Abstract: Background: Worldwide, at least 2.8 million people
die each year as a result of being overweight or obese, and 35.8
million (2.3%) of global DALYs are caused by overweight or
obesity. Obesity is acknowledged as one of the burning public
health problems reducing life expectancy and quality of life. The
body composition analysis of the university population is essential
in assessing the nutritional status, as well as the risk of developing
diseases associated with abnormal body fat content so as to make
nutritional recommendations. Objectives: The main aim was to
determine the prevalence of obesity and overweight in University
students using Anthropometric analysis and BIA methods. Material
and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 283 university students
participated. The body composition analysis was undertaken by
using mainly: i) Anthropometric Measurement: Height, Weight,
BMI, waist circumference, hip circumference and skin fold
thickness, ii) Bio-electrical impedance was used for analysis of
body fat mass, fat percent and visceral fat which was measured by
Tanita SC-330P Professional Body Composition Analyzer. The
data so collected were compiled in MS Excel and analyzed for
males and females using SPSS 16. Results and Discussion: The
mean age of the male (n= 153) studied subjects was 25.37 ±2.39
years and females (n=130) was 22.53 ±2.31. The data of BIA
revealed very high mean fat per cent of the female subjects i.e.
30.3±6.5 per cent whereas mean fat per cent of the male subjects
was 15.60±6.02 per cent indicating a normal body fat range. The
findings showed high visceral fat of both males (12.92±3.02) and
females (16.86±4.98). BMI, BF% and WHR were higher among
females, and BMI was higher among males. The most evident
correlation was verified between BF% and WHR for female
students (r=0.902; p
Abstract: This article presents two methods for the
compensation of harmonics generated by a nonlinear load. The first is
the classic method P-Q. The second is the controller by modern
method of artificial intelligence specifically fuzzy logic. Both
methods are applied to a shunt Active Power Filter (sAPF) based on a
three-phase voltage converter at five levels NPC topology. In
calculating the harmonic currents of reference, we use the algorithm
P-Q and pulse generation, we use the intersective PWM. For
flexibility and dynamics, we use fuzzy logic. The results give us clear
that the rate of Harmonic Distortion issued by fuzzy logic is better
than P-Q.
Abstract: Family is a basic unit of the society and the main
source of human development. The initial aim of the family is
psychological and social support of its members and has special
developmental stages. Researches show the families who have less
cohesion, have more conflicts and maladjustments and the members
of such families are not able to communicate effectively. Family is a
system in which any inter communication is related to child rearing
patterns and can affect it. Even the child rearing styles in childhood
can determine the family communications in adulthood. Therefore,
the aim of the present research was to examine the relationship
between child-rearing styles including authoritative, authoritarian and
permissive with dimensions of family communication patterns
including the conversation and conformity. The research design was a
correlational and the population consisted of the psychology students
of Roudehen Islamic Azad University who were studying in
academic year 2013-2014. A sample of 324 students was selected
randomly from the population. The research tools were the Baumrind
Child-rearing Questionnaires and Family Communication
Patterns Inventory, The Revised Scale of Koerner and Fitzpatrick.
The result was as below: (a) there was a positive and significant
relationship between conversation orientation and authoritative style.
(b) There was no significant relationship between conversation
orientation and other child-rearing styles. (c) There was a negative
significant relationship between conformity orientation and
authoritative style. (d) There was a positive significant relationship
between conformity orientation with authoritarian and permissive
styles. (e) There was a significant relationship between 3 dimensions
of child-rearing and communication patterns.
Abstract: This paper introduces symbiotic organism search (SOS)
for solving capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP). SOS is a new
approach in metaheuristics fields and never been used to solve discrete
problems. A sophisticated decoding method to deal with a discrete
problem setting in CVRP is applied using the basic symbiotic
organism search (SOS) framework. The performance of the algorithm
was evaluated on a set of benchmark instances and compared results
with best known solution. The computational results show that the
proposed algorithm can produce good solution as a preliminary
testing. These results indicated that the proposed SOS can be applied
as an alternative to solve the capacitated vehicle routing problem.
