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Hip-fracture patients are vulnerable to the outcomes of COVID-19. We performed a cross-sectional survey to determine measures employed to limit nosocomial spread of COVID-19 in 23 orthopaedic trauma departments in the North-West of England. Nineteen (87%) hospitals admitted patients to a ward prior to a negative swab, and only 9 (39%) patients were barrier nursed. Hip-fracture patients were operated in non-COVID-19-free theatres in 21 (91%) hospitals. Regular screening of doctors working in trauma and elective areas for COVID-19 was undertaken in three (13%) and five (22%) hospitals, respectively. Doctors moved freely between trauma and elective areas in 22 (96%) hospitals.

Purpose The aim of this study is to evaluate the right atrial (RA) mechanics and change in echocardiographic parameters used for assessment of RA by examining the end stage kidney patients before and after the hemodialysis (HD). Methods Patients between 18 and 85 years of age, receiving HD for at least 6 months were included. The echocardiographic images were obtained before and after hemodialysis therapy. Two-dimensional speckle tracking strain analysis was performed for right atrium in 62 patients. Reference points for analysis are set on the "P" waves. RA reservoir, conduit and contraction phase longitudinal strain (Figure 1) and strain rates (Figure 2) were calculated. The changes in echocardiographic methods before and after hemodialysis were examined. Correlation between volume depletion and change in echocardiographic parameters were calculated. Results 62 patients (49.7 ± 16.9 years of age, 22 women) were included in study. The mean volume of ultrafiltration was 2958.12 ± 1050.5 ml . The chamber sizes RA are decreased after hemodialysis (RA major diameter; 4.74 ± 0.62 cm vs. 4.46 ± 0.54 cm p

In this study, parameters of the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) model based on the type II censored samples are estimated when the distribution of the error terms is Jones and Faddy’s skew t. In the estimation procedure, maximum likelihood (ML) methodology is used. Solutions of the likelihood equations are obtained using an iterative method because of the nonlinear terms existing in the likelihood equations. A modified version of the ML methodology is also used. It gives the explicit estimators of the model parameters and has no computational difficulties. A new test statistic is proposed for testing the equality of the treatment effects. An extensive Monte Carlo simulation study is carried out to compare the powers of the test statistics based on the ML and the modified ML estimators of the parameters. Real data are analyzed at the end of the study to illustrate the implementation of the proposed methodologies.

Automated face recognition systems are fast becoming a need for security-related applications. Development of a fool-proof and efficient face recognition system is a challenging domain for researchers. This paper presents comparative evaluation of two candidate techniques for automated face recognition application, viz. dotted Raster-stereography and feature-based system. The relevant performance parameters — accuracy, precision, sensitivity and specificity – measured for the two techniques using IPRL Database of images are reported. The results suggest that dotted Raster-stereography based face recognition system has better accuracy, precision, sensitivity and specificity, and hence is a preferred choice as compared with feature-based system for such sensitive applications where high face recognition accuracy is required. On the other hand, feature-based technique is faster in terms of the training and testing times required. Hence such applications where volume of face recognition work is large and high speed is required with some compromise in accuracy being acceptable then feature-based technique may also be the technique of choice.

The objective of the GER-e-TEC project is to provide recorded personalized medical monitoring of residents in nursing homes using an intelligent telemedicine platform. It will assist healthcare staff by automatically processing the information from sensors and questionnaires to provide early detection and escalate alerts to enable health professionals, operating in retirement homes, to optimize patient care.

Telemedicine is now in vogue, allowing thanks to the computer and communication tools to be deployed in the field of health, such as Dermatology, areas in which it has shown interest. As the population is aging, Geriatrics is more and more concerned by this innovative practice and nursing homes are more and more concerned. We take a look at telemedicine projects in France deployed in the field of dermatology in the elderly.

