31 research outputs found
Corrigendum: Angiotensin-converting enzyme gene insertion/deletion polymorphism and risk of ischemic stroke complication among patients with hypertension in the Ethiopian population
No full textVitamin D deficiency and VDR TaqI polymorphism on diabetic nephropathy risk among type 2 diabetes patients
No full textBackgroundMany studies have shown that vitamin D deficiency and vitamin D receptor TaqI gene polymorphisms are associated with susceptibility to diabetic nephropathy in various populations. The objective of this study was to determine the impact of vitamin D deficiency and vitamin D receptor TaqI gene polymorphism on the risk of diabetic nephropathy complications in T2DM at the Debre Tabor Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, Northwest EthiopiaMethodsA total of 210 participants, including 70 diabetic patients with nephropathy, 70 diabetic patients without nephropathy, and 70 healthy controls, participated in an age—and sex-matched hospital-based case-control study. Demographic and clinical data were assessed to determine the related risk factors. DNA was extracted from blood samples and subjected to polymerase chain reaction and agarose gel electrophoresis analysis to determine the TaqI genotypes.ResultsVitamin D deficiency was detected in our investigation, and it was much more prevalent in diabetic nephropathy patients than type 2 diabetic patients and controls (OR = 5.05, 95% CL = 2.03–12.53; P < 0.001). Moreover, both the TaqI tt genotype (OR: 2.48; 95% CL: 1.15-5.37; P=0.020) and t allele (OR: 1.70; 95% CL: 1.13-2.57; P=0.010) were substantially more prevalent in diabetic nephropathy patients than in type 2 diabetic patients and controls, indicating that it may be a major risk factor for the development of diabetic nephropathy.ConclusionsThe findings point to a potential link between vitamin D deficiency and diabetic nephropathy complications. Moreover, TaqI gene polymorphisms have been linked to an increased risk of developing the disease in the Ethiopian population under study
Association between angiotensinogen M235T gene polymorphism and risk of ischemic stroke among the Ethiopian population: a case control study
No full textIschemic stroke (IS) is a multifaceted, complicated illness resulting from a confluence of genetic, environmental and vascular risk factors. Many genes that may contribute to ischemic stroke have been discovered in humans. The genetic contribution appears to be greater in IS patients with hypertension. There is conflicting evidence about a positive correlation between the AGT M235T polymorphism and ischemic stroke. The aim of this study was to examine the possible association of the AGT M235T gene polymorphism with the risk of ischemic stroke. A hospital-based case-control study was carried out in 36 ischemic stroke patient cases and 36 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Clinical parameters were measured to assess the associated risk factors. DNA was isolated from blood samples, and the AGT M235T genotypes were identified using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and analyzed by agarose gel electrophoresis. The AGT-TT genotype (OR = 4.64, 95% CL = 1.23–17.4; p = 0.023 and T allele (OR = 2.54, 95% CL = 1.28–5.02; p = 0.003) were significantly more common in patients than in controls, indicating that it may be a major risk factor for the development of ischemic stroke. The results suggest that there may be a significant correlation between the AGT M235T gene polymorphism and the development of ischemic stroke in the studied Ethiopian population
Annotating Significant Relations on Multimedia Web Documents
No full textAnnotation is a fundamental activity for information extraction. Annotation of large
corpora provides a basis for building ontologies and thesauri (Braschler and Schauble
2000), while annotation of existing data helps adding semantics (Volz et al. 2004).
The elements to be annotated range from simple text (Kahan and Koivunen 2001),
to structured data (Geerts et al. 2006), images (Herve and Boujemaa 2007), and
video (Del Bimbo and Bertini 2007), while the annotation content can be as simple
as a tag (Zheng et al. 2008a,b) or as complex as a whole new document (Bottoni
et al. 2006), most commonly being text. While traditional annotation on paper alter
the physical support of the document, digital annotations can be added at will on a
digital document without modifying it, still maintaining their relationship to the
original document through suitable metadata.
Automatic annotation of complex documents is still a hard problem for computational
systems, hence any support to the manual work of the human annotators,
for example, retrieval of existing information or versatility in managing different
types of media is helpful. Moreover multimedia documents can be both the subject
and the content of the annotation, making the combined management of documents
and annotations a must. On the other hand, as we focus on in this chapter, annotation
can prove useful not only for wide communities, but also for groups of interest
or at the enterprise level, or even for individuals, allowing them to accumulate
knowledge on specific topics by constructing a web of annotations.
In this sense, the annotation activity can be used to extract and retrieve two types
of information. In the first type, which we may call “objective,” well-known facts, for
example, dates, places, or names, are extracted, which need to be related, structured,
and documented, possibly according to known, domain-dependent conventions. Ithe second, “subjective,” type, the information which is extracted is related to the
user’s goal in the context of a particular activity. Users may want to associate different,
possibly unrelated parts of a document, such as salient features of an event
or location, or of the psychological profile of a person, or information about a
product or service, with a view to what is needed for a given task, for example, a
presentation, a lecture, or the construction of a personal archive. Moreover, they
want to do so in a nondisruptive way, while perusing the document.
The MADCOW system (for Multimedia Annotation of Digital Content Over the
Web) (Bottoni et al. 2004, 2006), allows users to annotate web pages containing
different types of media with web notes composed of text, images, video, and, in
general, any type of digital document, which can then be retrieved from the originally
annotated document (or directly through queries to an annotation server), and
which can be made public. The MADCOW client is integrated as a bookmarklet on
the toolbar of the most common browsers and allows readers to create or retrieve
annotations on the current page without interfering with their normal behavior
when accessing information on the Web.
