Evaluating tools to support a new practical classification of diabetes: excellent control may represent misdiagnosis and omission from disease registers is associated with worse control.

To conduct a service evaluation of usability and utility on-line clinical audit tools developed as part of a UK Classification of Diabetes project to improve the categorisation and ultimately management of diabetes

Time-dependent quantum transport in a resonant tunnel junction coupled to a nanomechanical oscillator

We present a theoretical study of time-dependent quantum transport in a resonant tunnel junction coupled to a nanomechanical oscillator within the non-equilibrium Green's function technique. An arbitrary voltage is applied to the tunnel junction and electrons in the leads are considered to be at zero temperature. The transient and the steady state behavior of the system is considered here in order to explore the quantum dynamics of the oscillator as a function of time. The properties of the phonon distribution of the nanomechnical oscillator strongly coupled to the electrons on the dot are investigated using a non-perturbative approach. We consider both the energy transferred from the electrons to the oscillator and the Fano factor as a function of time. We discuss the quantum dynamics of the nanomechanical oscillator in terms of pure and mixed states. We have found a significant difference between a quantum and a classical oscillator. In particular, the energy of a classical oscillator will always be dissipated by the electrons whereas the quantum oscillator remains in an excited state. This will provide useful insight for the design of experiments aimed at studying the quantum behavior of an oscillator.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figure

Peningkatan Kemampuan Siswa Membaca Nyaring Melalui Teknik Modeling Di Kelas III SD Terpencil Gondalon

Penelitian ini berjudul Peningkatan Kemampuan Siswa Membaca Nyaring Melalui Teknik Modeling di Kelas III SD Terpencil Gondalon. Dengan uraian permasalahan yaitu apakah dengan menggunakan tehnik modeling dapat meningkatkan kemampuan siswa kelas III membaca nyaring melalui teknik modeling. Tujuan dari penelitian ini yaitu untuk meningkatkan kemampuan siswa dalam membaca nyaring melalui teknik modeling. Penelitian ini merupakan jenis penelitian tindakan kelas (PTK), yang dilaksanakan 2 siklus yang terdiri atas perencanaan, pelaksanaan tindakan, observasi, dan refleksi. Data yang diambil adalah data kualitatif yaitu data hasil observasi diperoleh dari hasil pengamatan situasi pembelajaran. Serta data kuantitatif yaitu data hasil belajar diperoleh dari hasil tes. Hasil penelitian siklus I diperoleh tuntas individu 4 orang dan tidak tuntas individu 6 orang dengan persentase daya serap klasikal 58% dan ketuntasan belajar klasikal 40%. Hasil belajar siklus II seluruh siswa dinyatakan tuntas yaitu 100% dengan persentase daya serap klasikal 87,6%. Dengan demikian dapat dikatakan bahwa penggunaan teknik modeling dapat meningkatkan kemampuan siswa membaca nyaring siswa kelas III SD Terpencil Gondalon

Aplikasi Principal Component Regresion Untuk Analisis Qsar Senyawa Antioksidan Turunan Flavon/ Flavonol Menggunakan Deskriptor Elektronik Hasil Perhitungan Metode Am1

Telah dilakukan aplikasi teknik Principal Component Regresion (PCR) untuk analisis hubungan kuantitatif antara struktur elektronik dan aktivitas (QSAR) antioksidan dari senyawa turunan flavon / flavonol. Data aktivitas merupakan data sekunder yang diperoleh dari literatur dan masing-masing dinyatakan sebagai % aktivitas. Representasi struktur kimia berupa deskriptor elektronik meliputi muatan bersih atom dan momen dipol yang diperoleh dari hasil perhitungan metode semiempirik AM1. Evaluasi QSAR yang dilakuakan berupa analisis tahapan Principal Component Analysis (PCA) untuk mengkonversi variabel laten yang dilanjutkan dengan analisis regresi multilinier antara aktivitas dan variabel laten. Hasil penelitian ditunjukkan dengan model persamaan QSAR terpilih dengan menggunakan 4 komponen utama yang dipresentasikan dalam persamaan :%A = 212.2 + (7.196) T1-(20.593)T2-(192.906)T3+(242.706)T4; n=18; 2=0.822 Fhitung/Ftabel=1,397. Kata Kunci: QSAR, Principal Component Analysis, molecular modelin

Epidemiological Characteristics of Poliomyelitis During the 21st Century (2000-2013)

Poliovirus is the pathogenic agent of paralytic poliomyelitis that belongs to the picornaviridae family. Poliomyelitis has an extended history dating over to the Egyptian eighteenth dynasty. It was recognized as distinct disease in the late nineteenth century when the world was ravaged by large number of outbreaks and epidemics in many countries. Paralytic Polio, the rarest but the most severe form of the disease, is characterized by acute flaccid paralysis of any or rarely both of the limbs. Increasing epidemics during the late 19th and 20th centuries lead to the initiation of a worldwide global effort for polio eradication in 1988, super headed by WHO and various other organizations. The launch of Global Polio Eradication Initiative together with the introduction of two polio vaccines resulted in 99% reduction of wild poliovirus cases worldwide while the total number of polio-endemic countries dropped from 24 countries in the year 2000 to only three countries in 2012; Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. This review will focus on the general biology of poliovirus, some historic and geographic epidemiological aspects of poliomyelitis eradication during the year 2000-2012 and also on the major failing factors associated with the efficiency of the vaccines to eradicate polio in Pakistan

