Healthcare professionals routinely use audio signals, generated by the human body, to help diagnose disease or assess its progression. With new technologies, it is now possible to collect human-generated sounds, such as coughing. Audio-based machine learning technologies can be adopted for automatic analysis of collected data. Valuable and rich information can be obtained from the cough signal and extracting effective characteristics from a finite duration time interval that changes as a function of time. This article presents a proposed approach to the detection and diagnosis of COVID-19 through the processing of cough collected from patients suffering from the most common symptoms of this pandemic. The proposed method is based on adopting a combination of Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). The combination of these two signal processing techniques is gaining lots of interest in the field of speaker and speech recognition. As a cough recognition approach, we found it well-performing, as it generates and utilizes an efficient minimum number of features. Mean and median frequencies, which are known to be the most useful features in the frequency domain, are applied to generate an effective statistical measure to compare the results. The hybrid structure of DWT and SVD, adopted in this approach adds to its efficiency, where a 200 times reduction, in terms of the number of operations, is achieved. Despite the fact that symptoms of the infected and non-infected people used in the study are having lots of similarities, diagnosis results obtained from the application of the proposed approach show high diagnosis rate, which is proved through the matching with relevant PCR tests. The proposed approach is open for more improvements with its performance further assured by enlarging the dataset, while including healthy people.
Iraqi EFL students face difficulties in writing composition, especially academic writing, which affects negatively their exam results. This study has been conducted in the Department of English at College of Education for Women, University of Baghdad, in order to identify first year EFL students’ incompetence in writing. This may enhance their achievement by some weekly writing activities. It deals with Iraqi EFL students’ difficulties in writing paragraphs such as descriptive, process, opinion, and factual paragraphs. The study aims to identify these difficulties and to suggest suitable solutions for them. The researcher perceives that it is necessary to enhance students’ skills in writing because it i
... Show MorePeripheral artery disease (PAD) is associated with increased oxidative stress and impaired endothelial function. Ticagrelor treatment improves antioxidant properties in addition to its antiplatelet effects. This study investigated the impact of Ticagrelor treatment on serum superoxide dismutase (SOD) levels and other biochemical parameters in PAD patients. It also evaluated the potential diagnostic accuracy and clinical utility of specific biomarkers based on receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. Seventy individuals were categorized into healthy control (n=40), baseline PAD patients not on Ticagrelor (B-PAD, n=30), and same PAD patients after treated with Ticagrelor (A-PAD, n=30). Parameters measured included SOD concent
... Show MoreIn this work, synthesized N4,N4`-bis(2, 3, 4 nitro benzylidene) biphenyi-4-4`-diamine(B1-B3) , was tested as an inhibitors in controlling the corrosion of carbon steel in NaCl 3.5% solution by using open circuit potential (OCP),at four different temperatures (293, 303, 313 and 323 K). Furthermore, the surface morphology was investigated using the Atomic force microscopy (AFM). The effect of using different Schiff bases and temperature was also investigated. Schiff bases was synthesized and characterized via using. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR)and Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) characterized . The experimental results shown that Schiff bases can consider as an excellent corrosion inhibitors for carbon steel in NaCl 3
... Show MoreIn this study, nano TiO2 was prepared with titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) as a resource to titanium oxide. The catalyst was synthesized using phosphotungstic acid (PTA) and, stearyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (STAB) was used as the structure-directing material. Characterization of the product was done by the X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescent spectroscopy (XRF), nitrogen adsorption/desorption measurements, Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra, were used to characterize the calcined TiO2 nanoparticles by STAB and PWA. The TiO2 nanomaterials were prepared in three crystalline forms (amorphous, anatase, anatase-rutile). The results showed that the nanoparticles of anatase TiO2 have good cata
... Show MoreBackground: Prosthodontists estimated the parallelism of the occlusal plane to different anatomical landmarks, which was somewhat arbitrary and depended mainly on their vision. The aim of this research was to assess the degree of accuracy of prosthodontists in determining the parallelism of two lines. This research was aimed to assess which technique would be more accurate for the prosthodontist to distinguish parallelism; the comparison of the occlusal plane with the interpupillary line or with the inferior border of the earlobes. Materials and methods: Twenty eight prosthodontic specialists were included in this research. Illustrations of two lines with different tilts were presented to the participants to distinguish whether parallel or
... Show MoreNo. Due to their apparently extreme optical to X-ray properties, Narrow Line Seyfert 1s (NLSy1s) have been considered a special class of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Here, we summarize observational results from different groups to conclude that none of the characteristics that are typically used to define the NLSy1s as a distinct group – from the, nowadays called, Broad Line Seyfert 1s (BLSy1s) – is unique, nor ubiquitous of these particular sources, but shared by the whole Type 1 AGN. Historically, the NLSy1s have been distinguished from the BLSy1s by the narrow width of the broad Hb emission line. The upper limit on the full width at half maximum of this line is 2000kms−1 for NLSy1s, while in BLSy1s it can be of several thousands
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