Optimal profile limits for maternal mortality rate (MMR) in South Sudan

© 2018 The Author(s). Background: Reducing Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) is considered by the international community as one of the eight Millennium Development Goals. Based on previous studies, Skilled Assistant at Birth (SAB), General Fertility Rate (GFR) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) have been identified as the most significant predictors of MMR in South Sudan. This paper aims for the first time to develop profile limits for the MMR in terms of significant predictors SAB, GFR, and GDP. The paper provides the optimal values of SAB and GFR for a given MMR level. Methods: Logarithmic multi- regression model is used to model MMR in terms of SAB, GFR and GDP. Data from 1986 to 2015 collected from Juba Teaching Hospital was used to develop the model for predicting MMR. Optimization procedures are deployed to attain the optimal level of SAB and GFR for a given MMR level. MATLAB was used to conduct the optimization procedures. The optimized values were then used to develop lower and upper profile limits for yearly MMR, SAB and GFR. Results: The statistical analysis shows that increasing SAB by 1.22% per year would decrease MMR by 1.4% (95% CI (0.4-5%)) decreasing GFR by 1.22% per year would decrease MMR by 1.8% (95% CI (0.5-6.26%)). The results also indicate that to achieve the UN recommended MMR levels of minimum 70 and maximum 140 by 2030, the government should simultaneously reduce GFR from the current value of 175 to 97 and 75, increase SAB from the current value of 19 to 50 and 76. Conclusions: This study for the first time has deployed optimization procedures to develop lower and upper yearly profile limits for maternal mortality rate targeting the UN recommended lower and upper MMR levels by 2030. The MMR profile limits have been accompanied by the profile limits for optimal yearly values of SAB and GFR levels. Having the optimal level of predictors that significantly influence the maternal mortality rate can effectively aid the government and international or

Video Fragmentation and Reverse Search on the Web

This chapter is focused on methods and tools for video fragmentation and reverse search on the web. These technologies can assist journalists when they are dealing with fake news—which nowadays are being rapidly spread via social media platforms—that rely on the reuse of a previously posted video from a past event with the intention to mislead the viewers about a contemporary event. The fragmentation of a video into visually and temporally coherent parts and the extraction of a representative keyframe for each defined fragment enables the provision of a complete and concise keyframe-based summary of the video. Contrary to straightforward approaches that sample video frames with a constant step, the generated summary through video fragmentation and keyframe extraction is considerably more effective for discovering the video content and performing a fragment-level search for the video on the web. This chapter starts by explaining the nature and characteristics of this type of reuse-based fake news in its introductory part, and continues with an overview of existing approaches for temporal fragmentation of single-shot videos into sub-shots (the most appropriate level of temporal granularity when dealing with user-generated videos) and tools for performing reverse search of a video on the web. Subsequently, it describes two state-of-the-art methods for video sub-shot fragmentation—one relying on the assessment of the visual coherence over sequences of frames, and another one that is based on the identification of camera activity during the video recording—and presents the InVID web application that enables the fine-grained (at the fragment-level) reverse search for near-duplicates of a given video on the web. In the sequel, the chapter reports the findings of a series of experimental evaluations regarding the efficiency of the above-mentioned technologies, which indicate their competence to generate a concise and complete keyframe-based summary of the video content, and the use of this fragment-level representation for fine-grained reverse video search on the web. Finally, it draws conclusions about the effectiveness of the presented technologies and outlines our future plans for further advancing them

Assessment of the physical characteristics and stormwater effluent quality of permeable pavement systems containing recycled materials

This paper evaluates the physical characteristics of two recycled materials and the pollutant removal efficiencies of four 0.2 m2 tanked permeable pavement rigs in the laboratory, that contained either natural aggregates or these recycled materials in the sub-base. The selected recycled materials were Crushed Concrete Aggregates (CCA) and Cement-bounded Expanded Polystyrene beads (C-EPS) whilst the natural aggregates were basalt and quartzite. Natural stormwater runoff was used as influent. Effluent was collected for analysis after 7–10 mins of discharge. Influent and effluent were analysed for pH, Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Electroconductivity (EC), turbidity, Total Suspended Solids (TSS), Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Nitrate-Nitrogen (NO3-N), reactive phosphorous (PO43-) and sulphates (SO42-). Both CCA and C-EPS had suitable physical properties for use as sub-base materials in PPS. However, C-EPS is recommended for use in pavements with light to no traffic because of its relatively low compressive strength. In terms of pollutant removal efficiencies, significant differences (p 0.05) were found with respect to TSS, turbidity, COD and NO3-N. Effluent from rigs containing CCA and C-EPS saw significant increases in pH, EC and TDS measurements whilst improvements in DO, TSS, turbidity, COD, PO43- and SO42- were observed. All mean values except pH were, however, within the Maximum Permissible Levels (MPLs) of water pollutants discharged into the environment according to the Trinidad and Tobago Environmental Management Authority (EMA) or the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). In this regard, the CCA and C-EPS performed satisfactorily as sub-base materials in the permeable pavement rigs. It is noted, however, that further analysis is recommended through leaching tests on the recycled materials

A region-dependent image matching method for image and video annotation

In this paper we propose an image matching approach that selects the method of matching for each region in the image based on the region properties. This method can be used to find images similar to a query image from a database, which is useful for automatic image and video annotation. In this approach, each image is first divided into large homogeneous areas, identified as "texture areas", and non-texture areas. Local descriptors are then used to match the keypoints in the non-texture areas, while texture regions are matched based on low level visual features. Experimental results prove that while exclusion of texture areas from local descriptor matching increases the efficiency of the whole process, utilization of appropriate measures for different regions can also increase the overall performance. © 2011 IEEE