Measuring health status and quality of life in disease management programs

Current medical practice is largely disease and problem focused, concentrating on the diagnosis and treatment of anatomic or physiologic problems. This approach assumes that physiologic parameters accurately reflect the patient\u27s status of health. It also assumes that, when a patient\u27s disease is ameliorated, his or her quality of life will improve. Many health services researchers find these parameters to be imperfect determinates for good outcomes of patients\u27 perceived health status. However, there are many valid and reliable methods to measure patients\u27 health status and quality of life. Recently available survey tools that measure quality of life are based on modern psychometric techniques. Disease management programs should take advantage of these valid and reliable tools to measure outcomes of their patients and assess the quality of their programs

The Aesthetic Presence of Diagnosis in the Coptic Christian Icon.

تعدّدت الدّراسات في فنّون الشّرق بمختلف توجّهاتها ومكوّناتها ما جعل التّصوير الأيقوني محمل مساءلة واهتمام كبير من الدّارسين والأركيُولوُجيّين. وللإجابة عن هذا السؤال سندرس في هذا البحث مضامين الأيقونة القبطيّة المسيحيّة ومظاهرها واستقراء مميزات التشخيص العنصر الأساسي في بنائيّة الأيقونة القبطيّة المسيحيّة، زيادة على البحث في أثر العامل الدّيني في تطوير رسومات الأيقونة القبطيّة المسيحيّة. فإلى أي مدى أسهم العامل العقدي في تطوير الأيقونة وتشكّل خصوصياتها الفنيّة؟There were many studies in the arts of the East, with their various orientations and components, which made iconography a source of accountability and great interest on the part of scholars and archaeologists.  In order to answer this question, we will study in this research the contents and manifestations of the Coptic Christian icon and an extrapolation of the characteristics of the diagnosis as a basic element in the construction of the Coptic Christian icon, in addition to researching the role of the religious factor in the development of the Coptic Christian icon drawings. To what extent did the nodal factor contribute to the development of the icon and the formation of its artistic specificities

Photovoltaic Power System for a Village in Libya

Electrical. E-ngineerin

Estimation de l'état de charge (SOC) et de l'état de santé (SOH) d'une batterie Lithium-Ion utilisée pour les voitures électriques

Faire de l’énergie propre est devenu un défi pour tout le monde. Parmi ces énergies propres, il y a l’utilisation des voitures électriques et hybrides. D’après plusieurs statistiques, les voitures traditionnelles polluent de plus en plus de l’atmosphère. Mais le plus grand souci est le stockage de l’énergie dans des grosses batteries utilisées pour les voitures électriques. Delà l’idée est venue pour étudier le comportement de ces batteries. Plusieurs techniques de stockage d’énergie sont utilisées pour bien exploiter, gérer et surveiller cette quantité électrique dans les batteries, et qui affecte la performance des voitures électriques. Il existe plusieurs types d'accumulateurs comme Lead-Acide, Lithium-Ion etc. Afin de bien comprendre le comportement des accumulateurs et des batteries dans les voitures électriques, nous ferrons appel à des modèles électriques capables de gérer et de surveiller le comportement des batteries ainsi de prédire et de simuler, en temps réel, son fonctionnement. Nous devrons donc prendre en considération les phénomènes électrochimique et dynamique de la batterie qui se manifestent pendant son fonctionnement. L'objectif de ce mémoire est d’étudier et de mettre en évidence un modèle qui peut suivre les changements et les phénomènes électrochimique de la batterie Lithium-Ion, de proposer un modèle électrique plus proche du modèle chimique et de prédire, surtout, l’état de charge et l’état de santé de la batterie Lithium-Ion. En premier lieu le modèle proposé est appliqué à une batterie Lead-Acide, afin de le comparer avec les travaux déjà réalisés. Par la suite, il sera appliqué aux batteries de type Lithium-Ion, utilisés dans les voitures électriques. A chaque étape de l’étude, nous tiendrons compte, dans le modèle proposé, d’autres paramètres dans le but de donner plus de précision sur l’état de charge SOC et l’état de santé et de vieillissement SOH de la batterie. La question qui se pose est celle-ci : Pourquoi estime-t-on surtout l’état de charge ? La capacité de la batterie d’une voiture électrique est inaccessible par mesure directe. C’est pourquoi l’utilisation d’une estimation basée sur le Filtre de Kalman est primordiale pour réussir à l’obtention de l’information sur l’état de charge de la batterie à n’importe quel moment

Intravenous immunoglobulin prophylaxis of late-onset sepsis in preterm neonates

Advances in neonatal care during the past 15 years have resulted in an increased survival rate for preterm newborn infants with birth weight of less than 1500 grams. Despite therapeutic improvements, infection remains a major problem in this group of babies due to their increased susceptibility to infection. In a double blind, placebo controlled trial, we investigated the effect of intravenous immunoglobulin (IgG) in the prevention of nosocomial infection in very low birth weight infants (with birth weight ≤ 1500 grams and gestational age ≤ 32 weeks). Patients were recruited from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital. Thirty eight infants were enrolled into the trial and all needed intensive life support and/or parenteral nutrition through a long line. After randomisation 19 were given IVIG and 19 were used as controls. Four babies died early in the study and were excluded. The babies were intensively monitored during the study period for the number of proven or suspected episodes of infection and any complication of therapy. Additional information about their ability to resist infection was obtained by checking their opsonic activity. Babies ≤ 1000 grams birth weight were given 700 mg/kg of IVIG. Babies with 1001 - 1500 grams were given 500 mg/kg of IVIG. The placebo given to control group was 5 % dextrose. These doses were repeated at two weekly intervals so long as the babies needed intensive care. We conclude that the administration of IVIG did not provide effective prophylaxis for late-onset sepsis. IVIG appears to be well tolerated by very low birth weight infants. No significant side effects were observed

