Paradoxical impact of socioeconomic factors on outcome of atrial fibrillation in Europe: trends in incidence and mortality from atrial fibrillation

Aims: To understand the changing trends in Atrial Fibrillation (AF) incidence and mortality across Europe from 1990 to 2017, and how socioeconomic factors and sex differences play a role. Methods and Results: We performed a temporal analysis of data from the 2017 Global Burden of Disease Database for 20 countries across Europe using Joinpoint regression analysis. Age-adjusted incidence, mortality and mortality to incidence ratios (MIRs) to approximate case fatality rate are presented. Incidence and mortality trends were heterogenous throughout Europe, with Austria, Denmark and Sweden experiencing peaks in incidence in the middle of the study period. Mortality rates were higher in wealthier countries with the highest being Sweden for both men and women (8.83 and 8.88 per 100,000, respectively) in 2017. MIRs were higher in women in all countries studied, with the disparity increasing the most over time in Germany (43.6% higher in women versus men in 1990 to 74.5% higher in women in 2017). Conclusion: AF incidence and mortality across Europe did not show a general trend, but unique patterns for some nations were observed. Higher mortality rates were observed in wealthier countries, potentially secondary to a survivor effect where patients survive long enough to suffer from AF and its complications. Outcomes for women with AF were worse than men, represented by higher MIRs. This suggests there is widespread healthcare inequality between the sexes across Europe, or that there are biological differences between them in terms of their risk of adverse outcomes from A

Proportion of hepatitis C virus antibodies in icteric patients

A total of 1783 sera from icteric patients (988 male & 795 female), their ages ranged 8-54 years, were tested for the presence of viral hepatitis markers (hepatitis A, B, and C), using the available diagnostic kits (enzyme linked immunosorbant assay). 300 donor sera were also tested as matched control. Among the icteric patients 859 (48,2%) had evidence of acute hepatitis A (HA), 499 (28%) were found to be infected with hepatitis B (HB), and hepatitis C virus (HCV-Ab) was detected in 8.2% of patients that confirmed by recombinant immunoblot assay. The results indicated that the maximum HCV seroprevalence was found in patients more than 30 years old, and there was no difference in the chance of infection in both sexes. The main route of HCV transmission was observed in icteric patients who had received blood, and those underwent surgical intervention. These reflect the fact that some of transfused blood may contain HCV that could not be detected by routine serological tests used in Blood Bank. There is a need to identify HCV carriers and the increased awareness of medical and paramedical personnel regarding the risk of transmitting the disease iatrogenically. Furthermore the need to document the risk of nosocomial transmission and highlight the crucial role of molecular sequence based phylogenetic analysis of cloned viral isolates in the investigation of HCV infection

Improving quality of service in IEEE 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access protocol

A new quality of service (QoS) enhancement scheme for IEEE 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) protocol is developed. It uses a combination of an adaptive access category (AC) traffic allocation, incorporated into the network's wireless side, and weighted round robin (WRR) queuing scheduling mechanism, incorporated into the wired side of the network. The adaptive traffic allocation algorithm determines the packet arrival rate (PAR) of the up- and down-link traffic for each access category (AC). It then dynamically allocates traffic of a lower priority AC to the next higher AC, when the higher AC is not receiving traffic at the time. WRR shared the network resources, based on the traffic’s Quality of Service requirements. The incorporation of the scheme caused an overall reduction of delay by 54.6%, jitter by 32%, and packet loss ratio by 62% for the transmitted applications

Quality of service using a combination of fuzzy c-means and regression model

In this study, a network quality of service (QoS) evaluation system was proposed. The system used a combination of fuzzy C-means (FCM) and regression model to analyse and assess the QoS in a simulated network. Network QoS parameters of multimedia applications were intelligently analysed by FCM clustering algorithm. The QoS parameters for each FCM cluster centre were then inputted to a regression model in order to quantify the overall QoS. The proposed QoS evaluation system provided valuable information about the network’s QoS patterns and based on this information, the overall network’s QoS was effectively quantified

An adaptive statistical sampling technique for computer network traffic

The rapid growth of real-time applications transmitted over multimedia networks, makes measurement of their generated traffic increasingly important. These measurements allow the quality of service (QoS) provided by the network for the transmission of the applications to be assessed. However, most real-time applications generate an extensive amount of traffic data. Analysing these data in real-time is computationally intensive. Therefore, in order to reduce the amount of processed data, sampling needs to be performed. In fixed rate sampling, the sample rate is unaffected by the packet transmission rate. However, it is advantageous to adapt the sample rate in relation to packet transmission rate. In this study a novel statistical adaptive sampling method has been developed. The method adaptively adjusts the time interval between two consecutive sampled sections (called pre-and post sampling sections). This time interval is decreased when the two sections significantly differ statistically and it is increased when their net statistic is within a predefined threshold. The operation of the developed sampling method was evaluated using a simulated computer network. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the method in various scenarios, however more work is in progress to make the method more robust

Evaluation of adaptive statistical sampling versus random sampling for video traffic

The growth in real-time applications transmitted over computer networks means that the quality of service (QoS) parameters of these applications need to be assessed and quantified in order for critical real-time applications such as videoconferencing to be delivered with an appropriate level of quality. However, most real-time applications generate a large amount of traffic data. The process of measuring QoS parameters for these data is not practically feasible in real-time. Therefore, in order to reduce the data processing and storage, sampling is an essential operation. In fixed rate sampling the number of data packets processed remains unchanged even when the traffic characteristics change. In adaptive sampling the number of packets sampled varies in accordance with traffic rate. This makes the processing more efficient. In this paper, a comparison of adaptive statistical sampling approach versus random sampling was carried out. The adaptive statistical sampling method adjusts the sampling rate by determining the statistical variations of packet arrival rate. A suitable network was simulated using ns-2 package to carry out this investigation. The study demonstrated that the performance of adaptive statistical sampling was better than random sampling.</p

Investigation

of antnet routing algorithm by employing multiple ant colonies for packet switched networks to overcome the stagnation proble

Empathy at work

How does empathy help us to write and to work? Professor Maggie Gee chairs a panel discussion by members of the CoLA cross-disciplinary 'Empathy and Writing' group. In October 2013 a seminal paper in Science by David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano reported experiments showing that reading fiction increased 'Theory of Mind' - the ability to understand the world from another person's different point of view, which we might also call empathy. The German origin word 'einfühlung', translated as 'feeling into', sounds very like what happened when a novelist, playwright or screenwriter invents a character, or when a medical doctor hears, and tries to make sense of, a patient's story. How do different professions use empathy? How does it help, and are there limits to its usefulness? Professor Bambo Soyinka talks about empathy in scriptwriting and interactive narrative, neuroscientist Dr Alison Lee talks about empathy and the brain, novelist Emma Geen talks about the origins of empathy in aesthetic theory, and neurologist and writer Dr Omar Al Khayatt talks about the uses and limitations of empathy in medicine

The Antnet Routing Algorithm- A Modified Version

Abstract – Antnet is an agent based routing algorithm that is influenced from the unsophisticated and individual ant’s emergent behaviour. Ants (software agents) are used in antnet to collect information and to update the probabilistic distance vector routing table entries. Modified antnet algorithm has been introduced, which improve the throughput and average delay. Results shows that by detecting and dropping 0.5 % of packets routed through the non-optimal routes the average delay per packet decreased and network throughput can be increased. The effect of the traffic fluctuations has been limited with the boundaries introduced in this paper and the number of ants in the network has been limited with the current throughput of the network at any given time. I