A study of secondary schools' costs and indicators in the Sudan

Comprehensive educational planning has been adopted in Sudan since independence in 1956. The inadequate projection of resources for the plans' implementation has bedevilled the full achievement of their targets and led to frustration with the planning process. Relevant cost data for unit costs analysis, which gives a quantified framework within which it is possible to estimate in advance the financial and economic implications of structural changes and educational programmes and projects at the micro or macro levels and hence lead to more informed decision-making, are not available on a systematic basis at any level of aggregation. In the last decade as the adverse economic conditions have continued and financial stringency tightened, the need for reliable costs analysis based on more accurate relevant costs data has become even more urgent. This thesis is an attempt in this direction. It is based on a representative random sample of 48 academic secondary schools out of 203 public schools in northern Sudan, in the academic year 1988/89. It analyses the unit expenditure of secondary schools and its constituents, identifies the factors that influence their variations among educational institutions and between regions, and examines the utilization of resources at the school level. The per pupil costs, components and cost indicators are investigated by size, location, type and kind of school as well as the teacher profile of academic qualifications, types of training and levels of experience; per boarder costs are discussed separately. Pearson correlation has been employed to estimate the type and strength of the relationships between the unit costs and their constituents on one hand and the cost indicators on the other. The sample data are tested for economies of size and the results of the final public examination, the Sudan School Certificate, are related to the size of school and to per pupil expenditure and other cost indicators using linear and multiple regression, analysis

The Active Bundle Scheme for Protecting Electronic Medical Records

Adoption of the electronic medical records (EMRs) or electronic health records (EHRs) by healthcare providers will improve the quality of the American healthcare and reduce the annual bill. However, it will also increase privacy threats due to easier dissemination of EMRs/EHRs than “paper” medical records. Current privacy protection solutions for patient EMRs/EHRs have two main limitations: (1) they require an extensive exchange of messages between computer systems of healthcare providers; and (2) they depend only on data encryption. In this position paper, we propose a solution that provides protection for the patients\u27 EMRs/EHRs disseminated among different authorized healthcare provider systems. This is achieved through the use of the construct named active bundles (ABs). ABs keep EMRs/EHRs as sensitive data, include metadata containing privacy policies, and encompass a virtual machine that enforces privacy policies

Real Time Suppression of Howling Noise in Public Address System

AbstractHowling noise is a common phenomenon in a public address system. It is built up due to the acoustic coupling between the speaker system and the microphone when it creates a positive feedback. Real time implementation of howling noise detection and suppression was implemented using TMS320C6713 DSK starter kit. The whole implementation was done based on direct memory access (DMA) feature of the DSP processor. The method uses the properties of howling noise for efficient detection and has the advantage of suppressing the noise. Howling detection is performed based on spectral flatness measure (SFM) of each input speech frame. For frames without howling, the input is passed as such to the output. Howling suppression is performed by making output samples as zero if the presence of howling noise is detected

PREPARATION, RELEASE, RHEOLOGY AND STABILITY OF PIROXICAM EMULGEL

Objective: The purpose of this work was to develop and optimize the emulgel formulation of piroxicam with two types of gelling agent chitosan and xanthan gum. The release profiles of prepared formulas were investigated. In addition, the rheology and stability of the best formula were investigated.Methods: Emulsified piroxicam was prepared to use oleic acid, tween 80 and PG with a ratio (3:10:10). In xanthan based emulgel, the xanthan gum (1% and 1.5%) was spread as powder on emulsified piroxicam with stirring until emulgel was formed. In chitosan-based emgels, Chitosan gel was added to emulsified piroxicam and stirring until the Emulgel was constructed. Chitosan gels were prepared by incorporating different concentration, 2%, 3%, 6% w/v of chitosan in 1% v/v of glacial acetic acid in distilled water. In vitro release of piroxicam from different formulas was conducted in 300 ml phosphate buffer pH 7.4, at a speed of 120 rpm at 37±2°C. The amount of the drug released from the bases was determined spectrophotometrically at 504 nm. Viscometer Myr. Vr 3000 was used to measure the viscosity of the prepared formulas. The prepared formulas were stored in well-stoppered polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic containers in the dark for 6 mo at room temperature. They were checked for drug content, viscosity, and pH change bimonthly throughout the period.Results: The results showed that the dissolution increases significantly with increasing the concentration of xanthan. Chitosan has significant synergized the enhancements of xanthan gum in the release. Rheological behaviour of the selected formula containing chitosan (2%) and xanthan gum (1.5) had shear thinning in nature showing a decrease in viscosity at the increasing shear rates. The selected formula was stable 6 mo at 40˚C/75% RH and 4˚C. The formula found was yellow viscous creamy preparation with the smooth homogenous appearance. The pH and the drug release was also found to be stable under storage conditions.Conclusion: Piroxicam release can be improved by preparing emulgel which stable and have good rheologic properties

Actividad antifúngica de algunos extractos de plantas medicinales contra algunos aislados de hongos.

