Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor Agonists: Do They Increase Cardiovascular Risk?

Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality among people with type 2 diabetes mellitus. The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) agonists have a significant role on glucose and fat metabolism. Thiazolidinediones (TZDs) are predominantly PPARγ agonists, and their primary benefit appears to be the prevention of diabetic complications by improving glycemic control and lipid profile. Recently, the cardiovascular safety of rosiglitazone was brought to center stage following meta analyses and the interim analysis of the RECORD trial. Current evidence points to rosiglitazone having a greater risk of myocardial ischemic events than placebo, metformin, or sulfonylureas. This review article discusses the mechanism of action of PPAR agonists and correlates it with clinical and laboratory outcomes in the published literature. In addition, this review article attempts to discuss some of the molecular mechanisms regarding the association between TZDs therapy and the nontraditional cardiovascular risks

Using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to Identify Hydrocarbon Seepage in Kifl Oil Field and Adjacent Areas South of Iraq

The study area lies south of Iraq, it covers 4009 km². The data is used in this research comprise Landsat 8 (OLI) data, and Ancillary data such as geological and topographic maps. The study area include the Kifl Oil Field whereas comprise number of important formations for oil production. There are four oil wells drilled in the Kifl Oil Field. Some of them producer of hydrocarbon and others wells have hydrocarbon evidences.The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is used to identify prospective hydrocarbon seepage areas within the vegetation cover, the magnitude of green vegetation was quantified to levels and separated from other classes. The classification system for the vegetation in the study area is based on four categories: High vegetation density, Moderate vegetation density, Low vegetation density, and no vegetation. The result of classification reveals that low vegetation density areas, and no vegetation areas could be prospective hydrocarbon seepage areas. Supervised classification apply on the gray scale image of NDVI by chosen training areas of dark tones pixels that have values of absorption  close to values of water absorption which are illustrated prospective hydrocarbon seepage areas. Three classes in the study area included hydrocarbon seepage class compared with other three classes collected from another near area, this comparison has been proved that there is identical behave of the spectral signatures for all three classes. According to the conclusions, the NDVI is effective to identify hydrocarbon seepage in the study area particularly in the regions characterized by vegetation cover. Keywords: Landsat 8 (OLI), Hydrocarbon Seepage, NDVI, Threshold, Anaerobic

A Novel Damage Index for Online Monitoring of RC Slabs under Monotonic Loading by Integration of Process Controlling into Acoustic Emission Technique

This study introduces a novel structural health monitoring scheme for cementitious composite slabs with the aid of acoustic emission (AE) technique coupled with statistical process controlling (SPC) method. The adopted framework is an integrated monitoring solution that effectively relates current state (damaged) to reference state of the structure. Evaluation of the latter was made possible using autoregressive model incorporating a set of damage-sensitive feature. In order to provide a benchmark damage indicator, the collected data were processed using control chart analysis. The damage indicators for the former was similarly obtained and then compared with the benchmark to gauge the structural damage. These control charts offer a robust framework meticulously identifying inconsistency in the damage-sensitive feature imposed over the monitoring period. Linear and quadratic projections were also incorporated into SPC model to enhance identification of system transition to other damage states

Pilot Field Implementation of Suction Dredging for Sustainable Sediment Management of Dam Reservoirs

The buildup of sediment deposits in reservoirs is a long-standing problem with serious consequences on the reservoirs' functionality and the ecology of their river systems. In the last two decades, hydraulic dredging has been used as a more viable engineering solution to restore reservoirs' sustainability. This study proposes a novel ejector-pump dredging system (EPDS) that solely utilizes hydraulic dredging for removal and transport of the sediments deposited at the reservoir's bed. Unlike conventional dredging methods, air is injected into the header pipeline to create a turbulent three-phase flow regime that enhances the solids suspension and continuous flow in the system. Introducing air effectively reduces the critical value of the deposition velocity of the dredged solids and transports them in a slug flow regime. This technique minimizes the tendency of the sediment to settle, and therefore eliminates system plugging. A laboratory prototype of the proposed system has proven the efficacy of removal and transport of mixed-size sediments up to 150 mm. Field trials have further shown the feasibility of the proposed system. Removal of large sediments with productivity approaching 70 m³/h was made possible using the suction-type EPDS. The hopper-type EPDS enabled carrying the dredged material for up to 1, 000 m without resorting to a booster pump. The developed system was successfully used as part of an integrated dredging management program carried out for the Oouchibaru, Saigo, and Yamasubaru dams in the Mimi River basin, Japan. The very low turbidity levels recorded during the sediment dredging and transport operations of EPDS are indicative of the eco-friendly performance of the system

STUDYING THE EFFECT OF CATIONIC STARCH- ANIONIC NANOSILICA SYSTEM ON RETENTION AND DRAINAGE

Nanoparticles are widely used in the papermaking industry as retention/ drainage aids, usually in conjunction with a high mass cationic polyelectrolyte such as cationic starch. However, little convincing knowledge of their role and mechanism in the wet-end system is yet found. This work focused on the role of nanosilica on papermaking wet end system in response to some processing parameters (drainage, retention, and electrostatic force of the whole system). The observations indicated that the nanosilica performance is defined by interactions of nanosilica with the complex aqueous environment of wet end system. The interaction mechanism seems to rely on introduction of nanoparticles into a cationic starch-fines-fibers network, converting the fiber mat on the forming wire into a porous structure that is responsive to retention and drainage