Abstract: This study aimed to investigate the magnetic resonance
(MR) signal enhancement ratio (ER) of contrast-enhanced MR
angiography (CE-MRA) in normal rats with gadobenate dimeglumine
(Gd-BOPTA) using a clinical 3T scanner and an extremity coil. The
relaxivities of Gd-BOPTA with saline only and with 4.5% human
serum albumin (HSA) were also measured. Compared with
Gadolinium diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (Gd-DTPA),
Gd-BOPTA had higher relaxivities. The maximum ER of aorta (ERa),
kidney, liver and muscle with Gd-BOPTA were higher than those with
Gd-DTPA. The maximum ERa appeared at 1.2 min and decayed to half
at 10 min after Gd-BOPTA injection. This information is helpful for
the design of CE-MRA study of rats.
Abstract: This research study aims to present a retrospective
study about speech recognition systems and artificial intelligence.
Speech recognition has become one of the widely used technologies,
as it offers great opportunity to interact and communicate with
automated machines. Precisely, it can be affirmed that speech
recognition facilitates its users and helps them to perform their daily
routine tasks, in a more convenient and effective manner. This
research intends to present the illustration of recent technological
advancements, which are associated with artificial intelligence.
Recent researches have revealed the fact that speech recognition is
found to be the utmost issue, which affects the decoding of speech. In
order to overcome these issues, different statistical models were
developed by the researchers. Some of the most prominent statistical
models include acoustic model (AM), language model (LM), lexicon
model, and hidden Markov models (HMM). The research will help in
understanding all of these statistical models of speech recognition.
Researchers have also formulated different decoding methods, which
are being utilized for realistic decoding tasks and constrained
artificial languages. These decoding methods include pattern
recognition, acoustic phonetic, and artificial intelligence. It has been
recognized that artificial intelligence is the most efficient and reliable
methods, which are being used in speech recognition.
Abstract: Many water desalination technologies have been
developed but in general they are energy intensive and have high cost
and adverse environmental impact. Recently, adsorption technology
for water desalination has been investigated showing the potential of
using low temperature waste heat (50-85oC) thus reducing energy
consumption and CO2 emissions. This work mathematically
compares the performance of an adsorption cycle that produces two
useful effects namely, fresh water and cooling using two different
adsorbents, silica-gel and an advanced zeolite material AQSOA-ZO2,
produced by Mitsubishi plastics. It was found that at low chilled
water temperatures, typically below 20oC, the AQSOA-Z02 is more
efficient than silica-gel as the cycle can produce 5.8 m3 of fresh water
per day and 50.1 Rton of cooling per tonne of AQSOA-ZO2. Above
20oC silica-gel is still better as the cycle production reaches 8.4 m3
per day and 62.4 Rton per tonne of silica-gel. These results show the
potential of using the AQSOA-Z02 at low chilled water temperature
for water desalination and cooling applications.
Abstract: Plasmin plays an important role in the human
circulatory system owing to its catalytic ability of fibrinolysis. The
immediate injection of plasmin in patients of strokes has intrigued
many scientists to design vectors that can transport plasmin to the
desired location in human body. Here we predict the structure of
human plasmin and investigate the interaction of plasmin with the
gold-nanoparticle.
Because the crystal structure of plasminogen has been solved, we
deleted N-terminal domain (Pan-apple domain) of plasminogen and
generate a mimic of the active form of this enzyme (plasmin). We
conducted a simulated annealing process on plasmin and discovered a
very large conformation occurs. Kringle domains 1, 4 and 5 had been
observed to leave its original location relative to the main body of the
enzyme and the original doughnut shape of this enzyme has been
transformed to a V-shaped by opening its two arms. This observation
of conformational change is consistent with the experimental results of
neutron scattering and centrifugation.
We subsequently docked the plasmin on the simulated gold surface
to predict their interaction. The V-shaped plasmin could utilize its
Kringle domain and catalytic domain to contact the gold surface.
Our findings not only reveal the flexibility of plasmin structure but
also provide a guide for the design of a plasmin-gold nanoparticle.
Abstract: This research paper presents highly optimized barrel
shifter at 22nm Hi K metal gate strained Si technology node. This
barrel shifter is having a unique combination of static and dynamic
body bias which gives lowest power delay product. This power delay
product is compared with the same circuit at same technology node
with static forward biasing at ‘supply/2’ and also with normal reverse
substrate biasing and still found to be the lowest. The power delay
product of this barrel sifter is .39362X10-17J and is lowered by
approximately 78% to reference proposed barrel shifter at 32nm bulk
CMOS technology. Power delay product of barrel shifter at 22nm Hi
K Metal gate technology with normal reverse substrate bias is
2.97186933X10-17J and can be compared with this design’s PDP of
.39362X10-17J. This design uses both static and dynamic substrate
biasing and also has approximately 96% lower power delay product
compared to only forward body biased at half of supply voltage. The
NMOS model used are predictive technology models of Arizona state
university and the simulations to be carried out using HSPICE
simulator.
