A proposed assessment scheme for smart sustainable urban development

The twenty-first century belongs to the cities. For the first time in history, more than 50% of the world\u27s population now lives in a city and the urban population is expected to double by 2050. The opportunities created by new technologies challenge the way in which we conceive our cities, how we plan, design and construct them and how we will live in them. The current large gap between smart city and sustainable city frameworks implies that there is a need for developing their frameworks further or re-defining the smart sustainable city concept, which is relatively new and can be seen as a successor of information city, digital city and sustainable city. Furthermore, rating standards like LEED and (GPRS) do not cover all the topics behind the Smart Sustainable City Concept. The aim of this study is to conduct and perform qualitative and comparative analysis of International Standards and case studies, to provide a foundation for developing a framework for the planning of a Smart Sustainable City based on rigorous criteria and sub-criteria. This framework, can be used to assess the smart sustainable urban development of the new administrative capital of Egypt. The criteria have been selected according to international standards via ISO37120 and the Focus Group of Smart Sustainable Cities of International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T FGSSC), as a base for the framework. The framework developed in this study is more oriented towards achieving aspects of urban life at the design and planning stage versus other models existing in the literature that are more oriented towards progress in International Communication Technology (ICT) as a dimension by itself and as means to transform already built cities to smart cities. The proposed study is intended to build up and complement key dimensions that were developed by ITU-TFGSSC, by adding sub-dimensions and key indicators filling this gap in research. The outcome of this study could be used to generate a framework and develop recommendations that has been tailored for urban planners, owners, operators and occupiers, to successfully and cost effectively adopt smart sustainable solutions as they plan, design, construct, and manage future cities. City assessment tools can be used as support for decision making in urban development as they provide assessment methodologies for cities to show the progress towards defined targets

Investigating the use of stance markers in Egyptian and American MA theses: A corpus-based study

This is a corpus-based study that investigates the use of stance markers in MA theses written by Egyptian and American graduate students. It is a descriptive and exploratory study, utilizing a quantitative and qualitative design. A compiled corpus of 15 Egyptian theses was examined and compared to that of 15 American theses in terms of the writers\u27 use of stance markers. The study explored the use of self-mention through utilizing first person pronouns I, my, and me, and the more impersonal “it…that” structures and detected the patterns of the frequency and function of their use in both corpora. The findings of the study suggest that Egyptian thesis writers tend to be more distant and cautious in their writings. They prefer to employ more detached linguistic strategies to express their stance. This is illustrated in their avoidance of the use of first person pronouns and their high frequency of utilizing the impersonal “it…that” structures, passive constructions, and doubt adverbs. Another finding is that Egyptian thesis writers display a great deal of linguistic competence in utilizing “it…that” structures; however, they show a lack of variety in their choice of lexical items and syntactic structures in this stance feature. Differences in the use of stance markers in both corpora were highlighted and patterns of the “it…that” use, represented in The American Thesis Corpus (ATC), were listed in order to help Egyptian thesis writers voice their views in a more confident manner so as to gain acceptance in their disciplinary communities

Multi-View Face Recognition From Single RGBD Models of the Faces

This work takes important steps towards solving the following problem of current interest: Assuming that each individual in a population can be modeled by a single frontal RGBD face image, is it possible to carry out face recognition for such a population using multiple 2D images captured from arbitrary viewpoints? Although the general problem as stated above is extremely challenging, it encompasses subproblems that can be addressed today. The subproblems addressed in this work relate to: (1) Generating a large set of viewpoint dependent face images from a single RGBD frontal image for each individual; (2) using hierarchical approaches based on view-partitioned subspaces to represent the training data; and (3) based on these hierarchical approaches, using a weighted voting algorithm to integrate the evidence collected from multiple images of the same face as recorded from different viewpoints. We evaluate our methods on three datasets: a dataset of 10 people that we created and two publicly available datasets which include a total of 48 people. In addition to providing important insights into the nature of this problem, our results show that we are able to successfully recognize faces with accuracies of 95% or higher, outperforming existing state-of-the-art face recognition approaches based on deep convolutional neural networks

Adult Onset Morgagni Hernia: Medical vs. Surgical Management.

