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So far there is no study to measure the Poisson’s ratio of the human coronary arteries in order to verify their incompressibility regardless of being healthy or atherosclerosis. It has been reported that atherosclerosis alters the elastin content of the arterial wall which is responsible for the elastic...

Background: Water pipe (WP) tobacco smoking is gaining wide popularity among young and middle aged males and females. Aim of the work: The aim of this study was to evaluate the immediate effect of 1st pipe water smoking on brachial Flow mediated dilatation% (FMD%) and Nitrate mediated dilatation% (NMD%)...

Ageing and cardiovascular risk factors, particularly uncontrolled hypertension, adversely impact arterial stiffness and wave reflection leading to increased central systolic blood pressure. Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity is the “gold standard” method for the assessment of aortic stiffness. Increased...

This study explores the use of scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM) as a potential tool for characterisation of arterial stiffness using aortic biopsies. SAM data is presented for human tissue collected during aortic bypass graft surgery for multi-vessel coronary artery disease. Acoustic wave speed as...

Background: Incretine hormone glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) causes dose-dependent relaxation of the thoracic aorta of rats and other arteries via nitric oxide (NO), cAMP and ATP-sensitive potassium channels, however, through a mechanism not thoroughly described. Hereby we aimed to determine the mediators...

The arterial circulation acts as a network to deliver nutrients and oxygen to cells. The design of the cardiovascular system is subject to a variety of constraints and costs. It has been postulated that the design of the arterial network might be understood in terms of the need to minimize competing...

The original purpose for recording brachial blood pressure (BP) more than 100 years ago was to estimate central (aortic) BP. While high brachial BP is an important cardiovascular risk factor, it is clear that major differences in central systolic BP (SBP; e.g. >30 mmHg) can occur among people with...

Accurate measurement of the material properties of arterial tissue is important for better characterisation of diseases and the development of reliable computational models. There are a number of in vitro techniques that are applied to study the biomechanical properties of arterial tissue. This review...

Background: Characterization of normal ventricular–vascular interactions by non-invasive assessment in healthy adolescents may provide new mechanistic insights into altered physiological states in congenital and acquired heart disease in this age group. Methods: Ventricular and vascular measures were...

Arterial input impedance, as complete description of the arterial system, is explained by waves and wave reflection. Without wave reflections input impedance would equal aortic characteristic impedance and pressure and flow wave shapes would be similar. Waves reflect at many locations, causing input...

In this study we investigate information processing in deep neural network models. We demonstrate that unsupervised training of autoencoder models of certain class can result in emergence of compact and structured internal representation of the input data space that can be correlated with higher level...

Information systems such as those in the Banking sector need to comply with security regulations to assure that necessary security controls are in place. This paper presents an initial risk assessment method to assist a banking information system project in validating security requirements of the system....

The agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has been attracting a great deal of attention in academic and policy circles, as well as within the international development community. The growing interest in the AfCFTA partly reflects the fact that the African continent is...

Donald A. McDonald (1917–1973) was a pioneer in hemodynamics. He was Oxford educated and served on the faculty of Universities in both Great Britain and the USA. The problems that were the main theme of his text Blood Flow in Arteries published in 1960 were those concerned with pulsatile blood flow and...

Institutional trade barriers constitute substantial constraints for a number of exporters and importers. These barriers are multidimensional and they impede trade flows and trade performance of many developing countries, including African countries. In particular, the International Trade Centre through...

Controversy persists regarding the presence and significance of blood pressure “J-curves” of increased cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk as they relate to older people with isolated systolic hypertension (ISH). Age is an important effect modifier favoring diastolic blood pressure (DBP) in young adults,...

Objectives: To evaluate factors influencing resistive index (RI) and intima-media thickness of common carotid artery (IMT-CCA) as indices of arterial atherosclerosis in hypertensive patients. Methods: 56 treated hypertensive outpatients (mean age 68.9 ± 9.7 years; 31 diabetics) were examined. Fasting...

The study of vascular adaptation to extreme conditions, and in particular to hypoxia, represents a unique opportunity in cardiovascular physiology, with relevant translational implications. First, it has crucial clinical consequences for about 140 million people worldwide living at high altitude and...

In this paper, cellular neural networks (CNNs) with neutral type delays and time-varying leakage delays are investigated. By applying the existence of the exponential dichotomy of linear dynamic equations on time scales, a fixed point theorem and the theory of calculus on time scales, a set of sufficient...

Background: Central blood pressure values and arterial stiffness have demonstrated to be a useful tool to stratify cardiovascular risk and also as a biomarker. A question that is still unanswered is if hypertension treatment guided by central blood pressure parameters will be even better to promote cardiovascular...

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) has plagued the Middle East since it was first reported in 2012. Recently, at the end of December 2019, a cluster of pneumonia cases were reported from Wuhan city, Hubei Province, China, linked to a wet seafood market with a new coronavirus identified...

Starting from logarithmic, sinusoidal and power spirals, it is shown how these spirals are connected directly with Chebyshev polynomials, Lamé curves, with allometry and Antonelli-metrics in Finsler geometry. Curvature is a crucial concept in geometry both for closed curves and equiangular spirals, and...