Abstract: This paper investigates and compares the community
support for tourism development between two groups of minority
ethnic descendants in Malacca, Malaysia, namely the Baba-Nyonya
and Portuguese. A descriptive research design using a quantitative
method with self-reported and self-administered questionnaires
through across-sectional approach was applied. Through the
descriptive and inferential statistics, some significantly useful
insights pertaining to the issue investigated were obtained. The
research outcomes indicate that the sense of community is somewhat
more effective in small communities in terms of togetherness,
closeness and a sense of belonging compared to the slightly bigger
minority group. In addition, the sense of community attributes
through membership, influence, integration and shared emotional
connections contributes to community participation in tourism
development regardless of which ethnic group one belongs to.
Abstract: Mass media campaigns against obesity are often
designed to impact large audiences. This usually means that their
audience is defined based on general demographic characteristics like
age, gender, occupation etc., not taking into account psychographics
like behavior, motivations, wants, etc. Using psychographics, as the
base for the audience segmentation, is a common practice in case of
successful campaigns, as it allows developing more relevant
messages. It also serves a purpose of identifying key segments, those
that generate the best return on investment. For a health campaign,
that would be segments that have the best chance of being converted
into healthy lifestyle at the lowest cost. This paper presents the
limitations of the demographic targeting, based on the findings from
the reception study of IMSS (Mexican Social Security Institute) antiobesity
TV commercials and proposes mothers as the first level of
segmentation, in the process of identifying the key segment for these
campaigns.
Abstract: Fabric textures are very common in our daily life.
However, the representation of fabric textures has never been explored
from neuroscience view. Theoretical studies suggest that primary
visual cortex (V1) uses a sparse code to efficiently represent natural
images. However, how the simple cells in V1 encode the artificial
textures is still a mystery. So, here we will take fabric texture as
stimulus to study the response of independent component analysis that
is established to model the receptive field of simple cells in V1. We
choose 140 types of fabrics to get the classical fabric textures as
materials. Experiment results indicate that the receptive fields of
simple cells have obvious selectivity in orientation, frequency and
phase when drifting gratings are used to determine their tuning
properties. Additionally, the distribution of optimal orientation and
frequency shows that the patch size selected from each original fabric
image has a significant effect on the frequency selectivity.
Abstract: Purpose: The study aimed to assess the depressant or
antidepressant effects of several Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory
Drugs (NSAIDs) in mice: the selective cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2)
inhibitor meloxicam, and the non-selective COX-1 and COX-2
inhibitors lornoxicam, sodium metamizole, and ketorolac. The
current literature data regarding such effects of these agents are
scarce.
Materials and methods: The study was carried out on NMRI mice
weighing 20-35 g, kept in a standard laboratory environment. The
study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of
Medicine and Pharmacy „Carol Davila”, Bucharest. The study agents
were injected intraperitoneally, 10 mL/kg body weight (bw) 1 hour
before the assessment of the locomotor activity by cage testing (n=10
mice/ group) and 2 hours before the forced swimming tests (n=15).
The study agents were dissolved in normal saline (meloxicam,
sodium metamizole), ethanol 11.8% v/v in normal saline (ketorolac),
or water (lornoxicam), respectively. Negative and positive control
agents were also given (amitryptilline in the forced swimming test).
The cage floor used in the locomotor activity assessment was divided
into 20 equal 10 cm squares. The forced swimming test involved
partial immersion of the mice in cylinders (15/9cm height/diameter)
filled with water (10 cm depth at 28C), where they were left for 6
minutes. The cage endpoint used in the locomotor activity assessment
was the number of treaded squares. Four endpoints were used in the
forced swimming test (immobility latency for the entire 6 minutes,
and immobility, swimming, and climbing scores for the final 4
minutes of the swimming session), recorded by an observer that was
„blinded” to the experimental design. The statistical analysis used the
Levene test for variance homogeneity, ANOVA and post-hoc
analysis as appropriate, Tukey or Tamhane tests.
