Increasing the Accuracy of Detection and Recognition in Visual Surveillance

Visual surveillance has two major steps of detecting and recognizing moving objects. In the detection stage, moving objects must be detected as quickly and accurately as possible and the influence of environmental light changes and waving trees should be reduced. In this research a block-based method is introduced in HSV color space in the detection stage. This method did not scan all the pixels of the frame and acted well in situations like sudden light changes. A powerful pattern recognition system should have powerful feature extraction and classification. Note that, feature extraction in gray level or RGB color space has problems such as environmental light changes, adding noise or changes in contrast and sharpness of images, which lead to weak classification. So the HSV color space was used. Here, Block-based Improved Center Symmetric Local Binary Pattern is introduced for feature extraction. In each component of the HSV color space, information of highlight areas in the image such as edge, shape and some texture was extracted. The histogram was calculated in two-level blocks and Support Vector Machine was used for classifying into vehicles, motorcycles and pedestrians. The obtained results in increasing the detection accuracy and decreasing the spent time were satisfactory.DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v2i3.33

Investigating Ethical Skills in Dentists and Dental Students: A Comparative Study

Background: Commitment to professional ethics is important for all medical practitioners, including dentists. This skill should be taught to students during their studies. The purpose of this study was to investigate the moral skills of dentistry students and dentists. Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 160 dentistry students and dentists. The Moral skills Inventory (MSI) Questionnaire was cross-culturally adapted and used in this study. The MSI was developed by Chamber’s and has 40 items covering four domains including: moral sensitivity, moral reasoning, moral integrity, and moral courage. Each domain’s scores ranged from zero to 20. The results were analyzed using SPSS software version 21. Results: comparing with dentists, dentistry students got higher score in moral sensitivity domain (5.5 ± 3.64 vs. 3.87 ± 2.22) and moral integrity (6.4 ± 3.2 vs. 5.78 ± 2.72). However, in moral reasoning, dentists got higher score than students (15.40 ± 2.11 vs. 13.92 ± 2.35). In the moral courage domain, students’ score was 13.47 ± 3.10 and dentists’ was 13.62 ± 2.96. The mean±SD of total score of moral skills in all domains was 39.3± 4.50 for dental students, 38.68 ± 4.48 for dentists, and 38.99 ± 4.49 for all participants. Conclusion: The professional ethics skills are relatively low in all four domains among dentistry students and dentists. Workshops, reviewing the syllables of medical ethics course, and practicing moral skills during training courses and monitoring professional performance can help to improve moral skill

Influence of National Indicators on KSE Stock Index Variation

The aim of this research article is investigates perceptions of Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) stake holders regarding  influence of national indictors affecting on Karachi Stock Exchange index. Self-administered structured questionnaire distributed conveniently among 140 stake holders of Karachi Stock Exchange. Data analysed through SPSS version 20 and descriptive statistics mean frequency and % exposed; Karachi Stock Exchange stake holders perceived that national indicators have significant influence on Karachi Stock Exchange index variation. Results determine that due to political uncertainty in Pakistan effect on Karachi Stock Exchange Index variation. Conclusion matched with findings of previous studies also

Reviewing the Status of Professional Commitment Principles in the Physician-Patient Communication Models

Much attention is paid to the importance of the relationship between patients and physicians and the ethical issues that have been considered from different perspectives. Moreover, different models have been developed to establish such a relationship. In one of the most advanced methods, Emanuel EJ categorized 4 paternalistic -informative-interpretive models that have been agreed upon by many medical professionals. Each model has its characteristics and in the relationship between a patient and a practitioner, and to some extent, the professional commitment values (professionalism). In other words, the observance of the values of professionalism in each of these models has been based on the definitions of these principles; each is of particular importance, and individual attention has been paid to these values in different models. The present work aimed to evaluate each communication model according to the values of medical resource planning. Analyzing and adapting these models in terms of professional ethics could finally lead to analyzing the comparative approaches to professional commitment values

Knowledge and Attitude of Midwives and Obstetricians Towards Therapeutic Abortion Law and its Ethical Pitfalls

Background: Despite the implementation of a safe motherhood program in many countries, unsafe abortion continues to be a matter of reproductive health. Thus, urgent efforts to make abortion legal and safe have been recommended in developing countries. The present study was done to determine the knowledge of midwives and obstetricians about the therapeutic abortion law as well as their attitude about the ethical pitfalls.Methods: In this descriptive knowledge and attitude study, a researcher-made questionnaire was used to gather data, after estimating the appropriate Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient. A total of 162 midwives and obstetricians working in public and private medical centers affiliated to Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in 2018 were included in the study by convenience sampling method.Results: According to the results, 9.3% of participants had a low level, 72.8% had a moderate level, and only 17.9% had a good level of knowledge. The total mean score of knowledge was 7.17±1.7. The mean score of knowledge in the group of obstetricians (7.60±1.74) was significantly higher than midwives (6.94±1.54), (t=2.29, p=0.024). There was a significant correlation between participants’ age and their knowledge (r=0.912, p=0.001). Also, 47.53% of the participants believed that the therapeutic abortion law has some pitfalls. The most frequent attitude was about the restriction of the therapeutic law up to 19 weeks for fetal indications.Conclusion: The level of participants’ knowledge was low to moderate. The findings indicated the need for training the professional standards related to prenatal genetic screening and therapeutic abortion

