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.
Many approaches have been developed over time to counter the bioavailability limitations of poorly soluble drugs. With advances in nanotechnology in recent decades, this issue has been approached through the formulation of drugs as nanocrystals. Nanocrystals consist of pure drug(s) and a minimum of surface active agent(s) required for stabilization. They are carrier-free submicron colloidal drug delivery systems with a mean particle size typically in the range of 200 - 500 nm. By reducing particle size to nanoscale, the surface area available for dissolution is increased, and thus bioavailability is enhanced. Drug nanocrystals constitute a versatile formulation approach to enhance the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of poorly
... Show MoreThis article investigates the development of the following material properties of concrete with time: compressive strength, tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, and fracture energy. These properties were determined at seven different hydration ages (18 h, 30 h, 48 h, 72 h, 7 days, 14 days, 28 days) for four pure cement concrete mixes totaling 336 specimens tested throughout the study. Experimental data obtained were used to assess the relationship of the above properties with the concrete compressive strength and how these relationships are affected with age. Further, this study investigates prediction models available in literature and recommendations are made for models that are found suitable for application to early age conc
... Show MoreBackground: Laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) has become the treatment of choice for elective cholecystectomy.Objectives: To evaluate the safety and feasibility of early LC for AC and to compare the results with delayed LC.Methods: A prospective study done from April 2011 to October 2013, 88 patients with diagnosis of AC were divided randomly into two groups according to the mode of treatment; (early group n=40) treated by early LC within first 72 hours or (delayed group, n=48) initial conservative treatment for 4-6 weeks, followed by delayed LC.Results: There was no difference between the two groups (early & delayed LC), operating time (early 80min, delayed70min), conversion rate (early 7.5%, delayed 6.25%),postoperative complicatio
... Show MorePublications are generally considered an effective visual artistic means that addresses the recipient (the audience), with the functional, aesthetic and expressive dimensions they carry that contribute to spreading a diverse cultural awareness, especially those publications that are concerned with their media, promotional and organizational performance, as well as specific cultural events at specific times, in pursuit Access to renewable and elaborate designs to achieve the functional and aesthetic purpose, as the completed design and construction process is subject to many variations, whether this diversity is intellectual or technical, internal or external, and all of them may overlap to obtain a comprehensive system of artistic format
... Show MoreWith the high usage of computers and networks in the current time, the amount of security threats is increased. The study of intrusion detection systems (IDS) has received much attention throughout the computer science field. The main objective of this study is to examine the existing literature on various approaches for Intrusion Detection. This paper presents an overview of different intrusion detection systems and a detailed analysis of multiple techniques for these systems, including their advantages and disadvantages. These techniques include artificial neural networks, bio-inspired computing, evolutionary techniques, machine learning, and pattern recognition.
Most Internet-tomography problems such as shared congestion detection depend on network measurements. Usually, such measurements are carried out in multiple locations inside the network and relied on local clocks. These clocks usually skewed with time making these measurements unsynchronized and thereby degrading the performance of most techniques. Recently, shared congestion detection has become an important issue in many computer networked applications such as multimedia streaming and
peer-to-peer file sharing. One of the most powerful techniques that employed in literature is based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) with cross-correlation operation to determine the state of the congestion. Wavelet transform is used as a de-noisin
In this paper, the survival function has been estimated for the patients with lung cancer using different parametric estimation methods depending on sample for completing real data which explain the period of survival for patients who were ill with the lung cancer based on the diagnosis of disease or the entire of patients in a hospital for a time of two years (starting with 2012 to the end of 2013). Comparisons between the mentioned estimation methods has been performed using statistical indicator mean squares error, concluding that the estimation of the survival function for the lung cancer by using pre-test singles stage shrinkage estimator method was the best . <
... Show MoreBackground: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the top ten most common cancers worldwide. There are multiple risk factors for CRC, one of which is aging. However, in recent years, CRC has been reported in children. Objective: To describe the main characteristics and symptoms of CRC as well as highlight pathologic data for early-onset CRC. Methods: 79 CRC patients were recruited from the Oncology Teaching Hospital in the period February–December 2022. A questionnaire was used to collect demographic and clinical data. Results: 25 (31.6%) of patients were below 50 years of age. 52 (65.8%) patients had tumors in the colon. The most common symptom is bleeding per rectum in both age groups. There was no significant difference in patholog
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