Results: No statistically significant increase or decrease in the
number of treaded squares was seen in the locomotor activity
assessment of any mice group. In the forced swimming test,
amitryptilline showed an antidepressant effect in each experiment, at
the 10 mg/kg bw dosage. Sodium metamizole was depressant at 100
mg/kg bw (increased the immobility score, p=0.049, Tamhane test),
but not in lower dosages as well (25 and 50 mg/kg bw). Ketorolac
showed an antidepressant effect at the intermediate dosage of 5
mg/kg bw, but not so in the dosages of 2.5 and 10 mg/kg bw,
respectively (increased the swimming score, p=0.012, Tamhane test).
Meloxicam and lornoxicam did not alter the forced swimming
endpoints at any dosage level.
Discussion: 1) Certain NSAIDs caused changes in the forced
swimming patterns without interfering with locomotion. 2) Sodium
metamizole showed a depressant effect, whereas ketorolac proved
antidepressant. Conclusion: NSAID-induced mood changes are not
class effects of these agents and apparently are independent of the
type of inhibited cyclooxygenase (COX-1 or COX-2).
Disclosure: This paper was co-financed from the European Social
Fund, through the Sectorial Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2007-2013, project number POSDRU /159
/1.5 /S /138907 "Excellence in scientific interdisciplinary research,
doctoral and postdoctoral, in the economic, social and medical fields
-EXCELIS", coordinator The Bucharest University of Economic
Studies.
Abstract: The aim of the current study was to develop and
validate a Response to Stressful Situations Scale (RSSS) for the
Portuguese population. This scale assesses the degree of stress
experienced in scenarios that can constitute positive, negative and
more neutral stressors, and also describes the physiological,
emotional and behavioral reactions to those events according to their
intensity. These scenarios include typical stressor scenarios relevant
to patients with schizophrenia, which are currently absent from most
scales, assessing specific risks that these stressors may bring on
subjects, which may prove useful in non-clinical and clinical
populations (i.e. Patients with mood or anxiety disorders,
schizophrenia). Results from Principal Components Analysis and
Confirmatory Factor Analysis of two adult samples from general
population allowed to confirm a three-factor model with good fit
indices: χ2 (144)= 370.211, p = 0.000; GFI = 0.928; CFI = 0.927; TLI =
0.914, RMSEA = 0.055, P(rmsea ≤0.005) = .096; PCFI = .781.
Further data analysis of the scale revealed that RSSS is an adequate
assessment tool of stress response in adults to be used in further
research and clinical settings, with good psychometric characteristics,
adequate divergent and convergent validity, good temporal stability
and high internal consistency.
Abstract: Advanced treatments such as forward osmosis (FO)
can be used to separate or reject nutrients from secondary treated
effluents. Forward osmosis uses the chemical potential across the
membrane, which is the osmotic pressure gradient, to induce water to
flow through the membrane from a feed solution (FS) into a draw
solution (DS). The performance of FO is affected by the membrane
characteristics, composition of the FS and DS, and operating
conditions. The aim of this study was to investigate the optimum
velocity and temperature for nutrient rejection and water flux
performance in FO treatments. MgCl2 was used as the DS in the FO
process. The results showed that higher cross flow velocities yielded
higher water fluxes. High rejection of nutrients was achieved by using
a moderate cross flow velocity at 0.25 m/s. Nutrient rejection was
insensitive to temperature variation, whereas water flux was
significantly impacted by it. A temperature of 25°C was found to be
good for nutrient rejection.
Abstract: Brass terminal, one of the several crude oil and
petroleum products storage/handling facilities in the Niger Delta was
built in the 1980s. Activities at this site, over the years, released
crude oil into this 3 m-deep, 1500 m-long canal lying adjacent to the
terminal with oil floating on it and its sediment heavily polluted. To
ensure effective clean-up, three major activities were planned: site
characterization, bioremediation pilot plant construction and testing
and full-scale bioremediation of contaminated sediment / bank soil by
land farming. The canal was delineated into 12 lots and each
characterized, with reference to the floating oily phase, contaminated
sediment and canal bank soil. As a result of site characterization, a
pilot plant for on-site bioremediation was designed and a treatment
basin constructed for carrying out pilot bioremediation test.