We have recently enriched MADCOW with the ability to create notes pertaining
not only to single blocks of text or to structures within pictures contained in the
page, but also referring to any combination of these individual elements. As an
example, writers involved in the cooperative construction of a web page, or a scholar
reading a scientific document, could create a single note on two portions of text that
appear as contradictory, or as a repetition. A detailed analysis of a picture might
immediately refer to the text describing it. More sophisticated uses might uncover
the logical relations between different parts of the document as described in the
first scenario presented in the paper. These actions need not be done by the author
of the document, but provide a dynamic construction of the interpretation of the
document by its readers, in a sense materializing the notion of “open work” (Eco
1962). To our knowledge, no existing system for manual web annotation tackles the
problem of linking a single annotation to different portions of the document.
In the following, we introduce our running example on two scenarios, concerning
cooperative enrichment of available material between teacher and students,
and extraction of structured information by a single user, illustrating the use of
MADCOW to organize the two types of information discussed above. We present
the notion of multistructure, allowing the creation of multi-notes, which associate a
single annotation with several elements of a Web document, and present the relevant
data structures and the interaction by which they are created exploiting the
MADCOW client. Finally, we show how multi-notes can further be manipulated
and reused by readers accessing them
Bacterial pharyngitis, antimicrobial susceptibility, and associated factors among children at comprehensive specialized hospitals, Northwest Ethiopia
No full textWiener index of quadrangulation graphs
No full textThe Wiener index of a graph G, denoted W(G), is the sum of the distances between all non-ordered pairs of vertices in G.E. Czabarka, et al. conjectured that for a simple quadrangulation graph G on n vertices, n >= 4, W(G) <= {1/12n(3) + 7/6n-2, n 0 (mod 2), 1/12n(3) + 11/12n-1, n 1(mod 2). In this paper, we confirm this conjecture. (C) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V
The Minimum Number of 4-Cycles in a Maximal Planar Graph with Small Number of Vertices
No full textHakimi and Schmeichel determined a sharp lower bound for the number of cycles of length 4 in a maximal planar graph with n vertices, n≥ 5 . It has been shown that the bound is sharp for n= 5 , 12 and n≥ 14 vertices. However, the authors only conjectured the minimum number of cycles of length 4 for maximal planar graphs with the remaining small vertex numbers. In this note, we confirm their conjecture. © 2023, The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Iranian Mathematical Society
Land property rights and household take-up of development programs: Evidence from land certification program in Ethiopia
No full textAccess to secure land plays a key role in the socio-economic development of agricultural households. Since 1998, large-scale land certification programs aimed at strengthening the land property rights of agricultural households in Ethiopia have been implemented across regions to varying degrees. Using a three-period, large-scale nationally representative panel dataset from Ethiopia, this paper investigates the importance of access to secure land property right in the form of land certification for household take-up of agricultural development interventions that aim to improve household agricultural productivity and sustainable land use at a community level. We studied the take-up of agricultural extension packages and participation in community level sustainable land and water management programs as outcome variables. To account for potential endogeneity in the allocation of certificates and other confounding factors, we applied different panel data methods including instrumental variable approach. We find that access to secure property rights have a positive and significant effect on household take-up agricultural development interventions: agricultural extension packages and sustainable land and water management interventions. Additionally, we find that land certificates significantly predict household adoption of chemical fertilizers. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Analyzing the Effect of Yarn Tension, Weft Yarn Type, and Weft Yarn Density on Thermal Resistance, Thermal Conductivity, and Air Permeability of Plain Woven Fabric
No full text© 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. cc-byUncomfortable feelings during wear highly affect human health, work efficiency, and mental satisfaction. This study evaluated the thermal comfort of woven fabrics made from 16Ne ring and rotor spun weft yarns(x1). The other variables involved are warp tensions (x2) of 1 kilo newton (KN) and 2 kN, weft tensions (x3) of PFT/B- and PFT/B+T, and weft densities (x4) of 14 picks per centimeter (PPC) and 18 PPC. Comfort properties such as thermal conductivity, thermal insulation, and air permeability were measured and analyzed. The fabric produced from rotor-spun weft yarn showed better thermal comfort properties than the fabric made from ring-spun weft yarn. The results of the analysis revealed that when warp and weft yarn tension increased and weft density decreased, thermal conductivity and air permeability also increased. However, thermal insulation of the fabric decreased as yarn tension increased. On the other hand, as the weft density increased, the thermal insulation of the fabric increased. Air permeability increased as weft tension increased from PFT/B- to PFT/B+T and it decreased as weft density increased from 14 PPC to 18PPC. The maximum thermal conductivity and minimum thermal resistance were attained at 14 PPC weft density and ring-spun weft yarn
The Maximum Number of Paths of Length Three in a Planar Graph
No full textLet f(n, H) denote the maximum number of copies of H possible in an n-vertex planar graph. The function f(n, H) has been determined when H is a cycle of length 3 or 4 by Hakimi and Schmeichel and when H is a complete bipartite graph with smaller part of size 1 or 2 by Alon and Caro. We determine f(n, H) exactly in the case when H is a path of length 3. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