Background Breast cancer (BC) is a major health issue threatening women's life. No reliable epidemiological data on BC diagnosed by oncologists/senologists are available in Algeria. Methods The BreCaReAl study, a non-interventional prospective cohort study, included adult women with confirmed BC in Algeria. Disease incidence, patients and disease characteristics, treatment patterns, and mortality rate were recorded up to 12 months of follow-up. Results Overall, 1,437 patients were analysed: median age was 48 [41;57] years and 337 (23.5%) women had a family history of BC. BC incidence was 22.3 (95% CI: 21.5; 23.2) cases per 100,000 inhabitants over 8 months. Delayed diagnosis was reported in 400 (29.2%) patients. First line of treatments were mainly chemotherapy and surgery. Twenty-eight serious adverse events were reported including 10 (37.0%) events which led to death. Mortality rate reached 3.2% at 12 months Conclusion A delayed diagnosis highlights the importance of implementing more effective screening strategies.

The real-time or offline monitoring of signal waveform quality is important in many applications, such as electrical power quality monitoring, measurement of waveform distortion in recording systems and monitoring of electrical excitation in active measurement systems. This study presents a signal monitoring system based on a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), which receives digitized samples of analogue voltage developed across a sense resistor and performs signal processing in real time. The symmetry of the signal in both amplitude and time are calculated and used to form an overall symmetry parameter that quantifies the 'quality' of the signal, which ought to be sinusoidal. In addition, the signal frequency and amplitude are calculated. The value of the overall symmetry parameter as well as the signal amplitude are checked against predefined limits and accordingly flagged. The results show an optimum compromise among three parameters: code execution time, usage of FPGA resources and accuracy of results. The principles and implementation of the system discussed here may find application in fields where FPGA-based detailed waveform analysis is high priority.

Bu çalışmanın amacı, bireylerin enerji çeşitleri ve geri dönüşüme karşı tutumlarının, çevresel duyarsızlıkları ve çevresel davranışları üzerideki etkisinin önerilen bir model yardımıyla araştırılmasıdır. Verilerin analizinde ölçülen ve gizil değişkenler arasındaki nedensel ilişkileri bir model ile betimleme ve modelin uyumunu sınamada kullanılan Yapısal Eşitlik Modelleri(YEM) kullanılmıştır. Analiz sonucunda, nükleer enerjiye karşı olumlu tutumdaki artışın çevresel duyarsızlıkta artışa sebep olurken, güneş enerjisine karşı olumlu tutumda ki artışın ise çevresel duyarsızlıkta azalışa neden olduğu saptanmıştır. Çevresel duyarsızlıkta ki artışın geri dönüşüme karşı olumlu tutumda azalışa neden olurken, geri dönüşüme karşı olumlu tutumdaki artışın çevresel davranışta artışa neden olduğu saptanmıştır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Çevresel Davranış,Geri Dönüşüm, Enerji, Yapısal Eşitlik Modelleri(YEM)

A low cost dataglove system is developed by designing a glove equipped with Force Sensing Resistor (FSR) on to the thumb, index and middle finger, named as GloveMAP. The system involves the finger movements with some of grasping activities to investigate the force exerted on the fingertips during grasping five different shapes of objects with same weight. The output forces obtained from the experiment are then analyzed by finding the features of force objects grasping. Linear Discriminat Analysis (LDA) is used as classifier to process the features information of grasping force. The final result of the recognition rate for cylinder, rectangular, spherical, planar and disc objects are 87.5%, 90%, 85%, 92% and 95% respectively

In this research paper, authors propose multimodal brain image registration using discrete wavelet transform(DWT) followed by Gaussian pyramids. The reference and target images are decomposed into their LL, LH, HL and LL DWT coefficients and then are processed for image registration using Gaussian pyramids. The image registration is also done using Gaussian pyramids only and wavelets transforms only for comparison. The quality of registration is measured by comparing the maximum MI values used by the three methods and also by comparing their correlation coefficients. Our proposed technique proves to show better results when compared with the other two methods.

