TV white spaces for railway wireless applications

Train-to-ground communication is one of the most crucial features of modern railway systems. The extensive use of emerging wireless technologies helps to achieve the rail industry vision of implementing intelligent trains, having a customised experience for travelling passengers, and running trains closer together. The Global System for Mobile Communications-Railway (GSM-R) is an international wireless communications standard introduced for train-to-ground communications in mainline railways. However, GSM-R currently suffers from severe interference and capacity problems that impede the consideration of this technology for emerging rail applications. The prospect of opportunistic access to an inefficiently utilised frequency spectrum, known as TV White Spaces (TVWS), that exploits desirable railway propagation characteristics is proposed to solve the spectrum scarcity problem. In order to provide full protection for spectrum Primary Users (PUs), The IEEE 802.22 standard sets strict policies for mobile platforms. This research proposes a handover procedure and channel access scheme that maintain seamless connectivity for various railway wireless applications in the mobility-restrictive TVWS. The suitability of the approach is tested through its application in Remote Condition Monitoring (RCM) systems whose telecommunication requirements can tolerate the uncertainty in the TVWS spectrum availability. The method is applicable to other rail applications if special considerations are given to the specific application requirements. Prior knowledge of the train’s trajectory enables the method to pre-select a list channels that last for long distances, which minimises unnecessary control messages overhead. The newly proposed method indicates an improvement of 37.8% in the channel utilisation distance, as the train can have an uninterrupted connection for an average consecutive distance of 1.188 km using the new scheme compared with an average of 0.862 km for the IEEE 802.22 standard. Besides that, for the same data rate, an extra 6.5% of maintenance data can be transmitted using the new approach if compared with the IEEE 802.22 standard under various spectrum availability. The results also reflect 0% probability of channel collision under all spectrum availability, due to the first-come-first-served spectrum access adopted, and 0% probability of overall network blocking at spectrum availability that is (� 30%). Finally, the new method does not cause any interference to the surrounding PUs and enables better transmission power for the spectrum Secondary Users (SUs) that can reach up to 42.2 dBm under different channel availability, which directly improves the overall network throughput

Analytical hierarchy process decision support system (AHP-DSS) for trenchless technology

[abstract not available]https://fount.aucegypt.edu/faculty_book_chapters/1384/thumbnail.jp

Relation of serum visfatin level and uterine artery Doppler to preeclampsia

Background: Preeclampsia (PE) is a significant cause of remarkable fetomaternal morbidity and mortality worldwide. Visfatin is 52 KDa novel adipokine, pre B cell colony enhancing factor (PBEF) which could be used as a biochemical marker predictor or a diagnostic tool for preeclampsia. Trans abdominal pulsed Doppler ultrasound (US) monitor the impedance to blood flow in the uterine arteries in pregnant females and those with preeclampsia. Visfatin has been implicated in the pathogenesis of preeclampsia with a limited contradictory. The aim of our study is to monitor the risky pregnant females through Visfatin level and transabdominal pulsed Doppler of the uterine artery.Methods: Assessment of the serum Visfatin levels in the maternal circulation of preeclamptic pregnant females wether mild or severe, and compared to those in the normal pregnant subjects as control through recruitment of cases of mild PE (n=40), severe PE (n=40), normal pregnant subjects (n=60) in a cross sectional study where the cases were of the patients hospitalized at El Shatby Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the control subjects were of referrals to the outpatient departments. Fasting blood samples were drawn, kept at -20 degree centigrades , enzyme linked immune sorbant assay (ELISA) Test was performed on them to determine the Visfatin level and recorded the uterine arteries pulsatility index through transabdominal doppler ultrasound. Lastly, the data were analysed using (F test) ANOVA statistical method.Results: Amongst the groups, Serum visfatin level was significantly higher in the severe preeclamptic group rather than the normal pregnant group and those with mild preeclampsia (p<0.001). Uterine artery pulsatility index was significantly higher in the severe preeclamptic group rather than the normal pregnant group and those with mild preeclampsia (p<0.001).Conclusions: Severe preeclamptic pregnant females were shown to represent higher circulating visfatin levels as one of the most recent biochemical markers of preeclampsia, higher uterine artery pulsatility index compared to normal pregnant and those with mild preeclamptic groups of women

