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The aim of this study was to evaluate vascular and echocardiographic markers of hypertension (HT) in subjects with newly diagnosed HT before treatment started. We studied 32 patients with newly diagnosed HT without pharmacological therapy (HT group) and 31 healthy ones (control group). ABPM were performed...

Computer intrusions are taking place everywhere, and have become a major concern for information security. Most intrusions to a computer system may result from illegitimate or irregular calls to the operating system, so analyzing the system-call sequences becomes an important and fundamental technique...

This paper presents a distributed terminal (finite-time) backstepping consensus control for multi-agent Euler-Lagrange systems. Terminal virtual error surfaces and virtual controls are proposed to guarantee the finite-time error consensus and formation convergence of a group of one-leader and multi-follower...

This study aimed to predict seasonal influenza activity and detection of influenza outbreaks. Data of all registered cases (n = 53,526) of influenza-like illnesses (ILIs) from sentinel sites of healthcare centers in Iran were obtained from the FluNet web-based tool, World Health Organization (WHO), from...

In this work, we extended the original Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) to cover not only the case of multiple vehicles but also to constrain the minimum and maximum numbers of cities each vehicle can visit. Our algorithm is a modified Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm which has the ability to...

In Asia, which has a rapidly aging population, dementia is the most prominent disease. This article presents an application of Latent Growth Mixture Model (LGMM) to identify classes of individual Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and other dementias Years Lived with Disability (YLD) rates for Asian and North...

Background Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), is an emerging virus respiratory infection. It has a high mortality rate and a wide spectrum of clinical features. This study describes the clinical characteristics and outcome of MERS infected patients. Methods A retrospective study...

In Brazil, a scoring system was adopted to diagnose tuberculosis in childhood. This study determined the accuracy in diagnosing tuberculosis in children with either a negative smear or with no smear or culture conducted in a reference center in João Pessoa Paraíba – Brazil. It is a phase III validation...

Diabetes mellitus substantially increases cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. Among Saudi Arabian citizens with diabetes, little is known about the prevalence and control of other CVD risk factors. We extracted data from medical records of a random selection of 422 patients seen between 2008 and 2012...

Clustering is a well-known approach in data mining, which is used to separate data without being labeled. Some clustering methods are more popular such as the k-means. In all clustering techniques, the cluster centers must be found that help to determine which object is belonged to which cluster by measuring...

Background: Recent studies proposed that deceleration in pulse wave velocity (PWV) following reactive hyperaemia might reflect arterial distensibility and endothelial function. We therefore investigated methodological aspects and clinical determinants of new indexes of flow-mediated slowing (FMS) of...

Catecholamines are organic compounds derived from amino acids tyrosine and phenylalanine, which acts as neurotransmitters and also functions as hormones in the blood circulation. They bind to plasma proteins and circulate in the blood stream. High levels of catecholamines will cause increase in the heart...

Background: Maximum aerobic capacity (VO2max) is associated with lower cardiovascular and total mortality. Step tests can be used to provide an estimate of (VO2max) in epidemiological or home-based studies. We compared different methods of estimation of VO2max and heart rate recovery and evaluated the...

Integrability conditions for Lie systems are related to reduction or transformation processes. We here analyze a geometric method to construct integrability conditions for Riccati equations following these approaches. Our procedure provides us with a unified geometrical viewpoint that allows us to analyze...

This paper uses panel data of 42 sub-Saharan Africa countries from 2005 to 2015 to examine the effect of aid for trade (AfT) on export diversification. The average Hirschman-Herfindahl index measure of 0.77 indicates that the export basket of sub-Saharan African countries is very narrow. This is further...

In this paper, we study a (2 + 1)-dimensional generalized Camassa-Holm (2dgCH) equation with both quadratic and cubic nonlinearity. We derive a peaked soliton (peakon) solution, double-peakon solutions, and kink-peakon solutions. In particular, weak kink - peakon solution is the first time to address...

With the trend of Industry 4.0, the communication established by Ethernet is becoming more and more common in the Industrial Control System (ICS), and it brings not only pros but also cons like vulnerabilities from information technology. Furthermore, most devices in the ICS are not ready for cyberattacks,...

Cancer is a devastating disease that can be challenging to treat. Fortunately, immune cells called T-cells can be activated for tumour destruction. Signal 1 of T-cell activation is provided by antigen presentation through the (T-cell receptor/major histocompatibility complex) interaction. Signal 2 of...

Background: Hypertensive crisis is an extreme phenotype of increased blood pressure that can lead to organs failure and thrombotic complications. Recently, we were able to show an angiotensin II driven FXI-thrombin amplification loop leading to vascular injury in experimental hypertension. Objective:...

Purpose: The aim of this study is to explore the physiological vascular adaptation to exposure to high altitude and to test the hypothesis that its impairment might play a role in the pathophysiology of acute mountain sickness (AMS). Methods: 34 healthy volunteers (age 38±11years, 13 women) were studied...

Introduction: In general population women seems to have greater arterial stiffness and central blood pressure(BP), measured by augmentation index (AIx), than men, but in hypertension this condition is poorly studied. Objectives: To evaluate differences of central BP and arterial stiffness between men...

Background: In patients with Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) a greater prevalence of structural and functional cardiovascular (CV) alterations has been described, possibly explaining the higher incidence of CV events, as compared to subjects matched for age and sex. Aim of this study was to analyze...

We find in the accounting literature the use of neural networks (NN) for the prediction of insolvency data from the last financial year before the bankruptcy, with a success rate below 85%. The objective of this work is to increase the predictive power of the NN models to discriminate between solvent...

A medical diagnosis system (DRCAD), which consists of two sub-modules Bayesian and rule-based inference models, is presented in this study. Three types of tests are conducted to assess the performances of the models producing synthetic data based on the ALARM network. The results indicate that the linear...