Monitoring patients with heart failure by telemedicine systems is a potential means susceptible to optimize the management of these patients and avoid life-threatening emergencies. In this context, we experimented in internal medicine unit an e-platform E-care dedicated to automated, intelligent detection of situations at risk of heart failure.The E-care platform based on medical sensors (blood pressure, heart rate, O2, weight), communicating (Bluetooth), to go up, in real time, to an intelligent physiological information and an analysis of the ontology medical, leading ultimately to the generation of alerts. After a development phase (proof of concept), the E-care platform has been deployed and tested by health professionals and patients in an internal medicine unit with 20 beds, opened on emergencies to the Strasbourg University Hospitals.One hundred and eighty patients were included and 1500 measurements were obtained. The patient profile included in this experiment was an elderly patient, with comorbidity in 90% of cases, with a loss of autonomy in 25%. Health professionals were using E-care platform every day to their great satisfaction. This experiment made it possible to validate the technology choices, to consolidate the system, and to test the robustness of the platform E-care. The collection continuously allowed us to have the critical number of patients for more detailed analysis of the relevance of alerts related to heart impairment. A preliminary analysis showed the relevance of the generated alerts.Preliminary results following the deployment of E-care platform in hospitals appear to show the relevance of technological choices, tools and solutions developed and adopted. This telemedicine system allows automatic, non-intrusive, generate alerts related to the detection of situations at risk for heart failure. Ultimately, E-care was capable of preventing hospitalization. A home deployment is currently underway.

A wired glove system is developed by designing a low cost dataglove which has the similar function with the conventional dataglove and has been named as GloveMAP. The system involves the finger movements with some of grasping activities to investigate the force exerted on the fingertips during grasping a rectangular object with different weight. Force sensing resistors (FSR) are attached to the thumb, index and middle fingers to obtain the voltage changes from the activities of fingers grasping. The output data from different weight of rectangular object during grasping are analyzed based on statistical approaches. The correlation between weight and force has been determined by comparing the gradient slope between both graphs.

Lip reading is a technique used by a hard hearing person to communicate in their conversation. Sometime the word they understand is not the same as what the other speaker talk. Computer-based lip reading system may help to track those words based on the movement of the lips. When speak, lip make a unique movement that may differ between several words. For the computer to recognize the spoken word, preliminary studies need to be done in order to extract features from the movements of the lip. A surface area of the lip is proposed as the feature of the lip movement. The horizontal and vertical distances of the lip are extracted to determine the surface area. In the experiments, several spoken words at the hospital have been chosen. The experimental results show that the ellipse feature could be employed to train the computer understands the spoken word from the human.

The purpose of indoor mobile robot navigation is to travel the mobile robot toward stable-target in a predefined straight line navigation. The movement information of the two-wheeled mobile robot is used as an input to the fuzzy membership function and the outputted probability from the membership function is used to move the robot towards target. The experimental results show that the proposed fuzzy approach has shown reduction in straight line navigation error, improvement of 60% compared to the without fuzzy navigation.

Phase-sensitive detection (PSD) is an established measurement technique for noisy signals. More recently, digital implementation of PSD using FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) or processor is becoming norm. This paper presents an FPGA-based digital PSD system, which is incorporated in a multi-channel bio-medical EIT instrument. In the paper, digital PSD has been analyzed using time- and frequency-domain methods of signal processing theory and a new interpretation of digital PSD in terms of accumulator-sampler has been given. Regarding design and implementation of the FPGA-based digital PSD system, two important issues of number of digitized waveform samples for use in PSD calculation and finite word length effect on PSD precision have been explored. Test results of the EIT instrument incorporating this digital PSD system have shown good noise performance, achieving an overall SNR of almost 80 dB at the high data-capturing rate of 100 frames/sec. The instrument also showed measurement capability to resolve large conductivity changes over very small spatial regions.

