Abstract: Hepatitis C is an infectious disease transmitted by
blood and due to hepatitis C virus (HCV), which attacks the liver.
The infection is characterized by liver inflammation (hepatitis) that is
often asymptomatic but can progress to chronic hepatitis and later
cirrhosis and liver cancer. Our problem tends to highlight on the one
hand the prevalence of infectious disease in the population of the
region of Batna and on other hand the biological characteristics of
this disease by a screening and a specific diagnosis based on
serological tests, liver checkup (measurement of haematological and
biochemical parameters).
The results showed:
The serology of hepatitis C establishes the diagnosis of infection
with hepatitis C. In this study and with the serological test, 24 cases
of the disease of hepatitis C were found in 1000 suspected cases (7
cases with normal transaminases and 17 cases with elevated
transaminases). The prevalence of this disease in this study
population was 2.4%.
The presence of hepatitis C disrupts liver function including the
onset of cytolysis, cholestasis, jaundice, thrombocytopenia, and
coagulation disorders.
Abstract: Human activity is a major concern in a wide variety of
applications, such as video surveillance, human computer interface
and face image database management. Detecting and recognizing
faces is a crucial step in these applications. Furthermore, major
advancements and initiatives in security applications in the past years
have propelled face recognition technology into the spotlight. The
performance of existing face recognition systems declines significantly
if the resolution of the face image falls below a certain level.
This is especially critical in surveillance imagery where often, due to
many reasons, only low-resolution video of faces is available. If these
low-resolution images are passed to a face recognition system, the
performance is usually unacceptable. Hence, resolution plays a key
role in face recognition systems. In this paper we introduce a new
low resolution face recognition system based on mixture of expert
neural networks. In order to produce the low resolution input images
we down-sampled the 48 × 48 ORL images to 12 × 12 ones using
the nearest neighbor interpolation method and after that applying
the bicubic interpolation method yields enhanced images which is
given to the Principal Component Analysis feature extractor system.
Comparison with some of the most related methods indicates that
the proposed novel model yields excellent recognition rate in low
resolution face recognition that is the recognition rate of 100% for
the training set and 96.5% for the test set.
Abstract: The model-based approach to user interface design
relies on developing separate models capturing various aspects about
users, tasks, application domain, presentation and dialog structures.
This paper presents a task modeling approach for user interface
design and aims at exploring mappings between task, domain and
presentation models. The basic idea of our approach is to identify
typical configurations in task and domain models and to investigate
how they relate each other. A special emphasis is put on applicationspecific
functions and mappings between domain objects and
operational task structures. In this respect, we will address two
layers in task decomposition: a functional (planning) layer and an
operational layer.
Abstract: The mineral having chemical compositional formula MgAl2O4 is called “spinel". The ferrites crystallize in spinel structure are known as spinel-ferrites or ferro-spinels. The spinel structure has a fcc cage of oxygen ions and the metallic cations are distributed among tetrahedral (A) and octahedral (B) interstitial voids (sites). The X-ray diffraction (XRD) intensity of each Bragg plane is sensitive to the distribution of cations in the interstitial voids of the spinel lattice. This leads to the method of determination of distribution of cations in the spinel oxides through XRD intensity analysis. The computer program for XRD intensity analysis has been developed in C language and also tested for the real experimental situation by synthesizing the spinel ferrite materials Mg0.6Zn0.4AlxFe2- xO4 and characterized them by X-ray diffractometry. The compositions of Mg0.6Zn0.4AlxFe2-xO4(x = 0.0 to 0.6) ferrites have been prepared by ceramic method and powder X-ray diffraction patterns were recorded. Thus, the authenticity of the program is checked by comparing the theoretically calculated data using computer simulation with the experimental ones. Further, the deduced cation distributions were used to fit the magnetization data using Localized canting of spins approach to explain the “recovery" of collinear spin structure due to Al3+ - substitution in Mg-Zn ferrites which is the case if A-site magnetic dilution and non-collinear spin structure. Since the distribution of cations in the spinel ferrites plays a very important role with regard to their electrical and magnetic properties, it is essential to determine the cation distribution in spinel lattice.