Morgagni hernia is a type of diaphragmatic hernia where bowel content herniates through an irregular opening into the thoracic cavity. Herein, we present the case of an 84-year-old female patient with multiple hospital admissions for abdominal symptoms. Radiological studies confirmed Morgagni hernia. She underwent a laparoscopic intervention with mesh placement. She was discharged in stable condition and was doing well on follow-up

Visual Task Classification using Classic Machine Learning and CNNs

Our eyes actively perform tasks including, but not limited to, searching, comparing, and counting. This includes tasks in front of a computer, whether it be trivial activities like reading email, or video gaming, or more serious activities like drone management, or flight simulation. Understanding what type of visual task is being performed is important to develop intelligent user interfaces. In this work, we investigated standard machine and deep learning methods to identify the task type using eye-tracking data-including both raw numerical data and the visual representations of the user gaze scan paths and pupil size. To this end, we experimented with computer vision algorithms such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and compared the results to classic machine learning algorithms. We found that Machine learning-based methods performed with high accuracy classifying tasks that involve minimal visual search, while CNNs techniques do better in situations where visual search task is included

Echocardiographic pearl a rare complication of infective endocarditis one of the rarest complication of infective endocarditis being diagnosed by echocardiography

Our patient is a 41 years old male, born and living in Cairo, working as a constructor worker and has 3 children the older of which is 13 years old. He was admitted to the internal medicine department by fever and shortness of breath for about 1 week associated with weakness of his right upper limb for 12h before his presentation which made him sought medical advice. He was not known to be hypertensive nor diabetic.He was a heavy Cigarette and Shesha smoker for about 17 years .He denied history of any substance abuse. He has no family history of any cardiac disease O/E: The patient appeared pale, toxic, orthopenic, a little confused however he was oriented to time, place and persons.There was mild weakness of his right upper limb with intact sensation. BP: 100/70 bilaterally, HR: 110, regular, of average volume, peripherally felt, Temp: 38.8°C, RR: 20/min. Bilateral fine basal rales on deep inspiration, Normal abdominal examination.Cardiac examination: The cardiac impulse was hyperdynamic at the 5th intercostal space just outside the mid-clavicular line with no palpable thrill. Auscultation revealed S3 gallop apically with grade III–IV pan systolic murmur radiating to the anterior axillary line.InvestigationsHgb: 11.2,WBC’s: 13,000, Platelet count: 270,000. Total billirubin: 1.1, BUN: 17, Creat: 1.4, Na: 135, K: 3.9, SGOT: 45, SGPT: 37.DiscussionLeft atrial dissection (LAD) is a rare complication and the literature reveals only a small number of cases. LAD is by Gallego et al. as a gap from the mitral or tricuspid annular area to interatrial septum or left atrial wall, creating a new chamber with or without communications into the true left or right atrium. The most common etiology of LAD is mitral valve surgery.Debridement of much calcified valves annulus, improper suturing of the annulus to the prosthetic cuff, excessive traction on sutures in the posterior annulus, and the hemodynamic influence of the paraprosthetic leak extended the dissection into the left atrial wall, developing a false cavity. Also left atrial thrombectomy can be associated with injury to the left atrial endocardium as a mechanism of primary tear.A rare case of left atrial dissection as a consequence of infectious endocarditis was reported. They present a patient with infectious endocarditis with involvement of mitral and aortic valves; in whom the trans-esophageal echocardiography was able to visualize the left atrial dissection.The LA has a venous component that receives the PVs, a fingerlike atrial appendage, and shares the septum with the right atrium. The major part of the atrium, including the septal component, is relatively smooth-walled whereas the appendage is rough with pectinate muscles. The smoothest parts are the superior and posterior walls that make up the pulmonary venous component, and the vestibule. Seemingly uniform, the walls are composed of one to three or more overlapping layers of differently aligned myocardial fibers, with marked regional variations in thickness. Why the posterior wall of the left atrium:A sagittal section through the left atrium of a cadaver shows the proximity of the esophagus to the posterior wall of the left atrium The wall is particularly thin at the level of the superior pulmonary veins. Clinical presentation may be the appearance of a new systolic murmur, associated with or without symptoms of heart failure and low-output manifestations, hours to days after the operation but there were patients in whom clinical onset occurs years after surgery. Rarely, LAD can be an incidental finding on TEE in an asymptomatic patient.LA dissection typically appears as a hypoechoic space from the mitral/tricuspid origin extending along the interatrial septum or LA wall. M-mode is excellent at distinguishing subtle movement of the intima or the endocardium in relation to the cardiac cycle. Similar to what is seen in aortic dissections, the false cavity is compressed during systole as the LA is being filled.Other entities that should be considered when an LA mass is visualized are:Thrombi most common left atrial myxoma, cysts, coronary aneurysms. Pericardial blood impinging on the LA wall may mimic these findings.Color flow Doppler can be used to examine the endocardium for a tear and point of communication with the chamber. Pulsed wave Doppler can also be used to identify flow across a tear. TEE is the diagnostic modality of choice for LAD.No definitive criteria exist to help guide management of LAD. Prompt surgical repair is usually required because of coexistent significant mitral regurgitation, intra-cardiac shunt, mycotic aneurysm, pseudo aneurysm or fistulous communication. However, in the absence of these findings, surgery may not always be necessary and occasionally successful repair has been performed years after diagnosis

