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F I Hawari,1 N A Obeidat,2 M Abu Alhalawa,2 Z Al-Busaidi,3 B Amara,4 S Baddar,3 M Elhabiby,5 H Elkholy51Cancer Control Office, King Hussein Cancer Center, School of Medicine, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan; 2Cancer Control Office, King Hussein Cancer Center, Amman, Jordan; 3Department of Medicine, Sultan Qaboos University Hospital, Muscat, Oman; 4Faculty of Medicine, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fez, Morocco; 5Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, EgyptPurpose: Waterpipe (WP) use has become a global trend in young populations. However, there are few well-controlled studies focusing specifically on the chronic effects of exclusive WP use on young adults’ respiratory health. We sought to compare in young adults the burden of respiratory symptoms in regular WP smokers (WPS) relative to regular cigarette smokers (CS, positive controls) and non-smokers (negative controls); and to evaluate differences in health-related quality of life between the three groups.Method: We implemented a cross-sectional survey in college campuses across four countries (Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Oman). Purposive sampling was employed to identify habitual (regular) healthy WPS (smoked 3 or more WP per week for 3 or more years); CS (smoked 5 or more cigarettes daily for 3 or more years); and non-smokers. Respiratory symptoms were assessed using the European Community Respiratory Health Survey and the American Thoracic Society and the Division of Lung Diseases Questionnaire. Health-related quality of life was measured using the Short-Form 12. Demographic, environmental and lifestyle factors also were measured.Result: The analytic sample included 135 WPS, 303 CS, and 300 non-smokers. Either tobacco group had significantly greater proportions of males than the non-smoker group. A significantly lower proportion of non-smokers (than either tobacco group) was overweight or obese. Average numbers of reported respiratory symptoms were 5.1, 5.8, and 2.9 in WPS, CS, and non-smokers, respectively. In multivariable regressions controlling for environmental exposures, body mass index, and physical activity, WPS and CS exhibited significantly higher rates of respiratory symptoms than non-smokers (1.6 times greater and 1.9 times greater rate of respiratory symptoms than non-smokers, respectively). Non-smokers reported significantly higher scores for general health relative to either WPS or CS.Conclusion: Relative to their young non-smoking counterparts, young habitual WPS exhibit a significant burden of respiratory symptoms that is comparable to that observed with CS. Young WPS (and CS), despite their age, may be well on their way to developing respiratory disease.Keywords: tobacco, hookah, cough, phlegm, lung diseases, early onset

