Prevalence of Depression among Sudanese Patients with type-2 Diabetes Mellitus

Background: Both diabetes mellitus and depression are common disorders, and when coexist; they lead to poor glycemic control that may ultimately increase the risk of both micro and macrovascular complications. In Sudan, few data are available regarding prevalence of depression among subjects with type -2 diabetes mellitus.Objectives: The aim of the study is to determine the prevalence of depression among Sudanese patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus.Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study, carried out among Sudanese patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus who attended medical insurance clinic in Omdurman. The patients gave consent and HADS questionnaire was filled.Results: The study enrolled 400 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, 176 (44%) of them had depression. Among those with depression, 52.3% had mild depression, 29.5% and 18.2% of them, had severe and moderate depression, respectively. Sixty three percent of the study group were female. Their ages range from 30-79 years with a mean of 56.6 ±13.The average duration of diabetes was 10.3 years. 76% of patients were physically inactive and 16 (4%) of them were smokers. Fifty six (14%) had family history of psychiatric disorders, 170 (42.5%) of them showed lack of enjoyment, 77 (19.3%) of them lacked laughing, 81(20.3%) of them lost sensation of happiness, 68(17%) of them lost energy, 238 (59.5%) of them neglected their external appearance, 76 (19%) of them showed no enjoyment, and 62 (15.5%) of them lost enjoying reading or watching television.Conclusion: Depression is common among Sudanese patients with type -2 diabetes mellitus, therefore screening for depression should be part of routine clinical evaluation of these patients.Key words: Sudan, diabetes mellitus, depression

The Mutual Fund Industry and the Protection of Human Rights

This article considers the appropriate application of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) to the mutual funds industry. Mutual funds can impact human rights by financially supporting oppressive states or abusive companies. Given the indirect nature of such impacts, along with the exclusively external management of the funds, this article argues that a unique approach to implementing the UNGP is necessary for this industry. Divided into five parts, the article outlines the governance structure of mutual funds and the expectations on states and businesses in the UNGP, before assessing the appropriateness of applying current guidance for banks and other financial actors to mutual funds. The article concludes with practical recommendations for both fund managers and states on the implementation of the UNGP in this industry

Convolutional neural network-based real-time object detection and tracking for parrot AR drone 2.

Recent advancements in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have provided an opportunity to create autonomous devices, robots, and machines characterized particularly with the ability to make decisions and perform tasks without human mediation. One of these devices, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or drones are widely used to perform tasks like surveillance, search and rescue, object detection and target tracking, parcel delivery (recently started by Amazon), and many more. The sensitivity in performing said tasks demands that drones must be efficient and reliable. For this, in this paper, an approach to detect and track the target object, moving or still, for a drone is presented. The Parrot AR Drone 2 is used for this application. Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is used for object detection and target tracking. The object detection results show that CNN detects and classifies object with a high level of accuracy (98%). For real-time tracking, the tracking algorithm responds faster than conventionally used approaches, efficiently tracking the detected object without losing it from sight. The calculations based on several iterations exhibit that the efficiency achieved for target tracking is 96.5%

The spectra of selected functional gastrointestinal disorders in Sudanese university students according to the Rome III criteria

Background: The prevalence of functional gastrointestinal disorders  (FGIDs) including functional dyspepsia (FD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and functional constipation (FC) was not studied in Sudan.Objectives: The aim of this study is to estimate prevalence of these disorders in Sudanese university students using Rome III criteria.Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among medical students in Omdurman Islamic University during the period from January to June 2012. The selected volunteers responded to a self-reported questionnaire based on Rome III criteria.Results: A total of 348 subjects were studied. Male: Female ratio was 0.6: 1. Prevalence of FD, IBS and FC were 21.6%, 12.9% and 10.3% respectively. IBS was more prevalent in females (16.4%) compared to males (7%). The most prevalent symptoms were postprandial fullness (74.1%), straining during .25% of defecation (43.9%) and lumpy or hard stools in .25% of defecations (37%).Conclusion: Functional gastrointestinal disorders are common in university students. Further studies are needed to characterize the epidemiology of FGIDs in Sudan.Key words: Functional gastrointestinal disorders, dyspepsia, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, Sudan

