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Background: The term inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) describes disorders in which the intestines be inflamed. It has often been thought that they are due to an autoimmune disease. Two major types of IBD are ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD). UC is limited to the colon. CD can involve every part of the gastrointestinal tract from the mouth to the anus. Objective: To compare between serum and faecal calprotectin regarding their role in follow up of disease activity in inflammatory bowel disease patients. Patients and Methods: An observational cross-sectional study was conducted on 25 patients admitted to Tropical medicine department, Ain Shams University Hospitals. Results: Calprotectin is highly resistant to proteolysis and can hold in the stool sample for up to 7 days at room temperature. Higher levels of serum calprotectin were linked to a severe inflammatory state in the colon as well as significant clinical symptoms in UC patients. Also, serum calprotectin, CRP, and ESR levels were compared to IBD activity and it was detected that serum calprotectin levels had more sensitivity and specificity than CRP and ESR in identifying IBD activity. Serum calpro-tectin levels in patients with IBD activity either UC or CD groups, were considerably more than in remission. SC and FC levels were higher levels in clinically active IBD comparing with inactive IBD. Conclusion: Serum calprotectin levels are higher in patients with IBD and are related to clinical activity. High serum calprotectin levels can distinguish between patients who are clinically active and those who are in remission in both UC and CD groups. Our findings show that serum calprotectin may be a promising simple diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for IBD however more research is needed to reach a judgment in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A methodology is described for solving optimal pointwise control of a coupled system of Burgers' equations. It is aimed to determine the optimal pointwise control that minimizes a given performance measure. The performance measure is specified as a quadratic functional of the distance between a final state function and a predefined target function along with the energy due to the control effort. The modal expansion method is used to reduce the optimal control of distributed parameter systems into the control of the invariant lumped parameter systems. A system of non-linear algebraic equations are derived as necessary conditions of optimality and solved by Runge–Kutta method to obtain the optimal Fourier coefficients and frequencies. The feasibility of the proposed methodology is demonstrated by numerical simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A mathematical theory for a class of optimal control problems for a damped distributed-parameter system represented by N serially connnected flexible structures coupled through boundary conditions is formulated. The control is to be implemented by applying a finite number of actuators to a discrete number of points within the structure. A maximum principle is proved for a system of N partial differential equations of second order in time and forth order in space, coercive in space variables, with variable coefficients. Under additional convexity assumptions on the state variables and their derivatives, the optimal control is shown to be unique. The proposed theory is demonstrated by applying it to problem of controlling the vibrations of the two strings that are coupled at the connecting point. Numerical results are given for various parameters, and the efficiency of the control is investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]