Real-time localization is a crucial task in various applications, such as automatic vehicles (AV), robotics, and smart city. This study proposes a framework for map-aided LiDAR-inertial localization, with the objective of accurately estimating the trajectory in a point clouds map. The proposed framework addresses the localization problem through a factor graph optimization (FGO), enabling the fusion of homogenous measurements for sensor fusion and designed absolute and relative constraints. Specifically, the framework estimates the light detection and ranging (LiDAR) odometry by leveraging inertial measurement unit (IMU) and registering corresponding featured points. To eliminate the accumulative error, this paper employs a ground plane distance and a map matching error to constraint the positioning error along the trajectory. Finally, local odometry and constraints are integrated using a FGO, including LiDAR odometry, IMU pre-integration, and ground constraints, map matching constraints, and loop closure. Experimental results were evaluated on an open-source dataset, UrbanNav, with an overall localization accuracy of 2.29 m (root mean square error, RMSE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are cars, buses or trucks that can travel with limited or no human intervention. They combine sensors, perception systems, and software to control, navigate, and safely drive the vehicle. AVs promise to improve the efficiency of our transportation system, reduce collisions and traffic congestion and improve mobility for our growing population. As the world continues to move toward a more efficient transportation system driven by AVs, there is a growing demand for new technologies that guarantee efficient and safe operation. Trust in AVs hinges on the reliability of autonomy, including the crucial task of positioning, which should be accurately provided at high precision everywhere for all environments. This paper introduces a framework for developing and deploying robust positioning and mapping systems for AVs at a submeter level of accuracy with high integrity. We introduce a new paradigm for the positioning and mapping of AVs that expands the capabilities of the present technologies and enables the processing of a broader range of complementary sensors and systems on a single platform. The target is to sustain this performance seamlessly everywhere in all operating and weather conditions relying on the suite of wireless and perception systems in addition to the vehicle's onboard sensors. Some sample results demonstrating the submeter level of positioning in various environments are discussed in this paper. This research will significantly impact the acceptance of and trust in AVs by enhancing safety and reliability and decreasing the failure rate in degraded environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reliability and robustness of positioning systems in urban and suburban environments are intrinsic. This is obvious following the continuous increase of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) applications in such challenging environments. Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) represent the primary positioning technique used for navigation purposes in these applications, which can be satisfying in open-sky areas. However, GNSS cannot provide the same level of navigation performance in urban environments. One of the main reasons for this is the No-Line of Sight (NLOS) signals. In this study, the integration of GNSS and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors is exploited, and a new algorithm is proposed for the detection of NLOS signals. Real field data are used to test and validate the proposed strategy and algorithm. Phase-smoothed code observations are employed to evaluate the accuracy improvement after excluding the NLOS observations. The results show that the horizontal direction's positional accuracy can be improved significantly after applying the proposed algorithm. This improvement reaches 10.403 m with a mean value of 2.162 m (62.2% improvement) over all epochs with detected NLOS signals. After analysing this improvement in the Cross-Track (CT) and Along-Track (AT) directions, it is found that the accuracy improvement reaches 8.641 m with a mean value of 1.699 m in the CT direction and 6.879 m with a mean value of 1.303 m in the AT direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the small size of Micro Aerial Vehicles, they are well suited for various indoor applications, especially search/rescue operations. Most of these operations are performed in unknown 3D environments. Real‐time map construction and vehicle's localization are essential tasks. Various approaches provide solutions for 3D‐map representation. However, these approaches require expensive embedded systems to afford high‐processing memory/computational costs. Because of its exposure to risks, the MAV should be equipped with a low‐cost navigation system. The principal aim of map construction herein is to facilitate the navigation task. Thus, constructing a massive 3D map is not required. Consequently, this paper proposes an efficient real‐time 3D SLAM. The proposed method avoids the 3D‐map representation of each region of the trajectory. Alternatively, it divides the environment along the trajectory into several 2D maps with a single 2D map in every region at the height of the MAV, as well as a transient region between each of the two constructed maps to enable connecting neighboring maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, many companies and research centres have been working on research and development of navigation technologies for self-driving cars. Many navigation technologies were developed based on the fusion of various sensors. However, most of these techniques used expensive sensors and consequently increase the overall cost of such cars. Therefore, low-cost sensors are now a rich research topic in land vehicle navigation. Consumer Portable Devices (CPDs) such as smartphones and tablets are being widely used and contain many sensors (e.g. cameras, barometers, magnetometers, accelerometers, gyroscopes, and GNSS receivers) that can be used in the land vehicle navigation applications.This paper investigates various land vehicle navigation systems based on low-cost self-contained inertial sensors in CPD, vehicle information and on-board sensors with a focus on GNSS denied environment. Vehicle motion information such as forward speed is acquired from On-Board Diagnosis II (OBD-II) while the land vehicle heading change is estimated using CPD attached to the steering wheel. Additionally, a low-cost on-board GNSS/inertial integrated system is also employed. The paper investigates many navigation schemes such as different Dead Reckoning (DR) systems, Reduced Inertial Sensor System (RISS) based systems, and aided loosely coupled GNSS/inertial integrated system.An experimental road test is performed, and different simulated GNSS signal outages were applied to the data. The results show that the modified RISS system based on OBD-II velocity, onboard gyroscopes, accelerometers, and CPD-based heading change provides a better navigation estimation than the typical RISS system for 90s GNSS signal outage. On the other hand, typical inertial aided with CPD heading change, OBD-II velocity updates, and Non-Holonomic Constraint (NHC) provide the best navigation result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The autonomous vehicles, such as wheeled robots and drones, efficiently contribute in the search and rescue operations. Specially for indoor environments, these autonomous vehicles rely on simultaneous localization and mapping approach (SLAM) to construct a map for the unknown environment and simultaneously to estimate the vehicle's position inside this map. The result of the scan matching process, which is a key step in many of SLAM approaches, has a fundamental role of the accuracy of the map construction. Typically, local and global scan matching approaches, that utilize laser scan rangefinder, suffer from accumulated errors as both approaches are sensitive to previous history. The reference key frame (RKF) algorithm reduces errors accumulation as it decreases the dependency on the accuracy of the previous history. However, the RKF algorithm still suffers; as most of the SLAM approaches, from scale shrinking problem during scanning corridors that exceed the maximum detection range of the laser scan rangefinder. The shrinking in long corridors comes from the unsuccessful estimation of the longitudinal movement from the implemented RKF algorithm and the unavailability of this information from external source as well. This paper proposes an improvement for the RKF algorithm. This is achieved by integrating the outcomes of the optical flow with the RKF algorithm using extended Kalman filter (EKF) to overcome the shrinking problem. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with the RKF, iterative closest point (ICP), and Hector SLAM in corridors that exceed the maximum detection range of the laser scan rangefinder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The automation of unmanned vehicle operation has gained a lot of research attention, in the last few years, because of its numerous applications. The vehicle localization is more challenging in indoor environments where absolute positioning measurements (e.g. GPS) are typically unavailable. Laser range finders are among the most widely used sensors that help the unmanned vehicles to localize themselves in indoor environments. Typically, automatic real-time matching of the successive scans is performed either explicitly or implicitly by any localization approach that utilizes laser range finders. Many accustomed approaches such as Iterative Closest Point (ICP), Iterative Matching Range Point (IMRP), Iterative Dual Correspondence (IDC), and Polar Scan Matching (PSM) handles the scan matching problem in an iterative fashion which significantly affects the time consumption. Furthermore, the solution convergence is not guaranteed especially in cases of sharp maneuvers or fast movement. This paper proposes an automated real-time scan matching algorithm where the matching process is initialized using the detected corners. This initialization step aims to increase the convergence probability and to limit the number of iterations needed to reach convergence. The corner detection is preceded by line extraction from the laser scans. To evaluate the probability of line availability in indoor environments, various data sets, offered by different research groups, have been tested and the mean numbers of extracted lines per scan for these data sets are ranging from 4.10 to 8.86 lines of more than 7 points. The set of all intersections between extracted lines are detected as corners regardless of the physical intersection of these line segments in the scan. To account for the uncertainties of the detected corners, the covariance of the corners is estimated using the extracted lines variances. The detected corners are used to estimate the transformation parameters between the successive scan using least squares. These estimated transformation parameters are used to calculate an adjusted initialization for scan matching process. The presented method can be employed solely to match the successive scans and also can be used to aid other accustomed iterative methods to achieve more effective and faster converge. The performance and time consumption of the proposed approach is compared with ICP algorithm alone without initialization in different scenarios such as static period, fast straight movement, and sharp manoeuvers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cairo public bus service suffers from several problems such as unscheduled stops, unscheduled route deviations, and inaccurate schedules. This research aims to study those problems for a selected bus route in Cairo using a prototype AVL system. Locations of the unscheduled stops and unscheduled route deviations, along with other trip time and speed data, were collected. Passengers' reliability on the unscheduled stops was compared to theirs on the official scheduled stops. Trip time was also modelled to assess the unscheduled stops' impact on trip time, and to check the accuracy of the scheduled trip time. Moreover, the frequency and the distance of the unscheduled route deviations, as well as the bus stops skipped during the deviations, were investigated. Lastly, solutions were proposed, using the AVL system, for the studied bus service deficiencies; and recommendations were suggested for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate 3D reconstruction has become essential for non-traditional mapping applications such as urban planning, mining industry, environmental monitoring, navigation, surveillance, pipeline inspection, infrastructure monitoring, landslide hazard analysis, indoor localization, and military simulation. The needs of these applications cannot be satisfied by traditional mapping, which is based on dedicated data acquisition systems designed for mapping purposes. Recent advances in hardware and software development have made it possible to conduct accurate 3D mapping without using costly and high-end data acquisition systems. Low-cost digital cameras, laser scanners, and navigation systems can provide accurate mapping if they are properly integrated at the hardware and software levels. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are emerging as a mobile mapping platform that can provide additional economical and practical advantages. However, such economical and practical requirements need navigation systems that can provide uninterrupted navigation solution. Hence, testing the performance characteristics of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) or low cost navigation sensors for various UAV applications is important research. This work focuses on studying the performance characteristics under different manoeuvres using inertial measurements integrated with single point positioning, Real-Time-Kinematic (RTK), and additional navigational aiding sensors. Furthermore, the performance of the inertial sensors is tested during Global Positioning System (GPS) signal outage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

