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Background: Aging is associated with increased arterial stiffness and chronic low-grade inflammation. Acute inflammatory stimulus in the presence of low-grade chronic inflammation briefly increases the risk of cardiovascular events. The risk of cardiovascular events also increases substantially in older...

Multivariate meta-analysis has potential over its univariate counterpart. The most common challenge in univariate or multivariate meta-analysis is estimating heterogeneity parameters in non-negative domains under the random-effects model assumption. In this context, two new multivariate estimation methods...

Understand the behavior of Fuzzy Rule-based Systems (FRBSs) at inference level is a complex task that allows the designer to produce simpler and powerful systems. The fuzzy inference-grams –known as fingrams– establish a novel and mighty tool for understanding the structure and behavior of...

Collaboration is one of the effective approaches that help us to share knowledge together and exchange ideas within team members. Sometimes, helpful new knowledge that is not held by the members emerges as a result of the collaboration. Such knowledge often contributes to get prime solutions in the collaboration...

In this paper, we consider a partially linear single-index model when missing responses and nonlinear regressors with measurement error are taken into account. Utilizing data imputation for missing values and regression calibration for error-prone regressors, we not only estimate the parameters in the...

The Somos 4 sequences are a family of sequences satisfying a fourth order bilinear recurrence relation. In recent work, one of us has proved that the general term in such sequences can be expressed in terms of the Weierstrass sigma function for an associated elliptic curve. Here we derive the analogous...

It is shown that the group of geometrical symmetries of the Universal equation of D-dimensional space coincides with SL(D + 1, R).

Event monitoring and determination is a popular application in WSN. Considering the special circumstance that some nodes of the wireless sensor network are faulty, a fault tolerant schema for data aggregation based on event clustering was proposed. Also, an improved HRTS algorithm named T-HRTS which...

The probabilistic linguistic term sets (PLTSs) are powerful to deal with the hesitant linguistic situation in which each provided linguistic term has a probability. The PLTSs contain uncertainties caused by the linguistic terms and their probability information. In order to measure such uncertainties,...

African trade statistics suffer from errors of commission and omission. A quarter-century ago, Alexander Yeats (1990) compared receipts of importers and exporters and concluded that the data could not be used to determine the magnitude, direction, or composition of trade. The only fact to be safely deduced...

Successive sampling (SS)–population size estimation (PSE) is a technique used to estimate the sizes of hidden populations using data collected in respondent-driven sampling (RDS) surveys. We assess past estimations and use new data from an RDS survey to calculate a new PSE. In 2012, 852 adult women in...

The goal of this review is to look at the role of endothelial damage and dysfunction in the initiation and development of early complications that appear after hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). These early complications share overlapping clinical manifestations and the suspicion of underlying...

Background: The aim of this study is to compare Tuberculin Skin Test (TST) result and interferon gamma response to human PPD (purified protein derivative), in scar positive and scar negative BCG-vaccinated children. Methods: Between August 2007 and May 2008 a total of 236 children aged 1–168 months...

This article discusses how the practice of open defecation influences the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations (UN) and accepted by all countries. Unfortunately, the practice of open defecation still exists. Public health is at stake because open defecation enables transmission...

This paper proposes a knee exoskeleton with passive-powering mechanism to provide power assistance to the knee joint during squat lifting of objects from the ground. It is designed to capture and store 20% of the biomechanical energy dissipated at the biological knee joint during decent phase and return...

Purpose: Loose endothelial cells and the destruction of the blood–brain barrier (BBB) are one of the pathophysiological mechanisms of early brain injury (EBI) after subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Tie-2 receptor phosphorylation is important for maintaining integrity of microvascular endothelial cells...

Purpose: Current knowledge of Lymphoma Associated Hemophagocytic Syndrome (LAHS) mainly relies on T/NK-cell LAHS cases, while B-cell lymphoma associated hemophagocytic syndrome (B-LAHS) variant are rare. We aimed at identifying a single-center cohort of patients with B-LAHS to shed light on relevant...

To drive economic development, it is important for policy makers to have a good understanding of the linkages between imports, exports, and the rest of the economy. This is particularly true for Africa. The continent depends on exports of commodities to finance imports of manufactured goods for consumption...

The presentation of congenital intestinal stenosis in neonates can vary from mild intermittent feeding intolerance resulting in difficulty of clinical judgment to profound obstruction. This report describes one case of ileal stenosis whose radiological investigations were not favoring intestinal obstruction...

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered concerns about the global food crisis, thus identification of food security risks constitutes an important basis for responding to the influence of the pandemic. In this study, the influence path of the pandemic on food security was analyzed first. Then, the risk nodes...

Accurate measurement of blood pressure (BP) is a critical goal for appropriate diagnosis and management of high BP. The measurement reference standard is brachial cuff BP, but recent large-scale meta-analyses show major deficiencies in the accuracy of this method. Indeed, irrespective of cuff technique...

Hypertension and arterial aging engage a plethora of key signaling pathways that act in concert to induce vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) phenotypic changes leading to vascular degeneration and extracellular matrix (ECM) changes responsible for alterations of the mechanical properties of the vascular...

Models of haemodynamics play a central role in current research directed to understanding and addressing cardiovascular disease. Although conventional windkessel and wave models are very useful, they are incompatible due to conflicting assumptions and neither comprehensively explain the basis and interdependencies...