There are few studies examining the quality of life (QOL) of patients with haemorrhoidal disease. Transanal heamorrhoidal dearterialization (THD) is a treatment modality for heamorrhoidal disease in which a Doppler transducer is used to locate the supplying arteries that are subsequently ligated. The aim of this study was to assess symptoms and QOL changes following THD.This was a prospective evaluation of QOL and symptom changes following THD. Patient symptoms, demographics and QOL were recorded preoperatively and 1-month post-operatively following THD using the medical outcomes study short-form-36 (SF-36).Thirteen patients undergoing THD were evaluated. One month following THD symptoms of haemorrhoid protrusion, bleeding, anal pain, painful defaecation, constipation and tenesmus, had all significantly reduced (P0.05). Limitations in usual role activities because of physical health problems (53.8 +/- 10.5 Vs 90.4 +/-4.5, P = 0.004), vitality, energy and fatigue (45 +/- 6.9 Vs 73.5 +/- 5.0, P= 0.003), general mental health, psychologic distress and wellbeing (60.9 +/- 6.9 Vs 83.1 +/- 5.9, P= 0.023), limitations in social activities because of physical or emotional problems (58.7 +/- 8.8 Vs 84 +/- 5.9, P = 0.025), and physical pain (52.9 +/- 7.9 Vs 84.6 +/- 6.4, P= 0.005) scores had all improved 1-month following THD.THD significantly reduces symptoms of haemorrhoidal disease and improves specific aspects of QOL 1-month following surgery.

Increased brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) in cardiovascular disease is thought to be a compensatory protective mechanism allowing to delay the occurrence of terminal heart failure. Heart transplantation should normalize the neuroendocrine balance but BNP remains elevated in stable heart-transplant recipients (Htx). Such increase has been related to persistent endothelial and cardiac dysfunctions. The purpose of this study was to determine whether selected Htx, presenting with normal hemodynamic and cardiac systolic and diastolic functions on both side of the heart, show a normalization of their BNP plasma values.Of a cohort of well-being 26 Htx, we selected 12 patients with normal hemodynamics and left and right heart systolic and diastolic functions and compared their circulating BNP, cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) (the BNP second messenger) and endothelin-1 (ET) values with that of 12 age-, body mass index- and mean arterial pressure-matched controls. Cardiac function determination by echodoppler included cardiac filling pressures assessment using tissue Doppler imaging. Blood samples for biological and hormonal determinations were drawn at rest, within 15 min before echocardiography.As selected, hemodynamic and left and right heart systolic and diastolic functions were located in the normal range in Htx. Plasma ET value was also similar in Htx and controls (20.7 +/- 0.9 vs. 19.6 +/- 0.9 fmol/mL). However, circulating BNP, like cGMP, was still significantly increased after heart transplantation, when compared with controls (33.8 +/- 8.5 vs. 4.0 +/- 0.9 pg/mL, p = 0.002 and 8.2 +/- 1.1 vs. 4.4 +/- 0.3 nmol/L, p = 0.003) for BNP and cGMP, respectively, in Htx and controls. Interestingly, the sole correlation observed was between BNP and cGMP (r = 0.85, p0.0001) after heart transplantation.After heart transplantation, BNP remained increased despite the normalization of hemodynamic and cardiac systolic and diastolic functions. This suggests that such endocrine heart stimulation should not be viewed only as a hemodynamic marker in Htx. Further studies will be useful to investigate the role of pro-inflammatory cytokines and whether elevated BNP still possesses antifibrotic properties, further supporting the interest of enhancing its activity after heart transplantation.