Introduction: Fungi live everywhere in the environment, most of them are not dangerous, but some types of fungi can be harmful to humanhealth. The medicinal plants contain many antimicrobial components that make them recently used as powerful drugs. The aim of the present investigation was to examine the antifungal potential and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of three plant extract: Aloe vera gel, cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum) and turmeric (Curcuma longa) against three fungal species: Aspergillus niger, Candida albicans and Fusarium oxysporum. Materials and Methods: The plant materials were extracted using solvents DMSO and ethanol and then were tested against the selected fungal isolates using well diffusion method. Results and Discussion: Antifungal activity of Aloe vera against Aspergillus niger showed MIC value of 25% whereas for Candida albicans and Fusarium oxysporum the MIC obtained was 100%. Both cinnamon and turmeric showed maximum potency against Aspergillus niger, Candida albicans and Fusarium oxysporum at highest MIC value of 100 %. The degree of inhibition increased correspondingly with increasing concentrations of the plant extracts. Conclusions: the tested plant extracts have an antifungal activity and could be used as alternative drugs

Real-time visual and EMG signals recognition to control dexterous prosthetic hand based on deep learning and machine learning

The revolution in prosthetic hands allows the evolution of a new generation of prostheses that increase artificial intelligence to control an adept hand. A suitable gripping and grasping action for different shapes of the objects is currently a challenging task of prosthetic hand design. The most artificial hands are based on electromyography signals. A novel approach has been proposed in this work using deep learning classification method for assorting items into seven gripping patterns based on EMG and image recognition. Hence, this approach conducting two scenarios; The first scenario is recording the EMG signals for five healthy participants for the basic hand movement (cylindrical, tip, spherical, lateral, palmar, and hook). Then three time-domain (standard deviation, mean absolute value, and the principal component analysis) are used to extract the EMG signal features. After that, the SVM is used to find the proper classes and achieve an accuracy that reaches 89%. The second scenario is collecting the 723 RGB images for 24 items and sorting them into seven classes, i.e., cylindrical, tip, spherical, lateral, palmar, hook, and full hand. The GoogLeNet algorithm is used for training based on 144 layers; these layers include the convolutional layers, ReLU activation layers, max-pooling layers, drop-out layers, and a softmax layer. The GoogLeNet achieves high training accuracy reaches 99%. Finally, the system is tested, and the experiments showed that the proposed visual hand based on the myoelectric control method (Vision-EMG) could significantly give recognition accuracy reaches 95%

Hydrophobic profiles of the tail anchors in SLMAP dictate subcellular targeting

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Tail anchored (TA) membrane proteins target subcellular structures via a C-terminal transmembrane domain and serve prominent roles in membrane fusion and vesicle transport. Sarcolemmal Membrane Associated Protein (SLMAP) possesses two alternatively spliced tail anchors (TA1 or TA2) but their specificity of subcellular targeting remains unknown.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>TA1 or TA2 can direct SLMAP to reticular structures including the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), whilst TA2 directs SLMAP additionally to the mitochondria. Despite the general structural similarity of SLMAP to other vesicle trafficking proteins, we found no evidence for its localization with the vesicle transport machinery or a role in vesicle transport. The predicted transmembrane region of TA2 is flanked on either side by a positively charged amino acid and is itself less hydrophobic than the transmembrane helix present in TA1. Substitution of the positively charged amino acids, in the regions flanking the transmembrane helix of TA2, with leucine did not alter its subcellular targeting. The targeting of SLMAP to the mitochondria was dependent on the hydrophobic nature of TA2 since targeting of SLMAP-TA2 was prevented by the substitution of leucine (L) for moderately hydrophobic amino acid residues within the transmembrane region. The SLMAP-TA2-4L mutant had a hydrophobic profile that was comparable to that of SLMAP-TA1 and had identical targeting properties to SLMAP-TA1.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Thus the overall hydrophobicity of the two alternatively spliced TAs in SLMAP determines its subcellular targeting and TA2 predominantly directs SLMAP to the mitochondira where it may serve roles in the function of this organelle.</p