Folic acid restores endothelial function in ACTH-induced hypertension

AbstractHypertension is associated with increased oxidative stress and vascular endothelium dysfunction. The aim was to study the effect of folic acid (FA) on hypertension, blood nitric oxide (NO), homocysteine (HCY), malondialdehyde (MDA) and reduced glutathione (GSH); aortic tissue glutathione peroxidase (GPx), catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD); and vascular endothelial function in adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH)-induced hypertension rats. Rats were treated with saline or FA alone (0.04g/L/day orally, control), or subcutaneous ACTH-induced hypertension (0.2mg/kg/day, ACTH) groups. Treated FA groups were started before (Folic–ACTH, prevention) and during (ACTH–Folic, reversal) ACTH administrations. Systolic blood pressure (SBP), thymus/body weight ratio, blood urea, creatinine, NO, HCY, MDA and GSH; aortic endothelium-dependent vasodilator (EDD) in response to acetylcholine (ACh), aortic tissue extract for CAT, GPx, and SOD activity; and histopathological changes of aorta and kidney were assessed. Saline or FA alone did not change SBP (P>0.05). FA, in prevention study, significantly decreased SBP, increased serum NO and GSH, enhanced relaxation response (EDD%) to 1×10−4M ACh; increased aortic tissue GPx, CAT and SOD activity, also revealed nearly normal endothelial cell layer and moderately positive cytoplasmic staining for CD34+ expression versus ACTH-treated rats (P<0.05). In contrast, FA, in reversal study, did not show significant changes in most of the measured parameters as ACTH-treated group (P>0.05). FA can be used as an adjuvant therapy for prevention and treatment of ACTH-induced hypertension. The protective role of FA in ACTH-induced hypertension could be attributed via decreasing HCY, MDA (oxidative stress); increasing NO, GSH, GPx, CAT, SOD activity (antioxidants); and restoring endothelial dysfunction

Polycystic Liver With Cardiac Compression Leading to Atrial Fibrillation: Case Report and Review of the Literature.

Polycystic liver disease (PCLD) is a rare condition that most often occurs in patients with polycystic kidney disease and less commonly as an isolated liver disease. Complications include cyst rupture, infection, hemorrhage, and compression of surrounding organs by large cysts. We present the case of a patient with a history of PCLD who presented to our hospital with palpitations and was found to have atrial fibrillation. Imaging and echocardiograph revealed a dominant large cyst compressing the right atrium. Other etiologies including thyroid disease, ischemic heart disease, and electrolytes abnormalities were excluded. The patient refused surgical intervention and was conservatively treated with rate control and anticoagulation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of new-onset atrial fibrillation secondary to right atrial compression by a liver cyst. Compression of cardiac chambers resulting in new-onset arrhythmia should be considered when evaluating patients with PCLD