O Varal de Roupas - Objeto de Aprendizagem de Vetores em Linguagem C

É comum que os alunos apresentem elevado grau de dificuldade no aprendizado de algoritmos computacionais. Na programação de computadores, os conceitos envolvidos, como o de vetores, por exemplo, são bastante abstratos, ocasionando dificuldade para expressar as ações que resolvem o problema em instruções computacionais. Como forma de contribuir para a aprendizagem de vetores em uma linguagem de programação, este artigo apresenta um objeto educacional que tem como base o cenário de roupas colocadas em um varal e em um armário. Essas atividades são associadas com instruções computacionais na representação de estruturas de dados homogêneos de acordo com a sintaxe e a semântica da Linguagem C

Settings-Free Hybrid Metaheuristic General Optimization Methods

Several population-based metaheuristic optimization algorithms have been proposed in the last decades, none of which are able either to outperform all existing algorithms or to solve all optimization problems according to the No Free Lunch (NFL) theorem. Many of these algorithms behave effectively, under a correct setting of the control parameter(s), when solving different engineering problems. The optimization behavior of these algorithms is boosted by applying various strategies, which include the hybridization technique and the use of chaotic maps instead of the pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs). The hybrid algorithms are suitable for a large number of engineering applications in which they behave more effectively than the thoroughbred optimization algorithms. However, they increase the difficulty of correctly setting control parameters, and sometimes they are designed to solve particular problems. This paper presents three hybridizations dubbed HYBPOP, HYBSUBPOP, and HYBIND of up to seven algorithms free of control parameters. Each hybrid proposal uses a different strategy to switch the algorithm charged with generating each new individual. These algorithms are Jaya, sine cosine algorithm (SCA), Rao’s algorithms, teaching-learning-based optimization (TLBO), and chaotic Jaya. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithms perform better than the original algorithms, which implies the optimal use of these algorithms according to the problem to be solved. One more advantage of the hybrid algorithms is that no prior process of control parameter tuning is needed.This research and APC was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the Research State Agency under Grant RTI2018-098156-B-C54 co-financed by FEDER funds, and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grant TIN2017-89266-R, co-financed by FEDER funds

Enhanced Parallel Sine Cosine Algorithm for Constrained and Unconstrained Optimization

The sine cosine algorithm’s main idea is the sine and cosine-based vacillation outwards or towards the best solution. The first main contribution of this paper proposes an enhanced version of the SCA algorithm called as ESCA algorithm. The supremacy of the proposed algorithm over a set of state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of solution accuracy and convergence speed will be demonstrated by experimental tests. When these algorithms are transferred to the business sector, they must meet time requirements dependent on the industrial process. If these temporal requirements are not met, an efficient solution is to speed them up by designing parallel algorithms. The second major contribution of this work is the design of several parallel algorithms for efficiently exploiting current multicore processor architectures. First, one-level synchronous and asynchronous parallel ESCA algorithms are designed. They have two favors; retain the proposed algorithm’s behavior and provide excellent parallel performance by combining coarse-grained parallelism with fine-grained parallelism. Moreover, the parallel scalability of the proposed algorithms is further improved by employing a two-level parallel strategy. Indeed, the experimental results suggest that the one-level parallel ESCA algorithms reduce the computing time, on average, by 87.4% and 90.8%, respectively, using 12 physical processing cores. The two-level parallel algorithms provide extra reductions of the computing time by 91.4%, 93.1%, and 94.5% with 16, 20, and 24 processing cores, including physical and logical cores. Comparison analysis is carried out on 30 unconstrained benchmark functions and three challenging engineering design problems. The experimental outcomes show that the proposed ESCA algorithm behaves outstandingly well in terms of exploration and exploitation behaviors, local optima avoidance, and convergence speed toward the optimum. The overall performance of the proposed algorithm is statistically validated using three non-parametric statistical tests, namely Friedman, Friedman aligned, and Quade tests.This research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the Research State Agency under Grant RTI2018-098156-B-C54 cofinanced by FEDER funds and the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Research State Agency under Grant PID2020-120213RB-I00 cofinanced by FEDER funds

In Support of the Matrix Language Frame Model: Evidence from Igbo-English Intrasentential Codeswitching

This paper explores the morphosyntactic features of mixed nominal expressions in a sample of empirical Igbo-English intrasentential codeswitching data (i.e. codeswitching within a bilingual clause) in terms of the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model. Since both Igbo and English differ in the relative order of head and complement within the nominal argument phrase, the analysed data seem appropriate for testing the veracity of the principal assumption underpinning the MLF model: the notion that the two languages (in our case Igbo and English) participating in codeswitching do not both contribute equally to the morphosyntactic frame of a mixed constituent. As it turns out, the findings provide both empirical and quantitative support for the basic theoretical view that there is a Matrix Language (ML) versus Embedded Language (EL) hierarchy in classic codeswitching as predicted by the MLF model because both Igbo and English do not simultaneously satisfy the roles of the ML in Igbo-English codeswitching