Dry Powder Formulation of Azithromycin for COVID-19 Therapeutics

Aim: The aim of this study is to develop dry powder formulations of azithromycin-loaded poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanocomposite microparticles for pulmonary delivery to improve the low bioavailability of azithromycin. Methods: Double emulsion method was used to produce nanoparticles, which were then spray dried to form nanocomposite microparticles. Encapsulation efficiency and drug loading were analysed, and formulations were characterised by particle size, zeta potential, morphology, crystallinity and in-vitro aerosol dispersion performance. Results: The addition of chitosan changed the neutrally-charged azithromycin only formulation to positively-charged nanoparticles. However, the addition of chitosan also increased the particle size of the formulations. It was observed in the NGI® data that there is an improvement in dispersibility of the chitosan-related formulations. Conclusion: It was demonstrated in this study that all dry powder formulations were able to deliver azithromycin to the deep lung regions, which suggests the potential of using azithromycin via pulmonary drug delivery as an effective method to treat COVID-19

Development of intelligent drone battery charging system based on wireless power transmission using hill climbing algorithm.

In this work, an advanced drone battery charging system is developed. The system is composed of a drone charging station with multiple power transmitters and a receiver to charge the battery of a drone. A resonance inductive coupling-based wireless power transmission technique is used. With limits of wireless power transmission in inductive coupling, it is necessary that the coupling between a transmitter and receiver be strong for efficient power transmission; however, for a drone, it is normally hard to land it properly on a charging station or a charging device to get maximum coupling for efficient wireless power transmission. Normally, some physical sensors such as ultrasonic sensors and infrared sensors are used to align the transmitter and receiver for proper coupling and wireless power transmission; however, in this system, a novel method based on the hill climbing algorithm is proposed to control the coupling between the transmitter and a receiver without using any physical sensor. The feasibility of the proposed algorithm was checked using MATLAB. A practical test bench was developed for the system and several experiments were conducted under different scenarios. The system is fully automatic and gives 98.8% accuracy (achieved under different test scenarios) for mitigating the poor landing effect. Also, the efficiency η of 85% is achieved for wireless power transmission. The test results show that the proposed drone battery charging system is efficient enough to mitigate the coupling effect caused by the poor landing of the drone, with the possibility to land freely on the charging station without the worry of power transmission loss

Human pose estimation-based real-time gait analysis using convolutional neural network.

Gait analysis is widely used in clinical practice to help in understanding the gait abnormalities and its association with a certain underlying medical condition for better diagnosis and prognosis. Several technologies embedded in the specialized devices such as computer-interfaced video cameras to measure patient motion, electrodes placed on the surface of the skin to appreciate muscle activity, force platforms embedded in a walkway to monitor the forces and torques produced between the ambulatory patient and the ground, Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors, and wearable devices are being used for this purpose. All of these technologies require an expert to translate the data recorded by the said embedded specialized devices, which is typically done by a medical expert but with the recent improvements in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially in deep learning, it is possible now to create a mechanism where the translation of the data can be performed by a deep learning tool such as Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Therefore, this work presents an approach where human pose estimation is combined with a CNN for classification between normal and abnormal gait of a human with an ability to provide information about the detected abnormalities form an extracted skeletal image in real-time

Pattern of Endoscopic Findings of Upper Gastrointestinal Tract in Omdurman Teaching Hospital, Sudan

