A Bi-directional Bi-Lingual Translation Braille-Text System

AbstractVisually impaired people are an integral part of the society. However, their disabilities have made them to have less access to computers, the Internet, and high quality educational software than the people with clear vision. Consequently, they have not been able to improve on their own knowledge, and have significant influence and impact on the economic, commercial, and educational ventures in the society. One way to narrow this widening gap and see a reversal of this trend is to develop a system, within their economic reach, and which will empower them to communicate freely and widely using the Internet or any other information infrastructure. Over time, the Braille system has been used by the visually impaired for communication and contact with the outside world. Translation between one language and another, using the Braille coding system, has been limited, problematic, and in many cases, one-directional.This paper describes an Arabic Braille bi-directional and bi-lingual translation/editor system that does not need expensive equipments. With appropriate rule file for any other languages, this system can be generalized to facilitate communication among literate people regardless of their disabilities (visually impaired or sighted), income, languages, and geographical locations

Arabic Programming Environment

Computer Scienc

Antimicrobial resistance among migrants in Europe: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are rising globally and there is concern that increased migration is contributing to the burden of antibiotic resistance in Europe. However, the effect of migration on the burden of AMR in Europe has not yet been comprehensively examined. Therefore, we did a systematic review and meta-analysis to identify and synthesise data for AMR carriage or infection in migrants to Europe to examine differences in patterns of AMR across migrant groups and in different settings. METHODS: For this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed, and Scopus with no language restrictions from Jan 1, 2000, to Jan 18, 2017, for primary data from observational studies reporting antibacterial resistance in common bacterial pathogens among migrants to 21 European Union-15 and European Economic Area countries. To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to report data on carriage or infection with laboratory-confirmed antibiotic-resistant organisms in migrant populations. We extracted data from eligible studies and assessed quality using piloted, standardised forms. We did not examine drug resistance in tuberculosis and excluded articles solely reporting on this parameter. We also excluded articles in which migrant status was determined by ethnicity, country of birth of participants' parents, or was not defined, and articles in which data were not disaggregated by migrant status. Outcomes were carriage of or infection with antibiotic-resistant organisms. We used random-effects models to calculate the pooled prevalence of each outcome. The study protocol is registered with PROSPERO, number CRD42016043681. FINDINGS: We identified 2274 articles, of which 23 observational studies reporting on antibiotic resistance in 2319 migrants were included. The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or AMR infection in migrants was 25·4% (95% CI 19·1-31·8; I2 =98%), including meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (7·8%, 4·8-10·7; I2 =92%) and antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria (27·2%, 17·6-36·8; I2 =94%). The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or infection was higher in refugees and asylum seekers (33·0%, 18·3-47·6; I2 =98%) than in other migrant groups (6·6%, 1·8-11·3; I2 =92%). The pooled prevalence of antibiotic-resistant organisms was slightly higher in high-migrant community settings (33·1%, 11·1-55·1; I2 =96%) than in migrants in hospitals (24·3%, 16·1-32·6; I2 =98%). We did not find evidence of high rates of transmission of AMR from migrant to host populations. INTERPRETATION: Migrants are exposed to conditions favouring the emergence of drug resistance during transit and in host countries in Europe. Increased antibiotic resistance among refugees and asylum seekers and in high-migrant community settings (such as refugee camps and detention facilities) highlights the need for improved living conditions, access to health care, and initiatives to facilitate detection of and appropriate high-quality treatment for antibiotic-resistant infections during transit and in host countries. Protocols for the prevention and control of infection and for antibiotic surveillance need to be integrated in all aspects of health care, which should be accessible for all migrant groups, and should target determinants of AMR before, during, and after migration. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health Research Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, Imperial College Healthcare Charity, the Wellcome Trust, and UK National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare-associated Infections and Antimictobial Resistance at Imperial College London

Surgical site infection after gastrointestinal surgery in high-income, middle-income, and low-income countries: a prospective, international, multicentre cohort study

Background: Surgical site infection (SSI) is one of the most common infections associated with health care, but its importance as a global health priority is not fully understood. We quantified the burden of SSI after gastrointestinal surgery in countries in all parts of the world. Methods: This international, prospective, multicentre cohort study included consecutive patients undergoing elective or emergency gastrointestinal resection within 2-week time periods at any health-care facility in any country. Countries with participating centres were stratified into high-income, middle-income, and low-income groups according to the UN's Human Development Index (HDI). Data variables from the GlobalSurg 1 study and other studies that have been found to affect the likelihood of SSI were entered into risk adjustment models. The primary outcome measure was the 30-day SSI incidence (defined by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria for superficial and deep incisional SSI). Relationships with explanatory variables were examined using Bayesian multilevel logistic regression models. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT02662231. Findings: Between Jan 4, 2016, and July 31, 2016, 13 265 records were submitted for analysis. 12 539 patients from 343 hospitals in 66 countries were included. 7339 (58·5%) patient were from high-HDI countries (193 hospitals in 30 countries), 3918 (31·2%) patients were from middle-HDI countries (82 hospitals in 18 countries), and 1282 (10·2%) patients were from low-HDI countries (68 hospitals in 18 countries). In total, 1538 (12·3%) patients had SSI within 30 days of surgery. The incidence of SSI varied between countries with high (691 [9·4%] of 7339 patients), middle (549 [14·0%] of 3918 patients), and low (298 [23·2%] of 1282) HDI (p < 0·001). The highest SSI incidence in each HDI group was after dirty surgery (102 [17·8%] of 574 patients in high-HDI countries; 74 [31·4%] of 236 patients in middle-HDI countries; 72 [39·8%] of 181 patients in low-HDI countries). Following risk factor adjustment, patients in low-HDI countries were at greatest risk of SSI (adjusted odds ratio 1·60, 95% credible interval 1·05–2·37; p=0·030). 132 (21·6%) of 610 patients with an SSI and a microbiology culture result had an infection that was resistant to the prophylactic antibiotic used. Resistant infections were detected in 49 (16·6%) of 295 patients in high-HDI countries, in 37 (19·8%) of 187 patients in middle-HDI countries, and in 46 (35·9%) of 128 patients in low-HDI countries (p < 0·001). Interpretation: Countries with a low HDI carry a disproportionately greater burden of SSI than countries with a middle or high HDI and might have higher rates of antibiotic resistance. In view of WHO recommendations on SSI prevention that highlight the absence of high-quality interventional research, urgent, pragmatic, randomised trials based in LMICs are needed to assess measures aiming to reduce this preventable complication