Using Virtual Tours as a University Campus Guide: Al- Zaytoonah University Case Study

Most university campuses, such as the campus of Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan (ZUJ), are usually large and comprise many buildings. Finding the location of an office, a lecture hall, a service center, etc. is not an easy task for most visitors and even for many students and employees. Therefore, a virtual tour of the campus and its buildings will provide a valuable tool that eases this task, especially when it is available on a public website and accessible without the need for special virtual reality devices. Previous studies on virtual tours focused on their important marketing aspect. On the other hand, this study is focused on using virtual tours as a guide for finding the specific locations that different users seek to visit. Consequently, a virtual tour of ZUJ has been designed and provided via the university website. The building names and numbers are provided on the website in Arabic and English with links to their tours. The tours that lead to the important locations include many significant details inside the buildings such as room numbers, bathroom signs, and door signs. The study showed user satisfaction with the tours and the efficacy of using the website without special virtual reality devices

A Forensic Scheme for Revealing Post-processed Region Duplication Forgery in Suspected Images

Recent researches have demonstrated that local interest points alone can be employed to detect region duplication forgery in image forensics. Authentic images may be abused by copy-move tool in Adobe Photoshop to fully contained duplicated regions such as objects with high primitives such as corners and edges. Corners and edges represent the internal structure of an object in the image which makes them have a discriminating property under geometric transformations such as scale and rotation operation. They can be localised using scale-invariant features transform (SIFT) algorithm. In this paper, we provide an image forgery detection technique by using local interest points. Local interest points can be exposed by extracting adaptive non-maximal suppression (ANMS) keypoints from dividing blocks in the segmented image to detect such corners of objects. We also demonstrate that ANMS keypoints can be effectively utilised to detect blurred and scaled forged regions. The ANMS features of the image are shown to exhibit the internal structure of copy moved region. We provide a new texture descriptor called local phase quantisation (LPQ) that is robust to image blurring and also to eliminate the false positives of duplicated regions. Experimental results show that our scheme has the ability to reveal region duplication forgeries under scaling, rotation and blur manipulation of JPEG images on MICC-F220 and CASIA v2 image datasets

Identification of masses in digital mammogram using gray level co-occurrence matrices

Digital mammogram has become the most effective technique for early breast cancer detection modality. Digital mammogram takes an electronic image of the breast and stores it directly in a computer. The aim of this study is to develop an automated system for assisting the analysis of digital mammograms. Computer image processing techniques will be applied to enhance images and this is followed by segmentation of the region of interest (ROI). Subsequently, the textural features will be extracted from the ROI. The texture features will be used to classify the ROIs as either masses or non-masses. In this study normal breast images and breast image with masses used as the standard input to the proposed system are taken from Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS) digital mammogram database. In MIAS database, masses are grouped into either spiculated, circumscribed or ill-defined. Additional information includes location of masses centres and radius of masses. The extraction of the textural features of ROIs is done by using gray level co-occurrence matrices (GLCM) which is constructed at four different directions for each ROI. The results show that the GLCM at 0º, 45º, 90º and 135º with a block size of 8X8 give significant texture information to identify between masses and non-masses tissues. Analysis of GLCM properties i.e. contrast, energy and homogeneity resulted in receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve area of Az = 0.84 for Otsu’s method, 0.82 for thresholding method and Az = 0.7 for K-mean clustering. ROC curve area of 0.8-0.9 is rated as good results. The authors’ proposed method contains no complicated algorithm. The detection is based on a decision tree with five criterions to be analysed. This simplicity leads to less computational time. Thus, this approach is suitable for automated real-time breast cancer diagnosis system

Performance management of a service unit in hotel theoretical review

This paper aims to review the existing literature on performance management in the F&B department of hotels, its processes, and its effective management system framework. This paper discusses food and beverage systems and explains a system model framework of performance management in the area of F&B and its application to the hotel industry. The conceptual paper suggests an application of the system model in the F&B department and encourages hotels to improve its management to better serve their guests

Implementation of a Miniaturized Planar Tri-Band Microstrip Patch Antenna for Wireless Sensors in Mobile Applications

Antennas in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are characterized by the enhanced capacity of the network, longer range of transmission, better spatial reuse, and lower interference. In this paper, we propose a planar patch antenna for mobile communication applications operating at 1.8, 3.5, and 5.4 GHz. A planar microstrip patch antenna (MPA) consists of two F-shaped resonators that enable operations at 1.8 and 3.5 GHz while operation at 5.4 GHz is achieved when the patch is truncated from the middle. The proposed planar patch is printed on a low-cost FR-4 substrate that is 1.6 mm in thickness. The equivalent circuit model is also designed to validate the reflection coefficient of the proposed antenna with the S-11 obtained from the circuit model. It contains three RLC (resistor-inductor-capacitor) circuits for generating three frequency bands for the proposed antenna. Thereby, we obtained a good agreement between simulation and measurement results. The proposed antenna has an elliptically shaped radiation pattern at 1.8 and 3.5 GHz, while the broadside directional pattern is obtained at the 5.4 GHz frequency band. At 1.8, 3.5, and 5.4 GHz, the simulated peak realized gains of 2.34, 5.2, and 1.42 dB are obtained and compared to the experimental peak realized gains of 2.22, 5.18, and 1.38 dB at same frequencies. The results indicate that the proposed planar patch antenna can be utilized for mobile applications such as digital communication systems (DCS), worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), and wireless local area networks (WLAN)