3D model of indoor environments provide rich information that can facilitate the disambiguation of different places and increases the familiarization process to any indoor environment for the remote users. In this research work, we describe a system for visual odometry and 3D modeling using information from RGB-D sensor (Camera). The visual odometry method estimates the relative pose of the consecutive RGB-D frames through feature extraction and matching techniques. The pose estimated by visual odometry algorithm is then refined with iterative closest point (ICP) method. The switching technique between ICP and visual odometry in case of no visible features suppresses inconsistency in the final developed map. Finally, we add the loop closure to remove the deviation between first and last frames. In order to have a semantic meaning out of 3D models, the planar patches are segmented from RGB-D point clouds data using region growing technique followed by convex hull method to assign boundaries to the extracted patches. In order to build a final semantic 3D model, the segmented patches are merged using relative pose information obtained from the first step. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrestrial Laser Scanners (TLS) are utilized through different data acquisition techniques such as Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) and the output can be used in different applications such as 3D city modelling, cultural heritage documentations, oil and Gas as built, etc... In this research paper, we will investigate one of the modes of TLS on mobile mapping platform. Namely the Stop-and-Go (SAG) mode. Unlike the continuous mode, the Stop-and-Go mode does not require the use of IMU to estimate the TLS attitude and thus in-turn it has an overall reduction in the system cost. Moreover, it decreases the time required for data processing in comparison with the continuous mode. For successful use of SAG mobile mapping in urban areas, it is preferred to use a long range time of flight laser scanner to cover long distances in each scan and minimize the registration error. The problem arise with Long range laser scanners is their low point cloud density. The low point cloud density affects the registration accuracy specially in monitoring applications. The point spacing between points is one of the issues facing the registration especially when the matching points are chosen manually. Since most of TLS nowadays are equipped with camera on-board we can utilize the camera to get an initial estimate of the registration parameters based on image matching. After having an initial approximation of the registration parameters we feed those parameters to the Iterative Closest Point algorithm to obtain more accurate registration result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of LiDAR systems do not provide the end user with the calibration and acquisition procedures that can use to validate the quality of the data acquired by the airborne system. Therefore, this system needs data Quality Control (QC) and assessment procedures to verify the accuracy of the laser footprints and mainly at building edges. This research paper introduces an efficient method for validating the quality of the airborne LiDAR point clouds data using terrestrial laser scanning data integrated with edge detection techniques. This method will be based on detecting the edge of buildings from these two independent systems. Hence, the building edges are extracted from the airborne data using an algorithm that is based on the standard deviation of neighbour point's height from certain threshold with respect to centre points using radius threshold. The algorithm is adaptive to different point densities. The approach is combined with another innovative edge detection technique from terrestrial laser scanning point clouds that is based on the height and point density constraints. Finally, statistical analysis and assessment will be applied to compare these two systems in term of edge detection extraction precision, which will be a priori step for 3D city modelling generated from heterogeneous LiDAR systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers provide diverse measurements, namely the code and carrier phase measurements. The measurements' rates between successive epochs are similar in both observables, but the change in carrier phase can be determined on one order of magnitude higher than the change in code. This diversity of measurements is used in the measurements domain to improve position accuracy. The code measurements are contaminated with diverse errors that fall in different frequency bands (i.e., multipath error, falls in a high to medium frequency band 0.1 to 0.003 Hz, whereas the ionospheric error is in the lower frequency band 0 to 1.2e4 Hz). As these errors have different frequency components, the methodology is presented whereby the multipath error can be mitigated through frequency domain processing. In this article, an innovative codesmoothing technique is used, namely multiresolution real-time (MRRT) code-smoothing technique. This technique is used in real-time scenarios to mitigate multipath error (medium to high frequency) and noise (high frequency) and to retain the ionospheric error (low frequency) untouched in the mitigation procedure. The proposed MRRT technique is superior to those in the literature in the way that it can effectively remove the multipath and noise in real-time scenario and retain the smoothed code unbiased with low variance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: "Road traffic accidents" is a major health problem and it is significantly related to the mean daily sleep hours and sleep quality. This study aims to explore the sleep quality among a group of Egyptian truck drivers. Methodology: A convenience sample of 117 male truck drivers working on Cairo - Suez highway was selected. Socio-demographic and occupational history were collected using an interview questionnaire and the Pittsburgh sleep quality index (PSQI) was calculated. Results: The mean age of the studied drivers was 38.7 ± 9.7 y, 82.1% were married and 79.5% were current smokers. The mean driving hours per day was 15.35 ± 4.77, the mean sleeping hours per day was 5.8 ± 2.3 and 48 drivers (41%) had poor sleep quality according to the cutoff 5 for PSQI questionnaire. There was a significant difference between drivers with good vs poor sleep quality regarding number of cigarettes smoked per day, hours of work per day and mean distance travelled per day. Multivariate logistic regression showed that hours of work per day was the only significant predictor with poor sleep quality. Among drivers with poor sleep quality 16.3% reported having accidents in the past year which was significantly higher (p=0.016) than those who had good sleep quality (2.9%), Odds Ratio: 6.4, 95% CI; 1.3-31.8. Conclusion: Poor sleep quality is associate with increased risk of road traffic accidents among the studied truck drivers and the main factor that affect sleep quality is the number of working hours per day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Substance use disorder (SUD) is a significant public health concern and is one among the most common psychiatric disorders beginning in young adulthood. The history of substance abuse is as old as mankind itself; recently it has become a global problem that is influenced by social, economic, political, and psychosocial factors, scientist have long noted an association between social relationships and health. Aim of the work: to analyze and discuss similarities and difference between the genders in substance use disorder, highlighting severity of substance use disorder in both male and female focusing on comorbidity of substance use disorder in both male and female. Subjects and Methods: This cross sectional descriptive study was conducted on a sample of 117 addict patient (39 f and 78 m) who seek a treatment in Egyptian psychiatric hospitals. The Sample was collected from inpatient and outpatient department of Ain Shams Psychiatric hospital, Heliopolis (Almatar) Psychiatric Hospital and Alabasseya Psychiatric hospital. Results: the study revealed a statistically significant difference in various parameters as the mean age of abuse was higher among men than women with longer duration of life time and last 30 days intake compared to females. As regard marital status, married men percentage was lower in comparison to females who had a higher percentage of divorces. Regarding educational level, more females completed primary level but more males completed to tertiary diploma and higher percentage compared with females. Males abuse was more physically and emotionally but females exposed to more sexual abuse. Legal problems were higher in males as violation and drug charge compared to the females. On the other hand, job and dealing drugs as a source of money for drugs were mainly in males but females gained money mainly from the family or prostitution. Men showed higher rates of HCV infection than female. Conclusion: there is a clear difference between men and women in many of the points covered in this study, which confirms that there must be different programs developed specifically for women and not as sometimes happens by the application of treatment programs addiction to men, which leads to the consequences of unsatisfactory For female patients as well as those involved in the treatment of addiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Evidence-based screening is crucial to detect myocardial ischemia in high-risk diabetics. We explored the relationship between nitric oxide (NO) levels, lipid profile indices, and atherogenic index of plasma (AIP) in type 2 diabetics with coronary artery disease (CAD) and to determine their potential as prognostic markers., Materials and Methods: A case-control study included 50 diabetics with CAD (cases), 30 diabetics without CAD (control 1), and 23 healthy controls (control 2). Biochemical parameters were determined using standard protocols; plasma NO was measured via the Griess reaction., Results: Cases had the highest levels of NO, fasting blood sugar, glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), and triglycerides, and the lowest total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels. Cases exhibited the highest TC: HDL-C, LDL-C: HDL-C, and AIP ratios. A significant positive correlation between NO and HbA1c ( r = 0.328, P = 0.020)., Conclusion: Chronic hyperglycemia could enhance NO overproduction driven by inducible isoform, suggesting a potential role for chronic hyperglycemia in endothelial dysfunction and vascular complications in diabetes., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts of interest., (Copyright: © 2024 Journal of Research in Medical Sciences.)

