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Ali Qais Blebil,1,2 Juman Abdulelah Dujaili,1,2 Ali Haider Mohammed,1,2 Kaeshaelya Thiruchelvam,3 Shaun Lee,1 Ramadan Elkalmi,4 Yee Chang Soh,5 Audrey Yong,6 Rohullah Roien7 1School of Pharmacy, Monash University Malaysia, Bandar Sunway, Selangor, Malaysia; 2Department of Pharmacy, Al Rafidain University College, Baghdad, 10001, Iraq; 3School of Pharmacy, International Medical University, Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; 4Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Sabha University, Sabha, Libya; 5Global Public Health, Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University Malaysia, Bandar Sunway, Malaysia; 6Faculty of Pharmacy, Mahsa University, Selangor, Malaysia; 7Medical Research Centre, Kateb University, Kabul, 1004, AfghanistanCorrespondence: Rohullah RoienMedical Research Centre, Kateb University, Kabul, 1004, Afghanistan, Tel +93 785454093, Email rohullahroien@kateb.edu.afIntroduction: There is a predicted growth of up to 17% in an older adult of Malaysian above 60 years of age by 2040. This will increase the workload of almost every healthcare provider to ensure optimal geriatric care.Purpose: This study aimed to assess pharmacy students’ knowledge and attitudes towards geriatric pharmacy education and older patients to determine their preparation in delivering appropriate medical care to the geriatric population.Methods: Self-administered questionnaires were distributed among pharmacy students in different Malaysian universities. The survey included several sections to assess multiple aspects such as sociodemographic information, assessment of knowledge using a validated 28-item Geriatric Knowledge Assessment Scale (GKAS), and attitudes towards geriatrics education.Results: The response rate was around 70% of the respondents. The mean (± standard deviation) age of the cohort was 22.28 (± 1.12) years. Despite around 78% of pharmacy students claiming that their knowledge of geriatric care is adequate, their GKAS score showed that only around 20% have high geriatric knowledge. Around 80% of them showed a positive attitude on the importance of taking courses focused on geriatric care and demonstrated interest to further knowledge and training in geriatric care. However, more than half of the students were uncertain of their answers towards their attitudes regarding older patients.Conclusion: Given the growing role of pharmacists in the ageing population, this study highlights the importance of geriatric care education among potential pharmacists. Therefore, we urge the need to improve/develop geriatrics education and training into the pharmacy curriculum to ensure sufficient preparation for actual practice after graduation.Keywords: geriatric care, older adult, pharmacy students, knowledge, attitude, Malaysia

We consider the following system of differential equations , , together with Hermite boundary conditions , , , , where , for , and . By using different fixed point theorems, we offer criteria for the existence of three solutions of the system which are of "prescribed signs" on the interval .

This cross-sectional study evaluated the validity of three alternative methods compared to the gold standard 24-h urine collection for estimating dietary sodium intake, a modifiable risk factor for hypertension, among middle-aged and older adults with elevated blood pressure. These included spot urine collection (using Kawasaki, Tanaka, and INTERSALT equations), 24-h dietary recall, and food frequency questionnaire responses, compared to 24-h urine collection in a subset of 65 participants (aged 50-75 years, 58.5% women, 61.6% hypertensive) from the DePEC-Nutrition trial. The validity of the methods was assessed using bias, the Spearman correlation coefficient (SCC), the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and Bland-Altman analysis. Among the alternative methods, spot urine collection using the Kawasaki equation showed the strongest correlation (SCC 0.238; ICC 0.119, 95% CI -0.079 to 0.323), but it exhibited a significant bias (1414 mg/day, p -value < 0.001) relative to 24-h urine collection. Conversely, dietary surveys had a smaller bias but wider limits of agreement. These findings underscore the complexities of accurately estimating dietary sodium intake using spot urine collection or dietary surveys in this specific population, suggesting that a combination or the refinement of existing methodologies might improve accuracy. Further research with larger samples is necessary to develop more reliable methods for assessing sodium intake in this high-risk group.

The DePEC-Nutrition trial is a complex dietary and behavioural intervention of salt intake reduction combined with increased high-nitrate vegetable consumption among Malaysian middle-aged and older adults with elevated blood pressure. This study aimed to assess the feasibility and acceptability of the trial. Participants were recruited from the South East Asia Community Observatory (SEACO) database and randomised into one of four groups: (1) low salt; (2) high-nitrate vegetable; (3) combined high-nitrate vegetable and low salt; and (4) control. The intervention included a combination of group counselling sessions, information booklets, reinforcement videos and text messages to modify dietary behaviour. The primary outcomes evaluated were the measures of feasibility and acceptability of (1) recruitment, follow-up attendance and retention; (2) data collection procedures and clinical outcome measures; and (3) individual and combined multi-modal dietary interventions. A total of 74 participants were recruited, and the 10-month retention rate was 73%. Data collection procedures were acceptable with minimal missing data. All intervention strategies were feasible and acceptable, with group counselling being the most acceptable strategy. This study provides important insights into improving the screening process of participants, facilitating their access to the research facilities and refining the measurement protocols and dietary recommendations, which are instrumental in formulating the design of a full-scale definitive DePEC-Nutrition trial.