Privacy preserving encrypted phonetic search of speech data

This paper presents a strategy for enabling speech recognition to be performed in the cloud whilst preserving the privacy of users. The approach advocates a demarcation of responsibilities between the client and server-side components for performing the speech recognition task. On the client-side resides the acoustic model, which symbolically encodes the audio and encrypts the data before uploading to the server. The server-side then employs searchable encryption to enable the phonetic search of the speech content. Some preliminary results for speech encoding and searchable encryption are presented

An Assessment of Risk of Iodine Deficiency Among Pregnant Women in Sarawak, Malaysia

Previous findings from a state-wide Iodine Deficiency Disorders (IDD) study among pregnant women (PW) in Sarawak indicated that PW are at risk of IDD and further assessment is needed. This paper describes the methodology used in conducting this study for an assessment of risk of iodine deficiency among pregnant women in Sarawak, Malaysia. A total of 30 maternal child health care clinics (MCHCs) were selected using probability proportional to population size (PPS) sampling technique. The PW sample size was calculated based on 95% confidence interval (CI), relative precision of 5%, design effect of 2, anticipated IDD prevalence of 65.0% and non-response rate of 20%. Thus, the total sample size required was 750 (25 respondents per selected MCHC). The WHO Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) surveys approach was used to randomly select the first respondent and subsequent respondents were chosen until the required number of PW was met. The required data were obtained through: face-to-face interviews (socio-demographic and food frequency questionnaire), clinical assessments (thyroid size, and hyper/hypothyroidism) and biochemical analysis (urine and blood serum). A total of 677 PW responded in the study with a response rate of 90.2%. Majority of the PW were at second gravida, aged 25-29 years old and of Malay ethnicity. The methodology used in this study was based on International guidelines which may provide state's estimates. All the necessary steps were taken into consideration to ensure valid and reliable findings on current iodine status among PW

Rearrangement of Coordinate Selection for Triangle Features Improvement in Digit Recognition

Triangle geometry feature demonstrated as useful properties in classifying the image. This feature has been implemented in numerous recognition field such as biometric area, security area, medical area, geological area, inspection area and digit recognition area. This study is focusing on improving triangle features in digit recognition. Commonly, triangle features are explored by determining three points of triangle shape which represent as A, B and C to extract useful features in digit recognition. There is possibilities triangle shape cannot be formed when chosen coordinate are in line. Thus, a prior study has proposed an improvement on triangle selection point technique by determining the position of coordinate A, B and C use gradient value to identify the triangle shape can be modelled or vice versa. The suggested improvement is based on the dominant distribution which only covers certain areas of an image. Hence, a method named Triangle Point using Three Block (Tp3B) was proposed in this study. The proposed method proposes the arrangement of selection coordinate point based on three different blocks which where all coordinates points of an image were covered. Experiments have developed over image digit dataset of IFCHDB, HODA, MNIST and BANGLA which contains testing and train data of each. Features classification accuracy tested using supervised machine learning (SML) which is Support Vector Machine (SVM). Experimental results show, the proposed technique gives a promising result for dataset HODA and MNIST

Seasonal and spatial variability of selected surface water quality parameters in Setiu Wetland, Terengganu, Malaysia

This paper presents the results for surface water quality parameters measured in the Setiu Wetland, on the east coast of Malaysia, which feeds into the southern part of the South China Sea. There are no previous studies dealing with the seasonal and spatial variation of water quality in this area, despite numerous anthropogenic inputs into this ecologically and economically important wetland. The parameters measured were salinity, temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, biological oxygen demand (BOD) and total suspended solids (TSS). These parameters were sampled monthly from October 2009 to September 2010, during both the wet and dry seasons, at ten sampling stations distributed throughout the area. The physical water quality parameters were measured in situ whilst TSS and BOD were determined using the standard methods. A deterioration of water quality in the Setiu Wetland was observed in areas near agriculture and aquaculture activities. This was expected to be as a result of the use of fertilisers, waste from fish farm food and the waste products of aquaculture. The parameters measured showed lower mean values of surface salinity, temperature, DO, pH and TSS during the wet season relative to the dry season. In contrast, the concentration of BOD was high during the wet season and lowest in the dry season. Results obtained from this study clearly showed the surface physical water quality for the Setiu Wetland was highly influenced by anthropogenic activities and seasonal variation. Therefore, both factors must be considered to move towards proper management of this wetland

Coulomb plasmas in outer envelopes of neutron stars

Outer envelopes of neutron stars consist mostly of fully ionized, strongly coupled Coulomb plasmas characterized by typical densities about 10^4-10^{11} g/cc and temperatures about 10^4-10^9 K. Many neutron stars possess magnetic fields about 10^{11}-10^{14} G. Here we briefly review recent theoretical advances which allow one to calculate thermodynamic functions and electron transport coefficients for such plasmas with an accuracy required for theoretical interpretation of observations.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, latex2e using cpp2e.cls (included). Proc. PNP-10 Workshop, Greifswald, Germany, 4-9 Sept. 2000. Accepted for publication in Contrib. Plasma Phys. 41 (2001) no. 2-