Background Childhood obesity is a worldwide public health epidemic. Sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy dietary patterns increased the rates of overweight and obesity among children. This study aimed to (1) estimate healthy behaviors (including dietary patterns and physical activity) and (2) determine the prevalence of overweight and obesity among Saudi school-aged children in the Qassim region, Saudi Arabia. Methods A population-based cross-sectional study was conducted among Saudi schoolchildren aged between five and 16 years old. The study group consisted of 339 children including 237 males and 102 females. Data were collected using a questionnaire based on the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) survey. Body mass index (BMI) for age and gender was computed for each child using the AnthroPlus 2007 software (World Health Organization {WHO}, Geneva, Switzerland). Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23.0 (IBM SPSS Statistics, Armonk, NY) was used for data analyses. Results The prevalence of overweight and obesity among Saudi children was 46 (13.6%) and 81 (23.9%), respectively. Males consumed more soft drinks and energy drinks, whereas females consumed more fruit juice. As children grew older, the consumption of unhealthy food and beverages increased. Males engaged in more daily physical activity compared to females. Conclusion Saudi schoolchildren (aged 5-16 years) demonstrated significant gender-specific variations in dietary patterns and levels of physical activity. A significant proportion of Saudi children were overweight or obese. The study highlighted the complex relationship between age, school class, gender, and health behaviors among Saudi school-aged children. Policymakers and parents could benefit from the understanding of such complex relationships to promote healthy behaviors among school-aged children., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright © 2023, Mohieldein et al.)