Abstract: A microchannel with two inlets and two outlets was tested as a potential reactor to carry out two-phase catalytic phase transfer reaction with phase separation at the exit of the microchannel. The catalytic phase transfer reaction between benzyl chloride and sodium sulfide was chosen as a model reaction. The effect of operational time on the conversion was studied. By utilizing a multiphase parallel flow inside the microchannel reactor with the aid of a guideline structure, the catalytic phase reaction followed by phase separation could be ensured. The organic phase could be separated completely from one exit and part of the aqueous phase was separated purely and could be reused with slightly affecting the catalytic phase transfer reaction.
Abstract: Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a 4G wireless
broadband technology developed by the Third Generation
Partnership Project (3GPP) release 8, and it's represent the
competitiveness of Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
(UMTS) for the next 10 years and beyond. The concepts for LTE
systems have been introduced in 3GPP release 8, with objective of
high-data-rate, low-latency and packet-optimized radio access
technology. In this paper, performance of different TCP variants
during LTE network investigated. The performance of TCP over
LTE is affected mostly by the links of the wired network and total
bandwidth available at the serving base station. This paper describes
an NS-2 based simulation analysis of TCP-Vegas, TCP-Tahoe, TCPReno,
TCP-Newreno, TCP-SACK, and TCP-FACK, with full
modeling of all traffics of LTE system. The Evaluation of the
network performance with all TCP variants is mainly based on
throughput, average delay and lost packet. The analysis of TCP
performance over LTE ensures that all TCP's have a similar
throughput and the best performance return to TCP-Vegas than other
variants.
Abstract: IT infrastructures are becoming more and more
difficult. Therefore, in the first industrial IT systems, the P2P
paradigm has replaced the traditional client server and methods of
self-organization are gaining more and more importance. From the
past it is known that especially regular structures like grids may
significantly improve the system behavior and performance. This
contribution introduces a new algorithm based on a biologic
analogue, which may provide the growth of several regular structures
on top of anarchic grown P2P- or social network structures.
Abstract: The design problem of Infinite Impulse Response (IIR)
digital filters is usually expressed as the minimization problem of
the complex magnitude error that includes both the magnitude and
phase information. However, the group delay of the filter obtained
by solving such design problem may be far from the desired group
delay. In this paper, we propose a design method of stable IIR digital
filters with prespecified maximum group delay errors. In the proposed
method, the approximation problems of the magnitude-phase and
group delay are separately defined, and these two approximation
problems are alternately solved using successive projections. As a
result, the proposed method can design the IIR filters that satisfy the
prespecified allowable errors for not only the complex magnitude but
also the group delay by alternately executing the coefficient update
for the magnitude-phase and the group delay approximation. The
usefulness of the proposed method is verified through some examples.
Abstract: Since the 1980s, banks and financial service institutions have been running in an endless race of innovation to cope with the advancing technology, the fierce competition, and the more sophisticated and demanding customers. In order to guide their innovation efforts, several researches were conducted to identify the success and failure factors of new financial services. These mainly included organizational factors, marketplace factors and new service development process factors. They almost all emphasized the importance of customer and market orientation as a response to the highly perceptual and intangible characteristics of financial services. However, they deemphasized the critical characteristics of high involvement of risk and close correlation with the economic conditions, a factor that heavily contributed to the Global financial Crisis of 2008. This paper reviews the success and failure factors of new financial services. It then adds new perspectives emerging from the analysis of the role of innovation in the global financial crisis.
Abstract: Obtaining labeled data in supervised learning is often
difficult and expensive, and thus the trained learning algorithm tends
to be overfitting due to small number of training data. As a result,
some researchers have focused on using unlabeled data which may
not necessary to follow the same generative distribution as the labeled
data to construct a high-level feature for improving performance on
supervised learning tasks. In this paper, we investigate the impact of
the relationship between unlabeled and labeled data for classification
performance. Specifically, we will apply difference unlabeled data
which have different degrees of relation to the labeled data for
handwritten digit classification task based on MNIST dataset. Our
experimental results show that the higher the degree of relation
between unlabeled and labeled data, the better the classification
performance. Although the unlabeled data that is completely from
different generative distribution to the labeled data provides the lowest
classification performance, we still achieve high classification performance.
This leads to expanding the applicability of the supervised
learning algorithms using unsupervised learning.
Abstract: Banishing hunger from the face of earth has been
frequently expressed in various international, national and regional
level conferences since 1974. Providing food security has become
important issue across the world particularly in developing countries.
In a developing country like India, where growth rate of population is
more than that of the food grains production, food security is a
question of great concern. According to the International Food Policy
Research Institute's Global Hunger Index, 2011, India ranks 67 of the
81 countries of the world with the worst food security status. After
Green Revolution, India became a food surplus country. Its
production has increased from 74.23 million tonnes in 1966-67 to
257.44 million tonnes in 2011-12. But after achieving selfsufficiency
in food during last three decades, the country is now
facing new challenges due to increasing population, climate change,
stagnation in farm productivity. Therefore, the main objective of the
present paper is to examine the food security situation at national
level in the country and further to explain the paradox of food
insecurity in a food surplus state of India i.e in Punjab at micro level.
In order to achieve the said objectives, secondary data collected from
the Ministry of Agriculture and the Agriculture department of Punjab
State was analyzed. The result of the study showed that despite
having surplus food production the country is still facing food
insecurity problem at micro level. Within the Kandi belt of Punjab
state, the area adjacent to plains is food secure while the area along
the hills falls in food insecure zone.
The present paper is divided into following three sections (i)
Introduction, (ii) Analysis of food security situation at national level
as well as micro level (Kandi belt of Punjab State) (iii) Concluding
Observations
Abstract: Herein, we report the different types of surface morphology due to the interaction between the pure protein Insulin (INS) and catanionic surfactant mixture of Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate (SDS) and Cetyl Trimethyl Ammonium Bromide (CTAB) at air/water interface obtained by the Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) technique. We characterized the aggregations by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) in LB films. We found that the INS adsorption increased in presence of catanionic surfactant at air/water interface. The presence of small amount of surfactant induces two-stage growth kinetics due to the pure protein absorption and protein-catanionic surface micelle interaction. The protein remains in native state in presence of small amount of surfactant mixture. Smaller amount of surfactant mixture with INS is producing surface micelle type structure. This may be considered for drug delivery system. On the other hand, INS becomes unfolded and fibrillated in presence of higher amount of surfactant mixture. In both the cases, the protein was successfully immobilized on a glass substrate by the LB technique. These results may find applications in the fundamental science of the physical chemistry of surfactant systems, as well as in the preparation of drug-delivery system.
Abstract: In this article a modification of the algorithm of the fuzzy ART network, aiming at returning it supervised is carried out. It consists of the search for the comparison, training and vigilance parameters giving the minimum quadratic distances between the output of the training base and those obtained by the network. The same process is applied for the determination of the parameters of the fuzzy ARTMAP giving the most powerful network. The modification consist in making learn the fuzzy ARTMAP a base of examples not only once as it is of use, but as many time as its architecture is in evolution or than the objective error is not reached . In this way, we don-t worry about the values to impose on the eight (08) parameters of the network. To evaluate each one of these three networks modified, a comparison of their performances is carried out. As application we carried out a classification of the image of Algiers-s bay taken by SPOT XS. We use as criterion of evaluation the training duration, the mean square error (MSE) in step control and the rate of good classification per class. The results of this study presented as curves, tables and images show that modified fuzzy ARTMAP presents the best compromise quality/computing time.
