Abstract: Automated intelligent, clinical decision support systems generally promote to help or to assist physicians and patients regarding to prevention of diseases or treatment of illnesses using computer represented knowledge and information. In this paper, assessment factors affecting the proper design of clinical decision support system were investigated. The required procedure steps for gathering the data from clinical trial and extracting the information from large volume of healthcare repositories were listed, which are necessary for validation and verification of evidence-based implementation of clinical decision support system. The goal of this paper is to extract useful evaluation factors affecting the quality of the clinical decision support system in the design, development, and implementation of a computer-based decision support system.
Abstract: Analysis of amplitude and phase characteristics for delta, theta, and alpha bands at localized time instant from EEG signals is important for the characterizing information processing in the brain. In this paper, complex demodulation method was used to analyze EEG (Electroencephalographic) signal, particularly for auditory evoked potential response signal, with sufficient time resolution and designated frequency bandwidth resolution required. The complex demodulation decomposes raw EEG signal into 3 designated delta, theta, and alpha bands with complex EEG signal representation at sampled time instant, which can enable the extraction of amplitude envelope and phase information. Throughout simulated test data, and real EEG signal acquired during auditory attention task, it can extract the phase offset, phase and frequency changing instant and decomposed amplitude envelope for delta, theta, and alpha bands. The complex demodulation technique can be efficiently used in brain signal analysis in case of phase, and amplitude information required.
Abstract: A major goal in animal genetics is to understand the role of common genetic variants in diseases susceptibility and production traits. Sahiwal cattle can be considered as a global animal genetic resource due to its relatively high milk producing ability, resistance against tropical diseases and heat tolerant. CYP11B1 gene provides instructions for making a mitochondrial enzyme called steroid 11-beta-hydroxylase. It catalyzes the 11deoxy-cortisol to cortisol and 11deoxycorticosterone to corticosterone in cattle. The bovine CYP11B1 gene is positioned on BTA14q12 comprises of eight introns and nine exons and protein is associated with mitochondrial epithelium. The present study was aimed to identify the single-nucleotide polymorphisms in CYP11B1 gene in Sahiwal cattle breed of Pakistan. Four polymorphic sites were identified in exon one of CYP11B1 gene through sequencing approach. Significant finding was the incidence of the C→T polymorphism in 5'-UTR, causing amino acid substitution from alanine to valine (A30V) in Sahiwal cattle breed. That Ala/Val polymorphism may serve as a powerful genetic tool for the development of DNA markers that can be used for the particular traits for different local cattle breeds.
Abstract: Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), an enzyme degrading heme to carbon monoxide, iron, and biliverdin, has been recognized as playing a crucial role in cellular defense against stressful conditions, not only related to heme release. In the present study, the effects of TNF-a on the expression of heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) in human aortic endothelial cells (HAECs) as well as the related mechanisms were investigated. 10 ng/mL TNF-α treatment significantly increased HO-1 expression after 6h, then a further increase at 12h and declined at 24h. Treatment with 2 ng/mL of TNF-a after 12 h resulted in a significant increase in HO-1 expression, which peaked at 10 ng/mL, then declined at 20 ng/mL. TNF-α induced HO-1 expression and then HO-1 expression reduced vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) expression. Phosphorylation studies of ERK1/2, JNK, and p38, three subgroups of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) demonstrated TNF-α-induced ERK1/2, JNK, and p38 phosphorylation. The increase in HO-1 expression in response to TNF-α treatment was affected by pretreatment with SP600125 (a JNK inhibitor) and SB203580 (a p38 inhibitor), not with PD98059 (an ERK1/2 inhibitor). The expression of HO-1 was stronger in aortas of TNF-α-treated apo-E deficient mice when compared with control mice. These results suggest that low dose of TNF-α treatment notably induced HO-1 expression was mediated through JNK/p38 phosphorylation and may have a protective potential in cardiovascular diseases and inflammatory response through the regulation of HO-1 expression.