In this paper, three risk indicators on road safety are combined into a composite indicator in order to assess the overall fatality risk for the 27 Brazilian states using the so-called multiple layer data envelopment analysis model. The states are first clustered and next, a range of bootstrapped scores...

There is a wide class of integrable Hamiltonian systems on finite-dimensional coadjoint orbits of the loop algebra ~gl(r) which are represented by r × r Lax equations with a rational spectral parameter. A reduced complex phase space is foliated with open subsets of Jacobians of regularized spectral curves....

Due to the implicit characteristics of learning disabilities (LDs), the diagnosis of students with learning disabilities has long been a difficult issue. Artificial intelligence techniques like artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector machine (SVM) have been applied to the LD diagnosis problem...

A hazardous waste is waste that poses substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment. Hazardous waste management is an area of the waste management field concerned with the proper containment, management, and disposal of wastes which could be considered hazardous. In this paper,...

The growing understanding of the bidirectional relationship between the gastrointestinal (GI) microbiome and the immune system has opened up new avenues for treatment of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is the transfer of stool from a donor to a recipient who harbors...

In India, cervical cancer screening is conducted at various levels; however, after screening, the adherence to the cancer care continuum is barely understood. This study evaluated a community-based cancer screening program conducted in a rural setting (Tirunelveli and Tuticorin districts) in South India...

Background: High-intensity training has become increasingly popular in recent years but the exact effects of high intensity running on the hemodynamic system are not entirely understood and it is unknown whether the aerobic training status of the subjects might influence these hemodynamic reactions....

Objectives: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression at a post-transcriptional level. Through binding to mRNA sequences, miRNAs have a wide variety of functions, and are key regulators in vascular disease. Although there are only 2 papers looking directly at the association...

Background: Central Pulse Wave Velocity (PWV) is considered to be the gold standard measurement of arterial stiffness. In healthy subjects, cardiovascular risk factors such as age, hypertension, diabetes and end-stage renal disease are associated with increased central (Carotid–Femoral) and peripheral...

Breast cancer is identified as the most common type of cancer in women worldwide with 1.6 million women around the world diagnosed every year. This prompts many active areas of research in identifying better ways to prevent, detect, and treat breast cancer. DESIREE is a European Union funded project,...

In sample surveys ratio estimator has found extensive applications to obtain more precise estimators of the population ratio, population mean, and population total of the study variable in the presence of auxiliary information, when the study variable is positively correlated with the auxiliary variable....

We study the nonlinear self-adjointness of a class of quasilinear 2D second order evolution equations by applying the method of Ibragimov. Which enables one to establish the conservation laws for any differential equation. We first obtain conditions determining the self-adjointness for a sub-class in...

A new solvable many-body problem of goldfish type is introduced and the behavior of its solutions is tersely discussed.

Background: Common carotid artery intima-media thickness (cIMT) is an accepted ultrasound marker of subclinical atherosclerosis. It is argued that increase in cIMT may also reflect nonatherosclerotic thickening, thus, lumen diameter could be taken into account. A common approach to account for lumen...

Background: Vascular structural(intima-media thickness, IMT) and functional(carotid stiffness, cPWV)alterations are related to different pattern of left ventricular (LV) geometry in general populations and in hypertensives. The relationship between vascular damage and LV geometry has not been analyzed...

Background: Arterial stiffness has been considered as an index of vascular ageing. However, the relationship between age and stiffness of various segments of the arterial tree is heterogeneous. Moreover, the hemodynamic impact of vascular stiffness is thought to be related to the attenuation or even...

Introduction: Augmentation Index (AIx) is a surrogate measure of systemic arterial stiffness and wave reflections. Clinic measures of AIx are considered to be a sensitive measure of risk in young adults and are lower in individuals who take part in high levels of physical activity (PA). The development...

This paper proposes a hexapod type microrobot controlled by an artificial neural networks IC. The structural component of the microrobot is produced by micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) process. The rotary actuator inside the robot is composed of the artificial muscle wire of shape memory alloy...

We analyse the state of the art of hi-tech and robot based technologies in terms of Assistive Technology for all patients and, in particular, elderly people assistance and everyday activities aid. We focus on different aspects and characteristics of these tools, such as playfulness, invasiveness, learning-speed,...

Identification of strategic issues assists organizations to pay attention to what is actually important in their long term decision making. The domain of strategic issue identification is broad, disperse and unclear. Since strategic issues are not predefined, the process of assigning the meaning to these...

A new class of distribution function based on the symmetric densities is introduced, these transformations also produce nonnormal distributions and its pdf and cd f can be expressed in parametric form. This class of distributions depend on the two parameters, namely g and h which controls the skewness...

The laser dynamic speckle is a phenomenon caused by the fluctuant interference of the laser light reflected from an illuminated surface where some kind of activity is taking place. Signals generated by the intensity changes in each pixel through the sequence are processed with the finality of identifying...

First, we recall the algebro-geometric method of construction of finite field valued solutions of the discrete KP equation, and next we perform a reduction of dKP to the discrete 1D Toda equation.

It is shown that solutions to the intermediate surface diffusion flow are real analytic in space and time, provided the initial surface is real diffeomorphic to a Euclidean sphere.

Dynamics of spiral waves in perturbed two-dimensional autowave media can be dscribed asymptotically in terms of Aristotelean dynamics. We apply this general thory to the spiral waves in the Complex Ginzburg­Landau equation (CGLE). The RFs are found numerically. In this work, we study the dependence of...

We review here the main properties of symmetries of separating hierarchies of nonlinear Schrödinger equations and discuss the obstruction to symmetry liftings from (n)particles to a higher number. We argue that for particles with internal degrees of freedom, new multiparticle effects must appear at each...