BACKGROUND The prognostic values of baseline, longitudinal high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) and its change over time on mortality in patients undergoing continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) remain uncertain. METHODS We retrospectively studied 1228 consecutive CAPD patients from 2007 to 2012, and followed up through December 2014. Cox regression models were performed to...

Off-line recognition of text plays a significant role in several applications, such as cheque verification and mail sorting. However, the selection of the technique for feature extraction remains a big challenging step for achieving high recognition accuracy. This paper presents an efficient handwritten digit recognition system based on HOG to capture the discriminative features of digit image....

INTRODUCTION Perinatal mortality is defined as the population of stillborn fetuses and newborns that occur on delivery. Perinatal period is the period that includes fetuses weighing> 500g (22nd week of gestation) and newborns aged up to seven days. Infants born prematurely are more likely to pass away during the neonatal period (up to 28 days) and the first year of life than full-term newborns,...

During the last two decades, the number of spectral bands in optical remote sensing technology kept growing steadily going from multispectral (MS) to hyperspectral (HS) data sets. HS images employ hundreds of contiguous spectral bands to capture and process spectral information over a range of wavelenghts, compared to the tens of discrete spectral bands used in MS images (Chang, 2003). This inc...

For low complexity, mobile, hands-free, speaker independent connected digit recognition, a xed-point digital signal processor based implementation is essential. In this paper, we investigate algorithms for connected-digit recognition using whole-word digit models and a background model. We show that signi cant improvement can be achieved by using background model adaptation, continuously adapti...

Grazing dairy cows milked by an automatic system (AS) experienced mild heat stress (HS) periods twice during the summer. The daily temperature humidity index (THI) during these periods were higher than 72. Milk production, as well as milking frequency, rumination time and milk fat to protein ratio (F/P) during these periods were compared with adjacent periods with mean THI of 61. The daily milk...

Aggregate import of China's animal-derived food increased remarkably and has been on a continuous upward trend. This paper use s data at the Harmonized System (HS) six- digit level from 2002 to 2018 explore growth driver animal derived imports. It is found that: (1) mainly driven by rapid quantity growth, which contributes up 70.12%; (2) Although market highly concentrated, it exhibits tendency...

In Libya, from time to time, the National Electricity Grid is directed by the National Electricity Company to conduct load shedding to alleviate pressure on supply at times of peak demand. This involves hours’ of power outages in the area covered by this study, namely, the Southern Electrical Grid of Libya (SEGL). The proposed approach focuses on a set of region categories to mitigate the effec...