Areca nut chewing and the risk of re-hospitalization and mortality among patients with acute coronary syndrome in Pakistan

Objectives: Areca nut is widely consumed in many parts of the world, especially in South and Southeast Asia, where cardiovascular disease (CVD) is also a huge burden. Among the forms of CVD, acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is a major cause of mortality and morbidity. Research has shown areca nut chewing to be associated with diabetes, hypertension, oropharyngeal and esophageal cancers, and CVD, but little is known about mortality and re-hospitalization secondary to ACS among areca nut users and non-users. Methods: A prospective cohort was studied to quantify the effect of areca nut chewing on patients with newly diagnosed ACS by categorizing the study population into exposed and non-exposed groups according to baseline chewing status. Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine the associations of areca nut chewing with the risk of re-hospitalization and 30-day mortality secondary to ACS. Results: Of the 384 ACS patients, 49.5% (n=190) were areca users. During 1-month of follow-up, 20.3% (n=78) deaths and 25.1% (n=96) re-hospitalizations occurred. A higher risk of re-hospitalization was found (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 2.05; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.29 to 3.27; p=0.002) in areca users than in non-users. Moreover, patients with severe disease were at a significantly higher risk of 30-day mortality (aHR, 2.77; 95% CI, 1.67 to 4.59; p<0.001) and re-hospitalization (aHR, 2.72; 95% CI, 1.73 to 4.26; p<0.001). Conclusions: The 30-day re-hospitalization rate among ACS patients was found to be significantly higher in areca users and individuals with severe disease. These findings suggest that screening for a history of areca nut chewing may help to identify patients at a high risk for re-hospitalization due to secondary events

The use of L1 and L2 in prewriting discussions in EFL writing and students' attitudes towards L1 and L2 use in prewriting discussions

Ankara : The Department of Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Bilkent University, 2010.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2010.Includes bibliographical references leaves 73-75.This study investigated the effectiveness of the use of L1 and L2 in prewriting discussion on EFL students‘ writing quality. The study also examined students‘ attitudes towards prewriting discussions in general, and having prewriting discussions in L1 and L2 in particular. Data were collected in three phases with 30 sophomore Kurdish native speaker students in the English Language Department at Koya University in the north of Iraq. In the first phase, the students wrote four essays after prewriting discussions in either their native language (Kurdish) or their second language (English). In the study, the students wrote two essays in the first and fourth week after L1 discussions and they also wrote two essays in the second and third weeks after having L2 discussions. In the second step, data were collected through a questionnaire which focused on the students‘ attitudes towards prewriting discussion in general and the use of L1 and L2 in particular. Then, according to their writing test scores, four participants were chosen (two with the highest and two with the lowest scores) and interviewed in order to know their in-depth feelings and attitudes towards prewriting discussions and using L1 and L2 in prewriting discussions in EFL writing classes. The findings showed that the participants wrote better essays after the L2 prewriting discussions than after the L1 discussions. The findings also showed that the students generally responded positively to prewriting discussions as an effective technique in EFL writing classes; however they had mixed feelings about some points relating to the language choice in prewriting discussions. In other words, some of the participants believed that L2 use was more useful for English major students as they need to learn English, while other participants believed that the language choice in prewriting discussions should be determined according to students‘ level of second language proficiency. In brief, the results indicated that English language students should use the second language in all speaking class activities in all levels in order to help them learn English better, but lower level students should be allowed to use their native language when they cannot fully express their ideas in English. Finally, this study presents some pedagogical recommendations such as using prewriting discussions together with other techniques in the second language writing process. It also recommends that the use of L1 alongside L2 in prewriting discussions should be allowed among EFL students, especially lower level students, in order to help them participate in class activities and make them feel less anxious while expressing their ideas, and also to help them to better understand the topics and improve their writing performance.Karim, Hemn AdilM.S

Crystal structure, thermal behavior and spectroscopic studies of a new organic hydrogen arsenate