To date, few studies have investigated male sexual dysfunctions (FSDs) in schizophrenia in non-Western countries, with most studies focusing on the sexual side effects of antipsychotic medications. Therefore, we aimed to screen for FSD in a sample of Egyptian females with schizophrenia, compare them to controls and to investigate demographic and clinical parameters associated with FSD. We conducted a cross-sectional study of 72 medicated and unmedicated females with schizophrenia (27 unmedicated and 45 medicated) and 24 controls. They were assessed using the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) and data were collected for demographic and clinical parameters. We found that females with schizophrenia had significantly lower scores on the FSFI compared to controls and that 93.1% of females with schizophrenia reached the threshold for FSD (FSFI score ≤26), compared to 87.5% of controls. Medicated and unmedicated subjects did not differ significantly in most domains of the FSFI. Age, duration of illness, positive and negative syndrome Scale total, positive and negative symptom scores correlated significantly with the majority of domains of the FSFI. Rates of FSD are very high in both schizophrenia and controls and correlate in schizophrenia with a number of demographic and clinical parameters, suggesting that FSDs are not restricted to the side effects of medications. There is a need to screen for sexual function in routine practice, and for developing active strategies to tackle sexual dysfunctions., (Copyright © 2023 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Smartphone addiction is considered currently as a public health concern especially among university students., Aim: The study assesses the prevalence of smartphone addiction and its sociodemographic and psychiatric correlates among Egyptian university students., Methods: A random sample of 1,380 undergraduate Egyptian university students from different universities were assessed using the smartphone addiction short scale, Beck depression Inventory, Beck anxiety Inventory, Pittsburgh sleep Quality Index, and Columbia suicide severity scale., Results: About 59% are smartphone addicts without any gender difference, we find a highly significant relation between smartphone addiction and depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, smoking, and suicide., Conclusion: our study adds to the existing literature regarding the magnitude of smartphone addiction and its relationship with different psychiatric disorders.

Various high budget industries that utilize wheel-based vehicles rely on wheel odometry as an integral aspect of their navigation process. This research introduces a low-cost alternative for typical wheel encoders that are typically used to determine the on-track speed of vehicles. The proposed system is referred to as an Accelerometer-based Wheel Odometer for Kinematics determination (AWOK). The AWOK system comprises just a single axis accelerometer mounted radially at the center of any given wheel. The AWOK system can provide direct distances instead of just velocities, which are provided by typical wheel speedometers. Hence, the AWOK system is advantageous in comparison to typical wheel odometers. Besides, the AWOK system comprises a simple assembly with a highly efficient data processing algorithm. Additionally, the AWOK system provides a high capacity to handle high dynamics in comparison to similar approaches found in previous related work. Furthermore, the AWOK system is not affected by the inherited stochastic errors in micro-machined electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) inertial sensors, whether short-term or long-term errors. Above all, the AWOK system reported a relative accuracy of 0.15% in determining the distance covered by a car.

