Analysis of the filed data of a sample of Egyptian children with bronchial asthma

Background: Identification of the clinical profile of asthma in a community is crucial to the understanding of the growing disease burden. We sought to evaluate the clinical characteristics and management outcome of a sample of asthmatic children from Cairo city and its suburbs. Methods: This retrospective study analyzed the data of 422 consecutively numbered files of asthmatic children from the Pediatric Allergy and Immunology Unit of Ain Shams University Children's Hospital. Data collected included the age at onset, duration of follow up, precipitating factors, feeding history, clinical severity, presence of other allergic diseases and outcome and course of the disease. This is besides the available results of laboratory and imaging studies and the treatment received including the routes and types of therapy. Results: The results revealed that 197 children (46.7%) had bronchial asthma only while 225 (53.3%) had concomitant allergic disorders. Males outnumbered females and urban residents outnumbered suburban and rural residents and all cases belonged to the low and middle social and economic community sectors. A positive family history of allergy in general was evident in about 40% of cases. Viral infection was the most common precipitating factor for exacerbations. Mild and moderate persistent asthma were more frequent than the severe variety (15.10%, 10.20%, and 1.50%). Serum total IgE and peripheral blood eosinophil counts were elevated and atopy was evident in most cases. Inhaled corticosteroid therapy was the most commonly prescribed treatment in the current study but compliance was generally poor. Conclusion: Wider scale multi-center studies in Cairo and other localities of Egypt are needed to outline the profile of childhood asthma in the whole country using a population rather than a referral center-based approach.Keywords: Pediatric asthma, risk factors, asthma grade, asthma triggers, smoking, residenceEgypt J Pediatr Allergy Immunol 2009;7(2):59-6

Trainable videorealistic speech animation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-58).I describe how to create with machine learning techniques a generative, videorealistic, speech animation module. A human subject is first recorded using a videocamera as he/she utters a pre-determined speech corpus. After processing the corpus automatically, a visual speech module is learned from the data that is capable of synthesizing the human subject's mouth uttering entirely novel utterances that were not recorded in the original video. The synthesized utterance is re-composited onto a background sequence which contains natural head and eye movement. The final output is videorealistic in the sense that it looks like a video camera recording of the subject. At run time, the input to the system can be either real audio sequences or synthetic audio produced by a text-to-speech system, as long as they have been phonetically aligned. The two key contributions of this work are * a variant of the multidimensional morphable model (MMM) [4] [26] [25] to synthesize new, previously unseen mouth configurations from a small set of mouth image prototypes, * a trajectory synthesis technique based on regularization, which is automatically trained from the recorded video corpus, and which is capable of synthesizing trajectories in MMM space corresponding to any desired utterance. Results are presented on a series of numerical and psychophysical experiments designed to evaluate the synthetic animations.by Tony Farid Ezzat.Ph.D

Endoscopic management of biliary fascioliasis: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p><it>Fasciola hepatica</it>, an endemic parasite common in Iraq and its neighboring countries, is a very rare cause of cholestasis worldwide. Humans can become definitive hosts of this parasite through their ingestion of a contaminated water plant, for example, contaminated watercress. Symptoms of cholestasis may appear suddenly and, in some cases, are preceded by long periods of fever, eosinophilia, and vague gastrointestinal symptoms. Here we report the case of a woman with a sudden onset of symptoms of cholangitis. Her infection was proved by endoscopic retrograde cholangiography to be due to <it>Fasciola hepatica </it>infestation.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 38-year-old Kurdish woman from the northern region of Iraq presented with fever, right upper quadrant abdominal pain, and jaundice. An examination of the patient revealed elevated total serum bilirubin and liver enzymes. An ultrasonography also showed a dilatation of her common bile duct. During endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, a filling defect was identified in her common bile duct. After sphincterotomy and balloon extraction, one live <it>Fasiola hepatica </it>was extracted and physically removed.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p><it>Fasciola hepatica </it>should be a part of the differential diagnosis of common bile duct obstruction. When endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography is available, the disease can be easily diagnosed and treated.</p

Example-based analysis and synthesis for images of human faces

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1996.Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-108).by Tony F. Ezzat.M.Eng

Chronic performance of Riata 1580 and Endotak 0158 ICD leads: A single center 10-year experience

