Modeling Optimal Control for Mosquito and Insecticide

In this paper we consider a mathematical model of mosquito and insecticide. The aim of this model is to reduce the amount of mosquitoes in the ponds and swamps. Mosquitos are the main cause of malaria disease. We used the optimal spray strategies to minimize the amount of mosquito, we work optimal control framework by applying the Pontryagin's Maximum Principle. A characterization of the optimal control via adjoint variables was established. We obtained an optimality system that we sought to solve numerically by using MATLAB

Modeling Optimal Control for Mosquito and Insecticide

In this paper we consider a mathematical model of mosquito and insecticide. The aim of this model is to reduce the amount of mosquitoes in the ponds and swamps. Mosquitos are the main cause of malaria disease. We used the optimal spray strategies to minimize the amount of mosquito, we work optimal control framework by applying the Pontryagin's Maximum Principle. A characterization of the optimal control via adjoint variables was established. We obtained an optimality system that we sought to solve numerically by using MATLAB

Investigation of 1-alkanols in organised solutions

Conductometric behaviour of 1-alkanols (C5-C10) in organised solutions of sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS) is investigated. Interaction of each alkanol with anionic surfactant is reflected in terms of association constants, Kc. It is observed that self-assembly of SDBS is induced by the alkanol addition. The depression in critical micelle concentration (CMC) of SDBS caused by each alkanol is translated to partition coefficient, Kc by using interaction coefficient. The dimensionless partition coefficient, Kx is utilized to highlight the energy efficiency of the solubilization process. The results indicate that even longer chain alkanols prefer interfacial area for their residence. The relative solubility of each alkanol is enhanced with increasing SDBS concentration. Such basic information could be vital for development of nano-scale assemblies for specific delivery of water soluble drugs.KEY WORDS: SDBS, Alcohols, Partition coefficient, Relative solubility, Conductometry Bull. Chem. Soc. Ethiop. 2011, 25(3), 469-474

Effect of early tranexamic acid administration on mortality, hysterectomy, and other morbidities in women with post-partum haemorrhage (WOMAN): an international, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

Background Post-partum haemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal death worldwide. Early administration of tranexamic acid reduces deaths due to bleeding in trauma patients. We aimed to assess the effects of early administration of tranexamic acid on death, hysterectomy, and other relevant outcomes in women with post-partum haemorrhage. Methods In this randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, we recruited women aged 16 years and older with a clinical diagnosis of post-partum haemorrhage after a vaginal birth or caesarean section from 193 hospitals in 21 countries. We randomly assigned women to receive either 1 g intravenous tranexamic acid or matching placebo in addition to usual care. If bleeding continued after 30 min, or stopped and restarted within 24 h of the first dose, a second dose of 1 g of tranexamic acid or placebo could be given. Patients were assigned by selection of a numbered treatment pack from a box containing eight numbered packs that were identical apart from the pack number. Participants, care givers, and those assessing outcomes were masked to allocation. We originally planned to enrol 15 000 women with a composite primary endpoint of death from all-causes or hysterectomy within 42 days of giving birth. However, during the trial it became apparent that the decision to conduct a hysterectomy was often made at the same time as randomisation. Although tranexamic acid could influence the risk of death in these cases, it could not affect the risk of hysterectomy. We therefore increased the sample size from 15 000 to 20 000 women in order to estimate the effect of tranexamic acid on the risk of death from post-partum haemorrhage. All analyses were done on an intention-to-treat basis. This trial is registered with ISRCTN76912190 (Dec 8, 2008); ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT00872469; and PACTR201007000192283. Findings Between March, 2010, and April, 2016, 20 060 women were enrolled and randomly assigned to receive tranexamic acid (n=10 051) or placebo (n=10 009), of whom 10 036 and 9985, respectively, were included in the analysis. Death due to bleeding was significantly reduced in women given tranexamic acid (155 [1·5%] of 10 036 patients vs 191 [1·9%] of 9985 in the placebo group, risk ratio [RR] 0·81, 95% CI 0·65–1·00; p=0·045), especially in women given treatment within 3 h of giving birth (89 [1·2%] in the tranexamic acid group vs 127 [1·7%] in the placebo group, RR 0·69, 95% CI 0·52–0·91; p=0·008). All other causes of death did not differ significantly by group. Hysterectomy was not reduced with tranexamic acid (358 [3·6%] patients in the tranexamic acid group vs 351 [3·5%] in the placebo group, RR 1·02, 95% CI 0·88–1·07; p=0·84). The composite primary endpoint of death from all causes or hysterectomy was not reduced with tranexamic acid (534 [5·3%] deaths or hysterectomies in the tranexamic acid group vs 546 [5·5%] in the placebo group, RR 0·97, 95% CI 0·87-1·09; p=0·65). Adverse events (including thromboembolic events) did not differ significantly in the tranexamic acid versus placebo group. Interpretation Tranexamic acid reduces death due to bleeding in women with post-partum haemorrhage with no adverse effects. When used as a treatment for postpartum haemorrhage, tranexamic acid should be given as soon as possible after bleeding onset. Funding London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Pfizer, UK Department of Health, Wellcome Trust, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Contribution à la modélisation et l'optimisation d’hospitalisation à domicile