Nowadays, autonomous vehicles have achieved a lot of research interest regarding the navigation, the surrounding environmental perception, and control. Global Navigation Satellite System/Inertial Navigation System (GNSS/INS) is one of the significant components of any vehicle navigation system. However, GNSS has limitations in some operating scenarios such as urban regions and indoor environments where the GNSS signal suffers from multipath or outage. On the other hand, INS standalone navigation solution degrades over time due to the INS errors. Therefore, a modern vehicle navigation system depends on integration between different sensors to aid INS for mitigating its drift during GNSS signal outage. However, there are some challenges for the aiding sensors related to their high price, high computational costs, and environmental and weather effects. This paper proposes an integrated aiding navigation system for vehicles in an indoor environment (e.g., underground parking). This proposed system is based on optical flow and multiple mass flow sensors integrations to aid the low-cost INS by providing the navigation extended Kalman filter (EKF) with forward velocity and change of heading updates to enhance the vehicle navigation. The optical flow is computed for frames taken using a consumer portable device (CPD) camera mounted in the upward-looking direction to avoid moving objects in front of the camera and to exploit the typical features of the underground parking or tunnels such as ducts and pipes. On the other hand, the multiple mass flow sensors measurements are modeled to provide forward velocity information. Moreover, a mass flow differential odometry is proposed where the vehicle change of heading is estimated from the multiple mass flow sensors measurements. This integrated aiding system can be used for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and land vehicle navigations. However, the experimental results are implemented for land vehicles through the integration of CPD with mass flow sensors to aid the navigation system.

Background: Traditional healers are considered one of the important stages in the pathway to care of schizophrenia patients because of the confidence in the system, affordability and accessibility of the service, exposing patients to hazardous management, delay in seeking psychiatric help and bad prognosis., Aim: To assess the pathway to care of schizophrenia patients and role of traditional healers into it, the sociodemographic and clinical correlates of those patients., Methods: We assessed 232 patients with schizophrenia after confirmation of diagnosis with Structured Clinical Interview for DSM -IV Axis I Disorder (SCID-I) research version using a questionnaire designed by authors to assess help seeking behavior in schizophrenia patients and its sociodemographic and clinical correlates. Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale to identify the presence and severity of symptoms., Results: A total of 41.8% sought traditional healers first, 58.1% sought a psychiatric consultation first, main symptoms related to traditional healers seeking were hallucinations in 51.5%, delusions 29.9%, 9.28% bizarre behavior and 9.28% formal though disorder. Main causes of traditional healers' preference were society acceptance 30.39%, affordability 24.74% and accessibility 16.49%., Conclusion: This study shows that a significant percentage of the patients suffering from schizophrenia prefer to approach faith healers first due to their own beliefs, society acceptance, affordability and easy accessibility.

Introduction: Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties in describing feelings. Many studies have shown that there is a relation between alexithymia and different types of addictions. Nowadays, smartphone addiction is proposed to be a global problem. The current study focuses on the rates of alexithymia and its association with smartphone addiction in an Egyptian university., Materials and Methods: This is a cross-sectional study that was conducted in Ain Shams University. A sample of 200 university students was surveyed using Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) and Smartphone Addiction Scale - Short Version (SAS-SV)., Results: The results showed that 44 students (22%) had alexithymia. It was also found that around one third of the sample (N=65, 32.5%) met the criteria of smartphone addiction. There was a strong association between alexithymia and smartphone addiction (OR=4.33, 95% CI 2.15-8.74, p= < 0.001)., Conclusion: This study supports existing literature indicating the strong association between alexithymia and smartphone addiction., (Copyright © 2020 Elkholy, Elhabiby and Ibrahim.)

Background: Although Egypt places four generic pictorial health warnings (PHWs) on the front and back half of waterpipe tobacco packs (WTPs), waterpipe tobacco smoking (WTS) rates have continued to rise. It has been suggested that PHWs would be more salient if placed on the waterpipe device itself. This qualitative study explored how participants perceived the effects placing PHWs on waterpipe devices would have on warning salience and uptake or quitting of WTS., Methods: We conducted 10 focus groups and 10 in-depth interviews with 90 adult waterpipe smokers and non-smokers, men and women, who lived in rural, semi-urban and urban regions of Egypt. We presented participants with four novel PHWs of different sizes positioned randomly at four locations on a waterpipe device (the glass body, metal holder, mouthpiece or hose), one at a time. At each session, participants viewed a PHW on all four locations. Novel warnings were shown on plain labels with a dark uniform background and featured pictures, text and the quitline number. Transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis., Results: Participants thought placing PHWs on waterpipe devices might increase salience, prevent WTS initiation or trigger quit attempts; they favoured placing PHWs on the glass body, mouthpiece or waterpipe hose. Both waterpipe smoker and non-smoker participants thought these potential effects would affect non-smokers or non-established smokers more than established waterpipe users., Conclusions: Our exploratory study suggests that PHWs featured prominently on waterpipe devices could potentially deter experimentation with waterpipe tobacco products and promote cessation, especially among non-established users., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2019. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.)

Background: Patients with schizophrenia have considerably higher rates of mortality than general population. Multiple factors may play a role in this. Despite being a major preventable cause of death, smoking is usually overlooked when dealing with patients with schizophrenia. Understanding the pattern of smoking, its severity, and the reasons to quit might be helpful in managing patients with schizophrenia and decreasing the mortality gap. Subjects and Methods: The study included smokers divided into two groups; the first included 346 patients with schizophrenia while the second group had 150 smokers with no mental illness. Both groups were assessed and compared regarding sociodemographic variables, pattern of smoking, severity of nicotine dependence, and motivation to quit smoking. Results: Earlier age of starting to smoke, higher number of cigarettes per day, and lower dependency scores were noted in patients with Schizophrenia. Positive correlation was found between positive symptoms and severity of dependence. Specific positive symptoms were correlated to number of cigarettes per day and time before first cigarette. Patients with Schizophrenia showed a significant difference in intrinsic reasons to quit (health concerns and self-control), which were also positively correlated to their positive symptoms score. Linear regression analysis for predictors of FTND score revealed that only age, sex, and schizophrenia were significant predictors of FTND score. Conclusion: Patients with schizophrenia smoke at earlier ages and smoke more cigarettes per day, yet, have less severe dependence than non-schizophrenic counterparts. Positive symptoms play a role in their smoking pattern and severity. Health concerns and self-control are their main motives to quit smoking.