The present paper undertakes the study of a title organic-inorganic hybrid material 2-amino-3-benzyloxy pyridinium dihydrogenmonoarsenate, [C12H13N2O]H2AsO4, which has been synthesized by slow evaporation at room temperature using 2-amino-3-benzyloxypyridine as the structure-directing agent. The structure was determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction at 296 K. This compound is crystallized in the noncentrosymmetric orthorhombic space group P212121 with the lattice parameters a = 4.89 (7), b = 10.41 (1), c = 26.79 (3) Ã…, V = 1364.3 (3) Ã…3, and Z = 4. The crystal structure has been determined and refined to R1 = 0.0363 and wR2 = 0.1246 using 5438 independent reflections. The atomic arrangement can be described by infinite anionic chains running parallel to the [100] direction. The organic entities are located between these chains. H-bonds connecting the different species play an important role in the one-dimensional network cohesion. This compound is also characterized by solid-state 13C MAS NMR, IR, Raman spectroscopy and TG-ATD thermal analysis. Moreover, protonic conduction of this compound determined by impedance has been studied in the temperature range 299 - 403 K

PENGARUH STRUKTUR KEPEMILIKAN DAN STRUKTUR MODAL TERHADAP KEBIJAKAN DEVIDEN PADA PERUSAHAAN MANUFAKTUR YANG TERDAFTAR DI BURSA EFEK INDONESIA (BEI) TAHUN 2007-2008

Kebijakan deviden bersangkutan dengan penentuan pembagian pendapatan antara penggunaan pendapatan untuk dibayarkan kepada para pemegang saham sebagai deviden atau untuk digunakan di dalam perusahaan. Ada dua hal yang menetukan keputusan kebijakan deviden, pertama keputusan yang diambil oleh pemegang saham, dan struktur modal yang digunakan dalam perusahaa. Penelitian ini menggunakan sampel perusahaan manufaktur yang terdaftar di BEI sejak tahun 2007-2008. Dengan kriteria terpenting adalah memiliki struktur kepemilikan managerial dan institution, dan membagikan devidend. Pada penelitian ini didapat 15 perusahaan yang memenuhi kriteria penelitian. Objek dalam penelitian ini adalah struktur kepemilikan sebagai variabel X1 yang diukur dengan jumlah prosentase saham yang dimiliki oleh manajemen pada akhir tahun dan jumlah persentase saham yang dimiliki oleh institusi pada akhir tahun dan struktur modal sebagai variabel X2 diukur dengan melihat leverage, sedangkan kebijakan deviden sebagai variabel Y yang diukur dengan ratio pembayaran deviden (dividend payout ratio). Hasil penelitian ini menunjukan bahwa variabel managerial, institution dan leverage secara simultan berpengaruh signifikan terhadap variabel devidend payout ratio. Secara parsial variabel Institution dan leverage berpengaruh secara signifikan terhadap variabel DPR. Sedangkan variabel managerial tidak berpengaruh signifikan terhadap variabel DPR. Secara bersama-sama variabel managerial, institution dan leverage memberikan sumbangan 20.4% dalam menjelaskan DPR, sedangkan sisanya sebesar 79,6% dijelaskan oleh faktor-faktor lain diluar model. Dari hasil tersebut maka manajemen dapat memperhatikan faktor Institution dan leverage sebagai prediksi untuk menentukan kebijakan deviden. ***** Dividend policies concerned with determining the distribution of revenues between the use of revenues to be paid to shareholders as dividends or for use in the company. There are two things that determine the dividend policy decisions, the first decision taken by the shareholders, and capital structure used in company. This study uses samples of manufacturing companies listed on the Stock Exchange since the year 2007 to 2008. With the most important criteria is to have the managerial and ownership structures Institution, and the dividend payment. In the study showed the 15 companies that fulfilled the criteria. The object of this research are as variable ownership structure, as measured by the number of percentage of shares held by management at the end of the year and the number of percentage of shares owned by institutions at year end and capital structure as a variable measured with leverage, while the dividend policy as a variable y as measured by the ratio of dividend payment (dividend payout ratio). The results of this study show that managerial variables, Institution and simultaneously leverage significant effect on dividend payout ratio variable. Partially Institution and leverage variables significantly affect the dividend payout ratio variable. While the managerial variables did not significantly influence the dividend payout ratio variable. Taken together managerial variables, Institution and leverage contributed 20.4% in explaining the dividend payout ratio of 79.6% while the rest is explained by other factors outside the model. From these results, the management may consider the factors as a prediction Institution and leverage to determine dividend polic