This article is intended to examine the challenges of taxing digital economy due to rapid development of technology in Indonesia. Those changes should be responded equally from the government perspective pertaining to the changes in tax regulation, structure/institutional of tax organization, human resources...

This paper deals with analyzing dynamic engineering systems consisting of independent components. The failure of a components causes more load on the surviving components. This property is modeled by a power trend conditionally proportional hazard rates. For modeling system lifetimes, the theory of sequential...

Pneumocephalus (PNC) is defined as a pathological air collection inside the skull in the epidural, subdural, subarachnoid, intraventricular, or intraparenchymal compartments. The rate at which the air accumulates inside the cranium could be acute (<72 h) or delayed (≥72 h). Tension PNC (TP) occurs...

There is a high intensity and frequency of earthquake occurrence in Tianshui and its surrounding areas and it is very important to study on the historical strong earthquakes occurred in that area for knowing about the seismicity and earthquake risk prevention. This paper proposed an elliptical intensity...

In this paper, the intelligent networking integration system is designed and constructed by applying the Controller Area Network (CAN)open profiles as communication protocol for tool machine production line. While the basic network management and data transmission is followed by the dictionary objects...

Mental disorders related to the imbalance of neurotransmitters, which are substantially affected by gut microbiota. Gut microbiota impacts on mental health by regulating the level of neurotransmitters in the host. To understand the influence of gut microbiota on mental health via neurotransmitters, we...

Electrospinning is a potent “top-down” nanofabrication method and has been explored by many researchers in recent decades because it is an efficient, versatile, simple, and low-cost route to prepare nanofibers. Nanofiber membranes generated by electrospinning have been used in various fields including...

The rise of misinformation online and offline reveals the erosion of long-standing institutional bulwarks against its propagation in the digitized era. Concerns over the problem are global and the impact is long-lasting. The past few decades have witnessed the critical role of misinformation detection...

Load of transformer in distribution grid fluctuates according to many factors, resulting in overload frequently which affects the safety of power grid. And short-term load forecasting is considered. To improve forecasting accuracy, the input information and the model structure are both considered. First,...

A novel approach — based upon vertex operator representation — is devised to study the AKNS hierarchy. It is shown that this method reveals the remarkable properties of the AKNS hierarchy in relatively simple, rather natural and particularly effective ways. In addition, the connection of this vertex...

In this work we consider the modified Michaelis-Menten equation in biochemistry x˙=-a(E-y)x+by,  y˙=a(E-y)x-(b+r)y,  z˙=ry. It models the enzyme kinetics. We contribute to the understanding of its global dynamics, or more precisely, to the topological structure of its orbits by studying the integrability...

We construct the recursion operators for the non-commutative Burgers equations using their Lax operators. We investigate the existence of any integrable mixed version of left- and right-handed Burgers equations on higher symmetry grounds.

In this paper, we study the μ-variant of the periodic b-equation and show that this equation can be realized as a metric Euler equation on the Lie group Diff∞(𝕊) if and only if b = 2 (for which it becomes the μ-Camassa–Holm equation). In this case, the inertia operator generating the metric on Diff∞(𝕊)...

In this note we give the conditions for the existence of algebraic geodesics on some two-dimensional quadrics, namely, on hyperbolic paraboloids and elliptic paraboloids. It appears that in some cases, such geodesics are the rational space curves.

This study considers a new aspect of the belief function theory to define a belief set, which is characterized by truth, uncertainty and falsity belief degrees as a 3D vector representation. Then, based on the implication of a belief set, one of the similarity measures (i.e., Cosine, Jaccard and Dice)...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of extant knowledge on emoji use in Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). A compilation of 46 empirical studies published between 1998 and 2020 are presented as a critical review and in a Summary Table that reports the methodology, sample, key...

The strategy of investing large-scale tourism projects abroad has become one of the most important strategies for China to help developing countries to improve their people’s livelihood, provide assistance and practice China’s international responsibility. The proposal and implementation of the Belt...

Analyzing runtime behavior as part of debugging complex component-based systems used in the vehicle industry is an important aspect of the integration process. It is a laborious task that involves many manual steps. One reason for this is that, as of today, the analysis is usually not performed on the...

As the supply chain of food around the world has become more and more globalized and complicated, food safety issue has attracted considerable concern owing to the widespread pollution of the whole ecosystem and the extent of their impact on the well-being of human beings. Correspondingly, a variety...

This paper examines the factors influencing intra-Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) trade by empirically investigating whether the Free Trade Area (FTA) contributed to trade growth from 1997 to 2015. Gravity models for exports and imports were estimated to identify the factors influencing...

Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) is a breathing disorder characterized by narrowing of the upper airway that impairs normal ventilation during sleep. OSA is a highly prevalent condition which is associated with several Cardiovascular (CV) risk factors and CV diseases. Despite this clear association, Randomized...

We show that the solutions to the second-order differential equation associated to the generalised Chazy equation with parameters k = 2 and k = 3 naturally show up in the conformal rescaling that takes a representative metric in Nurowski’s conformal class associated to a maximally symmetric (2,3,5)-distribution...