Background: The pattern of endoscopic findings of upper gastrointestinal tract (UGT) including gastro esophageal reflux (GERD), peptic ulcer diseases (PU), and upper gastrointestinal malignancies was not studied recently in Sudan.Objectives: The aim of this study is to know the pattern of endoscopic findings of upper gastrointestinal tract.Materials and Methods: This is a cross-sectional descriptive study which was conducted during the period from March to September 2013, at endoscopy unit in Omdurman Teaching Hospital. All patients referred for upper gastrointestinal endoscopy were included in the study.Results: A total of 390 subjects was enrolled in the study.56.4% were females; the male to female ratio was 1.3:1, their ages ranged from 11 to 80 years old with a mean age of 50.2 years. The most common endoscopic findings in the study group was Gastritis 54.9% followed by esophagitis 42%, peptic ulcer diseases 21%, esophageal varices 13.8% and upper gastrointestinal tumors (esophageal and gastric) 13.2 %. Normal findings were found in 3% of all patients in the study group.Conclusion: Upper gastrointestinal disorders are more common in Sudan compared to other countries. Esophageal varices and upper gastrointestinal malignancies are increasing compared to previous studies. Further studies are required to characterize abnormalities of upper gastrointestinal tract.Key words: Upper gastro-intestinal endoscopy, Gastritis, Esophagitis, Peptic ulcer, Sudan

Autonomous moving target-tracking for a UAV quadcopter based on fuzzy-PI.

Moving target-tracking is an attractive application for quadcopters and a very challenging, complicated field of research due to the complex dynamics of a quadcopter and the varying speed of the moving target with time. For this reason, various control algorithms have been developed to track a moving target using a camera. In this paper, a Fuzzy-PI controller is developed to adjust the parameters of the PI controller using the position and change of position data as input. The proposed controller is compared to a gain-scheduled PID controller instead of the typical PID controller. To verify the performance of the developed system and distinguish which one has better performance, several experiments of a quadcopter tracking a moving target are conducted under the varying speed of the moving target, indoor and outdoor and during day and night. The obtained results indicate that the proposed controller works well for tracking a moving target under different scenarios, especially during night

Analisis eufemisme kematian masyarakat Melayu Sarawak dari perspektif semantik kognitif

Makalah ini meneliti proses-proses kognitif yang mendasari eufemisme kematian dalam masyarakat Melayu Sarawak (MMS). Eufemisme kematian yang digunakan oleh penutur merupakan bentuk penggunaan bahasa yang lebih halus dan sopan bagi menggantikan bahasa yang dianggap kasar atau tabu, dan tidak sesuai dituturkan secara langsung dalam komunikasi. Dalam pengungkapan eufemisme mengenai kematian, penutur berupaya mempamerkan sisi santun mereka di samping menunjukkan timbang rasa serta keprihatinan untuk tidak melukai hati dan perasaan pendengar. Kajian dari perspektif semantik kognitif ini menggunakan kerangka teori Metafora Konsepsi saranan Lakoff dan Johnson (1980). Beberapa mekanisme kognitif dimanfaatkan dalam analisis data seperti skema imej dan metafora konsepsi. Data eufemisme kematian MMS dikumpul menerusi kajian lapangan melibatkan kaedah temu bual, rakaman dan catatan. Informan yang terlibat dalam kajian ini ialah penutur Melayu di kawasan Kuching, Sarawak. Hasil analisis data mendapati bahawa pengkonsepsian eufemisme kematian MMS, khususnya untuk memperkatakan mengenai kematian didasari oleh skema imej Sumber-Laluan-Matlamat, di samping metafora konsepsi KEMATIAN ITU LOKASI YANG LEBIH BAIK, KEHIDUPAN ITU PERJALANAN dan KEMATIAN ITU PERLEPASAN [KEMATIAN ITU PERJALANAN]. Secara keseluruhan, kajian ini menunjukkan bahawa budaya Melayu dan agama Islam banyak mempengaruhi pengkonsepsian eufemisme kematian dalam MMS. Pengaruh ini dapat dilihat menerusi penggunaan kata-kata halus yang bertujuan untuk berbudi bahasa, sejajar dengan budaya Melayu yang mementingkan kesantunan dalam komunikasi. Hakikat kematian umat Islam yang akan kembali kepada Allah s.w.t. juga digambarkan dalam eufemisme yang dikaji. Sebagai sebuah kajian linguistik, kajian ini diharap dapat menjadi rujukan kepada pembaca dan penyelidik mengenai eufemisme MMS, khususnya dalam bidang semantik kognitif