Integration of IoT and chatbot for aquaculture with natural language processing

The development of internet of things (IoT) technology is very fast lately. One sector that can be implemented by IoT technology is the aquaculture sector. One important factor in the success of aquaculture is a good and controlled water quality condition. But the problem for the traditional aquaculture farmers is to monitor and increase the water quality quickly and efficiently. To resolve the above-mentioned problem, this paper proposes a real-time monitoring system for aquaculture and supported with chatbot assistant to facilitate the user. This system was composed of IoT system, cloud system, and chatbot system. The proposed system consists of 7 main modules: smart sensors, smart aeration system, local network system, cloud computing system, client visualization data, chatbot system, and solar powered system. The smart aeration system consists of NodeMCU, relay, and aerator. The smart sensors consist of several sensors such as dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, and water level sensor. Natural language processing is implemented to build the chatbot system. By combining text mining processing with naive Bayes algorithm, the result shows the very good performance with high precision and recall for each class to monitor the quality of water in aquaculture sector

FOXO3a gene polymorphism and bronchial asthma in Egyptian children INTRODUCTION Bronchial asthma is the most prevalent chronic immunological disorder in childhood period. It is characterized by airways inflammation and bronchial hyper-responsiveness where

Background: FOXO3a proteins play multiple crucial roles in immune response. FOXO3 inhibits T cell proliferation, induces T cell apoptosis via upregulation of proapoptotic proteins and it suppresses T cell activation preventing autoimmunity. The role of FOXO3a gene in the pathogenesis of bronchial asthma has been studied in few ethnic groups and revealed its implication in asthma pathogenesis.Objectives: The aim of the current study is to detect the association between single nucleotide polymorphism of the FOXO3a gene (rs13217795) and bronchial asthma, atopy and asthma severity in Egyptian children.Methods: The current cross-sectional case-control study was performed on 75 asthmatic children aged 2 to 12 years following up in the pulmonology outpatient clinic in Children's hospital, Cairo University and 75 age and sex matched healthy controls. Candidates were subjected to clinical evaluation in addition to genotyping for the FOXO3a gene polymorphism using PCR-RFLP technique.Results: The highest frequency was for the heterozygous type CT in both cases and controls groups. The genotype frequencies of mutant type TT for cases and controls were 12 % and 16% respectively, and the T allele frequencies were 37.2% in cases and 46.7% in the control group while CC genotype was present in 37.3% of asthmatic patients and 22.6% in the controls and the C allele was detected in 62.8% and 53.3% for cases and controls respectively. No statistically significant differences were observed between asthmatic patients and controls regarding the different genotypes of the FOXO3a gene polymorphism (p=0.161). No significant association was detected between the different genotypes of the FOXO3a gene polymorphism and the atopic status (p=0.536) or the different grades of asthma severity (p= 0.545).Conclusions: The study of FOXO3a gene polymorphism (rs13217795) in asthmatic Egyptian children revealed low frequency of the mutant TT genotype among cases and controls. In the current study, FOXO3a polymorphism has no role in the pathogenesis of asthma or atopy. Moreover, it has no relation to degree of disease severity.Keywords: Asthma, FOXO3a, gene, children, Egyptian, polymorphis

Incidence of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus in the United Arab Emirates; Comparison of Six Diagnostic Criteria: The Mutaba’ah Study

BACKGROUND: For more than half a century, there has been much research and controversies on how to accurately screen for and diagnose gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). There is a paucity of updated research among the Emirati population in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The lack of a uniform GDM diagnostic criteria results in the inability to accurately combine or compare the disease burden worldwide and locally. This study aimed to compare the incidence of GDM in the Emirati population using six diagnostic criteria for GDM. METHODS: The Mutaba’ah study is the largest multi-center mother and child cohort study in the UAE with an 18-year follow-up. We included singleton pregnancies from the Mutaba’ah cohort screened with the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) at 24–32 weeks from May 2017 to March 2021. We excluded patients with known diabetes and with newly diagnosed diabetes. GDM cumulative incidence was determined using the six specified criteria. GDM risk factors were compared using chi-square and t-tests. Agreements among the six criteria were assessed using kappa statistics. RESULTS: A total of 2,546 women were included with a mean age of 30.5 ± 6.0 years. Mean gravidity was 3.5 ± 2.1, and mean body mass index (BMI) at booking was 27.7 ± 5.6 kg/m(2). GDM incidence as diagnosed by any of the six criteria collectively was 27.1%. It ranged from 8.4% according to the EASD 1996 criteria to 21.5% according to the NICE 2015 criteria. The two most inclusive criteria were the NICE 2015 and the IADPSG criteria with GDM incidence rates of 21.5% (95% CI: 19.9, 23.1) and 21.3% (95% CI: 19.8, 23.0), respectively. Agreement between the two criteria was moderate (k = 0.66; p < 0.001). The least inclusive was the EASD 1996 criteria [8.4% (95% CI: 7.3, 9.6)]. The locally recommended IADPSG/WHO 2013 criteria had weak to moderate agreement with the other criteria, with Cohen’s kappa coefficient ranging from (k = 0.51; p < 0.001) to (k = 0.71; p < 0.001). Most of the GDM risk factors assessed were significantly higher among those with GDM (p < 0.005) identified by all criteria. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate discrepancies among the diagnostic criteria in identifying GDM cases. This emphasizes the need to unify GDM diagnostic criteria in this population to provide accurate and reliable incidence estimates for healthcare planning, especially because the agreement with the recommended criteria was not optimal