Introduction: Accurate sodium intake estimates in adults with elevated blood pressure are essential for monitoring salt reduction progress and preventing cardiovascular diseases. However, sodium assessments are challenging in this high-risk population because many commonly used antihypertensive drugs alter urinary sodium excretion. Despite the high cost and substantial participant burden of gold-standard 24-hour urine collection, the relative performance of existing spot-urine based equations and dietary self-report instruments have not been well studied in this population, who will benefit from salt restriction. This systematic review aims to describe the current methods of assessing dietary sodium intake in adults with elevated blood pressure and determine what method can provide a valid and accurate estimate of sodium intake compared with the gold standard 24-hour urine collection., Methods and Analysis: Studies assessing sodium intake in adults aged 18 years and above with reported elevated blood pressure will be included. Five electronic databases (MEDLINE, Embase, Global Health, WoS and Cochrane CENTRAL) will be systematically searched from inception to March 2021. Also, a manual search of bibliographies and grey literature will be conducted. Two reviewers will screen the records independently for eligibility. One reviewer will extract all data, and two others will review the extracted data for accuracy. The methodological quality of included studies will be evaluated based on three scoring systems: (1) National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute for interventional studies; (2) Biomarker-based Cross-sectional Studies for biomarker-based observational studies and (3) European Micronutrient Recommendation Aligned Network of Excellence for validation studies of dietary self-report instruments., Ethics and Dissemination: As the proposed systematic review will collect and analyse secondary data associated with individuals, there will be no ethical approval requirement. Findings will be disseminated in a peer-reviewed journal or presented at a conference., Prospero Registration Number: CRD42020176137., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2022. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)

Background: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a cognitive state associated with increased risk of dementia. Little research on MCI exists from low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), despite high prevalence of dementia in these settings., Objective: This systematic review aimed to review epidemiological reports to determine the prevalence of MCI and its associated risk factors in LMICs., Methods: Medline, Embase, and PsycINFO were searched from inception until November 2019. Eligible articles reported on MCI in population or community-based studies from LMICs and were included as long as MCI was clearly defined., Results: 5,568 articles were screened, and 78 retained. In total, n = 23 different LMICs were represented; mostly from China (n = 55 studies). Few studies were from countries defined as lower-middle income (n = 14), low income (n = 4), or from population representative samples (n = 4). There was large heterogeneity in how MCI was diagnosed; with Petersen criteria the most commonly applied (n = 26). Prevalence of amnesic MCI (aMCI) (Petersen criteria) ranged from 0.6%to 22.3%. Similar variability existed across studies using the International Working Group Criteria for aMCI (range 4.5%to 18.3%) and all-MCI (range 6.1%to 30.4%). Risk of MCI was associated with demographic (e.g., age), health (e.g., cardio-metabolic disease), and lifestyle (e.g., social isolation, smoking, diet and physical activity) factors., Conclusion: Outside of China, few MCI studies have been conducted in LMIC settings. There is an urgent need for population representative epidemiological studies to determine MCI prevalence in LMICs. MCI diagnostic methodology also needs to be standardized. This will allow for cross-study comparison and future resource planning.

Introduction: Global population ageing is one of the key factors linked to the projected rise of dementia incidence. Hence, there is a clear need to identify strategies to overcome this expected health burden and have a meaningful impact on populations' health worldwide. Current evidence supports the role of modifiable dietary and lifestyle risk factors in reducing the risk of dementia. In South-East Asia, changes in eating and lifestyle patterns under the influence of westernised habits have resulted in significant increases in the prevalence of metabolic, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Low vegetable consumption and high sodium intake have been identified as key contributors to the increased prevalence of NCDs in these countries. Therefore, nutritional and lifestyle strategies targeting these dietary risk factors are warranted. The overall objective of this randomised feasibility trial is to demonstrate the acceptability of a dietary intervention to increase the consumption of high-nitrate green leafy vegetables and reduce salt intake over 6 months among Malaysian adults with raised blood pressure., Methods and Analysis: Primary outcomes focus on feasibility measures of recruitment, retention, implementation and acceptability of the intervention. Secondary outcomes will include blood pressure, cognitive function, body composition and physical function (including muscle strength and gait speed). Adherence to the dietary intervention will be assessed through collection of biological samples, 24-hour recall and Food Frequency Questionnaire. A subgroup of participants will also complete postintervention focus groups to further explore the feasibility considerations of executing a larger trial, the ability of these individuals to make dietary changes and the barriers and facilitators associated with implementing these changes., Ethics and Dissemination: Ethical approval has been obtained from Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee and Medical Research and Ethics Committee of Malaysia. Results of the study will be disseminated via peer-reviewed publications and presentations at national and international conferences.ISRCTN47562685; Pre-results., Competing Interests: Competing interests: LR reports grants from National Institute of Health Research Senior Investigator award during the conduct of the study; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.)

