An angiopoietin 2, FGF23, and BMP10 biomarker signature differentiates atrial fibrillation from other concomitant cardiovascular conditions

Abstract Early detection of atrial fibrillation (AF) enables initiation of anticoagulation and early rhythm control therapy to reduce stroke, cardiovascular death, and heart failure. In a cross-sectional, observational study, we aimed to identify a combination of circulating biomolecules reflecting different biological processes to detect prevalent AF in patients with cardiovascular conditions presenting to hospital. Twelve biomarkers identified by reviewing literature and patents were quantified on a high-precision, high-throughput platform in 1485 consecutive patients with cardiovascular conditions (median age 69 years [Q1, Q3 60, 78]; 60% male). Patients had either known AF (45%) or AF ruled out by 7-day ECG-monitoring. Logistic regression with backward elimination and a neural network approach considering 7 key clinical characteristics and 12 biomarker concentrations were applied to a randomly sampled discovery cohort (n = 933) and validated in the remaining patients (n = 552). In addition to age, sex, and body mass index (BMI), BMP10, ANGPT2, and FGF23 identified patients with prevalent AF (AUC 0.743 [95% CI 0.712, 0.775]). These circulating biomolecules represent distinct pathways associated with atrial cardiomyopathy and AF. Neural networks identified the same variables as the regression-based approach. The validation using regression yielded an AUC of 0.719 (95% CI 0.677, 0.762), corroborated using deep neural networks (AUC 0.784 [95% CI 0.745, 0.822]). Age, sex, BMI and three circulating biomolecules (BMP10, ANGPT2, FGF23) are associated with prevalent AF in unselected patients presenting to hospital. Findings should be externally validated. Results suggest that age and different disease processes approximated by these three biomolecules contribute to AF in patients. Our findings have the potential to improve screening programs for AF after external validation

Explainable Recommendations in Intelligent Systems: Delivery Methods, Modalities and Risks

With the increase in data volume, velocity and types, intelligent human-agent systems have become popular and adopted in different application domains, including critical and sensitive areas such as health and security. Humans’ trust, their consent and receptiveness to recommendations are the main requirement for the success of such services. Recently, the demand on explaining the recommendations to humans has increased both from humans interacting with these systems so that they make an informed decision and, also, owners and systems managers to increase transparency and consequently trust and users’ retention. Existing systematic reviews in the area of explainable recommendations focused on the goal of providing explanations, their presentation and informational content. In this paper, we review the literature with a focus on two user experience facets of explanations; delivery methods and modalities. We then focus on the risks of explanation both on user experience and their decision making. Our review revealed that explanations delivery to end-users is mostly designed to be along with the recommendation in a push and pull styles while archiving explanations for later accountability and traceability is still limited. We also found that the emphasis was mainly on the benefits of recommendations while risks and potential concerns, such as over-reliance on machines, is still a new area to explore

A Review Paper: Digital Image Filtering Processing

Nowadays, visual information is increasingly sent in the form of digital images, making the identification of noisy data a common challenge in many research and application domains. Many noise reduction techniques have been developed in the contemporary era to remove noise while preserving image information. The task of eliminating noise from an original image remains a difficult one for researchers. The primary focus of this study is on picture denoising and filtering. For performing a comparative examination of existing denoising techniques, such as linear and nonlinear filters. salt, pepper noise, Gaussian noise, and speckle noise are examples of different noise models. PSNR of color images provides a quantity measure of comparison

Requirements for applying the beyond budget method in preparing the budget of the University of Mosul: A field study

The current research aims to clarify the concept of the Beyond Budget method and the most important principles of its preparation, in addition to determining the requirements for the use of the Beyond Budget method at the University of Mosul, where the importance of the research stems from the importance of the budget in improving the performance of the governmental unit, as the application of more flexible methods in budget preparation would It limits the pressures of the environmental variables that the unit may be exposed to, and the researchers relied on a qualitative analysis of the respondents answers to the interview questions, and the researchers were able to know the requirements and acceptability of the Beyond Budget method at the University of  Mosul. The researchers reached a number of conclusions, the most important of which was the inability of the current method adopted in preparing the budget of the University of Mosul to be an effective tool for evaluation and to provide information that helps decision-making which requires moving to modern methods of preparing budgets, and the use of the method Beyond Budget at the University of Mosul