Following a designed sampling protocol, samples from this pilot
plant were collected for analysis at two laboratories as a quality
assurance / quality control check. Results showed that Brass Canal
upstream is contaminated with dark, thick and viscous oily film with
characteristic hydrocarbon smell while downstream, thin oily film
interspersed with water was observed. Sediments were observed to be
dark with mixture of brownish sandy soil with TPH ranging from
17,800 mg/kg in Lot 1 to 88,500 mg/kg in Lot 12 samples. Brass
Canal bank soil was observed to be sandy from ground surface to 3m,
below ground surface (bgs) it was silty-sandy and brownish while
subsurface soil (4-10m bgs) was sandy-clayey and whitish/grayish
with typical hydrocarbon smell. Preliminary results obtained so far
have been very promising but were proprietary. This project is
considered, to the best of technical literature knowledge, the first
large-scale on-site bioremediation project in the Niger Delta region,
Nigeria.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a system for preventing gas
risks through the use of wireless communication modules and
intelligent gas safety appliances. Our system configuration consists of
an automatic extinguishing system, detectors, a wall-pad, and a
microcomputer controlled micom gas meter to monitor gas flow and
pressure as well as the occurrence of earthquakes. The automatic fire
extinguishing system checks for both combustible gaseous leaks and
monitors the environmental temperature, while the detector array
measures smoke and CO gas concentrations. Depending on detected
conditions, the micom gas meter cuts off an inner valve and generates
a warning, the automatic fire-extinguishing system cuts off an external
valve and sprays extinguishing materials, or the sensors generate
signals and take further action when smoke or CO are detected.
Information on intelligent measures taken by the gas safety appliances
and sensors are transmitted to the wall-pad, which in turn relays this as
real time data to a server that can be monitored via an external network
(BcN) connection to a web or mobile application for the management
of gas safety. To validate this smart-home gas management system, we
field-tested its suitability for use in Korean apartments under several
scenarios.
Abstract: Here, we study the characteristic feature of
conventional (ON-OFF keying) and soliton based transmission
system. We consider 20Gbps transmission system implemented with
Conventional Single Mode Fiber (C-SMF) to examine the role of
Gaussian pulse which is the characteristic of conventional
propagation and Hyperbolic-secant pulse which is the characteristic
of soliton propagation in it. We note the influence of these pulses
with respect to different dispersion lengths and soliton period in
conventional and soliton system respectively and evaluate the system
performance in terms of Quality factor. From the analysis, we could
prove that the soliton pulse has the consistent performance even for
long distance without dispersion compensation than the conventional
system as it is robust to dispersion. For the length of transmission of
200Km, soliton system yielded Q of 33.958 while the conventional
system totally exhausted with Q=0.
Abstract: Phthalates are ubiquitous environmental pollutants
well known because of their endocrine disrupting activity in human
organism. The aim of our study was, by biological monitoring,
investigate exposure to phthalates of Roma ethnicity group i.e.
children and adults from 5 families (n=29, average age 11.8 ± 7.6
years) living in western Slovakia. Additionally, we analysed some
associations between anthropometric measures, questionnaire data
i.e. socio-economic status, eating and drinking habits, practise of
personal care products and household conditions in comparison with
concentrations of phthalate metabolites. We used for analysis of urine
samples high performance liquid chromatography and tandem mass
spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) to determine concentrations of
phthalate metabolites monoethyl phthalate (MEP), mono-n-butyl
phthalate (MnBP), mono-iso-butyl phthalate (MiBP), mono(2-ethyl-
5-hydroxyhexyl) phthalate (5OH-MEHP), mono(2-ethyl-5-oxohexyl)
phthalate (5oxo-MEHP) and mono(2-etylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP).
Our results indicate that ethnicity, lower socioeconomic status and
different housing conditions in Roma population can affect urinary
concentration of phthalate metabolites.
Abstract: This paper presents a rank correlation curve. The
traditional correlation coefficient is valid for both continuous
variables and for integer variables using rank statistics. Since
the correlation coefficient has already been established in rank
statistics by Spearman, such a calculation can be extended to
the correlation curve.
This paper presents two survey questions. The survey
collected non-continuous variables. We will show weak to
moderate correlation. Obviously, one question has a negative
effect on the other. A review of the qualitative literature
can answer which question and why. The rank correlation
curve shows which collection of responses has a positive
slope and which collection of responses has a negative slope.
Such information is unavailable from the flat, ”first-glance”
correlation statistics.