Introduction La mortalite cardiovasculaire est la principale cause de deces chez les patients ayant eu une transplantation renale. Parmi les facteurs de risque de cardiopathie, les effets hemodynamiques de la fistule arterioveineuse (FAV) notamment en condition d’hyperdebit ont ete peu etudies. L’objectif de notre travail a ete de determiner la prevalence des FAV en hyperdebit un an apres transplantation et les modifications echocardiographiques associees. Patients et methodes Au total, 41 patients ayant eu une transplantation renale (29H et 12F, âge 57 ± 12 ans), hemodialyses sur FAV avant la transplantation ont ete etudies prospectivement entre fevrier 2014 et avril 2015 a 1 an de leur transplantation. 95 % des patients etaient traites par anticalcineurines (11 CsA ; 28 FK). La creatininemie etait de 142 ± 49 μmol/L et l’hemoglobine de 12,7 ± 1,7 g/dL. Une mesure du debit de FAV et une ETT ont ete realisees dans le meme temps. L’hyperdebit absolu etait defini par un debit dans la FAV > 2 L/min et l’hyperdebit relatif par un debit dans la FAV > 1 L/min associe a un ratio debit FAV sur debit cardiaque > 20 %. Resultats Dans notre population, le debit moyen dans la FAV etait de 1622 ± 807 mL/min, le debit cardiaque de 5,9 ± 1,1 L/min, la FEVG de 69 ± 7 % et le score NYHA de 2 ± 1. 70,7 % des patients avaient une hypertrophie ventriculaire gauche (HVG). Un hyperdebit de FAV a ete mis en evidence chez 66 % des patients (debit moyen 2016 ± 786 mL/min). Dans 32 % des cas, il s’agissait d’un hyperdebit absolu et dans 34 % d’un hyperdebit relatif. Trois patients avaient une insuffisance cardiaque a haut debit dont 2 cas secondaires a un hyperdebit de FAV. Seuls les diametres telesystoliques ( p = 0,01) et telediastoliques du ventricule gauche (DTDVG) ( p = 0,02) etaient significativement plus eleves dans le groupe hyperdebit. Discussion La prevalence particulierement elevee d’un hyperdebit de FAV a 1 an de la transplantation renale suggere l’importance du suivi hemodynamique de ces patients, de determiner les indications de la ligature de FAV et d’en evaluer les eventuels benefices en termes de regression des anomalies cardiaques par un travail ulterieur. Conclusion La ligature de la FAV pourrait permettre une diminution de la dilatation ventriculaire gauche chez les transplantes renaux comme cela vient d’etre recemment suggere [1] .

Deaf and hard of hearing people often have problems being able to understand and lip read other people. Usually deaf and hard of hearing people feel left out of conversation and sometimes they are actually ignored by other people. There are a variety of ways hearing-impaired person can communicate and gain accsss to the information. Communication support includes both technical and human aids. Human aids include interpreters, lip-readers and note-takers. Interpreters translate the Sign Language and must therefore be qualified. In this paper, vision system is used to track movements of the lip. In the experiment, the proposed system succesfully can differentiate 11 type of phonemes and then classified it to the respective viseme group. By using the proposed system the hearing-impaired persons could practise pronaunciations by themselve without support from the instructor.

Stimulation of membrane ruffling is one of the first events induced by addition of growth factors to quiescent cultures. In order to assess the importance of intact cytoskeleton in induction, by EGF + insulin, of early events such as stimulation of rRNA, c-fos, and actin mRNA expression, we studied the effect of cytochalasin D (CD) on these metabolisms. We observed that CD slightly increased rRNA synthesis in nonstimulated cells; conversely, it decreased rRNA synthesis in cells stimulated by EGF + insulin. The maximal inhibition observed was 60%. The c-fos mRNA was not expressed in control cells and was accumulated in cells stimulated by the mixture of EGF + insulin; this accumulation was inhibited by CD. Actin mRNA was expressed in control cells and its expression was stimulated by EGF + insulin. Addition of CD decreased actin mRNA accumulation in stimulated cells but increased this accumulation in unstimulated cells. Our results, taken together, show that CD specifically affected the stimulation of rRNA and mRNA expression induced by growth factors and suggest that intact cytoskeleton and possibly membrane ruffling favored this stimulation.

