It is widely accepted that early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) makes it possible for patients to gain access to appropriate health care services and would facilitate the development of new therapies. AD starts many years before its clinical manifestations and a biomarker that provides a measure of changes in the brain in this period would be useful for early diagnosis of AD. Given the rapid increase in the number of older people suffering from AD, there is a need for an accurate, low-cost and easy to use biomarkers that could be used to detect AD in its early stages. Potentially, the electroencephalogram (EEG) can play a vital role in this but at present, no reliable EEG biomarker exists for early diagnosis of AD. The gradual slowing of brain activity caused by AD starts from the back of the brain and spreads out towards other parts. Consequently, determining the brain regions that are first affected by AD may be useful in its early diagnosis. Higuchi fractal dimension (HFD) has characteristics which make it suited to capturing region-specific neural changes due to AD. The aim of this study is to investigate the potential of HFD of the EEG as a biomarker which is associated with the brain region first affected by AD. Mean HFD value was calculated for all channels of EEG signals recorded from 52 subjects (20-AD and 32-normal). Then, p-values were calculated between the two groups (AD and normal) to detect EEG channels that have a significant association with AD. k-nearest neighbor (KNN) algorithm was used to compute the distance between AD patients and normal subjects in the classification. Our results show that AD patients have significantly lower HFD values in the parietal areas. HFD values for channels in these areas were used to discriminate between AD and normal subjects with a sensitivity and specificity values of 100% and 80%, respectively.
A gantry robot is one of the most common types of industrial robots with linear movement. This type of robot is also known as a Cartesian or linear robot. It is an automated industrial system that moves along linear paths, enabling it to create a 3D envelope of the space in which it operates. A robot of this type has a standardised configuration process because it can have several sets of axes, such as X, Y and Z. The gantry robot picks up products from several places, so it can search through various locations. Afterwards, it carefully deposits the products on a conveyor belt for the next stage of the procedure or final shipment. This integration enables continuous and automated material flow
... Show MoreIn this paper, the botnet detection problem is defined as a feature selection problem and the genetic algorithm (GA) is used to search for the best significant combination of features from the entire search space of set of features. Furthermore, the Decision Tree (DT) classifier is used as an objective function to direct the ability of the proposed GA to locate the combination of features that can correctly classify the activities into normal traffics and botnet attacks. Two datasets namely the UNSW-NB15 and the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity Intrusion Detection System 2017 (CICIDS2017), are used as evaluation datasets. The results reveal that the proposed DT-aware GA can effectively find the relevant features from
... Show MoreTo evaluate the toxicity of benzalkonium chloride in aquaculture, the hemato-serological indices of Nile tilapia Oreochromis niloticus are used as biomarkers. Following exposure to three concentrations of benzalkonium chloride BAC 0.1, 0.25, 0.50, and 1 mg/l (BAC1,2,3 and 4) in aquaria for two durations 21 and 42 days, the microbiological assay in fish aquaria, in addition to blood parameters were assessed. Except for the mean difference between BAC2 and BAC3 (P > 0.05) at 42 days, the mean values of the bacterial counts revealed a significant difference between all compared groups (0.05 ≥ P ≤ 0.01). Following exposure to the lower concentrations of BAC (1, 2 and 3), the main blood parameters of Oreochromis niloticus namely red bl
... Show MoreSmart cities are using innovative technological solutions to improve the quality of life and service that citizens and visitors receive. Defined as a digital or ecological city, its services depend on information and communication technology infrastructure, such as intelligent automated traffic systems, advanced security management Services, building systems, and the use of automation in offices and homes. The global trend now towards smart cities, sustainable and green cities and other cities, with different nomenclature, the common denominator is the comfort of the individual and the preservation of natural resources. Adopting smart, sustainable, green, or healthy cities is either t
The marine collagens are biocompatible and biodegradable materials that are considered as a biomimetic approach for tissue regeneration. This study evaluated the effect of daily consumption of marine collagen supplement drink on enamel white spot lesions (WSLs), comparing the results against Regenerate system and Sylc air abrasion methods. Fifty human enamel slabs were allocated into five groups (n = 10 per group): non-treated (sound); non-treated (WSLs, 8% methylcellulose gel with 0.1 M lactic acid (pH 4.6) at 37 °C for 21 days); and three treated surfaces with marine collagen; Regenerate system; and Sylc air abrasion. The treatment lasted for 28 days followed by four weeks’ storage in artificial saliva (pH = 7.0, 37 °C). Evalu
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