Patient’s Rights in Iran and Iraq

Background: The aim of this study was to compare, review, and evaluate the studies on patients right in Iran and Iraq. Methods: This is a review study conducted by searching the Iranian and Iraqi databanks, such as Scientific Information Database (SID), Iranian Research Institute for Information Science and Technology, Iran Medex, Iraqi Academic scientific journals, and Google Scholar for both Iranian and Iraqi articles from 2002 to 2017 using the keywords, such as “Patient Rights”, “Patient Rights Charter”, “Patient Rights Observance”, “Iraq”, “Iran”, and “Patient Awareness and Rights”. Results: Of a total of 32 Iranian and Iraqi articles, only 25 articles met the aim of our study. Conclusion: The growing number of articles published indicates that from 1999 forwards, this topic began to attract the attention of Iranian researchers in a gradual manner, as for the Iraqi researchers, their attention has been attracted from 2013 onwards. Also, despite the poor knowledge of physicians about the patients’ rights in Iran, they have shown acceptable awareness and attitude regarding some patients’ rights. The same is true for Iraqi doctors and health care providers, but they have shown unsatisfactory consequences for some of the rights of Iraqi patients. Patient education through media and careful observation of the patient rights charter, and educating healthcare professionals, and developing professional training on patients’ legal rights by engaging them in educational sessions and lectures on patient rights is necessary. Adequate monitoring of practice according to the patient charter is strongly suggested

Cardiovascular Complications of Acute Amphetamine Abuse : Cross-sectional study

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate cardiovascular complications among patients who abuse amphetamines. Methods: This cross-sectional study took place between April 2014 and April 2015 among 3,870 patients referred to the Toxicology Emergency Department of Baharlou Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Those with clinical signs of drug abuse and positive urine screening tests were included in the study, while cases of chronic abuse were excluded. Cardiac complications were evaluated via electrocardiography (ECG) and transthoracic echocardiography. Results: A total of 230 patients (5.9%) had a history of acute amphetamine abuse and positive urine tests. Of these, 32 patients (13.9%) were <20 years old and 196 (85.2%) were male. In total, 119 (51.7%) used amphetamine and methamphetamine compounds while 111 (48.3%) used amphetamines with morphine or benzodiazepines. The most common ECG finding was sinus tachycardia (43.0%), followed by sinus tachycardia plus a prolonged QT interval (34.3%). Mean creatine kinase-MB and troponin I levels were 35.9 ± 4.3 U/mL and 0.6 ± 0.2 ng/mL, respectively. A total of 60 patients (26.1%) were admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. The majority (83.3%) of these patients had normal echocardiography results. The mean aortic root diameter (ARD) was 27.2 ± 2.8 mm. Abnormalities related to the ARD were found in 10 patients (16.7%), three of whom subsequently died. Conclusion: According to these findings, cardiac complications were common among Iranian patients who abuse amphetamines, although the majority of patients had normal echocardiography and ECG findings

Superstructure optimization and forecasting of decentralized energy generation based on palm oil biomass

Malaysia realizes the importance of addressing the concern of energy security to accomplish the nation’s policy objectives by mitigating the issues of security, energy efficiency and environmental impacts. To meet the rising demand for energy and incorporation of Green Technology in the national policy, Malaysian government during the last three decades has developed several strategies and policies. National Green Technology Policy was an initiative, which marked the firm determination of the government to incorporate Green Technology in the nation’s economy policy. Malaysia has abundant biomass resources, especially oil palm residues with power generation potential of about 2400 MW, which is promising for decentralized electricity generation (DEG). The aim of this study is to determine the best location to install appropriate biomass electricity generation plant in Johor and forecasting the electricity market (i.e. electricity demand) in order to provide a strategic assessment of measures for the local energy planners of Malaysia, as an optimization bottom-up model. A superstructure was developed and optimized to represent DEG system. The problem was formulated as Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) and implemented in General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS). Electricity demand was modeled using Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS). Based on GAMS and ANFIS models, palm oil biomass based DEG system and distribution network scenarios for current as well as next ten, twenty and thirty years have been proposed for State of Johor, Malaysia. Biomass from sixty six Palm Oil Mills (POMs) would be collected and transported to eight selected locations. Empirical findings of this study suggested that total production cost is minimized by placing biomass gasification based integrated combine cycle (BIGCC) power plant of 50MW at all eight locations. For 2020 Scenario, no additional infrastructure will be required. For 2030 Scenario, additional units of BIGCC of 50MW will be required at five out of eight locations. While for 2040 Scenario, again no additional infrastructure development will be needed. Total minimum cost varied from 6.31 M$/yr for current scenario to 22.63 M$/yr for 2040 scenario

A NEURAL NETWORK BASED TRAFFIC-AWARE FORWARDING STRATEGY IN NAMED DATA NETWORKING

Named Data Networking (NDN) is a new Internet architecture which has been proposed to eliminate TCP/IP Internet architecture restrictions. This architecture is abstracting away the notion of host and working based on naming datagrams. However, one of the major challenges of NDN is supporting QoS-aware forwarding strategy so as to forward Interest packets intelligently over multiple paths based on the current network condition. In this paper, Neural Network (NN) Based Traffic-aware Forwarding strategy (NNTF) is introduced in order to determine an optimal path for Interest forwarding. NN is embedded in NDN routers to select next hop dynamically based on the path overload probability achieved from the NN. This solution is characterized by load balancing and QoS-awareness via monitoring the available path and forwarding data on the traffic-aware shortest path. The performance of NNTF is evaluated using ndnSIM which shows the efficiency of this scheme in terms of network QoS improvementof17.5% and 72% reduction in network delay and packet drop respectively