Addition of a mixture of EGF + insulin to quiescent cell cultures synergistically stimulates the cells to reinitiate DNA synthesis and cell division. We have previously demonstrated that this mixture rapidly increases ATP turnover in quiescent cells. The present work shows that each of the two growth factors, EGF and insulin, when added separately to quiescent cells was able to stimulate the phosphorylation of the organic acid-soluble compounds (Po) pool and ATP turnover. The stimulation of ATP turnover was closely correlated with the increase in phosphorylation of the Po pool which suggests that Po labelling reflects the ATP turnover. In many experiments, the synergy between the two growth factors on the early increase in phosphorylation of the Po pool was clearly shown. Doubling the concentration of EGF (12-24 ng/ml) or insulin (50-100 ng/ml) did not increase early stimulation of phosphorylation of the Po pool, whereas simultaneous addition of the two growth factors induced a greater stimulation than that of each growth factor separately added. The augmentation in Po labelling after addition of EGF or insulin alone was transient. The synergistic effect of the two growth factors was more significant when determined 150 or 300 min after growth-factor addition. In our experimental conditions, each of the two growth factors, EGF and insulin, was able to induce a stimulation of DNA synthesis. However, the best stimulatory effect was observed with the mixture of the two which synergistically increased DNA synthesis determined between 6 and 24 h after growth-factor addition. The comparison between DNA replication and Po labelling suggests a correlation between the increase in DNA replication and in the total ATP synthesized in the first 5 h after cell stimulation by growth factors added separately or in combination.

We have demonstrated previously a rapid increase in ATP turnover soon after adding epidermal growth factor (EGF) and insulin to quiescent cultures of Swiss 3T3 cells. In the present work, we tried to determine whether this increase could be correlated with the early stimulation by growth factors of cell movements. We showed that cytochalasin B (CB), in complete or glucose-free medium, inhibited this early increase caused by growth factors, in phosphate incorporation in small organic acid-soluble compounds (Po). Cytochalasin D (CD) specifically inhibited the stimulation caused by growth factors of Po labelling and ATP turnover, but lacked all inhibitory effect on unstimulated cells. The inhibitory effect of CD was transient. We hypothesize that addition of EGF and insulin to quiescent 3T3 cell cultures induces a rapid and transient change in cell movements, which could be responsible for about half of the early increase in ATP degradation and turnover.

Araştırmanın Amacı: Bu çalışmanın amacı kredi kartı müşterilerinin kullandıkları kredi kartlarına ilişkin negatif ve pozitif tutumlarının araştırılmasıdır. Yöntem: Önce müşterilerin kredi kartına olan tutumları Açıklayıcı Faktör Analizi yardımıyla incelenmiş, daha sonra belirlenen 7 faktörün kredi kartına duyulan memnuniyet ve gelecekte kredi kartı kullanmama tutumlarına etkileri Çoklu Regresyon Analizi yardımıyla araştırılmıştır. Bulgular ve Sonuç: Çalışma sonucunda kredi kartının kişiye güven verdiği algısının Memnuniyet değişkeni üzerinde en büyük arttırıcı etkiye sahip faktör olduğu, bunun yanı sıra kredi kartı kullanımına karşı olumlu algının Çıkış değişkeni üzerinde en çok azaltıcı etkiye sahip faktör olduğu saptanmıştır, Research Aim: This study researched the effect of negative and positive perceptions of credit card holders towards credit cards in their satisfaction and exit behaviors. Method: In this study, we first assessed the attitudes of customers towards the use of credit cards by means of Exploratory Factor Analysis, then we assessed the effects of the pre-determined 7 factors on the credit card satisfaction and the use of credit cards in the future thanks to Multiple Regression Analysis. Findings and Result: At the end of the study, It was found the perception that credit cards give customer confidence has the most effect to increase the satisfaction. It was also found that positive attitudes towards the use of credit cards have the most effect to decrease effect on exit behavior