A healthcare network or health system consists of all organizations, actions and people who participate to promote, restore or maintain people’s health. The health care systems in many developed countries are facing increasing costs. The major reason is the changing age distribution of the population with more elderly people in need of support. Increasing healthcare costs has created new alternatives to traditional hospitalization in which one is Home Health Care (HHC). Home health care or domiciliary care is the provision of health care and assistance to people in their own homes, according to a formal assessment of their needs. HHC has attained a specific place in healthcare network. HHC programs have now been successfully implemented in many countries. The purpose of HHC is to provide the care and support needed to assist patients to live independently in their own homes. HHC is primarily performed by means of personal visitations of healthcare workers to patients in their homes, where they provide care assistance according to patients’ needs. In this thesis we have considered different aspects of planning problems for home health care services. The efficient use of resources is necessary in continuous healthcare services. To meet the increased demand of HHC, operation research specialist can play an important role by solving the various combinatorial optimization problems arising in HHC. These problems can be tactical, strategic or operational with respect to planning horizon. Strategic problems are those which help in attaining long term goals or objectives, e.g. higher level of quality for HHC patients and efficient use of resources. These strategic objectives can be achieved through tactical i.e. medium term panning and operational planning i.e. short term planning. The main purpose of our thesis is to identify these potential optimization problems and solve them via recent metaheuristics. HHC is an alternative to traditional hospitalization and has got a significant share in the organization of healthcare in developed countries. The change in aging demographics, recent development in technology and the increase in the demand of healthcare services are major reasons for this rapid growth. Some studies show HHC as a tool to reduce costs of care, which is a major preoccupation in developed countries. Some others reveal that it leads to the improvement of patients’ satisfaction without increasing the resources. Home health care, i.e. visiting and nursing patients in their homes, is a flourishing realm in the medical industry. The number of companies has grown largely both in public and private sectors. The staffing needs for HHC companies have been expanded as well. Also they face the problem of assigning geographically dispersed patients to home healthcare workers and preparing daily schedules for these workers. The challenge of this problem is to combine aspects of vehicle routing and staff rostering. Both of them are well known NP- hard combinatorial optimization problems, it means the amount of computational time required to find solution increases exponentially with problem size. Home healthcare workers scheduling problem is difficult to solve optimally due to presence of large number of constraints. These are two types of constraints: hard constraints and soft constraints. The hard constraints are the restrictions to be fulfilled for the schedules to be applicable and soft constraints are preferences to improve the quality of these schedules. (...)Résumé indisponible

عرض وتحليل للمجموعة القصصية "كان ما كان" لميخائيل نعيمة: Presentation & Analysis of the story collection “Kaan Ma Kaan” By Mikhail Naimy

"Kaan Ma Kaan" is a collection of short stories published by Dar Al-Makshuf in Beirut in 1937. The collection consists of six stories: "The Cuckoo Clock", "Its new Year", "The Barren Woman", "The Ammunition", "Dear the Pasha", and "Shorty". The collection was translated into Persian and published in 2014, and two stories, "The Its new Year" and "Dear the Pasha", were translated into English. The stories are filled with memories and dreams, and they open up horizons of the past. Although the past may be all misery, Mikhail Naimey interacted with humanity in this collection, and he meditated on life and the secrets of the human soul, focusing on emotions and feelings that he conveyed through a magical and descriptive narrative, causing the reader to interact involuntarily with them. In each story of this collection, the human ego was present. This ego is what made Khatab turn his back on the field and immigrate to America to challenge the Cuckoo Clock that took his beloved, and it is the same ego that made the beautiful woman in "The Barren Woman" commit suicide because she did not find herself in the heart of Aziz, who wanted her for the Children. In her letter to Aziz, she repeated the word "I" seventeen times. This ego is what made Shorty say, "Names among people are used like branding for cattle, to distinguish one from the other, and they do not perform the qualities of the named." Shorty repeated the word "I" four times in the first part of his letter before the author interrupted him and eight times in the second part. This ego seeks its happiness and hates what harms it. This collection seeks identity in its foreignness and seeks to communicate with others in peace and love. "Kaan Ma Kaan" revealed several social themes, including immigration to the West, its positives and negatives, and its effects on Arab immigrants, the preference for males over females in the Arab mentality, in the past and present, and the issue of infertility in women, as well as the negative effects of wars on individuals and communities

Energy Efficiency of a Decode-and-Forward Multiple-Relay Network with Rate Adaptive LDPC Codes

This paper presents cooperative transmission (CT), where multiple relays are used to achieve array and diversity gains, as an enabling technology for Internet of Things (IoT) networks with hardware-limited devices. We investigate a channel coding aided decode-and-forward (DF) relaying network, considering a two-hop multiple-relay network, where the data transmission between the source and the destination is realized with the help of DF relays. Low density parity check (LDPC) codes are adopted as forward error correction (FEC) codes to encode and decode the data both at the source and relays. We consider both fixed and variable code rates depending upon the quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning such as spectral efficiency and maximum energy efficiency. Furthermore, an optimal power allocation scheme is studied for the cooperative system under the energy efficiency constraint. We present the simulation results of our proposed scheme, compared with conventional methods, which show that if decoupled code rates are used on both hops then a trade-off has to be maintained between system complexity, transmission delay, and bit error rate (BER)