Background: A key focus for dementia risk-reduction is the prevention of socio-demographic, lifestyle, and nutritional risk factors. High sodium intake is associated with hypertension and cardiovascular disease (both are linked to dementia), generating numerous recommendations for salt reduction to improve cardiovascular health., Objective: This systematic review aimed to assess, in middle- and older-aged people, the relationship between dietary sodium intake and cognitive outcomes including cognitive function, risk of cognitive decline, or dementia., Methods: Six databases (PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, Psych info, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library) were searched from inception to 1 March 2020. Data extraction included information on study design, population characteristics, sodium reduction strategy (trials) or assessment of dietary sodium intake (observational studies), measurement of cognitive function or dementia, and summary of main results. Risk-of-bias assessments were performed using the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) assessment tool., Results: Fifteen studies met the inclusion criteria including one clinical trial, six cohorts, and eight cross-sectional studies. Studies reported mixed associations between sodium levels and cognition. Results from the only clinical trial showed that a lower sodium intake was associated with improved cognition over six months. In analysis restricted to only high-quality studies, three out of four studies found that higher sodium intake was associated with impaired cognitive function., Conclusion: There is some evidence that high salt intake is associated with poor cognition. However, findings are mixed, likely due to poor methodological quality, and heterogeneous dietary, analytical, and cognitive assessment methods and design of the studies. Reduced sodium intake may be a potential target for intervention. High quality prospective studies and clinical trials are needed.

Aims: Facial candling is one of the traditional treatments that is claimed to be able to help in curing or reducing various allergy and inflammation conditions such as allergic rhinitis. We aimed to explore the perceptions of participants with allergic rhinitis toward their disease conditions and facial candling treatment., Materials and Methods: The study used a qualitative exploratory design, comprising 12 in-depth interviews. A semi-structured topic guide was used to explore all relevant aspects of the topic, which were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim. All the interviews were conducted in a few beauty salons in purposively selected city areas in the state of Kedah, Malaysia., Results: Of the 12 patients, seven (58%) reported a positive experience of facial candling treatment, with improvement in the condition of their allergic rhinitis. Specific themes about the experience of facial candling treatment that were identified within the transcript data included knowledge about facial candling, options for disease treatment, effectiveness of facial candling, sources of information, comparison, application of treatment, treatment budget, and safety. The major strength lies in the fact that reasons for using facial candling were uncovered from the perspectives of people with allergic rhinitis through the in-depth interviews., Conclusions: The motives of these participants for using facial candling are mainly due to cultural influence and its low cost of treatment. There were mixed responses from the participants about the usefulness of facial candling. Most of the respondents had not assessed the safety of prolonged use of facial candling and regarded it as a safe procedure as this has been practiced for generations., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts of interest.

Background: Despite the surge in mobile health (mHealth) applications (apps) about pediatric care in commercial app stores, to our knowledge, reviews of the quality of such apps are lacking. Consequently, it is a great challenge for health care professionals (HCPs) to identify appropriate and reliable mHealth apps for delivering health care services. Thus, we performed a structured review of the extant literature about mHealth apps in pediatric care and quality assessment of selected apps found in commercial app stores., Methods: A review and comparison of mHealth apps in pediatric care found in Google's Play Store (Android system) and Apple's App Store (iOS system) were performed. For the structured review of the available literature, Google Scholar, PubMed, IEEE Xplore Digital Library, and Science Direct online databases were used for the literature search. The assessment criteria used for comparison included requirement for Internet connection, size of application, information on disease, diagnostic tools, medical calculator, information on disease treatments, dosage recommendations, and drug interaction checker., Results: Fifty mHealth apps for general pediatric care and 8 mHealth apps for specific pediatric diseases were discussed in the literature. Of the 90 mHealth apps we reviewed, 27 that fulfilled the study criteria were selected for quality assessment. Medscape, Skyscape, and iGuideline scored the highest (score=7), while PediaBP scored the lowest (score=3)., Conclusions: Medscape, Skyscape, and iGuideline are the most comprehensive mHealth apps for HCPs as quick references for pediatric care. More studies about mHealth apps in pediatric care are warranted to ensure the quality and reliability of mHealth apps.

