Healthcare professionals routinely use audio signals, generated by the human body, to help diagnose disease or assess its progression. With new technologies, it is now possible to collect human-generated sounds, such as coughing. Audio-based machine learning technologies can be adopted for automatic analysis of collected data. Valuable and rich information can be obtained from the cough signal and extracting effective characteristics from a finite duration time interval that changes as a function of time. This article presents a proposed approach to the detection and diagnosis of COVID-19 through the processing of cough collected from patients suffering from the most common symptoms of this pandemic. The proposed method is based on adopt

The development of low profile gamma-ray detectors has encouraged the production of small field of view (SFOV) hand-held imaging devices for use at the patient bedside and in operating theatres. Early development of these SFOV cameras was focussed on a single modality—gamma ray imaging. Recently, a hybrid system—gamma plus optical imaging—has been developed. This combination of optical and gamma cameras enables high spatial resolution multi-modal imaging, giving a superimposed scintigraphic and optical image. Hybrid imaging offers new possibilities for assisting clinicians and surgeons in localising the site of uptake in procedures such as sentinel node detection. The hybrid camera concept can be extended to a multimodal detec

Objective. Glass-ionomer and resin-modified glass-ionomer cements are versatile materials with the ability to form a direct bond with tooth tissues. The aim of this study was to formulate a novel class of dental bio-interactive restorative material (pRMGIC) based on resin-modified glass-ionomer cements via the inclusion of an organophosphorus monomer, ethylene glycol methacrylate phosphate, with a potential to improve the mechanical properties and also function as a reparative restorative material. Methods. pRMGIC was formulated with modification of the resin phase by forming mixes of ethylene glycol methacrylate phosphate (EGMP; 0–40%wt) and 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate monomer into the liquid phase of a RMGIC (Fuji II LC, GC Corp.).

Background The Transportation Problem (TP) is a detailed model in operations study with applications in logistics, supply chain management, and resource allocation. The classical IBFS methods including North-West Corner, Least Cost and Vogel’s Approximation have competitive computational efficiency, but they are very sensitive to the structure of the problem and usually lead to a solution that is far from the global optimum. Classic enhancement strategies like the Generalized Distribution (MODI) and Stepping-Stone (SS) approaches have low computational complexity but may fall into a local optimum quickly, which makes them ineffective in large-scale or unbalanced problems. Methods We propose the first generic hybrid algorithm, calle

A novel fractal design scheme has been introduced in this paper to generate microstrip bandpass filter designs with miniaturized sizes for wireless applications. The presented fractal scheme is based on Minkowski-like prefractal geometry. The space-filling property and self-similarity of this fractal geometry has found to produce reduced size symmetrical structures corresponding to the successive iteration levels. The resulting filter designs are with sizes suitable for use in modern wireless communication systems. The performance of each of the generated bandpass filter structures up to the 2^nd iteration has been analyzed using a method of moments (MoM) based software IE3D, which is widely adopted in microwave research and in

The hydrological process has a dynamic nature characterised by randomness and complex phenomena. The application of machine learning (ML) models in forecasting river flow has grown rapidly. This is owing to their capacity to simulate the complex phenomena associated with hydrological and environmental processes. Four different ML models were developed for river flow forecasting located in semiarid region, Iraq. The effectiveness of data division influence on the ML models process was investigated. Three data division modeling scenarios were inspected including 70%–30%, 80%–20, and 90%–10%. Several statistical indicators are computed to verify the performance of the models. The results revealed the potential of the hybridized s

Several stress-strain models were used to predict the strengths of steel fiber reinforced concrete, which are distinctive of the material. However, insufficient research has been done on the influence of hybrid fiber combinations (comprising two or more distinct fibers) on the characteristics of concrete. For this reason, the researchers conducted an experimental program to determine the stress-strain relationship of 30 concrete samples reinforced with two distinct fibers (a hybrid of polyvinyl alcohol and steel fibers), with compressive strengths ranging from 40 to 120 MPa. A total of 80% of the experimental results were used to develop a new empirical stress-strain model, which was accomplished through the application of the parti

In this paper three techniques for image compression are implemented. The proposed techniques consist of three dimension (3-D) two level discrete wavelet transform (DWT), 3-D two level discrete multi-wavelet transform (DMWT) and 3-D two level hybrid (wavelet-multiwavelet transform) technique. Daubechies and Haar are used in discrete wavelet transform and Critically Sampled preprocessing is used in discrete multi-wavelet transform. The aim is to maintain to increase the compression ratio (CR) with respect to increase the level of the transformation in case of 3-D transformation, so, the compression ratio is measured for each level. To get a good compression, the image data properties, were measured, such as, image entropy (He), percent root-

The printing designer's creative thinking is a deliberate  mental process based on specific skills that stimulate the motivation of  the student to learn and call for  new information for the investigation and research to discover the problems and attitudes and through reformulating the experience in new patterns depending on the active imagination and the flexible scientific thinking through providing the largest number possible  of various unfamiliar  printing design models, and testing their suitability and then readjusting the results with the availability of  suitable educational, learning and academic atmosphere.

The designer's creative thinking depends on main skills. Fluency skill is to put t