Introduction: Despite the global rise in waterpipe tobacco smoking (WTS), the effectiveness of waterpipe tobacco health warnings remain understudied, especially in countries with high WTS rates. Egypt has been employing waterpipe tobacco labelling for a decade, however, their effectiveness is unknown. Our overall aim was to measure the effectiveness of pictorial health warnings (PHWs) on waterpipe tobacco packs (WTPs) through participant memory recall and to investigate whether they induced behavioural responses in waterpipe smokers and deterred uptake of WTS in non-smokers, examining the differentials of effectiveness among socio-demographic subgroups., Subjects and Methods: We conducted two surveys including 1490 adult current waterpipe smokers, 73 former waterpipe smokers, and 451 non-smokers in Cairo and a rural village in Egypt between 2015-2017. Participants who noticed PHWs on WTPs were asked questions about salience, communication of health risks, public support, cognitive processing, and self-reported behavioural responses (current waterpipe smokers: reduce consumption, forgo a smoke, quit attempts; former waterpipe smokers: quit; non-smokers: deter WTS initiation). Univariate and multivariable statistical analyses were performed., Results: Participants' mean age was 35 years, mostly males (90.4%), waterpipe smokers (74.0%) and rural residents (59.3%). Approximately two-thirds of participants noticed PHWs on WTPs. Salience was significantly less among females, urban residents and participants with high literacy. More than three-quarters of participants reported that WTS health risks were communicated through the warnings. At least half of participants cognitively processed the warnings: 56.3% thought of the warnings when WTPs were out of sight; non-smokers understood the warnings (83.2%) and discussed them with others (90.3%) significantly more than current (76.0% and 72.5%, respectively) and former waterpipe smokers (81.0% and 61.9%, respectively). Participants reported that PHWs on WTPs motivated 58.5% of waterpipe smokers to think about quitting; 64.5% to reduce their consumption; 42.2% to forgo a smoke; 24.5% to attempt to quit; 57.1% of former waterpipe smokers to successfully quit; and 59.3% of non-smokers to remain smoke-free., Conclusions: Findings suggest that inserting PHWs on WTPs is an effective waterpipe tobacco labelling policy. Countries with similarly high rates of WTS should consider adopting WTP PHWs within a comprehensive regulatory framework., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Objective: Despite the global increase in waterpipe tobacco smoking (WTS) including in Egypt, few studies have assessed the effectiveness of waterpipe tobacco (WT) health warnings. Egypt has used pictorial health warnings (PHWs) on waterpipe tobacco packs (WTPs) and has rotated these every two years since 2008. We explored in this qualitative study how participants perceived existing PHWs on WTPs, assessed how they interpreted novel plain packaging of WT featuring enhanced PHWs, and probed perceptions of how existing and novel sets would affect uptake or cessation of WTS., Design: We conducted ten qualitative focus groups and ten in-depth interviews. We explored participants' views of the four existing PHWs (occupied 50% of the front and back of WTPs, displayed cancers, and featured colourful fruits and flavors) and four novel PHWs (occupied 80% of the front and back of WTPs, displayed different topical content, with plain packaging). Transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis., Setting: Rural Menoufia, urban and semi-urban Cairo, Egypt., Participants: 90 waterpipe smokers and non-smokers, men and women, aged 18 years or older., Outcomes: Perceived potential effect on WTS uptake or cessation, probing factors related to PHW content and WTP design., Results: Participants in focus groups and in-depth interviews thought existing WT PHWs elicited affective responses, but found them unclear or unrealistic and thought the colourful packaging detracted from the warnings. In contrast, they thought novel and larger WT PHWs presented in plain packaging might prevent WTS initiation or trigger quit attempts. Participants regarded warnings featuring proximal health risks as most likely to be acceptable., Conclusions: Our exploratory study suggests larger WT PHWs featuring proximal risks and presented on plain WTPs could potentially deter experimentation with WT products among non-users and promote cessation among existing users., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2018. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.)

Unmanned aerial vehicles represent an effective technology for indoor search and rescue operations. Typically, most indoor missions' environments would be unknown, unstructured, and/or dynamic. Navigation of UAVs in such environments is addressed by simultaneous localization and mapping approach using either local or global approaches. Both approaches suffer from accumulated errors and high processing time due to the iterative nature of the scan matching method. Moreover, point-to-point scan matching is prone to outlier association processes. This paper proposes a low-cost novel method for 2D real-time scan matching based on a reference key frame (RKF). RKF is a hybrid scan matching technique comprised of feature-to-feature and point-to-point approaches. This algorithm aims at mitigating errors accumulation using the key frame technique, which is inspired from video streaming broadcast process. The algorithm depends on the iterative closest point algorithm during the lack of linear features which is typically exhibited in unstructured environments. The algorithm switches back to the RKF once linear features are detected. To validate and evaluate the algorithm, the mapping performance and time consumption are compared with various algorithms in static and dynamic environments. The performance of the algorithm exhibits promising navigational, mapping results and very short computational time, that indicates the potential use of the new algorithm with real-time systems.