It has been suggested that accumulation of advanced glycation end-products (AGE) is involved in several pathophysiological processes in the vessel wall. Soluble isoform of receptor for AGE (sRAGE) acts as a decoy for capturing circulating AGE, prevents them from binding to the cell-surface receptor and...

Vascular calcification was regarded as an innocent bystander in cardiovascular disease. It was considered to be the passive chemical nucleation of calcium and phosphate ions on cellular debris and therefore the end-stage of atherosclerosis. Currently, vascular calcification is understood to be an actively...

Proteins are the main molecular components of the arterial wall. Alterations in the amounts of specific proteins in both the extracellular matrix and in vascular cells are believed to be associated with different arterial pathologies, however only sparse data is currently available, particularly in relation...

Background: The arterial system is viscoelastic rather than purely elastic. There exist various methods to characterize the purely elastic nature of arterial compliance, each method yielding different values. The pulse pressure method (CPPM), estimating compliance by matching the pulse pressure (PP)...

Blood flow imposes shear stress on endothelial cells (ECs). ECs are able to convert these mechanical stimuli into intracellular signals that affect cellular function. As deregulated autophagy is associated with an acceleration of a variety of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases where impaired flow-mediated...

Stem cell-based therapies for vascular regeneration in patients with cardiovascular ischemic diseases initially relied on a very simple concept: therapeutic stem/progenitor cells might differentiate into vascular cells, mainly of endothelial phenotype, increasing new vessel formation and tissue perfusion...

The contribution of arterial functional and structural changes to left ventricular (LV) diastolic dysfunction has been the area of latest research. There are some studies on the relationship of arterial stiffness (a.s.) and left atrial (LA) remodeling as a marker of diastolic burden. Little is known...

Cardiovascular diseases are the main cause of mortality and morbidity in Western countries, but the underlying mechanisms are still poorly understood. Genetic polymorphisms, once thought to represent a major determinant of cardiovascular risk, individually and collectively, only explain a tiny fraction...

Biomedical research is increasingly based on the efforts of PhD students. This talk will trace the development of the author’s research, and show how this experience can be used to optimize PhD training. The basis of the research has been that essential hypertension is associated with increased peripheral...

Background: Brachial blood pressure (BP) may not reflect central BP due to systolic BP (SBP) amplification. Patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) elicit vascular irregularities that may affect SBP amplification or other central BP indices (including pulse pressure [PP], augmentation pressure...

Intrusion Detection System(IDS) has received attention to deal with the illegal access to the network. However, IDS has a critical problem which outputs a tremendous number of logs. Analyzing these logs apply a large amount of load to a network manager. In this paper, we propose a novel visualization...

In order to improve the applications for an industrial robot, it is necessary to increase its flexibility and accuracy. The machine vision technology is an effective solution. In order to reduce the influence of the size, deformation etc., the target extraction method with fusion of color space and moment...

This paper proposes an obstacle avoidance method based on a multi-layered non-contact impedance model for control of the biosignal-based electric wheelchair. The proposed system can calculate a virtual repulsive force before the collision by multi-layered impedance fields covered around it. This system...

As the exponential increase of data in the world, machine learning, pattern recognition, data mining etc. are attracting more attentions recently. Classification is one of the major research in pattern recognition and a large number of methods have been proposed such as decision trees, neural networks...

In this paper a generalized class of finite population variance is suggested and its large sample bias and mean square error are derived. Further some special cases of this class are considered along with a numerical example to compute and compare their biases and mean square errors.

Scientific computational experiments often span multiple computational and analytical steps, and during execution, researchers need to store, access, transfer, and query information. Scientific workflow is a powerful tool to stream-line and organize scientific application. Numbers of tools have been...

This paper presents a new chaos-based image cipher using a plaintext-related permutation. The cat map and Lorenz system are employed to shuffle the positions of image pixels and generate the diffusion keystream, respectively. The control parameters of the cat map, i.e. the permutation key, are determined...

Emergency management is a highly relevant area of interest in operations research. Currently the area is undergoing widespread development. Furthermore, recent disasters have highlighted the importance of disaster management, in order to alleviate the suffering of vulnerable people and save lives. In...

paper aims at working out analysis model of risk coupling for rural tourism safety accidents. First, based on the regional environmental risk system theory, the rural tourism safety system is analyzed. Second, under the four dimension of man, machine, environment, and management, the diamond model is...

This study aims to evaluate the antibiotic prescribing rate for acute bacterial rhinosinusitis in community pharmacies and to study the corresponding attitude and behavior of participants. A cross-sectional, nationwide study was conducted using a patient-simulated case of bacterial rhinosinusitis. Descriptive...

Background: Mental stress, dynamic exercise and cold pressor stimulation all increase blood pressure (BP); however, their effects on arterial stiffness are not well described. Methods: Twenty-three young healthy subjects (14 female/9 males), aged 18–30 years (23 ± 3 years), underwent mental arithmetic...

Background: Venous occlusion plethysmography is commonly used to assess changes in calf blood flow (CBF). Although the leg is often positioned above the level of the heart to aid venous emptying during periods of cuff deflation, its direct effect on measured CBF is not known. We therefore planned to...

As one suitable optimization method implementing computational intelligence, ant colony optimization (ACO) can be used to solve the traveling salesman problem (TSP). However, traditional ACO has many shortcomings, including slow convergence and low efficiency. By enlarging the ants' search space...