Selected studies on foreign body impaction in goats with special reference to ultrasonography

Background and Aim: Diagnosis of foreign body impaction in ruminant is still of interest in most clinical studies. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate this condition using B-mode ultrasonography in addition to evaluation of clinical, hemato-biochemical and ruminal parameters in healthy and affected goats. Materials and Methods: Fifteen clinically normal goats and 15 goats with foreign body impaction were recruited in Menia El-Kamh abattoir. All animals were selected only when revealed negative for internal and external parasite. Thorough clinical, ultrasonographic examination and blood analysis were applied before slaughtering. Meanwhile, ruminal fluid and necropsy findings were assessed after slaughtering. Results: The prominent clinical signs in diseased group were inappetence, dullness, emaciation, weakness, scanty hard feces and tympany. Ultrasonographic examination of diseased goats revealed the presence of foreign body at left 11th-12th ICS. Foreign body in rumen appeared as hyperechoic band with acoustic shadowing. Significant reduction in ruminal wall thickness and biphasic reticular motility along with significant increase in monophasic reticular contraction and relaxation period were recorded in diseased goats when compared with control one. The erythrocytes count, hemoglobin content, hematocrit percent and albumin were significantly decreased in diseased goats when compared with healthy one. Moreover, ruminal fluid analysis of affected goats revealed significant decrease in ruminal pH and prolonged Methylene blue reduction time. Conclusions: Findings indicated that B-mode ultrasonography is a relatively simple and objective method for diagnosis of foreign body impaction in goats

نموذج مقترح لقرارات هيكل رأس المال للشركات الصغيرة والمتوسطة الحجم في الدول النامية " دراسة تطبيقية في مصر"

The Purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the limited research of determining the factors that affect the capital structure decisions of the Egyptian small and medium enterprises. Although the traditional theories of capital structure are useful in explaining the capital structure decisions of the companies, but it is showed that they mainly explained these decisions of large enterprises in developed economies, so the researcher tries to specify the main determinants of capital structure of SMEs in the Egyptian context. The study has been performed by investigating the capital structure of a sample of 27 SMEs that are listed in the NileX index, the only index for the Egyptian SMEs. The data was collected over the period 2010 – 2016. The results showed evidence that some of managerial attitudes and characteristics are considered from the drivers of the capital structure decisions of the Egyptian SMEs. Aversion to external control has a negative impact on the willingness to seek external financing while managerial growth intentions and strength of the managerial relationships with others positively affect the leverage. Also, the results showed a limited evidence on the effect of corporate governance mechanisms on the capital structure, CEO duality positively affect the leverage. Firm specific factors and country specific factors are considered from the determinants of the capital structure decisions of the Egyptian SMEs.Under the supervision of: Prof. Mahmoud Sobh Prof. Hayam Hassan Wahb

FPGA-based Coherent MSK Spread Spectrum Modem for Small Satellites TT&C Transponders

In low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication links it is required to employ modulation/demodulation techniques to achieve transmission with minimum power and efficient usage of spectrum (according to international telecommunication union (ITU) and consultative committee for space data systems (CCSDS) regulations and recommendations) with minimum bit error rate (BER) at the receiver. Minimum shift keying (MSK) meets all these requirements. It is required also to measure the varying distance between the satellite and the ground station (range) and the velocity of the satellite (range rate) to facilitate the tracking of the satellite by the ground station antenna tracking system and therefore, a direct sequence spread spectrum (DS-SS) technique is used. Thus, coherent MSK DS-SS modem is chosen in this paper for LEO communication links. This paper investigates design, implementation and testing of a FPGA-based coherent MSK DS-SS modem suitable for small satellites TT&C transponders. The modem includes a MSK modulator, an automatic gain control (AGC), and MSK DS-SS demodulator/synchronizer (where a proposed novel phase ambiguity solver algorithm is presented). Demodulator performance is evaluated by adding band-limited (nearly white within the signal bandwidth) Gaussian noise to the MSK DS-SS modulated signal (resulting in Eb/No near 0dB) and measuring the BER and the phase variances of the synchronized carrier and the clock with its operating Eb/No for the extracted chips, which show good performance

