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Background: The nutritional status of children living under conflict is an important issue. The aim of the present study is to review all available data on malnutrition in preschool Palestinian children and provide objective results concerning the epidemic of malnutrition. Methods: The literature for...

Background: Cost-effective interventions are needed to control the transmission of viral respiratory tract infections (RTIs) in mass gatherings. Facemasks are a promising preventive measure, however, previous studies on the efficacy of facemasks have been inconclusive. This study proposes a large-scale...

γ-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) is a secondary metabolite produced in Monascus-fermented food. The mycotoxin (citrinin), another major secondary metabolite, is neurotoxic to humans and thus it diminishes the social acceptability of Monascus-Fermented Rice (MFR). The study was aimed to enrich GABA content...

Background: The Framingham Heart Study group has proposed an algorithm for calculating the 10-year risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) and heart/vascular age. The predictors used are age, diabetes, smoking, systolic blood pressure, total and high density cholesterol. We investigated the association...

Objective: Accumulating evidence suggests that low birth weight is associated with increased risk of future cardiovascular risk and increased systolic blood pressure. However the relationship between birth weight and arterial stiffness is controversial. We examined this relationship in the ENIGMA study,...

Background: Exercise influences pulse wave morphology, but the mechanisms are unknown. Methods: We measured radial arterial pulse wave contour (SphygmoCorR) in 1005 adults from a cohort follow-up examination in 2004/5 and compared individuals who, by self report, were sedentary (NPE, of less than one...

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is characterized by the development of renal cysts related to polycystin mutations in the tubular wall leading to renal failure. Moreover, patients with ADPKD also display early cardiovascular complications including hypertension and aneurysms before...

Demand Response (DR) has been extensively studied as one of the important features of smart grid. The DR strategies can be grouped into two categories, one is incentive-based DR and the other is pricing-based DR. Our work focuses on DR involving both pricing factor and incentive factor using scoring...

By focusing on resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capability view (DCV), a target firm can be assessed for its complementarity and compatibility by the alliance-initiating firm to form a strategic technology alliance. This is because complementarity and compatibility among the partner firms affect...

We developed a method for classification of Japanese documents and ranking of representative documents by using the characteristic of the frequencies of nouns. A representative document is defined as a document whose feature vector is the closest to the center of gravity of the class in the feature vector...

Control algorithms development for humanoid locomotion is difficult due to humanoid’s high number of Degrees of Freedom and system nonlinearity. Moreover, a humanoid may lose balance as its walking speed changes. We present AR-601M humanoid locomotion modelling with virtual height inverted pendulum and...

A simple method for calculating finite-gap elliptic potentials and corresponding spectra of the one-dimensional Schrödinger operator which is based on a general representation of the potentials in a form of rational functions of the Weierstrass function and trace formulae is proposed. It is shown that...

It is an important problem how to estimate the learning achievement of the programming learning. However, the quantitative evaluation method according to learning achievement is difficult. On the other hand, “work” of a control program influences the control performance of the plant by the petrochemical...

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) has become a potentially curative therapy for an increasing number of malignant and non-malignant conditions. As survival rates continue to improve, the focus of patient care has shifted from managing not only immediate but also long-term complications....

This paper presents a data-driven scheme that can obtain the optimized Generalized Minimum Variance (GMV) control parameters by applying the Nelder–Mead (NM) method based on Proportional-Integral Derivative (PID) controller for linear system. An adjustable λ is included in the GMV-PID controller. In...

By using the extended Harrison and Estabrook's differential forms approach, in this paper, we investigate the Lie symmetries of the continuous and discrete dispersive long waves system, respectively. Based on this method, two closed ideals written in terms of a set of differential forms are constructed...

We study a one-unit repairable system, supported by two identical spare units on cold standby, and serviced by two types of repairers. The model applies, for instance, to ANSI (American National Standard Institute) centrifugal pumps in a chemical plant, and hydraulic systems in aviation industry. The...

The objective was to study the changes in vascular function of HIV-1 (subtype C) infected black Africans over three years. In a longitudinal study (2005–2008) we compared the vascular function of 140 HIV+ (newly diagnosed) black Africans from the North-West province, South Africa. Seventy seven of the...

For given levels of blood pressure (BP), people with ‘stiffer’ (less distensible) large arteries develop more cardiovascular (CVS) events, as is typical of diabetes. South Asians (SA) develop excess mortality from all CVS disease, African-Caribbeans (AfC) lower overall mortality despite more hypertension...

Introduction: The difference between systolic blood pressure (SBP) measured in clinic and during the daytime phase of ambulatory BP measurement (ABPM) (Δclinic-day ABPM SBP) has been used as a measure of white-coat effect. We hypothesised that this was mediated through increased aortic stiffness resulting...

Statistical analysis of lifetime distributions under Type-II censoring scheme is based on precise lifetime data. However, in real situations all observations and measurements of Type-II censoring scheme are not precise numbers but more or less non-precise, also called fuzzy. This paper deals with the...

Negatons are a solution class with the following characteristic properties: They consist of solitons which are organized in groups. Solitons belonging to the same group are coupled in the sense that they drift apart from each other only logarithmically. The groups themselves rather behave like particles....

In the previous two parts of this series of papers, we introduced and studied a large class of analytic difference operators admitting reflectionless eigenfunctions, focusing on algebraic and function-theoretic features in the first part, and on connections with solitons in the second one. In this third...

Exactly integrable systems connected to semisimple algebras of second rank with an arbitrary choice of grading are presented in explicit form. General solutions of these systems are expressed in terms of matrix elements of two fundamental representations of the corresponding semisimple groups.

Under the Neumann constraints, each equation of the KdV hierarchy is decomposed into two finite dimensional systems, including the well-known Neumann model. Like in the case of the Bargmann constraint, the explicit Lax representations are deduced from the adjoint representation of the auxiliary spectral...

The generalization of parasupersymmetric quantum mechanics generated by an arbitrary number of parasupercharges and characterized by an arbitrary order of paraquantization is given. The relations for parasuperpotentials are obtained. It is shown that parasuperpotentials can be explicitly expressed via...

Virtual Reality (VR) technology is widely used in digital cities, industrial simulation, training, etc. where the environment modeling is a necessary component. Comparing with the difficulty to build the three dimension (3D) environment with the conventional methods, the Structure from Motion (SFM) method...