Anthropometric and body composition analysis of infertile women with polycystic ovary syndrome

أهداف البحث: لتقييم مكونات الجسم، والملف الشخصي للجسم البشري للنساء المصابات بالعقم اللاتي تم تشخيصهن بمتلازمة المبيض المتعدد التكيسات، والتحقق في الإصابة والعلاقة النسبية لمكونات دهون الجسم ومتلازمة المبيض المتعدد التكيسات. طرق البحث: أجريت دراسة مراقبة الحالة في المستشفى على مجموعة مكونة من ١٣٢ من المريضات مع أو بدون متلازمة المبيض المتعدد التكيسات. تم استخدام تحليل المقاومة الكهربائية البيولوجية لتسجيل مكونات الجسم مثل إجمالي الدهون بالجسم، والدهون بالأحشاء، والدهون تحت الجلد، ومكونات عضلات الهيكل العظمي وتوزيعها في الجذع، والساقين والذراعين بالإضافة إلى ضغط الدم. كما تم تسجيل الملف الشخصي للجسم البشري ويتضمن مؤشر كتلة الجسم، ووزن الجسم المثالي، ومحيط الخصر، ومحيط الورك ونسبة الخصر إلى الورك. النتائج: متوسط عمر الإصابة لمتلازمة المبيض المتعدد التكيسات كانت ٢٩. ٧٤ ±٣٫٣٢عاما وكانت الغالبية منهن في الأعلى إلى العالي جدا لفئة الدهون بالأحشاء مع ارتباط كبير. وإجمالي توزيع الدهون بالجسم، وكامل الدهون تحت الجلد، وللجذع، والذراع والساق كانت أعلى بكثير في متلازمة المبيض المتعدد التكيسات. كما كان معدل مؤشر كتلة الجسم، ومحيط الخصر والورك لمجموعة متلازمة المبيض المتعدد التكيسات ٢٨٫٢±٦٫٠٨، ٩٧٫٤٤±١٥٫١١سم، ١٠٩٫٢٢±١٧٫٣٩سم على التوالي. وأظهرت النتائج أيضا زيادة ملحوظة في ضغط الدم الانبساطي والمتوسط لمرضى متلازمة المبيض المتعدد التكيسات بالمقارنة بمجموعة التحكم. الاستنتاجات: أظهرت الدراسة مستويات عالية لمؤشر كتلة الجسم، وتوزيع الدهون بالجسم، ومحيط الخصر والورك، وضغط الدم الانبساطي والمتوسط، والدهون بالأحشاء، وزيادة غير متكافئة في مستوى الدهون الشاملة وتوزيعه

Proline derived guanidine catalysts forge extensive H-bonded architectures: a solution and solid state study

© 2020 The Authors. Published by Royal Society of Chemistry. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1039/C9RA07508AThe preparation of a range of amino acid derived guanidine organocatalysts is reported together with their application to the Michael addition of 2-hydroxy-1,4-napthoquinone to b-nitrostyrene, achieving a maximum ee of 56%. Some insight into the mechanism was sought by using X-ray crystallography and a detailed study of the intra- and intermolecular hydrogen bonding is reported.Published onlin

Uncovering Prospective Role and Applications of Existing and New Nutraceuticals from Bacterial, Fungal, Algal and Cyanobacterial, and Plant Sources

Nutraceuticals are a category of products more often associated with food but having pharmaceuticals property and characteristics. However, there is still no internationally accepted concept of these food‐pharmaceutical properties, and their interpretation can differ from country to country. Nutraceuticals are used as part of dietary supplements in most countries. They can be phytochemicals which are biologically active and have health benefits. These can be supplied as a supplement and/or as a functional food to the customer. For human health and longevity, these materials are likely to play a vital role. Consumption of these items is typical without a therapeutic prescription and/or supervision by the vast majority of the public. The development of nutraceuticals can be achieved through many bioresources and organisms. This review article will discuss the current research on nutraceuticals from different biological sources and their potential use as an agent for improving human health and well‐being, as well as the gaps and future perspective of research related to nutraceutical development