BACKGROUND: The long term performance of the Riata family of leads has recently come under increasing scrutiny. We aimed to determine the long term performance of the Riata 1580 leads compared with Endotak 0158 leads. METHODS: All patients with Riata 1580 or Endotak 0158 leads implanted from 2003-2008 at the Heart Hospital, UCLH were analysed. Significant electrical changes were: threshold increase >1V at a set pulse width between pacing checks, persistent R wave fall to 50%, noise, pacing impedance change to 1500 Ω, HV change to 200Ω, HV change ± 15Ω, pacing impedance change > 400Ω over 12 months. RESULTS: 333 Riata and 356 Endotak leads were implanted. Median follow up time + interquartile range, after exclusion of censored events including loss to follow up: Riata 3652 + 655 days, Endotak 3730 + 810 days. A total of 51 (15.9%) Riata leads and 21 (6.3%) Endotak leads were affected. A greater risk of failure was found for the Riata lead compared with the Endotak lead (p = 0.0001). An additional time-dependent effect was found, with the Riata lead 1.9 times more likely to fail in the first 6 years following lead implantation and 5.3 times more likely to fail after 6 years. CONCLUSIONS: Riata leads have a higher risk of failure compared to Endotak leads over time. The importance of careful ongoing performance surveillance late in the leads' lifetime is reflected in this ten year follow up study. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Chemical and isotopic fractionation of lead in the surface soils of Egypt

Chemical fractionation via sequential extraction (SEP) combined with isotopic analysis of Pb was used to investigate the origins and reactivity of Pb in 66 topsoil samples collected from 12 different locations in Egypt. The total soil Pb concentrations (TPb) covered a wide range (∼80–16,000 mg kg−1), but were only elevated in four industrial and urban locations within Cairo and Alexandria. In all the other locations values of TPb were generally low and were close to the average crustal Pb concentration of 14 mg kg−1. The largest Pb fraction in all soils, with the exception of two industrial locations, was the ‘residual’ fraction (38–63% of TPb) followed by Pb bound to ‘organic’ and ‘metal oxide’ phases. The Pb isotopic signatures (206Pb/207Pb vs 208Pb/207Pb) of all samples in all SEP fractions were highly variable, suggesting a heterogeneous mix of Pb contamination sources; however, they aligned closely to a binary mixing line between geogenic and petrol Pb sources. There were similar Pb isotopic patterns across all of the non-residual fractions with measureable data (F2 – F4) suggesting that the non-residual anthropogenic-Pb and geogenic-Pb have been assimilated into common pools within the soil. Binary and ternary source-apportionment models based on Pb isotopic ratios and abundances showed that the relative contribution of petrol-Pb and geogenic-Pb can be ascribed with reasonable certainty. However, the contribution of further sources can only be accounted for if the isotopic abundance of all end-members are known and are at the periphery of the soils dataset

Gender differences in fasting serum leptin level among Malaysian population

Serum leptin increases with progressive obesity in both genders. However, for any given measure of obesity, leptin levels are higher in women than men. This research is to study the gender differences of the fasting plasma leptin concentration in Malaysian people from east coast Malaysia with a back ground knowledge of ethnic variation. To be as a baseline for future research, and to consolidate our knowledge regarding leptin and it’s correlation with endocrine disorders. Objective: To study the gender differences of the plasma leptin and its relationship to the ethnic group, so that can establish a base line for future studies regarding leptin hormone and it’s association with different endocrine and fertility issues Method: This was a cross sectional study included 100 consented Malaysian people(50 male and female) were recruited from Kulliyyah of dentistry, International Islamic University Malaysia and medical department, Hospital Tengku Ampuan Afzan, Kuantan, those with endocrine, diabetic illness, abnormal BMI, chronic illness and any patient on hormonal treatment were excluded from the study. Individual venous blood was taken between 0800–0900 am after an overnight fasting. Determination of serum leptin was done by enzyme linked immune-sorbent assay (ELISA)and measured in ng/ml. Data were analyzed using SPSS 18 Result:. Mean age were, 34.5±6.4 and 31.2± 4.3 for male and female respectively, there was no significant difference between the age of both groups. Mean body mass index for male was 23 ± 1.91 Kg / m2 which were not significantly different from the female BMI which was 22 ± 0.87 Kg / m2. data were analysed by Mann-Whitney U-test, found that serum leptin levels in females are significantly higher (Z= 6.0, p<0.001) than those in males, 7.29 ng/ml vs 3.94 ng/ml respectively. Correlation coefficient of serum leptin level with female body mass index (kg/m2) is 0.693 in a value of <.0001 conclusion: Serum leptin is significantly affected by gender, with women have significantly higher serum leptin level than man, further study is required to measure the fat mass in addition to serum leptin in both genders as a possible reason for this difference,. Keywords LEPTIN , GENDER, Ethnic variatio