Background: Mobile devices and applications (apps) that act as access tools for health care management aid in the improvement of clinical decision making and patient outcomes. However, the tremendous amount of mobile health (mHealth) apps available in commercial app stores makes it hard for the lay users as well as health care professionals to choose the right one for their individual needs. The contents and features of these apps have not been systematically reviewed and compared. This study aims to assess the contents and features of mHealth apps for caring of older people., Methods: A review and comparison of mHealth apps for caring of older people available in Google's Play Store (Android system) and Apple's App Store (iOS system) were performed. Systematic review of previous relevant literature were conducted. The assessment criteria used for comparison were requirement for Internet connection, information of disease, size of app, diagnostics and assessment tools, medical calculator, dosage recommendations and indications, clinical updates, drugs interaction checker, and information on disease management., Results: Twenty-five mHealth apps were assessed. Medscape and Skyscape Medical Library are the most comprehensive mHealth apps for general drug information, medical references, clinical score, and medical calculator. Alzheimer's Disease Pocketcard and Confusion: Delirium & Dementia: A Bedside Guide apps are recommended for clinical assessment, diagnosis, drug information, and management of geriatric patients with Alzheimer disease, delirium, and dementia., Conclusions: More studies about mHealth apps for caring of older people are warranted to ensure the quality and reliability of the mHealth apps.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of pharmacist-led warfarin management and standardized treatment protocol. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was carried out in a cardiology referral hospital located in central Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from 2009 to 2014. The inclusion criteria were: adult patients who were diagnosed and treated for atrial fibrillation (AF) with warfarin, attended the warfarin medication therapy adherence clinic (WMTAC) for at least 12 weeks, and with at least four international normalized ratio (INR) readings. The electronic medical records were reviewed for demographics, type of AF, warfarin dose, INRs, adverse events, co-morbidities, and drug-drug interactions. The outcome measures included the mean time to therapeutic INR, the mean percentage of time in therapeutic range (TTR), bleeding events, and common drug interactions. Results: Out of 473 patients, 151 patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The findings revealed that there were significant associations between the usual medical care (UMC) group and pharmacist-led WMTAC in terms of TTR ( p = 0.01) and INR ( p = 0.02) levels. A positive impact of pharmacists' involvement in the WMTAC clinic was where the "pharmacist's recommendation accepted" ( p = 0.01) and "expanded therapeutic INR range" ( p = 0.04) were statistically significantly higher in the WMTAC group. Conclusion: There was a significant positive association between the pharmacist-led WMTAC and anticoagulation effect (therapeutic TTR, INR). The identified findings revealed that expanded role of pharmacist in pharmacist-managed warfarin therapy is beneficial to optimize the warfarin therapy. This study also highlighted the critical roles that pharmacists can actively play to ensure optimal anticoagulation pharmaceutical care., Key Messages: What is already known on this subject? • Pharmacist-managed warfarin therapy is beneficial for optimizing warfarin therapy. In such therapy, recommendations such as dose adjustment and safer alternative drugs (given drug-drug interactions and/or food-drug interactions) are made.• The active involvement of pharmacists in warfarin adherence clinics could significantly improve adherence.• However, the warfarin treatment outcomes from UMC, pharmacist-and-physician-led care and pharmacist-led care have not been studied.• The impact of the implementation of the standardized protocol for the warfarin adherence clinic has not been assessed. What this study adds? • INR levels among UMC group and WMTAC group were significantly different.• Though the TTR level for the WMTAC group was not significantly different than the UMC group, it was higher and close to the targeted 60% level.• The identified findings show that pharmacists' focus on intervention for missed doses, adherence and dose adjustment provide positive impact on patients' warfarin therapy.

Background: There is a need for a collation and comparison of the content of the mobile medical applications (apps) to allow health care professionals to know precisely which app they can rely on to gain access to appropriate drugs references. This study aims to evaluate the features of mobile medical apps based on 3 major functions: Dosage recommendation, drug adverse Reaction, And Drug Interaction (DoReADI)., Method: A review and comparison of mobile apps available in Google's Play Store (Android system) and Apple's App Store (iOS system) were performed. The comparison was based on the availability of options, especially DoReADI functionalities. The assessment criteria were as follows: requirement for an Internet connection, subscription fee charged, size of app, dose recommendation, drug indication, dose calculator, drug picture, dose adjustment, pregnancy safety, interaction checker, interaction classification, clinical teaching advice, contraindicated drug, black box warning, adverse effect, contraindication or precaution, as well as toxicology and pharmacology information., Results: Eight mobile medical apps were included and used to compare their features and functionalities. The 4 apps that scored the highest (14/17 points) are: Lexicomp ® , Epocrates ® , Micromedex ® , and Drugs.com ® . Lexicomp and Micromedex do not provide the image of the drug and have an access subscription fee. Epocrates does not provide interaction classification and clinical teaching advice, and occupies a large space in the memory to be installed. Meanwhile, My Blue Book ® scored the lowest (9/17 points) because certain features such as toxicology information, drug interaction, clinical teaching advice, contraindicated drug, and black box warning were not included., Conclusion: Based on the features assessment criteria of each mobile medical application, Lexicomp, Epocrates, Micromedex, and Drugs.com are the apps that scored the highest. Epocrates and Micromedex are useful for checking drug interactions. In addition, some of the apps have additional features for the DoReADI criteria, for example, dose calculator and interaction classification.

