Mohamed Zaki

BACKGROUND: Recent guidelines stressed the need to adopt different values of waist circumference (WC) measurements to define abdominal obesity in different ethnic groups. The aim of this study is to identify WC cutoff points in normotensive and hypertensive subjects which are diagnostic of abdominal obesity in a Middle Eastern population and the prevalence of abdominal obesity in a nationwide sample. METHODS: Data were collected during phase-2 of the Egyptians National Hypertension Project survey. Blood pressure, anthropometric measurements and laboratory studies were performed according to a standardized protocol by trained personnel. To derive the cutoff points for WC, we applied the factor analysis on CV risk factors: diabetes mellitus, decrease in HDL-C and increase in LDL-C, triglycerides and left ventricular mass index by echocardiography. RESULTS: The sample included 2313 individuals above the age of 25 years. WC values (mean ± SD) were 88 ± 14 cm and 95 ± 14 cm for normotensive (NT) and hypertensive (HT) men respectively, and 89.6 ± 14.7 cm and 95.7 ± 15.9 cm for NT and HT women respectively. Applying factor analysis, the weighted average cutoff points were 93.5 cm for both NT and HT men and 91.5 and 92.5 cm for NT and HT women respectively. Based on these thresholds, the prevalence of abdominal obesity was 48% in men and 51.5% in women. CONCLUSION: This is the first report of specific abdominal obesity cutoff points in a Middle Eastern country. The cutoff points were different from the Europid standards. There is a high prevalence rate of abdominal obesity among Egyptians which is associated with increased prevalence of cardiometabolic risk factors.

To satisfy the ever growing need for effective screening and diagnostic tests, medical practitioners have turned their attention to high resolution, high throughput methods. One approach is to use mass spectrometry based methods for disease diagnosis. Effective diagnosis is achieved by classifying the mass spectra as belonging to healthy or diseased individuals. Unfortunately, the high resolution mass spectrometry data contains a large degree of noisy, redundant and irrelevant information, making accurate classification difficult. To overcome these obstacles, feature extraction methods are used to select or create small sets of relevant features. This paper compares existing feature selection methods to a novel wrapper-based feature selection and centroid-based classification method. A key contribution is the exposition of different feature extraction techniques, which encompass dimensionality reduction and feature selection methods. The experiments, on two cancer data sets, indicate that feature selection algorithms tend to both reduce data dimensionality and increase classification accuracy, while the dimensionality reduction techniques sacrifice performance as a result of lowering the number of features. In order to evaluate the dimensionality reduction and feature selection techniques, we use a simple classifier, thereby making the approach tractable. In relation to previous research, the proposed algorithm is very competitive in terms of (i) classification accuracy, (ii) size of feature sets, (iii) usage of computational resources during both training and classification phases.

This paper presents a machine learning (ML) based event detection and summarization system for soccer matches. The proposed system is composed of six phases. Firstly, in the pre-processing phase, the system segments the whole video stream into small video shots. Then, in the shot processing phase, it applies two types of classification to the video shots resulted from the pre-processing phase. Afterwards, in the replay detection phase, the system applies two machine learning algorithms, namely; support vector machine (SVM) and neural network (NN), for emphasizing important segments with logo appearance. Also, in the score board detection phase, the system uses both ML algorithms for detecting the caption region providing information about the score of the game. Subsequently, in the excitement event detection phase, the system uses k-means algorithm and Hough line transform for detecting vertical goal posts and Gabor filter for detecting goal net. Finally, in the logo-based event detection and summarization phase, the system highlights the most important events during the match. Experiments on real soccer videos demonstrate encouraging results. Compared to the performance results obtained using SVM classifier, the proposed system attained good NN-based performance results concerning recall ratio, however it attained poor NN-based performance results concerning precision ratio.

The use of pointers and data-structures based on pointers results in circular memory references that are interpreted by a vital compiler analysis, namely pointer analysis. For a pair of memory references at a program point, a typical pointer analysis specifies if the points-to relation between them may exist, definitely does not exist, or definitely exists. The "may be" case, which describes the points-to relation for most of the pairs, cannot be dealt with by most compiler optimizations. This is so to guarantee the soundness of these optimizations. However, the "may be" case can be capitalized by the modern class of speculative optimizations if the probability that two memory references alias can be measured. Focusing on multithreading, a prevailing technique of programming, this paper presents a new flow-sensitive technique for probabilistic pointer analysis of multithreaded programs. The proposed technique has the form of a type system and calculates the probability of every points-to relation at each program point. The key to our approach is to calculate the points-to information via a post-type derivation. The use of type systems has the advantage of associating each analysis results with a justification (proof) for the correctness of the results. This justification has the form of a type derivation and is very much required in applications like certified code.

INTRODUCTION: Female sexual dysfunction (FSD) is a prevalent health problem that has been inadequately investigated in the Arab world. An Arabic assessment instrument for FSD is urgently needed. AIM: To validate the Arabic version of the Female Sexual Function Index (ArFSFI). METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study conducted between January and April 2010. Eight hundred and fifty-five women (16-60 years old) participated in the study. Validation was carried out on aspects of face, content, discriminant, and criterion (concurrent) validity. Construct validity was evaluated using principal component analysis. Reliability studies on test-retest and on internal consistency were conducted with Pearson correlation and Cronbach's alpha, respectively. The best cutoff point for the ArFSFI to differentiate cases and noncases was determined using a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Parameters of validity and reliability of the ArFSFI and its domains. RESULTS: ArFSFI total score and scores of various domains showed high test-retest reliability (r from 0.92 to 0.98). ArFSFI domains showed high internal consistency (alpha from 0.85 to 0.94). Six hundred and forty-four women (75.32%) met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, criteria for diagnosis of sexual dysfunction while 211 women (24.68%) showed normal function. The ArFSFI was found to have good discriminant validity. There were significant differences between the mean scores of women with sexual dysfunction and those of women without sexual dysfunction. A total score of 28.1 was taken as the cutoff point for the ArFSFI to distinguish between women with FSD and women with normal function (sensitivity 96.7%, specificity 93.2%). The ArFSFI showed an excellent overall performance (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.985, 95% confidence interval 0.978-0.992). CONCLUSION: The ArFSFI is a validated, reliable, and locally accepted tool for use in the assessment of FSD in the Egyptian population.

Decimal floating-point fused-multiply-add (FMA) software or hardware designs require a verification process to prove that the design is in compliance with the IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE Std 754-2008). Our work represents the first verification technique to verify the decimal FMA designs using simulation based coverage models. The paper describes in details the coverage models needed in the verification of the decimal FMA, the FMA engine used to solve the coverage models, and the results of using that technique in the verification of SilMinds FMA hardware design, DecNumber FMA software design, and Intel-Decimal-Library FMA software design. The Technique has proven its efficiency in discovering bugs in FMA software and hardware designs.