Machine Learning Methods for Septic Shock Prediction

Sepsis is an organ dysfunction life-threatening disease that is caused by a dysregulated body response to infection. Sepsis is difficult to detect at an early stage, and when not detected early, is difficult to treat and results in high mortality rates. Developing improved methods for identifying patients in high risk of suffering septic shock has been the focus of much research in recent years. Building on this body of literature, this dissertation develops an improved method for septic shock prediction. Using the data from the MMIC-III database, an ensemble classifier is trained to identify high-risk patients. A robust prediction model is built by obtaining a risk score from fitting the Cox Hazard model on multiple input features. The score is added to the list of features and the Random Forest ensemble classifier is trained to produce the model. The Cox Enhanced Random Forest (CERF) proposed method is evaluated by comparing its predictive accuracy to those of extant methods

Ammonium-perchlorate diffusion flames - A spectrographic investigation

Spectroscopic analyses on ammonium perchlorate diffusion flames with various fuel

Desmoid tumor of the tongue

Desmoid tumors are rare neoplasms accounting for 0.03% of all neoplasms and have an estimated incidence of 2 to 4 per million per year. World Health Organization currently refers to all of the deep types of fibromatosis as desmoidtype of fibromatoses. The term ?desmoid? refers to the hard, tendon-like appearance of the tumor. The etiological factors suggested include genetic, endocrine and physical factors. About fifty percent of desmoid tumors arise in the abdominal region. The extra-abdominal desmoid tumors present a difficult problem in recognition and management especially because of the striking discrepancy between its deceptively harmless microscopic appearance and its potential to attain a large size, to recur, and to infiltrate neighboring tissues in the manner of a fibrosarcoma. Desmoid tumors are very rare in the oral cavity with less than 5% of cases constituting oral soft tissue fibromatosis. A 22-year old mentally retarded female patient with desmoid tumor occurring in the tongue is presented here

Audit Committee Effectiveness, Audit Quality and Earnings Management: An Empirical Study of the Listed Companies in Egypt

The role of audit committees and audit quality in ensuring the quality of corporate financial reporting has come under considerable scrutiny due to recent high-profile earnings management cases in the world. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between the audit committee effectiveness, audit quality and earnings management practices of more active 50 Egyptian companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange of the non-financial sector during the period 2007-2010. After controlling for size, leverage and cash flow from operation activities, the results of univariate and multivariate analyses indicated that audit committees independence; experience of audit committee members; audit committee meetings; and audit quality have significant negative association with discretionary accruals as a proxy for earnings management. On the other hand, no significant relationship is found between audit committees size and the level of discretionary accruals. This paper is important because it offers useful information that is of great value to policy makers, academics and other stakeholders. Keywords: Audit Committee Effectiveness, Audit Quality, Earning Management, Egyp

Georgian Terrains: The Islamic Orient in James Elroy Flecker's Hassan

This study is mainly concerned with Georgian representations of the Islamic Orient. In placing it in a Saidian framework, it investigates how James Elroy Flecker’s Hassan treats the Islamic motifs. This play constructs the Orient as a network of destructive sexuality, alluring wealth, astonishing superstitions, and wonder in the exotic and the unfamiliar. Islam is blackly pictured, the Quran is undermined and the Abbasid Caliphate is severely attacked as an authority of corruption. By way of concluding, it can be suggested that Flecker’s misrepresentations of the Islamic Orient are attributed to his ideological hatred of Islam.Keywords: Orientalism; Georgian Poetry; The Arabian Nights; Abbasid Caliphate; the Bible; Islam, Christianity; Baghdad; Schizophrenic; Sufism; Lasciviousness; Houris; Islamic Sexuality; Oriental promiscuity; Femme fatale; Exoticism; Oriental superstition; Cruelty; Aggression; Violenc

Reasons of the Gap between Outcome Characteristics of Private Higher Education, and Job Requirements of the Private Sector in Egypt (Reasons Related to Universities)

Universities present one of the main sources that society rely upon  to get the qualified staff which represents the source of human power needed for achieving the society's goals. So, higher education recently receives an exclusive concern all over the world, especially in Egypt. Nowadays, Egypt is highly concerned about increasing the number of Universities, especially the private ones, because they play a great role in establishing qualified humans. Also, it cares about developing and updating academic courses and teaching techniques in universities to cope with the new era requirements that are rapidly changed, and development in all fields. As for the important role of universities in preparing and qualifying the human resources, it was also important to find out the reasons that hinder universities from performing their effective role, which leads to their failure to fulfill the labor market requirements. The exploratory research has shown that the reasons which are related to university could be divided into five groups: 1. Reasons related to the policies of the higher education system. 2. Reasons related to the qualifications of the academic staff member. 3. Reasons related to the higher educational techniques. 4. Reasons related to the availability of resources and capabilities. 5. Reasons related to the fit between the academic courses and labor market requirements. The current research is designed to measure reasons of the gap (misfit) between the outcome characteristics of the private higher education and the job requirements in the private sector in Egypt. The study will be applied in the Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport in the following colleges: (a) College of management and technology (b) College of engineering and technology (c) College of maritime transport and technology. Based on the interviews with the academic staff members and some businessmen, the study concluded that regarding the effect of the policies of the private higher education system on the gap between the outcome characteristics of the private higher education and job requirements in the private sector in Egypt, the main causes for the above mentioned gap are the admission method, which is based on high school grades only, and the major selection method. With respect to the qualifications of the academic staff members, it was observed that the isolation of the academic staff members when they establish the academic courses from the labor market, and the weakness of communication between the academic staff members and the students are also considered as causes of the gap. Concerning the higher education techniques and tools, it was found that the inability to use modern methods of education and the dependence on the traditional methods of lecturing are considered as causes of the gap. With respect to the availability of resources and capabilities, this was not considered among the causes of the gap. For the fit between the academic courses and the labor market requirement, it was observed that the inconvenience of educational materials to the labor market requirements, the concentration on theoretical issues more than applications, and the use of old materials are considered causes of the gap.

NetworkMonitoring System (NMS)

Due to rapid changes and consequent new threats to computer networks there is a need for the design of systems that enhance network security. These systems make network administrators fully aware of the potential vulnerability of their networks. This paperdesigns a Network Monitoring System (NMS) which is an active defense and complex network surveillance platform designed for ISPs to meet their most rigorous security requirements. This system is motivated by the great needof government agencies, ecommerce companies and Web development organizations to secure their computer networks. The proposed system is also used by network administrators to enable them understand the vulnerabilities affecting computer networks. This enables these administrators to improve network security. The proposed system is a lawful network traffic (Internet Service Provider IP trffic) interception system with the main task of obtaining network communications, giving access to intercepted traffic to lawful authorities for the purpose of data analysis and/or evidence. Such data generally consist of signaling, network management information, or the content of network communications. The intercepted IP traffic is gathered and analyzed for network vulnerability in real time. Then, the corresponding TCP/UDP traffic (Web page, email message, VOIP calls, DHCP traffic, files transferred over the LAN such as HTML files, images, and video files, etc.) is rebuilt and displayed. Based on the results of the analysis of the rebuilt TCP/UDP an alarm could be generatedif amalicious behavior is detected. Experimental results show that the proposed system has many