The Internet and rapid development of technology has led to the application of pharmacoinformatic technologies in improving the efficiency of the medication use process. By integrating pharmacoinformatics in pharmacy education, a qualified workforce of pharmacists well trained in the perspective of both pharmacy practice and informatics for safe and positive health-related outcomes can be produced. This survey assessed the level of importance of the suggested topics for pharmacoinformatics courses for pharmacy bachelor's and master's degrees by giving a questionnaire to pharmacy lecturers in both public and private universities, and to pharmacists registered with the Ministry of Health, Malaysia. Briefly the study of pharmacoinformatics was classified into 5 major areas: Drug Information Services, Information Technology & Internet, Drug Formulary Management, Supply Chain Management, and Health Policy. The relative importance of all relevant topics were evaluated and reported. It was found that compared with the undergraduate level, master's degree had higher expectations, and thus a more in-depth pharmacoinformatics curriculum content. In addition, the experiential method of learning instead of formal lectures alone was used on pharmacy master's courses. The findings from this survey could serve as a guide to improve pharmacoinformatics curricula in order to produce pharmacists who can safely and effectively utilize pharmacy informatics to disseminate information in drug use.

Introduction: Reflexology is the systematic practice of applying some pressure to particular points on the feet and hands to impact on health of related parts of the body., Objective: To explore the practitioners' perspectives of reflexology in Malaysia., Methods: Data was collected using face-to-face semi-structured interviews with practitioners in Malaysia. The interviews were conducted in the Malay language and recorded. Interview conversations were translated and transcribed verbatim. Responses relating to different themes were identified in each of the interviews and a coding frame was developed. For each theme, the relevant data enabled a description of the range of views and experiences. Data collection and analysis were conducted concurrently and recruitment was stopped when saturation had been reached. All respondents gave written consent for their participation., Results: The findings show that reflexology treatment nowadays has been accepted as one of the ways to maintain general health. Practitioners believe that reflexology is able to detect some problems in to the body, which can make patients aware of a health condition and seek further treatment. However, if reflexology is not performed correctly, it may cause negative effects such as pain and bruises. Some practitioners voiced concern that illegal activities are taking place in unethical reflexology centers., Conclusions: Empowering the practitioner as a professional would help gain the public's trust and confidence in their treatment. Strict enforcement of regulation related to illegal conduct in reflexology centers will improve people's perception of the practice.

Reflexology is basically a study of how one part of the human body relates to another part of the body. Reflexology practitioners rely on the reflexes map of the feet and hands to all the internal organs and other human body parts. They believe that by applying the appropriate pressure and massage certain spots on the feet and hands, all other body parts could be energized and rejuvenated. This review aimed to revisit the concept of reflexology and examine its effectiveness, practices, and the training for reflexology practitioners. PubMed, SCOPUS, Google Scholar, and SpringerLink databases were utilized to search the following medical subject headings or keywords: foot massage, reflexology, foot reflexotherapy, reflexological treatment, and zone therapy. The articles published for the last 10 years were included. Previous systematic reviews failed to show concrete evidence for any specific effect of reflexology in any conditions. Due to its non-invasive, non-pharmacological complementary nature, reflexology is widely accepted and anecdotal evidence of positive effect reflexology in a variety of health conditions are available. Adequate training for practitioners is necessary to ensure the consistency of service provided.

Extreme learning machine (ELM) has recently attracted many researchers' interest due to its very fast learning speed, good generalization ability, and ease of implementation. It provides a unified solution that can be used directly to solve regression, binary, and multiclass classification problems. In this paper, we propose a stacked ELMs (S-ELMs) that is specially designed for solving large and complex data problems. The S-ELMs divides a single large ELM network into multiple stacked small ELMs which are serially connected. The S-ELMs can approximate a very large ELM network with small memory requirement. To further improve the testing accuracy on big data problems, the ELM autoencoder can be implemented during each iteration of the S-ELMs algorithm. The simulation results show that the S-ELMs even with random hidden nodes can achieve similar testing accuracy to support vector machine (SVM) while having low memory requirements. With the help of ELM autoencoder, the S-ELMs can achieve much better testing accuracy than SVM and slightly better accuracy than deep belief network (DBN) with much faster training speed.

