The rapid increase in the number of older people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other forms of dementia represents one of the major challenges to the health and social care systems. Early detection of AD makes it possible for patients to access appropriate services and to benefit from new treatments and therapies, as and when they become available. The onset of AD starts many years before the clinical symptoms become clear. A biomarker that can measure the brain changes in this period would be useful for early diagnosis of AD. Potentially, the electroencephalogram (EEG) can play a valuable role in early detection of AD. Damage in the brain due to AD leads to changes in the information processing activity of the brain and the EEG which can be quantified as a biomarker. The objective of the study reported in this paper is to develop robust EEG-based biomarkers for detecting AD in its early stages. We present a new approach to quantify the slowing of the EEG, one of the most consistent features at different stages of dementia, based on changes in the EEG amplitudes (ΔEEG A ). The new approach has sensitivity and specificity values of 100% and 88.88%, respectively, and outperformed the Lempel-Ziv Complexity (LZC) approach in discriminating between AD and normal subjects.
A progression of Polyaniline (PANI) and Titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles (NPs) were prepared by an in-situ polymerization strategy within the sight of TiO2 NPs. The subsequent nanocomposites were analyzed using Fourier-transform infrared spectra (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and Energy Dispersive X-Ray Analysis (EDX) taken for the prepared samples. PANI/TiO2 nanocomposites were prepared by various compound materials (with H2SO4 0.3 M and without it, to compare the outcome of it) by the compound oxidation technique using ammonium persulfate (APS) as oxidant within the sight of ultrafine grade powder of TiO2 cooled in an ice bath.
... Show MoreHeat transfer process and fluid flow in a solar chimney used for natural ventilation are investigated numerically in the present work. Solar chimney was tested by selecting different positions of absorber namely: at the back side, front side, and at the middle of the air gap. CFD analysis based on finite volume method is used to predict the thermal performance, and air flow in two dimensional solar chimney under unsteady state condition, to identify the effect of different parameters such as solar radiation. Results show that a solar chimney with absorber at the middle of the air gap gives better ventilation performance. A comparison between the numerical and previous experimental results shows fair agreement.
Hazardous materials, heavy metals, and organic toxins released into the environment have caused considerable harm to microbes, plants, animals, and humans. Wastewater is one of the most contaminated ecosystems due to heavy metals emitted mostly by human activity. Bioremediation of wastewater is an ecologically acceptable and cost-effective method of removing heavy metals from sewage; the general purpose of this study is to analyse the dependability of anaerobic sludge biomass in removing sulfur compounds and heavy metals from waste water. The anaerobic sludge biomass evaluated in this work was taken from a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in Al-Rustumiya, Baghdad, and grown in the mineral medium for anaerobic growth. In serum bottl
... Show MoreThe synthesis of zeolite NaX from locally available kaolin has been studied. The operating conditions for zeolite NaX production from kaolin with good crystallinity were as follows; a gel formation step of metakaolin in alkaline medium in presence of additional silica to crystallize the zeolite was achieved at 60 oC for 1 hr,and with stirring. In ageing step of the reactants at room temperature for 5 days and crystallization step at 87±2 oC for 24 hr. The catalytic activity of catalyst prepared from local kaolin was studied by using cumene cracking as a model for catalytic cracking and compared with standard HY zeolite and HX zeolite catalysts. The activity test was carried out in a laboratory continuous flow unit with fixed bed re
... Show MoreFacial emotion recognition finds many real applications in the daily life like human robot interaction, eLearning, healthcare, customer services etc. The task of facial emotion recognition is not easy due to the difficulty in determining the effective feature set that can recognize the emotion conveyed within the facial expression accurately. Graph mining techniques are exploited in this paper to solve facial emotion recognition problem. After determining positions of facial landmarks in face region, twelve different graphs are constructed using four facial components to serve as a source for sub-graphs mining stage using gSpan algorithm. In each group, the discriminative set of sub-graphs are selected and fed to Deep Belief Network (DBN) f
... Show MoreBackground: The presence of cancer has a profound psychological impact on the quality of life of patients and their families, on family and social relationships, and on role functioning.
Aim of the study: Assess the impact of childhood cancer on patients and their families.
Subjects and methods: A Prospective questionnaire-based study, for 151 patients, had malignancy identified by tumor registry of Children Welfare Teaching Hospital. The information was taken from the parent(s) in the presence of the patient who sometimes answered some questions during the interview.
Result: There was an interview with 151 families of children with cancer in t
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