It is widely accepted that early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) makes it possible for patients to gain access to appropriate health care services and would facilitate the development of new therapies. AD starts many years before its clinical manifestations and a biomarker that provides a measure of changes in the brain in this period would be useful for early diagnosis of AD. Given the rapid increase in the number of older people suffering from AD, there is a need for an accurate, low-cost and easy to use biomarkers that could be used to detect AD in its early stages. Potentially, the electroencephalogram (EEG) can play a vital role in this but at present, no reliable EEG biomarker exists for early diagnosis of AD. The gradual slowing of brain activity caused by AD starts from the back of the brain and spreads out towards other parts. Consequently, determining the brain regions that are first affected by AD may be useful in its early diagnosis. Higuchi fractal dimension (HFD) has characteristics which make it suited to capturing region-specific neural changes due to AD. The aim of this study is to investigate the potential of HFD of the EEG as a biomarker which is associated with the brain region first affected by AD. Mean HFD value was calculated for all channels of EEG signals recorded from 52 subjects (20-AD and 32-normal). Then, p-values were calculated between the two groups (AD and normal) to detect EEG channels that have a significant association with AD. k-nearest neighbor (KNN) algorithm was used to compute the distance between AD patients and normal subjects in the classification. Our results show that AD patients have significantly lower HFD values in the parietal areas. HFD values for channels in these areas were used to discriminate between AD and normal subjects with a sensitivity and specificity values of 100% and 80%, respectively.
For several applications, it is very important to have an edge detection technique matching human visual contour perception and less sensitive to noise. The edge detection algorithm describes in this paper based on the results obtained by Maximum a posteriori (MAP) and Maximum Entropy (ME) deblurring algorithms. The technique makes a trade-off between sharpening and smoothing the noisy image. One of the advantages of the described algorithm is less sensitive to noise than that given by Marr and Geuen techniques that considered to be the best edge detection algorithms in terms of matching human visual contour perception.
Voice Activity Detection (VAD) is considered as an important pre-processing step in speech processing systems such as speech enhancement, speech recognition, gender and age identification. VAD helps in reducing the time required to process speech data and to improve final system accuracy by focusing the work on the voiced part of the speech. An automatic technique for VAD using Fuzzy-Neuro technique (FN-AVAD) is presented in this paper. The aim of this work is to alleviate the problem of choosing the best threshold value in traditional VAD methods and achieves automaticity by combining fuzzy clustering and machine learning techniques. Four features are extracted from each speech segment, which are short term energy, zero-crossing rate, auto
... Show MorePavement crack and pothole identification are important tasks in transportation maintenance and road safety. This study offers a novel technique for automatic asphalt pavement crack and pothole detection which is based on image processing. Different types of cracks (transverse, longitudinal, alligator-type, and potholes) can be identified with such techniques. The goal of this research is to evaluate road surface damage by extracting cracks and potholes, categorizing them from images and videos, and comparing the manual and the automated methods. The proposed method was tested on 50 images. The results obtained from image processing showed that the proposed method can detect cracks and potholes and identify their severity levels wit
... Show MoreBackground: Osteoporosis is denoted by low bone mass and microarchitectural breakdown of bone tissue, directing to increased fracture risk and bone fragility. Fractures may lead to a decreased quality of life and increased medical costs. Thus, osteoporosis is widely considered a significant health concern.
Objective. This study aimed to compare quantitative computed tomography (QCT) and dual-energy X-Ray absorptiometry (DXA) to detect osteoporosis in postmenopausal women.
Subjects and Methods. We measured spinal volumetric bone mineral density (BMD) with QCT and areal spinal and hip BMD with DXA in 164 postmenopausal women. We calculated the osteo
... Show MoreThe study aims to demonstrate the importance of instructional methods in teaching Arabic language as a second language or teaching the Arabic language to non-native speakers. The study is in line with the tremendous development in the field of knowledge, especially in the field of technology and communication, and the emergence of many electronic media in education in general and language teaching in particular. It employs an image in teaching vocabulary and presenting the experience of the Arabic Language Institute for Non-Speakers-King Abdul-Aziz University. The study follows the descriptive approach to solve the problem represented by the lack of interest in the educational methods when teaching Arabic as a second language. Accordingl
... Show MoreIn Indonesia, cattle feces (CF) and water hyacinth (WH) plants are abundant but have not been widely revealed. The use of microorganisms as decomposers in the fermentation process has not been widely applied, so researchers are interested in studying further. This study was to evaluate the effect of the combination of CF with WH on composting by applying white-rot fungal (WRF) (Ganoderma sp) microorganism as a decomposer. A number of six types of treatment compared to R1(ratio of CF:WH)(25%:75%)+WRF; R2(ratio of CF:WH)(50%:50%)+WRF; R3(ratio of CF:WH)(75%:25%)+WRF; R4(ratio of CF:WH)(25%:75%) without WRF; R5(ratio of CF:WH)(50%:50%) without WRF; R6(ratio of CF:WH)
... Show MoreThis mini review provides an overview of methods for manufacturing expanded graphite (EGT) and the use of its composites with metal oxides in the field of photodegradation of dyes. Dyes from textile manufacturing represent a significant environmental pollution problem in waterways worldwide, highlighting the need for environmentally friendly and efficient technologies to remove dyes from industrial and local wastewater. Photodegradation technologies offer a low-cost, sustainable solution with minimal secondary pollution. Carbon-based materials, such as expanded graphite, are advantageous in enhancing catalytic activity. Accordingly, this review will explore the different fabrication techniques of expanded graphite and summarize the recent d
... Show MoreA simple, fast, selective of a new flow injection analysis method coupled with potentiometric detection was used to determine vitamin B1 in pharmaceutical formulations via the prepared new selective membranes. Two electrodes were constructed for the determination of vitamin B1 based on the ion-pair vitamin B1-phosphotungestic acid (B1-PTA) in a poly (vinyl chloride) supported with a plasticized di-butyl phthalate (DBPH) and di-butyl phosphate (DBP). Applications of these ion selective electrodes for the determination of vitamin B1 in the pharmaceutical preparations for batch and flow injection systems were described. The ion selective membrane exhibited a near-Nernstian slope values 56.88 and 58.53 mV / decade, with the linear dy
... Show MoreShowing animal shapes is one of the primary topics since the discovery of cave drawings, with semantic discourses, as they appeared in the ancient civilization of Iraq, with their discourse and intellectual structure, and their reflections on their plastic achievements. The research deals with three topics: the first (an introduction to the concept of discourse), the second: (the historical roots of animal forms), and the third (the manifestation of animal forms and their discourse, in Mesopotamia). Mesopotamian fauna and its concepts? What are the?, Its importance was also represented in: the presence of animals and their semantic and conceptual discourse, especially the sculptures (the lion and the bull), with the aim of revealing the
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