Location-based services (LBS) have attracted a great deal of attention recently. Outdoor localization can be solved by the GPS technique, but how to accurately and efficiently localize pedestrians in indoor environments is still a challenging problem. Recent techniques based on WiFi or pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) have several limiting problems, such as the variation of WiFi signals and the drift of PDR. An auxiliary tool for indoor localization is landmarks, which can be easily identified based on specific sensor patterns in the environment, and this will be exploited in our proposed approach. In this work, we propose a sensor fusion framework for combining WiFi, PDR and landmarks. Since the whole system is running on a smartphone, which is resource limited, we formulate the sensor fusion problem in a linear perspective, then a Kalman filter is applied instead of a particle filter, which is widely used in the literature. Furthermore, novel techniques to enhance the accuracy of individual approaches are adopted. In the experiments, an Android app is developed for real-time indoor localization and navigation. A comparison has been made between our proposed approach and individual approaches. The results show significant improvement using our proposed framework. Our proposed system can provide an average localization accuracy of 1 m.

Extreme learning machines (ELMs) have been proposed for generalized single-hidden-layer feedforward networks which need not be neuron alike and perform well in both regression and classification applications. The problem of determining the suitable network architectures is recognized to be crucial in the successful application of ELMs. This paper first proposes a dynamic ELM (D-ELM) where the hidden nodes can be recruited or deleted dynamically according to their significance to network performance, so that not only the parameters can be adjusted but also the architecture can be self-adapted simultaneously. Then, this paper proves in theory that such D-ELM using Lebesgue p-integrable hidden activation functions can approximate any Lebesgue p-integrable function on a compact input set. Simulation results obtained over various test problems demonstrate and verify that the proposed D-ELM does a good job reducing the network size while preserving good generalization performance.

Unlike a conventional white light source that emits a continuous and broad spectrum of light, the dual wavelength white light emitting diode (LED) generates white light by mixing blue and yellow lights, so there are two distinct peaks in its intensity spectrum. Prior works had shown that the spectral property of the dual wavelength white LED can affect the vertical scanning interferometry negatively if the spectral effects are not compensated. In this paper, we shall examine this issue by modeling the spectral property and variation of the dual wavelength white LED, followed by investigating its effects on the interference signal of vertical scanning interferometry. Instead of compensating the spectral effects of the dual wavelength white LED, we harness its spectral property to improve the performance of a phase-based height reconstruction algorithm in vertical scanning interferometry.

This paper presents a near-field ellipsometry method for nano-scale thin film characterization. The method is based on a reflection configuration of near-field optical detection. In the method, a new set of ellipsometry equations is established by taking into consideration the near-field sample-probe interaction and the topography of the thin film. Experimental and simulation results have shown that the proposed near-field ellipsometry is able to attain precise thin film characterization with nano-scale lateral resolution., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Second harmonic generation (SHG) has been applied to reduce background signals in near-field optical imaging, but this technique is usually limited to samples with strong second-order nonlinear susceptibilities. To overcome this limitation, in this paper, we present a versatile background-free SHG configuration, where it utilizes the second-order nonlinear susceptibility of the probe which essentially functions as a near-field polarizer capable of filtering out the background signal component. In the theoretical analysis, we first model the probe-sample optical interactions at both the fundamental frequency and the second harmonic frequency by using the coupled dipole method. The theoretical model reveals that the proposed versatile background-free SHG configuration requires two conditions. The first condition is that the incident optical field must be s-polarized. The second condition is that the probe must be made of crystals from symmetry class 222, symmetry class 622, symmetry class 422, symmetry class 42m, symmetry class 43m or symmetry class 23. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed versatile background-free SHG configuration, a probe made of deuterated potassium dideuterium phosphate (DKDP) crystal from symmetry class 42m is analyzed numerically. It is shown that when imaging samples with negligible second-order nonlinear susceptibilities, the proposed background-free SHG configuration improves the imaging contrast by more than one-order of magnitude as compared to all other imaging configurations. Moreover, we also investigate the dependence of its performance on other parameters, such as the probe-sample distance, the relative size between probe and sample, and the tilt angle of probe crystal. It is believed that the proposed configuration could be widely used to achieve high contrast near-field optical imaging.