Abstract: This paper presents the early-warning lights
classification management system for industrial parks promoted by the
Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) since 2011,
including the definition of each early-warning light, objectives, action
program and accomplishments. All of the 151 industrial parks in
Taiwan were classified into four early-warning lights, including red,
orange, yellow and green, for carrying out respective pollution
management according to the monitoring data of soil and groundwater
quality, regulatory compliance, and regulatory listing of control site or
remediation site. The Taiwan EPA set up a priority list for high
potential polluted industrial parks and investigated their soil and
groundwater qualities based on the results of the light classification
and pollution potential assessment. In 2011-2013, there were 44
industrial parks selected and carried out different investigation, such as
the early warning groundwater well networks establishment and
pollution investigation/verification for the red and orange-light
industrial parks and the environmental background survey for the
yellow-light industrial parks. Among them, 22 industrial parks were
newly or continuously confirmed that the concentrations of pollutants
exceeded those in soil or groundwater pollution control standards.
Thus, the further investigation, groundwater use restriction, listing of
pollution control site or remediation site, and pollutant isolation
measures were implemented by the local environmental protection and
industry competent authorities; the early warning lights of those
industrial parks were proposed to adjust up to orange or red-light. Up
to the present, the preliminary positive effect of the soil and
groundwater quality management system for industrial parks has been
noticed in several aspects, such as environmental background
information collection, early warning of pollution risk, pollution
investigation and control, information integration and application, and
inter-agency collaboration. Finally, the work and goal of self-initiated
quality management of industrial parks will be carried out on the basis
of the inter-agency collaboration by the classified lights system of
early warning and management as well as the regular announcement of
the status of each industrial park.
Abstract: Missing values in data are common in real world applications. Since the performance of many data mining algorithms depend critically on it being given a good metric over the input space, we decided in this paper to define a distance function for unlabeled
datasets with missing values. We use the Bhattacharyya distance, which measures the similarity of two probability distributions, to define our new distance function. According to this distance, the distance between two points without missing attributes values is simply the Mahalanobis distance. When on the other hand there is a missing value of one of the coordinates, the distance is computed according to the distribution of the missing coordinate. Our distance is general and can be used as part of any algorithm that computes the distance between data points. Because its performance depends strongly on the chosen distance measure, we opted for the k nearest neighbor classifier to evaluate its ability to accurately reflect object similarity. We experimented on standard numerical datasets from the UCI repository from different fields. On these datasets we simulated missing values and compared the performance of the kNN classifier using our distance to other three basic methods. Our experiments show that kNN using our distance function outperforms the kNN using other methods. Moreover, the runtime performance of our method is only slightly higher than the other methods.
Abstract: This study examines the media habits of young people
in Saudi Arabia, in particular their use of the Internet and television
in the domestic sphere, and how use of the Internet impacts upon
other activities. In order to address the research questions, focus
group interviews were conducted with Saudi university students. The
study found that television has become a central part of social life
within the household where television represents a main source for
family time, particularly in Ramadan while the Internet is a solitary
activity where it is used in more private spaces. Furthermore, Saudi
females were also more likely to have their Internet access monitored
and circumscribed by family members, with parents controlling the
location and the amount of time spent using the Internet.
Abstract: This paper aims to quantify the impact of natural disaster on tourism by the change of annual visitors to scenic spots. The data of visitors to Alishan, Sun Moon Lake, Sitou and Palace Museum in Taiwan during 1986 to 2012 year is collected, and the trend analysis is used to predict the annual visitors to these scenic spots. The findings show that 1999 Taiwan earthquake had significant effect on the visitors to Alishan, Sun Moon Lake and Sitou with an average impact of 55.75% during 1999 to 2000 year except for Palace Museum. The impact was greater as closer epicenter of 1999 earthquake. And the discovery period of visitors is about 2 to 9 years. Further, the impact of heavy rainfall on Alishan, Taiwan is estimated. As the accumulative rainfall reaches to 500 mm, the impact on visitors can be predicted.
Abstract: The paper discusses the implementation of the MultiAgent classification System (MACS) and utilizing it to provide an automated and accurate classification of end users developing applications in the spreadsheet domain. However, different technologies have been brought together to build MACS. The strength of the system is the integration of the agent technology with the FIPA specifications together with other technologies, which are the .NET widows service based agents, the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services, the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and Oracle Data Mining (ODM). The Microsoft's .NET widows service based agents were utilized to develop the monitoring agents of MACS, the .NET WCF services together with SOA approach allowed the distribution and communication between agents over the WWW. The Monitoring Agents (MAs) were configured to execute automatically to monitor excel spreadsheets development activities by content. Data gathered by the Monitoring Agents from various resources over a period of time was collected and filtered by a Database Updater Agent (DUA) residing in the .NET client application of the system. This agent then transfers and stores the data in Oracle server database via Oracle stored procedures for further processing that leads to the classification of the end user developers.