A Hydrodynamic Study of Benzyl Alcohol Oxidation in a Micro-Packed Bed Reactor

The various flow regimes prevalent during gold-palladium catalyzed benzyl alcohol oxidation in a micro-packed bed reactor and their influence on reaction performance are identified. The reaction is studied in a 300μm deep x 600μm wide silicon-glass micro-structured reactor packed with 65μm catalyst particles at a temperature of 120°C, pressure of 1 bar (g), using pure oxygen and neat benzyl alcohol as the feed. Significant improvement in the conversion and selectivity to the main product, benzaldehyde, is observed with increasing gas flowrate and decreasing liquid flowrate, which coincides with a change in the flow pattern from “liquid-dominated slug” (segregated regions of liquid and gas slugs) to “gas-continuous trickle” (thin film coated catalyst particles with gas flowing through the voids). The latter flow regime results in enhanced external mass transfer due to an increase in the available interfacial area and shorter diffusional distances. Results show selectivity up to 81% at a catalyst space time of 76 gcatgalc -1.s, outperforming a conventional batch laboratory reactor

You are what you eat: Application of Metabolomics Approaches to Advance Nutrition Research

A healthy condition is defined by complex human metabolic pathways that only function properly when fully satisfied by nutritional inputs. Poor nutritional intakes are associated with a number of metabolic diseases, such as diabetes, obesity, atherosclerosis, hypertension, and osteoporosis. In recent years, nutrition science has undergone an extraordinary transformation driven by the development of innovative software and analytical platforms. However, the complexity and variety of the chemical components present in different food types, and the diversity of interactions in the biochemical networks and biological systems, makes nutrition research a complicated field. Metabolomics science is an “-omic”, joining proteomics, transcriptomics, and genomics in affording a global understanding of biological systems. In this review, we present the main metabolomics approaches, and highlight the applications and the potential for metabolomics approaches in advancing nutritional food research

Production of Biodiesel from Locally Available Spent Vegetable Oils

The depletion of fossil fuels prompted considerable research to find alternative fuels. Due its environmental benefits and renewable nature the production of biodiesel has acquired increasing importance with a view to optimizing the production procedure and the sources of feedstock. Millions of liters of waste frying oil are produced from local restaurants and houses every year, most are discarded into sewage systems causing damage to the networks.  This study is intended to consider aspects related to the feasibility of the production of biodiesel from waste frying oils which will solve the problem of waste frying oil pollution and reduce the cost of biodiesel production.This research studies the conversion of locally available spent vegetable oils of different origins and with different chemical compositions into an environmentally friendly fuel. The biodiesel production requirements by base catalyzed trans-esterification process for the different feed stocks are determined according to the measured physical properties. The quality of the produced biodiesel is compared to petro diesel in terms of established standard specifications

Magnetic susceptibility and spin dynamics of a polyoxovanadate cluster: A proton NMR study of a model spin tetramer

We report susceptibility and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements in a polyoxovanadate compound with formula (NHEt)3[VIV8VV4As8O40(H2O)]H2O = (V12). The magnetic properties can be described by considering only the central square of localized V4+ ions and treated by an isotropic Heisenberg Hamiltonian of four intrinsic spins 1/2 coupled by nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic interaction with J17.6K. In this simplified description the ground state is nonmagnetic with ST = 0. The 1H NMR linewidth (full width at half maximum) data depend on both the magnetic field and temperature, and are explained by the dipolar interaction between proton nuclei and V4+ ion spins. The behavior of the nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate T-11 in the temperature range (4.2–300 K) is similar to that of χT vs T and it does not show any peak at low temperatures contrary to previous observations in antiferromagnetic rings with larger intrinsic spins. The results are explained by using the general features of the Moriya formula and by introducing a single T-independent broadening parameter for the electronic spin system. From the exponential T dependence of T-11 at low T(2.5K < T < 4.2K) we have obtained a field dependent gap following the linear relation ΔNMR = Δ0 “ gπBH, with the gap Δ0 17.6K in agreement with the susceptibility data. Below 2.5 K the proton T-11 deviates from the exponential decrease indicating the presence of a small, almost temperature independent, but strongly field dependent, nuclear relaxation contribution, which we will investigate in detail in the near future. © 2004 American Physical Society

Evaluation of aspirin and statin therapy use and adherence in patients with premature atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease

Importance: Studies on the use of and adherence to secondary prevention therapies in patients with premature and extremely premature atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) are lacking.Objective: To evaluate and compare aspirin use, any statin use, high-intensity statin use, and statin adherence among patients with premature or extremely premature ASCVD compared with patients with nonpremature ASCVD.Design, setting, and participants: This multicenter cross-sectional study used the clinical and administrative data sets of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to identify adult patients with at least 1 primary care visit in the VA health care system between October 1, 2014, and September 30, 2015. The study cohort comprised patients with ASCVD (ischemic heart disease, peripheral arterial disease, or ischemic cerebrovascular disease) who were enrolled in the Veterans With Premature Atherosclerosis (VITAL) registry. Patients with missing data for date of birth or sex and those with limited life expectancy were excluded. Data were analyzed from November 1, 2019, to January 1, 2020.Exposures: Premature (the first ASCVD event occurred at age women) vs nonpremature (the first ASCVD event occurred at age ≥55 years for men or age ≥65 years for women) ASCVD and extremely premature (the first ASCVD event occurred at age \u3c40 \u3eyears) vs nonpremature ASCVD.Main outcomes and measures: The primary outcomes were aspirin use, any statin use, high-intensity statin use, and statin adherence (measured by proportion of days covered [PDC] ≥0.8).Results: Of the 1 248 158 patients identified, 135 703 (10.9%) had premature ASCVD (mean [SD] age, 49.6 [5.8] years; 116 739 men [86.0%]), 1 112 455 (89.1%) had nonpremature ASCVD (mean [SD] age, 69.6 [8.9] years; 1 104 318 men [99.3%]), and 7716 (0.6%) had extremely premature ASCVD (mean [SD] age, 34.2 [4.3] years; 6576 men [85.2%]). Patients with premature ASCVD vs those with nonpremature ASCVD had lower rates of aspirin use (96 468 [71.1%] vs 860 726 [77.4%]; P \u3c .001) and any statin use (98 908 [72.9%] vs 894 931 [80.5%]; P \u3c .001); had a statin PDC of 0.8 or higher (57 306 [57.9%] vs 644 357 [72.0%]; P \u3c .001); and a higher rate of high-intensity statin use (49 354 [36.4%] vs 332 820 [29.9%]; P \u3c .001). Similarly, patients with extremely premature ASCVD were less likely to use aspirin (odds ratio [OR], 0.27; 95% CI, 0.26-0.29), any statin (OR, 0.25; 95% CI, 0.24-0.27), or high-intensity statin (OR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.74-0.82) and to be statin adherent (OR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.41-0.47).Conclusions and relevance: In this study, patients with premature or extremely premature ASCVD appeared to be less likely to use aspirin or statins and to adhere to statin therapy. This finding warrants further investigation into premature ASCVD and initiatives, including clinician and patient education, to better understand and mitigate the disparities in medication use and adherence

Towards microfluidic reactors for in situ synchrotron infrared studies

Anodically bonded etched silicon microfluidic devices that allow infrared spectroscopic measurement of solutions are reported. These extend spatially well-resolved in situ infrared measurement to higher temperatures and pressures than previously reported, making them useful for effectively time-resolved measurement of realistic catalytic processes. A data processing technique necessary for the mitigation of interference fringes caused by multiple reflections of the probe beam is also describe

Discordance between 10-year cardiovascular risk estimates using the ACC/AHA 2013 estimator and coronary artery calcium in individuals from 5 racial/ethnic groups: Comparing MASALA and MESA

Background and aims: South Asian (SA) individuals are thought to represent a group that is at high-risk for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). However, the performance of the Pooled Cohort Equations (PCE) remains uncertain in SAs living in the US. We aimed to study the interplay between predicted 10-year ASCVD risk and coronary artery calcium (CAC) in SAs compared to other racial/ethnic groups. Methods: We studied 536 SAs from the Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America (MASALA) study, and 2073 Non-Hispanic Whites (NHWs), 1514 African Americans (AAs), 1254 Hispanics, and 671 Chinese Americans (CAs) from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) who were not currently on statins. We used logistic regression models to assess the association between race/ethnicity and CAC within each ASCVD risk stratum. Results: SAs at low and at intermediate estimated ASCVD risk were more likely to have CAC = 0 compared to NHWs, while SAs at high risk had a similar CAC burden to NHWs. For example, intermediate-risk SAs had a 73% higher odds of CAC = 0 compared to NHWs (95% 1.00-2.99), while high-risk SAs were equally likely to have CAC = 0 (OR 0.95, 95% CI 0.65-1.38) and CAC > 100 (OR 0.86, 95% CI 0.61-1.22). Conclusions: Our results suggest that the extent of ASCVD risk overestimation using the PCEs may be even greater among SAs considered at low and intermediate risk than among NHWs. Studies with incident ASCVD events are required to validate and/or recalibrate current ASCVD risk prediction tools in this group