We present a reconstruction method to eliminate the autocorrelation noise (ACN) in optical coherence tomography (OCT). In this method, the optical fields scattered from the sample features are regarded as the response of a sparse finite impulse response (FIR) filter. Then the OCT reconstruction is formulated as one of identifying the parameters of a sparse FIR filter, which are obtained via an [script-l](1) optimization with soft thresholding. The experimental results show that the proposed method can obtain OCT reconstruction results with effective attenuation of ACN.

Laguerre-Gaussian beams have become increasingly important in areas like optical manipulation and quantum communications. A good understanding of the accuracy and sensitivity of their displacement measurements are required for these applications. In this Letter, we present a method to analyze and compare the performance of these measurements, and an estimation technique is proposed to improve their measurement accuracies. The effectiveness of our methods is verified by simulation studies.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) reconstruction by using frequency measurements in the wavelength domain is presented in this paper. The method directly recovers the axial scan by formulating the frequency domain OCT (FD-OCT) into an algebraic reconstruction problem. In this way, the need for interpolation is removed. Then by solving the problem with ℓ1 optimization, the computational load is significantly reduced. It is demonstrated by experiment and simulation that the proposed method can achieve high resolution and longer imaging depth compared to the FD-OCT method.

This brief presents a curve clustering technique based on a new multivariate model. Instead of the usual Gaussian random effect model, our method uses the multivariate t-distribution model which has better robustness to outliers and noise. In our method, we use the B-spline curve to model curve data and apply the mixed-effects model to capture the randomness and covariance of all curves within the same cluster. After fitting the B-spline-based mixed-effects model to the proposed multivariate t -distribution, we derive an expectation-maximization algorithm for estimating the parameters of the model, and apply the proposed approach to the simulated data and the real dataset. The experimental results show that our model yields better clustering results when compared to the conventional Gaussian random effect model.

This paper presents a new method to reduce the topographical artifacts in scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) images. The method uses the harmonics caused intrinsically by the nonlinearity in the oscillation of the SNOM probe even when the probe is working in a normal condition without extra excitation. Using these intrinsic harmonics, the gradient of the received SNOM signal with respect to the probe motion is obtained. Then, taking advantage of a SNOM capable of simultaneously obtaining both the topographical and optical signals, topographical artifacts are calculated from the product of the gradient and the topographical signal, and then removed from the received SNOM signal. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated experimentally.

This paper presents a novel estimation scheme to calculate the probe-sample separation in atomic force microscopy (AFM). The AFM is capable of measuring the sample topography by using a probe to interact with the sample. The interaction is dominated by the atomic force which is dependent on the probe-sample separation and sample properties. The key to successful AFM applications is accurate sensing and regulation of the probe-sample separation in nanometer scale. Our proposed scheme provides an accurate estimate of the probe-sample separation based on the information of the main sinusoidal and its harmonics. The estimation is shown to have a good performance even when noise is present.

This paper presents a novel optofluidic Michelson interferometer based on droplet microfluidics used to create a droplet grating. The droplet grating is formed by a stream of plugs in the microchannel with constant refractive index variation. It has a real-time tunability in the grating period through varying the flow rates of the liquids and index variation via different combinations of liquids. The optofluidic Michelson interferometer is highly sensitive and is suitable for the measurement of biomedical and biochemical buffer solutions. The experimental results show that it has a sensitivity of 66.7 nm per refractive index unit (RIU) and a detection range of 0.086 RIU.

A near-field ellipsometry method is presented for nano-scale thin film characterization. The technique fuses the topographic and ellipso-metric optical measurements that are simultaneously obtained by a scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM). It is shown that the proposed near-field ellipsometry is able to attain nano-scale lateral resolution and correct artifacts in characterization. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulation and experimental studies.

This paper presents a two coupled oscillators model to describe the dynamics of a tuning fork with a probe attached. The two coupled oscillators are unbalanced only in their effective masses and the damping ratios. By applying a frequency domain system identification approach in experimental investigation of various probe attachment cases, a good accuracy of the model is demonstrated. The effectiveness of the model is further demonstrated in quantitative analysis of the noise performance and the sensitivity of force sensing with a tuning fork probe. Compared with existing models, the proposed model can more accurately characterize the dynamics of a tuning fork probe.

For a recurrent neural network (RNN), its transient response is a critical issue, especially for real-time signal processing applications. The conventional RNN training algorithms, such as backpropagation through time (BPTT) and real-time recurrent learning (RTRL), have not adequately addressed this problem because they suffer from low convergence speed. While increasing the learning rate may help to improve the performance of the RNN, it can result in unstable training in terms of weight divergence. Therefore, an optimal tradeoff between RNN training speed and weight convergence is desired. In this paper, a robust adaptive gradient-descent (RAGD) training algorithm of RNN is developed based on a novel RNN hybrid training concept. It switches the training patterns between standard real-time online backpropagation (BP) and RTRL according to the derived convergence and stability conditions. The weight convergence and L(2)-stability of the algorithm are derived via the conic sector theorem. The optimized adaptive learning maximizes the training speed of the RNN for each weight update without violating the stability and convergence criteria. Computer simulations are carried out to demonstrate the applicability of the theoretical results.

This paper considers the design of robust neural network tracking controllers for nonlinear systems. The neural network is used in the closed-loop system to estimate the nonlinear system function. We introduce the conic sector theory to establish a robust neural control system, with guaranteed boundedness for both the input/output (I/O) signals and the weights of the neural network. The neural network is trained by the simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA) method instead of the standard backpropagation (BP) algorithm. The proposed neural control system guarantees closed-loop stability of the estimation system, and a good tracking performance. The performance improvement of the proposed system over existing systems can be quantified in terms of preventing weight shifts, fast convergence, and robustness against system disturbance.

Natural Organic Matter (NOM) from Myponga Reservoir, South Australia, was separated into four organic fractions based on their hydrophobic and hydrophilic properties using a sequence of non-ionic and ionic resins. NOM fractions were isolated for the purpose of determining the impact of alum coagulation on removal of these fractions in conventional water treatment, and their potential as precursors in the formation of disinfection by-products (DBP) and in supporting microbial growth. The NOM comprised VHA (very hydrophobic acids), SHA (slightly hydrophobic acids), CHA (charged hydrophilics) and NEU (neutral hydrophilics) fractions. These fractions were then jar tested with alum using low (50 mg/L), operational (100 mg/L) and very high (200 mg/L) doses to assess the removal capacities for these fractions in a conventional treatment plant. High-performance size exclusion chromatography-UV-DOC (HPSEC-UV-DOC) revealed that alum removed more of the hydrophobic and higher molecular weight components of NOM, but less of the NEU fraction and lower molecular weight components of NOM. Determination of biodegradable dissolved organic carbon (BDOC) indicated that the NEU fraction had the highest biodegradability, followed by the CHA, SHA and VHA fractions. The VHA fraction had the highest total-trihalomethane formation potential (t-THMFP), followed by NEU, SHA and CHA. The NOM not removed by alum coagulation had the potential to support microbial growth (NEU fraction), and disinfection by-product (DBP) formation (VHA and NEU fractions). To obtain treated water with lower overall residual NOM, other treatment methods would need to be applied in addition to alum coagulation in order to reduce the concentration of the neutral fraction., (IWA Publishing 2008.)

A novel lattice structure for the design of two-port optical interleavers is presented. With the proposed lattice structure, the exact linear-phase characteristics of the two outputs of interleavers are guaranteed. The desired spectral characteristics are achieved with appropriate choices of design parameters through an optimization algorithm. It is shown that the linear-phase characteristics of the proposed interleaver are retained even in the presence of design parameter variations. The simulation results verified the effectiveness of the proposed structure and design scheme.

We present an adaptive autofocusing scheme. In this scheme, the focus measure is updated with focus tuning. To achieve this, we construct the focus measure by using image moments and develop an adaptive focus-tuning strategy to estimate the measure in closed loop. It is shown that the adaptive updating of the focus measure enables us to overcome the dependence of autofocusing on the image contents. Such an adaptive closed-loop focusing operation also effectively suppresses both the effect of the noise in optical imaging and the effect of time delay due to image processing time. Therefore a high accuracy of autofocusing is guaranteed. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is demonstrated by simulations and experiments.

We present a multiple compartment, mammillary distributed-parameter model for capillary-tissue exchange, which can be implemented with dynamic contrast-enhanced imaging to study kinetic heterogeneity in tumors. The proposed n-compartment model consists of a vascular distributed-parameter compartment in direct exchange with a number (n - 1) of interstitial compartments. It is applied to a prostate tumor case study to illustrate the possible co-existence of two kinetically distinct compartments in the tumor, and the estimation of useful physiological parameters (such as perfusion, mean transit time, fractional volumes, and transfer and rate constants) associated with tissue microcirculation. The present model exhibits the convenient property of a separable impulse residue response function in time domain, which can be used to provide further insights and understanding on the physiological basis of tissue enhancement parameters commonly used for correlation studies with tumor histological diagnosis.

A robust backpropagation training algorithm with a dead zone scheme is used for the online tuning of the neuralnetwork (NN) tracking control system. This assures the convergence of the multilayered NN in the presence of disturbance. It is proved in this paper that the selection of a smaller range of the dead zone leads to a smaller estimate error of the NN, and hence a smaller tracking error of the NN tracking controller. The proposed algorithm is applied to a three-layered network with adjustable weights and a complete convergence proof is provided. The results can also be extended to the network with more hidden layers.