Epidemiology of pemphigus in Turkey: One-year prospective study of 220 cases

Pemphigus is a group of rare and life-threatening autoimmune blistering diseases of the skin and mucous membranes. Although they occur worldwide, their incidence shows wide geographical variation, and prospective data on the epidemiology of pemphigus are very limited. Objective of this work is to evaluate the incidence and epidemiological and clinical features of patients with pemphigus in Turkey. All patients newly diagnosed with pemphigus between June 2013 and June 2014 were prospectively enrolled in 33 dermatology departments in 20 different provinces from all seven regions of Turkey. Disease parameters including demography and clinical findings were recorded. A total of 220 patients were diagnosed with pemphigus during the 1-year period, with an annual incidence of 4.7 per million people in Turkey. Patients were predominantly women, with a male to female ratio of 1:1.41. The mean age at onset was 48.9 years. Pemphigus vulgaris (PV) was the commonest clinical subtype (n=192; 87.3%), followed by pemphigus foliaceus (n=21; 9.6%). The most common clinical subtype of PV was the mucocutaneous type (n=83; 43.2%). The mean Pemphigus Disease Area Index was 28.14±22.21 (mean ± Standard Deviation).  The incidence rate of pemphigus in Turkey is similar to the countries of South-East Europe, higher than those reported for the Central and Northern European countries and lower than the countries around the Mediterranean Sea and Iran. Pemphigus is more frequent in middle-aged people and is more common in women. The most frequent subtype was PV, with a 9-fold higher incidence than pemphigus foliaceus.   </p

PROCESS PLANNING AND WEIGHTED SCHEDULING WITH WNOPPT WEIGHTED DUE-DATE ASSIGNMENT USING HYBRID SEARCH FOR WEIGHTED CUSTOMERS

Although scheduling with due date assignment and, integrated process planning and scheduling are two popular topics studied by researchers, there are few works on the integration of process planning, scheduling, and due date assignment. In this study integration of process planning and scheduling with the weighted due date, the assignment is studied. Different level of integration of these three functions is tested. As a solution techniques random search and hybrid search are applied. The hybrid search starts with random search and continues with the genetic search. Search results are compared with ordinary solutions and searches are found very useful and hybrid search outperformed random search. Hybrid search with full integration combination found as the best combination.&nbsp

Modelling Porosity Permeability of Ceramic Tiles using Fuzzy Taguchi Method

Taguchi experiment design in quality development studies, is an approach to engineering that supports research and development, product design and product development activities by enabling fewer trials of experiments to determine the best combinations of inputs that affect the outcome. In this study, the factors affecting the porosity were studied in a firm that produces ceramic tile. There were 6 factors considered to be important in total and 2 levels in each factor. L8 orthogonal array were used during the experiment design, which proposes 8 experiment types with different factor levels. The results of the experiments were analyzed so that important factors were determined. Significance of factors were tested by ANOVA and 4 of them were found to be significant. These factors were fuzzified by assessing the factors using linguistic expressions and then triangular fuzzy numbers. A model with 4 inputs and 1 output was built and 34 rules were generated for this model. The developed model was shown to be a useful approach in modeling the porosity permeability of ceramic tiles