Chromohysteroscopy after failed intracytoplasmic sperm injection

Background: ICSI is the injection of a single sperm directly into the cytoplasm of the oocyte (ICSI). The failure to achieve pregnancy after ICSI has been studied over many years to reach the possible and preventable causes to avoid another failure. The aim of this study was to assess the value of using Chromohysteroscopy as a part of the work up of cases with one or more failed ICSI. The Ultimate goal is to detect the possible endometrial abnormalities and /or endometritis.Methods: Prospective cohort study was carried out with total of 50 infertile women recruited from infertility clinic in Elshatby Maternity University Hospital, Alexandria University, Egypt. Cases were allocated in 2 groups with 25 cases in each group. The first group included cases that had a failed trial of ICSI. The second group included control cases who were seeking for fertility treatment with no previous history of ICSI or any uterine surgery or anatomical abnormalities. In the postmenstrual period, Chromohysteroscopy was done by the same surgeon and documentation of all findings in the cavity and presence of endometritis.Results: There was a significant increase in the incidence of endometritis among the study group 68% in comparison to 16% in the control group.Conclusions: In this study endometrial dying with methylene blue at hysteroscopy improve the detection of chronic endometritis

Accurate metaheuristic deep convolutional structure for a robust human gait recognition

Gait recognition has become a developing technology in various security, industrial, medical, and military applications. This paper proposed a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) model to authenticate humans via their walking style. The proposed model has been applied to two commonly used standardized datasets, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIA) and Osaka University-Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research (OU-ISIR). After the silhouette images have been isolated from the gait image datasets, their features have been extracted using the proposed deep CNN and the traditional ones, including AlexNet, Inception (GoogleNet), VGGNet, ResNet50, and Xception. The best features were selected using genetic, grey wolf optimizer (GWO), particle swarm optimizer (PSO), and chi-square algorithms. Finally, recognize the selected features using the proposed deep neural network (DNN). Several performance evaluation parameters have been estimated to evaluate the model’s quality, including accuracy, specificity, sensitivity, false negative rate (FNR), and training time. Experiments have demonstrated that the suggested framework with a genetic feature selector outperforms previous selectors and recent research, scoring accuracy values of 99.46% and 99.09% for evaluating the CASIA and OU-ISIR datasets, respectively, in low time (19 seconds for training)

Health Care for Foreigners on the Occasion of the Covid 19: Comparative Analysis with Special Reference to the Border Situation of Ceuta

La gestión de la pandemia a nivel global ha precisado de políticas de intervención en todos los ámbitos para dar una respuesta coherente en la que se incluye la coordinación transfronteriza. En este trabajo se pretende analizar cuál ha sido el impacto que han tenido las medidas Covid-19 en los espacios fronterizos de España, especialmente los de Ceuta con Marruecos, Extremadura con Portugal y Fuenterrabía, los Pirineos y Andorra con Francia. Por su parte, también se pretende comparar cómo se ha prestado la asistencia sanitaria a los trabajadores transfronterizos, así como observar cómo ha variado esa asistencia en los diferentes servicios sanitarios de Ceuta en los que se atendían. Las políticas sociales deben garantizar los derechos de facto de las personas migrantes en situaciones de especial vulnerabilidad, así como responder a los principios de igualdad y universalidad a su acceso, por lo que se han de reformular las bases que lo regulan y afianzar su estabilidad.The management of the pandemic at a global level has required intervention policies in all areas to provide a coherent response that includes the cross-border coordination. This work aims to analyze what has been the impact that Covid-19 measures have had on the border areas of Spain, especially those of Ceuta with Morocco, Extremadura with Portugal and Fuenterrabía, the Pyrenees and Andorra with France. For its part, it is also intended to compare how healthcare has been provided to cross-border workers, as well as observing how this assistance has varied in the different health services of Ceuta in which they were treated. Social policies must guarantee the in fact rights of migrants in situations of special vulnerability, as well as responding to the principles of equality and universality to its access, so that the bases that regulate it must be reformulated and strengthen its stability

Impact of Releases from the Kef Eddir Dam on the Recharge of the Oued Damous Aquifer

Artificial recharge is a good way to mobilize water in aquifers and recharge groundwater. Dam releaseis one of the techniques used for groundwater recharge.The periodic releases programmed by the Kef Eddir dam make it possible to recharge the Damouswadi aquifer located in the coastal wilaya of Tipaza in Algeria, whose overexploitation lowersthe level of its water and causes a marine intrusion thatpollutes it.In this work, to estimate the impact of these releases onaquifer recharge, we followedthe releases of March 2020and May2021. The piezometric levelsofgroundwaterweremeasured beforethe releases,duringflow caused by them,and afterthem.These measures concern 13wells located along the Damouswadiwatercourse for the first yearand 18wells for the second year. These two years have sevenwells in common. Itallowed us to comparepiezometric levelsand rechargesbetween 2020 and 2021.In theabsence of releases on our return in May and June 2022, we measured the depth of water presenceand took samples from 6wells to measure thewater conductivity. These measurements allowusto evaluate the piezometry of the water table over these three years, and the conductivity will indicate the degree of salinity of its water