A Proposed Internet of Everything Framework for Disease Prediction

Social networks and Internet of things are two paradigms when integrated a new paradigm Internet of Everything is established that has its impact on revolutionizing various fields such as engineering, industry and healthcare. Social networks became nowadays of the most important web services on which people heavily rely, thus became a major source for information extraction for rational decision making considering individuals as social or socio sensors. Furthermore, people using sensors especially biological sensors enabled the use of internet of things technology in building intelligent healthcare systems. One of the challenges facing the design of such systems is the design of an intelligent recommender system that is able to deal with such big data. For that, this paper proposes a framework to develop an enhanced intelligent expert advisor-based health monitoring and disease awareness system. The proposed framework enables the researchers to design advisory systems that are able to observe physiological signals through the use of different bio sensors and integrate it with historical medical data together with   the massive data collected from social networks to provide accurate alerts and recommendations for many ailments inspected. The proposed Framework is designed to facilitate generic, dynamic and scalable process of integrating different types of social networks and bio sensors

Gene expression in HCV-associated HCC-identification of an UP-regulated gene encoding A protein related to ubiquitin conjugating enzyme

Available from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DXN059958 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

THE EFFECT OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ON THE FIRM’S FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE

The objective of this research is to investigate the relationship between thecorporate social responsibility and the firm’s financial performance. This relationship has been a very important issue and topic of great interest for researchers since from the origin of business entities. Therefore the aim of this study is to explore the nature of relationship between CSR and financial performance in the context of Egypt using a sample of 30 firms (firms listed on EGX 30) from 2007 to 2010. The sample was from a range of industrial sectors. We measured the corporate social responsibility by the S&P/EGX ESG Index, which is the only single source that offers published data regarding social corporate responsibility. The Corporate financial performance is measured by ROA and EPS. We find a positive and significant relation between corporate financial performance and the CSR. This result actually motivates organizations to think broadly about their obligations towards the society in which they operate rather than just maximizing their wealth

An approach for optimizing multi-objective problems using hybrid genetic algorithms

Optimization problems can be found in many aspects of our lives. An optimization problem can be approached as searching problem where an algorithm is proposed to search for the value of one or more variables that minimizes or maximizes an optimization function depending on an optimization goal. Multi-objective optimization problems are also abundant in many aspects of our lives with various applications in different fields in applied science. To solve such problems, evolutionary algorithms have been utilized including genetic algorithms that can achieve decent search space exploration. Things became even harder for multi-objective optimization problems when the algorithm attempts to optimize more than one objective function. In this paper, we propose a hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA) that utilizes a genetic algorithm (GA) to perform a global search supported by the particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO) to perform a local search. The proposed HGA achieved the concept of rehabilitation of rejected individuals. The proposed HGA was supported by a modified selection mechanism based on the K-means clustering algorithm that succeeded to restrict the selection process to promising solutions only and assured a balanced distribution of both the selected to survive and selected for rehabilitation individuals. The proposed algorithm was tested against 4 benchmark multi-objective optimization functions where it succeeded to achieve maximum balance between search space exploration and search space exploitation. The algorithm also succeeded in improving the HGA’s overall performance by limiting the average number of iterations until convergence

Digital Predistortion for Wideband High Efficiency RF Power Amplifiers for High Throughput Satellites

In satellite communications, there is considerable increasing demand to support higher data throughput on necessarily pre-allocated bandwidth channels. In communication payloads, the DC-to-RF power conversion efficiency is crucial and most of the DC power is consumed by the RF Power Amplifier (PA). Thus, maximizing the PA efficiency while maintaining low distortion is key. Both power and bandwidth efficiency could be increased by employing digital pre-distortion (DPD). This paper focuses on state-of-the-art DPD techniques and possible developments to fit in satellite communications. The toleration of effects of temperature, supply voltage, and load mismatch variations, are investigated. This research suggests that there are benefits to be gained; employing spectrally efficient modulation techniques and transmitting a high fidelity signal to result in less expensive space and ground segment transmitters. A proof-of-concept by simulation is presented for ultra-wideband applications. A novel DPD system architecture is proposed where envelope tracking (ET) of the driver amplifier (DA) and load modulation of the PA are used to maximize the overall PAE while high PAPR signals can be used. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that DPD has been proposed for large fractional bandwidth high PAPR signals for satellite communications

An Enhanced Testing Approach for Mobile Applications

Nowadays, there is an enormous number of mobile applications that are continuously being launched to the market. As a result of this rapid process, there is a need to increase the speed of testing process using enhanced approaches. This research aims to increase the effectiveness of the graphical user interface testing process of mobile applications. This is achieved by proposing an enhanced combinatorial-based metaheuristic approach. The proposed approach aims to maximize statement and branch coverage by applying Cuckoo search, for event selection. The approach was compared to monkey, frequency, random and greedy approaches. Experiments were conducted on different mobile applications. During the same testing time duration, the proposed approach achieved higher coverage than the other approaches. The proposed approach proved its effectiveness in mobile application testing compared to the other approaches.