Energy Efficiency of Distributed Environmental Control Systems

In this report, we present an analytical evaluation of the potential of occupant-regulated distributed environmental control systems (DECS) to enhance individual occupant thermal comfort in an office building with no increase, and possibly even a decrease in annual energy consumption. To this end we developed and applied several analytical models that allowed us to optimize comfort and energy consumption in partitioned office buildings equipped with either conventional central HVAC systems or occupant-regulated DECS. Our approach involved the following interrelated components: 1. Development of a simplified lumped-parameter thermal circuit model to compute the annual energy consumption. This was necessitated by the need to perform tens of thousands of optimization calculations involving different US climatic regions, and different occupant thermal preferences of a population of ~50 office occupants. Yearly transient simulations using TRNSYS, a time-dependent building energy modeling program, were run to determine the robustness of the simplified approach against time-dependent simulations. The simplified model predicts yearly energy consumption within approximately 0.6% of an equivalent transient simulation. Simulations of building energy usage were run for a wide variety of climatic regions and control scenarios, including traditional “one-size-fits-all” (OSFA) control; providing a uniform temperature to the entire building, and occupant-selected “have-it-your-way” (HIYW) control with a thermostat at each workstation. The thermal model shows that, un-optimized, DECS would lead to an increase in building energy consumption between 3-16% compared to the conventional approach depending on the climate regional and personal preferences of building occupants. Variations in building shape had little impact in the relative energy usage. 2. Development of a gradient-based optimization method to minimize energy consumption of DECS while keeping each occupant’s thermal dissatisfaction below a given threshold. The DECS energy usage was calculated using the simplified thermal model. OSFA control; providing a uniform temperature to the entire building, and occupant-selected HIYW control with a thermostat at each workstation were implemented for 3 cities representing 3 different climatic regions and control scenarios. It is shown that optimization allows DECS to deliver a higher level of individual and population thermal comfort while achieving annual energy savings between 14 and 26% compared to OSFA. The optimization model also allowed us to study the influence of the partitions’ thermal resistance and the variability of internal loads at each office. These influences didn’t make significant changes in the optimized energy consumption relative to OSFA. The results show that it is possible to provide thermal comfort for each occupant while saving energy compared to OSFA Furthermore, to simplify the implementation of this approach, a fuzzy logic system has been developed to generalize the overall optimization strategy. Its performance was almost as good as the gradient system. The fuzzy system provided thermal comfort to each occupant and saved energy compared to OSFA. The energy savings of the fuzzy system were not as high as for the gradient-optimized system, but the fuzzy system avoided complete connectivity, and the optimization did not have to be repeated for each population. 3. We employed a detailed CFD model of adjacent occupied cubicles to extend the thermal-circuit model in three significant ways: (a) relax the “office wall” requirement by allowing energy to flow between zones via advection as well as conduction, (b) improve the comfort model to account both for radiation as well as convection heat transfer, and (c) support ventilation systems in which the temperature is stratified, such as in underfloor air distribution systems. Initially, three-dimensional CFD simulations of several cubicle configurations, with an adjoining corridor, were performed both to understand the advection between cubicles and the resulting temperature stratification. These simulations showed that the advective flow between cubicles is very significant and severely limits the occupants’ ability to control the personal micro-environments by simply controlling the temperature of the incoming air. Subsequently, the existing thermal-circuit model was extended to include the phenomena described above. The modifications to the thermal-circuit model, which were incorporated such that the simulation time was only slightly impacted, showed that accounting for room stratification resulting from the use of floor swirl diffusers could lead to 10%-26% reduction in the annual energy consumed for HVAC in non-temperate climates. This trend was evident in both OSFA and HIYW scenarios. However, the ratio of energy usage in the two scenarios was little affected by the enhancements in the thermal model

Effect of magnetic field on the radial pulsations of a gas bubble in a non-Newtonian fluid

Dynamics of acoustically driven bubbles' radial oscillations in viscoelastic fluids are known as complex and uncontrollable phenomenon indicative of highly active nonlinear as well as chaotic behavior. In the present paper, the effect of magnetic fields on the non-linear behavior of bubble growth under the excitation of an acoustic pressure pulse in non-Newtonian fluid domain has been investigated. The constitutive equation [Upper-Convective Maxwell (UCM)] was used for modeling the rheological behaviors of the fluid. Due to the importance of the bubble in the medical applications such as drug, protein or gene delivery, blood is assumed to be the reference fluid. It was found that the magnetic field parameter (B) can be used for controlling the nonlinear radial oscillations of a spherical, acoustically forced gas bubble in nonlinear viscoelastic media. The relevance and importance of this control method to biomedical ultrasound applications were highlighted. We have studied the dynamic behavior of the radial response of the bubble before and after applying the magnetic field using Lyapunov exponent spectra, bifurcation diagrams and time series. A period-doubling bifurcation structure was predicted to occur for certain values of the parameters effects. Results indicated its strong impact on reducing the chaotic radial oscillations to regular ones. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved