SysMART Indoor Services: A System of Smart and Connected Supermarkets

Smart gadgets are being embedded almost in every aspect of our lives. From smart cities to smart watches, modern industries are increasingly supporting the Internet of Things (IoT). SysMART aims at making supermarkets smart, productive, and with a touch of modern lifestyle. While similar implementations to improve the shopping experience exists, they tend mainly to replace the shopping activity at the store with online shopping. Although online shopping reduces time and effort, it deprives customers from enjoying the experience. SysMART relies on cutting-edge devices and technology to simplify and reduce the time required during grocery shopping inside the supermarket. In addition, the system monitors and maintains perishable products in good condition suitable for human consumption. SysMART is built using state-of-the-art technologies that support rapid prototyping and precision data acquisition. The selected development environment is LabVIEW with its world-class interfacing libraries. The paper comprises a detailed system description, development strategy, interface design, software engineering, and a thorough analysis and evaluation.Comment: 7 pages, 11 figur

Flexural Behavior of Basalt Fiber Reinforced Concrete Beams with Recycled Concrete Coarse Aggregates

The State of Qatar has experienced tremendous economic development in the last decades. As a result, massive quantities of building materials have been used to accommodate the great pace in construction. However, Qatar suffers from the shortage of natural resources needed for concrete production. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the feasibility of reusing construction and demolition waste as aggregates to maintain the concrete construction industry. Recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) has been produced in Qatar since 2009 as a result of the extensive construction and demolition activities. The purpose of this study is to study the effect of using RCA combined with a newly developed basalt macro fibers (BMF) on the flexural behavior and ultimate capacity of beams with different replacement ratios of RCA experimentally and analytically. A total of 16 concrete beam specimens were flexural tested until failure. The parameters investigated included the RCA replacement ratio (0%, 25%, 50%, and 100%) and the BMF volume fraction (0%, 0.5%, 1% and 1.5%). The deflection, concrete compressive strain and steel tensile strain at mid-span of the tested beams were measured and recorded. The testing results of the specimens were compared to the control beam specimen with natural aggregate (Gabbro), without BMF. In addition, a critical comparison study was carried out between the experimental findings of this research and the analytical formulations based on the existing code-based analytical models. The test results showed an improvement in the flexural capacity of the beam specimens with the addition of BMF, while there are no remarkable effects of RCA on flexural strength of the tested beams. Test results clearly showed that both RCA and BMF in Qatar can be used as sustainable and eco-friendly alternative materials in concrete structures.This work was funded by Qatar University; their financial support through the internal research grant QUUS-CENG-SPR14/15-2

Isolation and Identification of Salmonella from Chickens Prepared for Slaughter in the State of Kuwait

Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis throughout the world, is frequently linked to food-borne illness. Products made from poultry are important sources of transmission. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the incidence of Salmonella species in Kuwait's broiler flocks and determine which antibiotics are the most effective against the various Salmonella serotypes. A total of 2064 chicken samples (liver, intestine, and caecum) were collected from dead carcasses raised ten broiler flocks, between January and December 2017. The results revealed that S. enterica were found in the chicken older than 7 days old even though they did not have any signs of a clinical illness. It means that S. enterica can enter the human food supply through slaughterhouses and the contaminate carcasses. There was significant difference between the rate of Salmonella isolation and seasons, where the winter season had higher rate of Salmonella isolation compared to the other seasons. Salmonella Enteritidis and S. typhimurium were the most frequently isolated serotypes. Antimicrobials susceptibility testing showed that 88% to 60% of the isolates were sensitive to Amoxicillin Clavulanic acid. However, most of Salmonella isolates revealed high resistance to Cefotaxime, Ampicillin, Amoxicillin, Sulfamethoxazole trimethoprim followed by Gentamycin, Spiramycin, Doxycycline and Chloramphenicol. The study highlights the implementation of unique biosecurity and biocontrol strategies for Salmonella management that can prevent the negative effects of antibiotics and can make the environment and foods derived from animals safe

Phenotypic and genotypic characterizations of Escherichia coli Isolated from veal meats and butchers’ shops in Mosul city, Iraq

Foodborne pathogens bacteria can cause various diseases and death worldwide. Escherichia coli is the most crucial microorganism transmitted through meat and its products. Pathogenic E. coli is one of the major groups that can produce the Stx1 and Stx2 toxins. The present study aims to isolate and identify the E. coli bacteria using the classical methods, and to detect the specific-species uidA gene, and Stx1 and Stx2 genes using the PCR assay. Five hundred four samples were collected randomly from meats and different parts of a butcher shops from various regions of the right and the left sides of Mosul city. The results found that the prevalence rate of E. coli in this study was 27.4% (138/504). Additionally, the prevalence rate of E. coli was higher in meat, 41.7% (35/84). At the same time, the prevalence rate of E. coli was lower in hook 16.7% (14/84). Additionally, the prevalence rate of E. coli in meats and butcher shops on the right and left sides of Mosul city was 31.9% (65/204) and 24.3% (73/300), respectively. Furthermore, all E. coli isolates possessed the specific species uidA gene. 30/138 (21.7%) of E. coli isolates possess the Stx1 gene, while 17/138 (12.3%) of E. coli isolates have the Stx2 gene. Finally, most E. coli isolates possessed the Stx1 and Stx2 genes 91/138 (66%)

Writer Identification on Multi-Script Handwritten Using Optimum Features

Recognizing the writer of a text that has been handwritten is a very intriguing research problem in the field of document analysis and recognition. This study tables an automatic way of recognizing the writer from handwritten samples. Even though much has been done in previous researches that have presented other various methods, it is still clear that the field has a room for improvement. This particular method uses Optimum Features based writer characterization. Here, each of the samples written is grouped according to their set of features that are acquired from a computed codebook. This proposed codebook is different from the others which segment the samples into graphemes by fragmenting a certain part of the writing known as ending strokes. The proposed technique is employed to a locate and extract the handwriting fragments from ending zone and then grouped the similar fragments to generate a new cluster known as ending cluster. The cluster that comes in handy in the process of coming up with the ending codebook through picking out the center of the same fragment group. The process is finalized by evaluating the proposed method on four datasets of the various languages. This method being proposed had an impressive 97.12% identification rate which is rates the best result on the ICFHR dataset

Application of the ANOVA method in the optimization of a thermoelectric cooler-based dehumidification system

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).In recent studies, Thermo-Electric Coolers (TEC) have been utilized for dehumidification purposes, which is mainly based on the extraction of moisture from humid atmospheric air. The reviewed literature showed that the rate of water collection from the TEC-based system can be affected by various parameters such as the module’s input voltage, the heat sink orientation, and tilt angles. In this research, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to examine the significance of these factors and their interaction within the system on the TEC-based dehumidification system. Four levels were investigated for both, the Peltier’s input voltage and the rotation angle, and three levels for the tilt angle. This study indicated the significance of the studied factors and their interactions within the dehumidification system along with performing an overall numerical optimization. The experiments were conducted under the same working conditions in an enclosed environment to minimize errors. According to the overall numerical optimization, which was validated experimentally, the optimum system performance was predicted to be obtained at approximately 6.8V Peltier input volt, 65° rotation angle, and 90° tilt angles, with predicted optimum productivities of 0.32278 L/kWh and 13.03 mL/hr. For the same set of parameters, the variation between the experiment and the numerical optimization was less than 4%. The experiments show that when optimizing water collection rates for thermoelectric cooling heat sinks​ under high humidity conditions, the orientation of the heat sink should be considered.Peer reviewe

Thermohydraulic analysis of covalent and noncovalent functionalized graphene nanoplatelets in circular tube fitted with turbulators

© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Covalent and non-covalent nanofluids were tested inside a circular tube fitted with twisted tape inserts with 45° and 90° helix angles. Reynolds number was 7000 ≤ Re ≤ 17,000, and thermophysical properties were assessed at 308 K. The physical model was solved numerically via a two-equation eddy-viscosity model (SST k-omega turbulence). GNPs-SDBS@DW and GNPs-COOH@DW nanofluids with concentrations (0.025 wt.%, 0.05 wt.% and 0.1 wt.%) were considered in this study. The twisted pipes' walls were heated under a constant temperature of 330 K. The current study considered six parameters: outlet temperature, heat transfer coefficient, average Nusselt number, friction factor, pressure loss, and performance evaluation criterion. In both cases (45° and 90° helix angles), GNPs-SDBS@DW nanofluids presented higher thermohydraulic performance than GNPs-COOH@DW and increased by increasing the mass fractions such as 1.17 for 0.025 wt.%, 1.19 for 0.05 wt.% and 1.26 for 0.1 wt.%. Meanwhile, in both cases (45° and 90° helix angles), the value of thermohydraulic performance using GNPs-COOH@DW was 1.02 for 0.025 wt.%, 1.05 for 0.05 wt.% and 1.02 for 0.1 wt.%.Peer reviewe

Assessment of the success rate of endodontically treated patients attending outpatient polyclinic

Objectives: The aim of this study is to determine the success rate of the endodontically treated teeth in patients attending the Polyclinic, Kulliyyah of Dentistry, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), from 2012 to 2015. Materials and Methods: A retrospective study involved endodontically treated teeth of patients attending the Polyclinic, Kulliyyah of Dentistry, IIUM, from 2012 to 2015. Clinical and radiographic data were recorded and classified as successful or failed, and further analyzed by Fisher’s exact test to measure the correlation between the variables using SPSS software version 16.0. Kappa test was used to measure the overall relationship between clinical and radiographic findings. Results: A total of sixty teeth were evaluated clinically and radiographically, the overall success rate was 85% (n = 51). Correlation between the variables showed nonsignificant (P > 0.05) in the success rate among age, gender, and race, upper and lower arches and between anterior and posterior teeth at the time of treatment. At postendodontic fixed restorations, the variables showed statistically significant relationship with the success rate (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Patients with no signs and symptoms and with no radiographical changes at the the time of clinical examination ,showed the highest percentage of success rate (85%) of postendodontic fixed restorations. Age, gender, and race have no significant relations with the success rate of endodontically treated teeth

Incidence and clinical outcomes of nosocomial infections in patients presenting with STEMI complicated by cardiogenic shock in the United States

OBJECTIVES: This study addresses the incidence, trends, and impact of nosocomial infections (NI) on the outcomes of patients admitted with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and cardiogenic shock (STEMI-CS) using the United States National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database. METHODS: We analyzed data from 105,184 STEMI-CS patients using the NIS database from the years 2005-2014. NI was defined as infections of more than or equal to three days, comprising of central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI), urinary tract infection (UTI), hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP), Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), bacteremia, and skin related infections. Outcomes of the impact of NI on STEMI-CS included in-hospital mortality, length of hospital stay (LOS) and costs. Significant associations of NI in patients admitted with STEMI-CS were also identified. RESULTS: Overall, 19.1% (20,137) of patients admitted with STEMI-CS developed NI. Trends of NI have decreased from 2005-2014. The most common NI were UTI (9.2%), followed by HAP (6.8%), CLABSI (1.5%), bacteremia (1.5%), skin related infections (1.5%), and CDI (1.3%). The strongest association of developing a NI was increasing LOS (7-9 days; OR: 1.99; 95% CI: 1.75-2.26; \u3e9 days; OR: 4.51; 95% CI: 4.04-5.04 compared to 4-6 days as reference). Increased mortality risk among patients with NI was significant, especially those with sepsis-associated NI compared to those without sepsis (OR: 2.95; 95% CI: 2.72-3.20). Patients with NI were found to be associated with significantly longer LOS and higher costs, irrespective of percutaneous mechanical circulatory support placement. CONCLUSIONS: NI were common among patients with STEMI-CS. Those who developed NI were at a greater risk of in-hospital mortality, increased LOS and costs