Adaptive Relay-Selection In Decode-And-Forward Cooperative Systems

In the past few years adaptive decode-and-forward cooperative diversity systems have been studied intensively in literature. Many schemes and protocols have been proposed to enhance the performance of the cooperative systems while trying to alleviate its drawbacks. One of the recent schemes that had been shown to give high improvements in performance is the best-relay selection scheme. In the best-relay selection scheme only one relaying nodes among the relays available in the system is selected to forward the source\u27s message to the destination. The best relay is selected as the relay node that can achieve the highest end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (snr) at the destination node. Performance improvements have been reported as compared to regular fixed decode-and-forward relaying in which all relays are required to forward the source\u27s message to the destination in terms of spectral efficiency and diversity order. In this thesis, we use simulations to show the improvement in the outage performance of the best-relay selection scheme

The Potential Impact of Electronic Services to Rafah Municipality's Operational Excellence

This study investigates the potential impact of electronic services in achieving operational excellence, using the Rafah municipality as a case study. The ARIMA model was employed in the study to forecast changes in the municipal cost trend. Additionally, a questionnaire was designed, to collect data from the study population of 329 employees in the Rafah municipality, a descriptive-analytical technique using the least squares method was utilized to estimate the regression equation of the operational excellence components (time and cost). The results demonstrate that the anticipated costs will reduce, with a relative decline rate of 1% for the years 2023, 2024, and 2025. Furthermore, the statistical findings showed that a change in the level of software package measurement of one unit would result in a 0.50-degree improvement in the transaction time index and a 0.29-degree decrease in cost. According to the results cited, electronic services had a statistically significant impact on the municipality of Rafah's achievement of operational excellence. Therefore, this study recommends implementing digitization to achieve operational excellence and establishing a technology unit that would be entrusted with supervising all facets of managing and improving municipal systems. Keywords: Electronic services, Digital transformation, Software packages, Knowledge management, Website, Operational excellence. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/15-17-10 Publication date:October 31st 202

Video-Assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery versus Open Decortication in Chronic Pleural Empyema

Background: The role of video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) for managing organized empyema is still limited. This study compared VATS versus open decortication in patients with chronic pleural empyema. Methods: This randomized controlled trial included 58 patients with stage III empyema. Patients were divided into two groups. Group A (n= 30) included patients who had decortication through an open thoracotomy, and Group B (n= 28) included VATS decortication patients. Two patients in the VATS group were converted to the open approach and were excluded from the analysis. Results: The mean age in Group A was 48.23 ± 8.44 years and 49.79 ± 7.85 years Group B (p= 0.47). There were 16 males (53.3%) in Group A and 15 (63.6%) in Group B (p= 0.99). The operative time was 336.0 ± 67.60 min in Group A and 291.07 ± 56.66 min in Group B (p= 0.01). There was no difference in intraoperative complications between groups. Postoperative hospital stay (p= 0.23) and ICU admission (p= 0.24) did not differ between groups. In Group A, the pain scale was 8 (6- 8), and it was 4 (2- 4) in Group B (p˂ 0.001). No difference was recorded in the postoperative complications between groups. Conclusion:  The outcomes of VATS in managing stage III empyema are comparable to the open approach. VATS has the advantage of lower postoperative pain. VATS could be an alternative to open decortication in patients with stage III pleural empyema

Deep Learning for Cancer Prognosis Prediction Using Portrait Photos by StyleGAN Embedding

Survival prediction for cancer patients is critical for optimal treatment selection and patient management. Current patient survival prediction methods typically extract survival information from patients' clinical record data or biological and imaging data. In practice, experienced clinicians can have a preliminary assessment of patients' health status based on patients' observable physical appearances, which are mainly facial features. However, such assessment is highly subjective. In this work, the efficacy of objectively capturing and using prognostic information contained in conventional portrait photographs using deep learning for survival predication purposes is investigated for the first time. A pre-trained StyleGAN2 model is fine-tuned on a custom dataset of our cancer patients' photos to empower its generator with generative ability suitable for patients' photos. The StyleGAN2 is then used to embed the photographs to its highly expressive latent space. Utilizing the state-of-the-art survival analysis models and based on StyleGAN's latent space photo embeddings, this approach achieved a C-index of 0.677, which is notably higher than chance and evidencing the prognostic value embedded in simple 2D facial images. In addition, thanks to StyleGAN's interpretable latent space, our survival prediction model can be validated for relying on essential facial features, eliminating any biases from extraneous information like clothing or background. Moreover, a health attribute is obtained from regression coefficients, which has important potential value for patient care