Abstract: We present a constructive proof of Tychonoff’s fixed point theorem in a locally convex space for uniformly continuous and sequentially locally non-constant functions.
Abstract: This paper presents a car parking monitoring system using wireless sensor networks. Multiple sensor nodes and a sink node, a gateway, and a server constitute a wireless network for monitoring a parking lot. Each of the sensor nodes is equipped with a 3-axis AMR sensor and deployed in the center of a parking space. Each sensor node reads its sensor values periodically and transmits the data to the sink node if the current and immediate past sensor values show a difference exceeding a threshold value. The sensor nodes and sink node use the 448 MHz band for wireless communication. Since RF transmission only occurs when sensor values show abrupt changes, the number of RF transmission operations is reduced and battery power can be conserved. The data from the sensor nodes reach the server via the sink node and gateway. The server determines which parking spaces are taken by cars based upon the received sensor data and reference values. The reference values are average sensor values measured by each sensor node when the corresponding parking spot is not occupied by a vehicle. Because the decision making is done by the server, the computational burden of the sensor node is relieved, which helps reduce the duty cycle of the sensor node.
Abstract: The importance of logistics has changed enormously in the last few decades. While logistics was formerly one of the core functions of most companies, logistics or at least parts of their functions are nowadays outsourced to external logistic service providers in terms of contracts. As a result of this shift new business models like the fourth party logistics provider emerged, which designs, plans and monitors the resulting logistics networks. This new business model and topics such as Synchromodality or Big Data impose new requirements on the underlying IT, which cannot be met with conventional concepts and approaches.
In this paper, the challenges of logistics network monitoring are outlined by using a scenario. The most common layers in a logical multilayered architecture for an information system are used to point out the arising challenges for IT. In addition, first appropriate solution approaches are introduced.
Abstract: The paper describes new concept of the ribbon beam antenna for RFID technology. Antenna is located near to railway lines to monitor tags situated on trains. Antenna works at 2.45 GHz and it is fabricated by microstrip technology. Antenna contains two same mirrored parts having the same radiation patterns. Each part consists of three dielectric layers. The first layer has on one side radiation elements. The second layer is only for mechanical construction and it sets optimal electromagnetic field for each radiating elements. The third layer has on its top side a ground plane and on the bottom side a microstrip circuit used for individual radiation elements feeding.
Abstract: Aerosols are small particles suspended in air that have wide varying spatial and temporal distributions. The concentration of aerosol in total columnar atmosphere is normally measured using aerosol optical depth (AOD). In long-term monitoring stations, accurate AOD retrieval is often difficult due to the lack of frequent calibration. To overcome this problem, a near-sea-level Langley calibration algorithm is developed using the combination of clear-sky detection model and statistical filter. It attempts to produce a dataset that consists of only homogenous and stable atmospheric condition for the Langley calibration purposes. In this paper, a radiance-based validation method is performed to further investigate the feasibility and consistency of the proposed algorithm at different location, day, and time. The algorithm is validated using SMARTS model based n DNI value. The overall results confirmed that the proposed calibration algorithm feasible and consistent for measurements taken at different sites and weather conditions.
Abstract: Modern industrial processes are based on a large amount of electronic devices such as programmable logic controllers and adjustable speed drives. Unfortunately, electronic devices are sensitive to disturbances, and thus, industrial loads become less tolerant to power quality problems such as sags, swells, and harmonics. Voltage sags are an important power quality problem. In this paper proposed a new configuration of Static Var Compensator (SVC) considering three different conditions named as topologies and Booster transformer with fuzzy logic based controller, capable of compensating for power quality problems associated with voltage sags and maintaining a prescribed level of voltage profile. Fuzzy logic controller is designed to achieve the firing angles for SVC such that it maintains voltage profile. The online monitoring system for voltage sag mitigation in the laboratory using the hardware is used. The results are presented from the performance of each topology and Booster transformer considered in this paper.