Abstract: Efficient preprocessing is very essential for automatic
recognition of handwritten documents. In this paper, techniques on
segmenting words in handwritten Arabic text are presented. Firstly,
connected components (ccs) are extracted, and distances among
different components are analyzed. The statistical distribution of this
distance is then obtained to determine an optimal threshold for words
segmentation. Meanwhile, an improved projection based method is
also employed for baseline detection. The proposed method has been
successfully tested on IFN/ENIT database consisting of 26459
Arabic words handwritten by 411 different writers, and the results
were promising and very encouraging in more accurate detection of
the baseline and segmentation of words for further recognition.
Abstract: Vibrations of circular cylindrical shells made of
layered composite materials are considered. The shells are weakened
by circumferential cracks. The influence of circumferential cracks
with constant depth on the vibration of the shell is prescribed with the
aid of a matrix of local flexibility coupled with the coefficient of the
stress intensity known in the linear elastic fracture mechanics.
Numerical results are presented for the case of the shell with one
circular crack.
Abstract: This paper presents key challenges reported by a
group of Australian undergraduate Physical Education students in
conducting a program for persons with an intellectual disability.
Strategies adopted to address these challenges are presented together
with representative feedback given by the Physical Education
students at the completion of the program. The significance of the
program’s findings is summarized.
Abstract: It is well known that a linear dynamic system including
a delay will exhibit limit cycle oscillations when a bang-bang sensor
is used in the feedback loop of a PID controller. A similar behaviour
occurs when a delayed feedback signal is used to train a neural
network. This paper develops a method of predicting this behaviour
by linearizing the system, which can be shown to behave in a manner
similar to an integral controller. Using this procedure, it is possible
to predict the characteristics of the neural network driven limit cycle
to varying degrees of accuracy, depending on the information known
about the system. An application is also presented: the intelligent
control of a spark ignition engine.
Abstract: A dent is a gross distortion of the pipe cross-section.
Dent depth is defined as the maximum reduction in the diameter of
the pipe compared to the original diameter. Pipeline dent finite
element (FE) simulation and theoretical analysis are conducted in this
paper to develop an understanding of the geometric characteristics
and strain distribution in the pressurized dented pipe. Based on the
results, the magnitude of the denting force increases significantly
with increasing the internal pressure, and the maximum
circumferential and longitudinal strains increase by increasing the
internal pressure and the dent depth. The results can be used for
characterizing dents and ranking their risks to the integrity of a
pipeline.
Abstract: There are many kinds of metal borates found not only
in nature but also synthesized in the laboratory such as magnesium
borates. Due to its excellent properties, as remarkable ceramic
materials, they have also application areas in anti-wear and friction
reducing additives as well as electro-conductive treating agents. The
synthesis of magnesium borate powders can be fulfilled simply with
two different methods, hydrothermal and thermal synthesis.
Microwave assisted method, also another way of producing
magnesium borate, can be classified into thermal synthesis because of
using the principles of solid state synthesis. It also contributes
producing particles with small size and high purity in nano-size
material synthesize. In this study the production of magnesium
borates, are aimed using MgCl2.6H2O and H3BO3. The identification
of both starting materials and products were made by the equipments
of, X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Fourier Transform Infrared
Spectroscopy (FT-IR). After several synthesis steps magnesium
borates were synthesized and characterized by XRD and FT-IR, as
well.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate the influence of
market share and diversification on the nonlife insurers- performance.
The underlying relationships have been investigated in different
industries and different disciplines (economics, management...), still,
no consistency exists either in the magnitude or statistical
significance of the relationship between market share (and
diversification as well) on one side and companies- performance on
the other side. Moreover, the direction of the relationship is also
somewhat questionable. While some authors find this relationship to
be positive, the others reveal its negative association. In order to test
the influence of market share and diversification on companies-
performance in Croatian nonlife insurance industry for the period
from 1999 to 2009, we designed an empirical model in which we
included the following independent variables: firms- profitability
from previous years, market share, diversification and control
variables (i.e. ownership, industrial concentration, GDP per capita,
inflation). Using the two-step generalized method of moments
(GMM) estimator we found evidence of a positive and statistically
significant influence of both, market share and diversification, on
insurers- profitability.