MHD effects on Casson fluid flow squeezing between parallel plates

We introduce this work by studying the non-Newtonian fluids, which have huge applications in different science fields. We decided to concentrate on taking the time-dependent Casson fluid, which is non-Newtonian, compressed between two flat plates. in fractional form and the magnetohydrodynamic and Darcian flow effects in consideration using the semi-analytical iterative method created by Temimi and Ansari, known as TAM, this method is carefully selected to be suitable for studying the Navier-Stokes model in the modified form to express the studied case mathematically. To simplify the partial differential equations of the system to the nonlinear ordinary differential equation of order four the similarity transformations suggested by Wang (1976) are used. The TAM approach demonstrates a high degree of accuracy, efficiency, and convergence when applied to the resolution of both linear and nonlinear problems, and the results in this article are used to study the effect of the related factors like squeeze number Sq, Casson parameterβ, magnetohydrodynamic parameter Mg and permeability constant Mp and examining the skin friction coefficient effect. The velocity profile is studied numerically, which is tabulated and graphically represented to show and confirm the theoretical study. We can conclude that the success of the proposed method in studying time-dependent Casson fluid, which is non-Newtonian, compressed between two flat plates provides opportunities for additional study and advancements in fluid mechanics using the techniques

Clinical and microbiological aspect of surgical affections associated with current epidemics in bovine

Egypt is endemic with Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD) and Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD), both impose a drastic effect on the economy. These viral diseases are often complicated with secondary bacterial infections; however, scarce data is available. In this study, utilizing microbiological and molecular procedures, we identified a number of secondary bacterial infections complicating FMDand LSD-infected cases. Moreover, the antimicrobial resistance profile of the bacterial isolates was explored. The data showed that several bacterial pathogens including Serratia odorifera, Enterococcus faecium, Paenibacillus apiaries and Microbacterium hominis could be recovered from LSD-infected cases. On the other hand, FMD cases were found to be complicated with Pseudomonas mosselii, Bacillus cereus and Trueperella pyogens. However, Bacillus licheniformis was isolated from both disease conditions. The antimicrobial testing revealed that all pathogens are resistant to more than three antibiotics of different families, indicating the multi-drug resistant capabilities of these isolates. This baseline investigation confirms the presence of many secondary bacterial infections linked to LSD and FMD as well as the widespread antimicrobial resistance among the isolated pathogens, however, the contribution of these pathogens to the mortality rate in both conditions needs further studie

Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography in Neuro-Ophthalmology

Giant cell arteritis (GCA) is a systemic vasculitis of medium and large arteries often with ophthalmic involvement, including ischemic optic neuropathy, retinal artery occlusion, and ocular motor cranial nerve palsies. This last complication occurs in 2%-15% of patients, but typically involves only 1 cranial nerve. We present 2 patients with biopsy-proven GCA associated with multiple cranial nerve palsies

A fractional numerical study on a plant disease model with replanting and preventive treatment

Food security has become a significant issue due to the growing human population. In this case, a significant role is played by agriculture. The essential foods are obtained mainly from plants. Plant diseases can, however, decrease both food production and its quality. Therefore, it is substantial to comprehend the dynamics of plant diseases as they can provide insightful information about the dispersal of plant diseases. In order to investigate the dynamics of plant disease and analyze the effects of strategies of disease control, a mathematical model can be applied. We show that this model provides the non-negative solutions that population dynamics requires. The model was investigated by using the Atangana-Baleanu in Caputo sense (ABC) operator which is symmetrical to the Caputo-Fabrizio (CF) operator with a different function. Whereas the ABC operator uses the generalized Mittag-Leffler function while the CF operator employs the exponential kernel. For the proposed model, we have displayed the local and global stability of a nonendemic and an endemic equilibrium, existence and uniqueness theorems. By applying the fractional Adams-Bashforth-Moulton method, we have implemented numerical solutions to illustrate the theoretical analysis

Effectiveness of Classification Methods on the Diabetes System

In today’s world using data mining and classification is considered to be one of the most important techniques, as today’s world is full of data that is generated by various sources. However, extracting useful knowledge out of this data is the real challenge, and this paper conquers this challenge by using machine learning algorithms to use data for classifiers to draw meaningful results. The aim of this research paper is to design a model to detect diabetes in patients with high accuracy. Therefore, this research paper using five different algorithms for different machine learning classification includes, Decision Tree, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest, Naive Bayes, and K- Nearest Neighbor (K-NN), the purpose of this approach is to predict diabetes at an early stage. Finally, we have compared the performance of these algorithms, concluding that K-NN algorithm is a better accuracy (81.16%), followed by the Naive Bayes algorithm (76.06%)

Upgrading of the Crude Yellow Cake to a Highly Purified Form using Tris (2-ethylhexyl) Phosphate in Presence of EDTA or CDTA

Upgrading crude yellow cake was done by 0.05 M Tris 2-ethylhexyl Phosphate / kerosene from 5 M nitrate solution.  More than 98 % of uranium extracted after 5 stages of contact, shaking time 5 minutes and volume phase ratio 1/1. Uranium stripping efficiency reached 99 % using distilled H2O, 10 minutes shaking time, (O/A) ratio 4/1 and three stripping stages. The purity of the produced cakes was enhanced by the addition of EDTA or CDTA. The produced cake using TEHP followed by EDTA addition to the stripping solution before uranium precipitation step was the most preferable cake with lower gangues