Abstract: Currently, mathematical and computer modeling are widely used in different biological studies to predict or assess behavior of such a complex systems as a biological are. This study deals with mathematical and computer modeling of bi-substrate enzymatic reactions, which play an important role in different biochemical pathways. The main objective of this study is to represent the results from in silico investigation of bi-substrate enzymatic reactions in the presence of uncompetitive inhibitors, as well as to describe in details the inhibition effects. Four models of uncompetitive inhibition were designed using different software packages. Particularly, uncompetitive inhibitor to the first [ES1] and the second ([ES1S2]; [FS2]) enzyme-substrate complexes have been studied. The simulation, using the same kinetic parameters for all models allowed investigating the behavior of reactions as well as determined some interesting aspects concerning influence of different cases of uncompetitive inhibition. Besides, it has been shown that uncompetitive inhibitors exhibit specific selectivity depending on mechanism of bi-substrate enzymatic reaction.
Abstract: Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-Advanced) LTE-Advanced is not new as a radio access technology, but it is an evolution of LTE to enhance the performance. This generation is the continuation of 3GPP-LTE (3GPP: 3rd Generation Partnership Project) and it is targeted for advanced development of the requirements of LTE in terms of throughput and coverage. The performance evaluation process of any network should be based on many models and simulations to investigate the network layers and functions and monitor the employment of the new technologies especially when this network includes large-bandwidth and low-latency links such as LTE and LTE-Advanced networks. Therefore, it’s necessary to enhance the proposed models of high-speed and high-congested link networks to make these links and traffics fulfill the needs of the huge data which transferred over the congested links. This article offered an innovative model of the most correlated links of LTE-Advanced system using the Network Simulator 2 (NS-2) with investigation of the link parameters.
Abstract: High Resolution NMR Spectroscopy offers unique screening capabilities for food quality and safety by combining non-targeted and targeted screening in one analysis.
The objective is to demonstrate, that due to its extreme reproducibility NMR can detect smallest changes in concentrations of many components in a mixture, which is best monitored by statistical evaluation however also delivers reliable quantification results.
The methodology typically uses a 400 MHz high resolution instrument under full automation after minimized sample preparation.
For example one fruit juice analysis in a push button operation takes at maximum 15 minutes and delivers a multitude of results, which are automatically summarized in a PDF report.
The method has been proven on fruit juices, where so far unknown frauds could be detected. In addition conventional targeted parameters are obtained in the same analysis. This technology has the advantage that NMR is completely quantitative and concentration calibration only has to be done once for all compounds. Since NMR is so reproducible, it is also transferable between different instruments (with same field strength) and laboratories. Based on strict SOP`s, statistical models developed once can be used on multiple instruments and strategies for compound identification and quantification are applicable as well across labs.
Abstract: In this paper, a one - dimensional microstructure tungsten grating (pyramids) is optimized for potential application as thermophotovoltaic (TPV) emitter. The influence of gratings geometric parameters on the spectral emittance are studied by using the rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA).The results show that the spectral emittance is affected by the gratings geometrical parameters. The optimum parameters are grating period of 0.5µm, a filling ratio of 0.8 and grating height of h=0.2µm. A broad peak of high emittance is obtained at wavelengths between 0.5 and 1.8µm. The emittance drops below 0.2 at wavelengths above 1.8µm. This can be explained by the surface plasmon polaritons excitation coupled with the grating microstructures. At longer wavelengths, the emittance remains low and this is highly desired for thermophotovoltaic applications to reduce the thermal leakage due to low-energy photons that do not produce any photocurrent. The proposed structure can be used as a selective emitter for a narrow band gap cell such as GaSb. The performance of this simple 1-D emitter proved to be superior to that from more complicated structures. Almost all the radiation from the emitter incident, at angles up to 40°, on the cell, could be utilized to produce a photocurrent. There is no need for a filter.
Abstract: The present paper studies a structure consisting of a periodic metallic grating, coated on a dielectric spacer atop an opaque metal substrate, using coherent thermal emission source in the infrared region. It has been theoretically demonstrated that by exciting surface magnetic polaritons between metallic gratings and an opaque metallic film, separated by a dielectric spacer, large emissivity peaks are almost independent of the emission angle and they can be achieved at the resonance frequencies. The reflectance spectrum of the proposed structure shows two resonances dip, which leads to a sharp emissivity peak. The relations of the reflection and absorption properties and the influence of geometric parameters on the radiative properties are investigated by rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA). The proposed structure can be easily constructed, using micro/nanofabrication and can be used as the coherent thermal emission source.