New Adaptive Data Transmission Scheme Over HF Radio

Acceptable Bit Error rate can be maintained by adapting some of the design parameters such as modulation, symbol rate, constellation size, and transmit power according to the channel state.<br />An estimate of HF propagation effects can be used to design an adaptive data transmission system over HF link. The proposed system combines the well known Automatic Link Establishment (ALE) together with variable rate transmission system. The standard ALE is modified to suite the required goal of selecting the best carrier frequency (channel) for a given transmission. This is based on measuring SINAD (Signal plus Noise plus Distortion to Noise plus Distortion), RSL (Received Signal Level), multipath phase distortion and BER (Bit Error Rate) for each channel in the frequency list. Channel condition evaluation is done by two arrangements. In the first an FFT analysis is used where a pilot signal is transmitted over the channel, while the data itself is used in the second arrangement. Passive channel assessment is used to avoid bad channels hence limiting the frequency pool size to be used in the point to point communication and the time required for scanning and linking. An exchange of channel information between the transmitting and receiving stations is considered to select the modulation scheme for transmission. Mainly MPSK and MFSK are considered with different levels giving different data rate according to the channel condition. The results of the computer simulation have shown that when transmitting at a fixed channel symbol rate of 1200 symbol/sec, the information rate ranges from 2400 bps using 4FSK up to 3600 bps using 8PSK for SNR ranges from 11dB up to 26dB.<br /

Construction of an ontology for intelligent Arabic QA systems leveraging the Conceptual Graphs representation

The last decade had known a great interest in Arabic Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications. This interest is due to the prominent importance of this 6th most wide-spread language in the world with more than 350 million native speakers. Currently, some basic Arabic language challenges related to the high inflection and derivation, Part-of-Speech (PoS) tagging, and diacritical ambiguity of Arabic text are practically tamed to a great extent. However, the development of high level and intelligent applications such as Question Answering (QA) systems is still obstructed by the lacks in terms of ontologies and other semantic resources. In this paper, we present the construction of a new Arabic ontology leveraging the contents of Arabic WordNet (AWN) and Arabic VerbNet (AVN). This new resource presents the advantage to combine the high lexical coverage and semantic relations between words existing in AWN together with the formal representation of syntactic and semantic frames corresponding to verbs in AVN. The Conceptual Graphs representation was adopted in the framework of a multi-layer platform dedicated to the development of intelligent and multi-agents systems. The built ontology is used to represent key concepts in questions and documents for further semantic comparison. Experiments conducted in the context of the QA task show a promising coverage with respect to the processed questions and passages. The obtained results also highlight an improvement in the performance of Arabic QA regarding the c@1 measure.The work of the last author was carried out in the framework of the WIQ-EI IRSES project (Grant No. 269180) within the FP 7 Marie Curie, the DIANA APPLICATIONS - Finding Hidden Knowledge in Texts: Applications (TIN2012-38603-C02-01) project, and the VLC/CAMPUS Microcluster on Multimodal Interaction in Intelligent Systems.Abouenour, L.; Nasri, M.; Bouzoubaa, K.; Kabbaj, A.; Rosso, P. (2014). Construction of an ontology for intelligent Arabic QA systems leveraging the Conceptual Graphs representation. Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems. 27(6):2869-2881. https://doi.org/10.3233/IFS-141248S2869288127

Zeolite-like metal–organic frameworks (ZMOFs): design, synthesis, and properties

International audienceThis review highlights various design and synthesis approaches toward the construction of ZMOFs, which are metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with topologies and, in some cases, features akin to traditional inorganic zeolites. The interest in this unique subset of MOFs is correlated with their exceptional characteristics arising from the periodic pore systems and distinctive cage-like cavities, in conjunction with modular intra-and/or extra-framework components, which ultimately allow for tailoring of the pore size, pore shape, and/or properties towards specific applications

Modified global k-means algorithm for clustering in gene expression data sets

Clustering in gene expression data sets is a challenging problem. Different algorithms for clustering of genes have been proposed. However due to the large number of genes only a few algorithms can be applied for the clustering of samples. k-means algorithm and its different variations are among those algorithms. But these algorithms in general can converge only to local minima and these local minima are significantly different from global solutions as the number of clusters increases. Over the last several years different approaches have been proposed to improve global search properties of k-means algorithm and its performance on large data sets. One of them is the global k-means algorithm. In this paper we develop a new version of the global k-means algorithm: the modified global k-means algorithm which is effective for solving clustering problems in gene expression data sets. We present preliminary computational results using gene expression data sets which demonstrate that the modified k-means algorithm improves and sometimes significantly results by k-means and global k-means algorithms.E