Comparison of normal incident sound absorption coefficient of direct piercing carved wood panel for circular, geometry and floral design

Direct Piercing Carved Wood Panel (DPCWP) is among the famous Malay wood carving art in the Malay culture. It is the best example of Malay people’s creativity and masterpiece. In this paper, the comparison of normal incidence sound absorption coefficient, αn (SAC) for three major types of design for the DPCWP is discussed. The simplest form of DPCWP, the circular type, then the geometry and floral types were investigated based on simulation and measurement works using sound intensity method to determine the normal incidence SAC, for 30% and 40% perforation ratios. The simulation work was carried out by using BEASY Acoustic software based on Boundary Element Method (BEM). From the results, there is an identical trend for DPCWP with geometry and floral design from 250 Hz to 4 kHz. At high frequencies (1 kHz to 4 kHz), both design show the tendency of decrement, suggesting that the complexity of the design does affect the average SAC value. However, for circular design, SAC is higher than other design at 1 kHz and shows a similar trend with other design at 2 kHz and 4 kHz for both simulation and measurement result

A heuristic rule based approach for monitoring of hemodynamic data in Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit

Patients in Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Units (CICU) are physiologically weak and require watchful monitoring and support. Such monitoring generates massive amount of data that enable early detection of changes in the patient's condition and provide information that help medical staff to give the treatment and evaluate the response to medical interventions.The countless data gathered from monitoring systems and clinical information systems have created a challenge and are time consuming for clinicians to analyze.This paper discusses the implementation of an intelligent system that has been designed to improve interpretation of clinical data which will then increase the quality and efficiency of the working environment in CICU.The implementation is based on the description state from the cardiologist.This research work extends the cardiologist approach by providing the heuristic rules(based approach to address the treatment.The system is intended to help physicians and CICU staffs to diagnose and track the conditions of patients

Transport urbain au Benin et pollution atmosphérique: évaluation quantitative de certains polluants chimiques de Cotonou

L’atmosphère dans la ville de Cotonou au Bénin en Afrique de l’Ouest, se caractérise par la présence de poussières soulevées au cours de la circulation sur toutes les voies et presque partout dans cette ville, par d’épaisses fumées opaques, en particulier au niveau des grandes artères et des carrefours. Ce phénomène est lié à une utilisation des moto à deux roues notamment les taxis–moto appelés « Zémidjan » dont le nombre en 2005 est estimé à 96.095 selon les statistiques de la mairie de Cotonou. Le présent article vise l’évaluation quantitative de certains polluants chimiques supposés nocifs et ayant fait l’objet de réglementation au niveau du Bénin. Il met en relief le rôle joué par le transport dans l’émission de ces polluants gazeux. A cet effet, les taux dans l’air du monoxyde de carbone (CO), du dioxyde d’azote (NO2), du dioxyde de soufre (SO2) et du plomb ont été déterminés. Le monoxyde de carbone et le dioxyde d’azote donnent des taux dépassant souvent le seuil retenu par la réglementation Béninoise. Le carrefour du grand marché Tokpa de Cotonou présente les plus forts taux mesurés avec un maximum de 214,7 mg/m3 de CO. La quantité du plomb fixée varie avec le temps d’exposition. Le travail a confirmé le rôle principal de pollution de l’air joué par le transport urbain à Cotonou. © 2013 International Formulae Group. All rights reserved.Mots clés: Transport urbain, Pollution atmosphérique, Evaluation quantitative, polluants chimiques, Cotonou

Automatic detection of the end-diastolic and end-systolic from 4D echocardiographics images

Accurate detection of the End-Diastolic (ED) and End-Systolic (ES) frames of a cardiac cycle are significant factors that may affect the accuracy of abnormality assessment of a ventricle. This process is a routine step of the ventricle assessment procedure as most of the time in clinical reports many parameters are measured in these two frames to help in diagnosing and dissection making. According to the previous works the process of detecting the ED and ES remains a challenge in that the ED and ES frames for the cavity are usually determined manually by review of individual image phases of the cavity and/or tracking the tricuspid valve. The proposed algorithm aims to automatically determine the ED and ES frames from the four Dimensional Echocardiographic images (4DE) of the Right Ventricle (RV) from one cardiac cycle. By computing the area of three slices along one cardiac cycle and selecting the maximum area as the ED frame and the minimum area as the ES frame. This method gives an accurate determination for the ED and ES frames, hence avoid the need for time consuming, expert contributions during the process of computing the cavity stroke volume

Grain Dynamics in a Two-dimensional Granular Flow

We have used particle tracking methods to study the dynamics of individual balls comprising a granular flow in a small-angle two-dimensional funnel. We statistically analyze many ball trajectories to examine the mechanisms of shock propagation. In particular, we study the creation of, and interactions between, shock waves. We also investigate the role of granular temperature and draw parallels to traffic flow dynamics.Comment: 17 pages, 24 figures. To appear in Phys.Rev.E. High res./color figures etc. on http://www.nbi.dk/CATS/Granular/GrainDyn.htm

Contour extraction of echocardiographic images based on pre-processing

In this work we present a technique to extract the heart contours from noisy echocardiograph images. Our technique is based on improving the image before applying contours detection to reduce heavy noise and get better image quality. To perform that, we combine many pre-processing techniques (filtering, morphological operations, and contrast adjustment) to avoid unclear edges and enhance low contrast of echocardiograph images, after implementing these techniques we can get legible detection for heart boundaries and valves movement by traditional edge detection methods

Quantitative detection of left ventricular wall motion abnormality by two-dimensional echocardiography

Echocardiography is a widely used imaging technique to examine various cardiac functions, especially to detect the left ventricular wall motion abnormality. Unfortunately the quality of echocardiograph images and complexities of underlying motion captured, makes it difficult for an in-experienced physicians/ radiologist to describe the motion abnormalities in a crisp way, leading to possible errors in diagnosis. In this study, we present a method to analyze left ventricular wall motion, by using optical flow to estimate velocities of the left ventricular wall segments and find relation between these segments motion. The proposed method will be able to present real clinical help to verify the left ventricular wall motion diagnosis

Methods to study splicing from high-throughput RNA Sequencing data

The development of novel high-throughput sequencing (HTS) methods for RNA (RNA-Seq) has provided a very powerful mean to study splicing under multiple conditions at unprecedented depth. However, the complexity of the information to be analyzed has turned this into a challenging task. In the last few years, a plethora of tools have been developed, allowing researchers to process RNA-Seq data to study the expression of isoforms and splicing events, and their relative changes under different conditions. We provide an overview of the methods available to study splicing from short RNA-Seq data. We group the methods according to the different questions they address: 1) Assignment of the sequencing reads to their likely gene of origin. This is addressed by methods that map reads to the genome and/or to the available gene annotations. 2) Recovering the sequence of splicing events and isoforms. This is addressed by transcript reconstruction and de novo assembly methods. 3) Quantification of events and isoforms. Either after reconstructing transcripts or using an annotation, many methods estimate the expression level or the relative usage of isoforms and/or events. 4) Providing an isoform or event view of differential splicing or expression. These include methods that compare relative event/isoform abundance or isoform expression across two or more conditions. 5) Visualizing splicing regulation. Various tools facilitate the visualization of the RNA-Seq data in the context of alternative splicing. In this review, we do not describe the specific mathematical models behind each method. Our aim is rather to provide an overview that could serve as an entry point for users who need to decide on a suitable tool for a specific analysis. We also attempt to propose a classification of the tools according to the operations they do, to facilitate the comparison and choice of methods.Comment: 31 pages, 1 figure, 9 tables. Small corrections adde