Extracting and Analyzing the Main Tajweed Rules from The Holy Qur'an

The Tajweed (professional recitation) of Al-Qur'an Al-Kareem is considered one of the most honorable sciences, as it has to do with the Book of Allah that we -the Muslims- have to recite. The objective of this research is to automate a system by which to extract the most important Tajweed rules from the Qur'an, as well to provide some kind of detailed analysis and statistics of these rules from whole or part of the Qur'an (be it a Juz' (Section), Surah (Chapter) or verse(s)). This research will serve a large segment of populace who are interested in the science of Tajweed, both the teachers and students as well. This paper covers the classification of Tajweed rules from the programming point of view and the way the program is used to pull out these rules. It also concentrates on ways to create statistics of Tajweed rules along with supporting examples

Extracting and Analyzing the Main Tajweed Rules from The Holy Quran

The Tajweed , professional recitation, of Al-Qur'an Al-Kareem is considered one of the most honorable sciences, as it has to do with the Book of Allah that we —the Muslims — have to recite. The objective of this research is to automate a system by which to extract the most important Tajweed rules from the Qur'an, as well to provide some kind of detailed analysis and statistics of these rules from whole or part of the Qur'an , be it a Jul , Section, , Surah , Chapter, or verse, s, , . This research will serve a large segment of populace who are interested in the science of Tajweed, both the teachers and students as well. This paper covers the classification of Tajweed rules from the programming point of view and the way the program is used to pull out these rules. It also concentrates on ways to create statistics of Tajweed rules along with supporting examples

Lung-RetinaNet: Lung Cancer Detection Using a RetinaNet With Multi-Scale Feature Fusion and Context Module

Lung cancer is one of the terrible diseases in various countries around the globe, and timely detection of the illness is still a challenging process. The oncologists consider the blood test results and CT scans to assess the tumor, which is time-consuming and involves extra human effort. Therefore, an automated system should be developed to efficiently recognize lung tumors and assess their severity to reduce mortality. Although various researchers have proposed lung disease detection systems, the existing techniques still lack significant detection accuracy for early-stage tumors. Thus, this study proposes a novel and efficient lung tumor detector based on a RetinaNet, namely Lung-RetinaNet. A multi-scale feature fusion-based module is introduced to aggregate various network layers, simultaneously increasing the semantic information from the shallow prediction layer. Moreover, a dilated and lightweight algorithm is employed for the context module to combine contextual information with each network stage layer to improve features and effectively localize the tiny tumors. The proposed methodology attained 99.8&#x0025; accuracy, 99.3&#x0025; recall, 99.4&#x0025; precision, 99.5&#x0025; F1-score, and 0.989 Auc. We evaluated our suggested model and matched the performance with state-of-the-art DL-based methods. The outcomes show that our technique provides more substantial results than existing methods

Enhancing the segmentation of Arabic characters using baseline information

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system was present to provide an automatic recognition of large printed documents for archiving or processing which improves the interaction between human and machine in many applications. The proposed system was developed for Arabic language. Arabic language is written cursively and consists of 29 characters each with different shapes. The Arabic OCR (AOCR) system is divided into several steps: image acquisition, preprocessing, segmentation, feature extraction, recognition and post processing. Segmentation step segments the text into lines, then into glyphs and finally into characters. The most important and sensitive step is the character segmentation step which its result may affect the following steps and at the end the recognition rate. This study has concentrated on character segmentation by enhancing an already published algorithm in the literature. As a result, the new algorithm decreases the processing time and avoids the segmentation of descenders such as the letter Ra (ر) and End Ya shapes (ـي، ى، ئ)

FROM WEB 1.0 TO WEB 2.0 AND BEYOND: IS THE WEB BECOMING MORE ACCESSIBLE FOR PEOPLE WITH VISUAL IMPAIRMENTS?

During the past five years, many dramatic changes have occurred on the Web. New services have been announced, new interfaces have been developed and the Web is approaching to be the new platform for many applications. Wikis, RSS feeds, Blogs to name just a few, are dubs of new Web applications (also know as Web 2.0) that sighted people are experimenting and enjoying nowadays. However, the question we want to address is: How these new applications and changes are going to affect on how visually impaired people access them? This paper aims to provide information about the tools, services, projects, and research that are taking place nowadays on the Web and the Semantic Web to make the Web more accessible for visually impaired people. Also, the authors will present a pilot experiment to check the accessibility of some Web 2.0 services. 1