Background: A large number of mentally ill patients prefer to visit non-medical practitioners such as traditional healers because of the confidence in the system, affordability and accessibility of the service. This may lead to delay in seeking psychiatric services and has prognostic impact., Aim: To assess the rate of bipolar affective disorder (BAD) patients seeking traditional healers, the sociodemographic and clinical correlates of those patients., Methods: We assessed 350 patients with BAD after confirmation of diagnosis with Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorder (SCID-I) research version and assessment of functioning with Global Assessment of Functioning scale. They were assessed for percent, rate and timing of seeking traditional healers., Results: In all, 40.8% sought traditional healers, with 34.9% more than four times. Of those, 62.2% were before seeking psychiatric services and 37.8% after. Lower educational level, less impairment of functioning and presence of hallucinations were significant correlates., Conclusion: This study shows that most of the patients suffering from mental illness prefer to approach faith healers first, which may delay entry to psychiatric care and thereby negatively impact the prognosis of BAD. This highlights the importance of mental health education and developing a positive collaborative relationship with traditional healers., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

Background and Objectives: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a complex, chronic mood disorder involving repeated episodes of depression and mania/hypomania. Two thirds of patients with bipolar disorder have a comorbid psychiatric condition. This study aims to assess the prevalence of Axis I diagnosis with its socio-demographic and clinical correlates among a sample of Egyptian patients with bipolar disorder., Methods: Out of the 400 patients who were enrolled in the study from number of governmental and private psychiatric hospitals in Cairo, Egypt, 350 patients diagnosed with bipolar affective disorders (157 females and 193 males) with age ranging from 18 to 55years were selected. Patients were assessed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorder (Research Version) (SCID-I)., Results: Prevalence of psychiatric comorbidity among BD patients was 20.3% (71 patients) among which 63 patients (18%) had comorbid substance abuse and 8 patients (2.3%) had comorbid anxiety disorders., Limitations: The study was limited by its cross sectional design with some patients having florid symptoms during assessment, not having a well representative community sample. This might have decreased the reliability and prevalence of lifetime psychiatric comorbidity due to uncooperativeness or memory bias. The study group was composed of bipolar patients attending tertiary care service which limits the possibility of generalizing these results on different treatment settings., Conclusions: Substance abuse followed by anxiety disorders was found to be the most common psychiatric comorbidity. Family history of psychiatric disorders and substance abuse as well as current psychotic features were highly correlated with comorbidity., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The present work aimed to study the toxic effect of cadmium (Cd) on rabbits' blood indices, as well as the therapeutic effect of the antioxidant agents, vitamins C and B complex and bee honey on Cd intoxicated rabbits. Cadmium chloride (CdCl2) was injected subcutaneously at a dose of 3 mg/kg of body weight. The results showed a significant increase in serum glucose, triglycerides, cholesterol, total protein, albumin, globulin, urea and creatinine, compared to the control group. In addition, CdCl2 intoxication increased the levels of uric acid, aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase and bilirubin. Concerning haematological parameters, the more obvious changes were an increase in mean corpuscular volume and a decrease in white blood cells count, platelets, lymphocytes, heamatocrit, haemoglobin and red blood cells count. Treatment of CdCl2-intoxicated animals with vitamins C and B complex and bee honey showed a decrease in the harmful effects of Cd by restoring haematological and biochemical changes. Bee honey treatment was the most effective in providing recoveries in the altered blood parameters.

There has been a lot of interest in recent years in using inertial sensors (accelerometers and gyroscopes) to monitor movement disorder motion and monitor the efficacy of treatment options. Two of the most prominent movement disorders, which are under evaluation in this research paper, are essential tremor (ET) and Parkinson's disease (PD). These movement disorders are first evaluated to show that ET and PD motion often depict more (tremor) motion content in the 3-12 Hz frequency band of interest than control data and that such tremor motion can be characterized using inertial sensors. As well, coherence analysis is used to compare between pairs of many of the six degrees-of-freedom of motions under evaluation, to determine the similarity in tremor motion for the various degrees-of-freedom at different frequency bands of interest. It was quite surprising that this coherence analysis depicts that there is a statistically significant relationship using coherence analysis when differentiating between control and effectively medicated PD motion. The statistical analysis uncovers the novel finding that PD medication induced dyskinesia is depicted within coherence data from inertial signals. Dyskinesia is involuntary motion or the absence of intended motion, and it is a common side effect among medicated PD patients. The results show that inertial sensors can be used to differentiate between effectively medicated PD motion and control motion; such a differentiation can often be difficult to perform with the human eye because effectively medicated PD patients tend to not produce much tremor. As well, the finding that PD motion, when well medicated, does still differ significantly from control motion allows for researchers to quantify potential deficiencies in the use of medication. By using inertial sensors to spot such deficiencies, as outlined in this research paper, it is hoped that medications with even a larger degree of efficacy can be created in the future.