Evaluation of Acute Flaccid Paralysis in Hamadan, Iran from 2002 to 2009

Jalal Poorolajal,Shadi Ghasemi,Leila Nezamabadi Farahani,Atefeh Sadat Hosseini,Seyyed Jalal Bathaei,Ali Zahiri 한국역학회 2011 Epidemiology and Health Vol.33 No.-

OBJECTIVES: To achieve a polio-free certification in Iran, a nationwide active surveillance program for acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) was set up following World Health Organization guidelines. This article describes the results of an eight-year surveillance of AFP in Hamadan, in the west of Iran. METHODS: A standard set of minimum core variables were collected. All cases of non-polio AFP in children aged <15 years old were reported. Two stool specimens were collected within 14 days of the onset of paralysis. RESULTS: During the eight-year survey, 88 AFP cases aged <15 years old were reported. About 40% (35/88) of cases were aged ≤5 years, 56% (49/88) were boys, 19 (21.6%) had fever at the onset of paralysis, 74 (84.0%) had complete paralysis within four days of onset, and 22 (24.7%) had asymmetric paralysis. More than one AFP case was detected per 100,000 children aged <15 years old in all years. The risk of AFP in patients aged <5 years old was almost double that of older patients. Guillain-Barré Syndrome was the major leading cause of AFP (66/88). Adequate stool specimens were collected from 85% of AFP patients. All stool specimens were tested virologically, but no wild polioviruses were detected. CONCLUSION: The active surveillance of non-polio AFP was efficient over the last eight years and exceeded 1.0 case per 100,000 children aged <15 years old. Nonetheless, there was a decreasing trend in the detection of AFP cases during the last two years and should be the focus of the policymakers’ special attention, although AFP cases were still above the target level.

Robust human activity recognition from depth video using spatiotemporal multi-fused features

Jalal, A.,Kim, Y.H.,Kim, Y.J.,Kamal, S.,Kim, D. Pergamon Press 2017 Pattern recognition Vol.61 No.-

The recently developed depth imaging technologies have provided new directions for human activity recognition (HAR) without attaching optical markers or any other motion sensors to human body parts. In this paper, we propose novel multi-fused features for online human activity recognition (HAR) system that recognizes human activities from continuous sequences of depth map. The proposed online HAR system segments human depth silhouettes using temporal human motion information as well as it obtains human skeleton joints using spatiotemporal human body information. Then, it extracts the spatiotemporal multi-fused features that concatenate four skeleton joint features and one body shape feature. Skeleton joint features include the torso-based distance feature (DT), the key joint-based distance feature (DK), the spatiotemporal magnitude feature (M) and the spatiotemporal directional angle feature (θ). The body shape feature called HOG-DDS represents the projections of the depth differential silhouettes (DDS) between two consecutive frames onto three orthogonal planes by the histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) format. The size of the proposed spatiotemporal multi-fused feature is reduced by a code vector in the code book which is generated by vector quantization method. Then, it trains the hidden Markov model (HMM) with the code vectors of the multi-fused features and recognizes the segmented human activity by the forward spotting scheme using the trained HMM-based human activity classifiers. The experimental results on three challenging depth video datasets such as IM-DailyDepthActivity, MSRAction3D and MSRDailyActivity3D demonstrate that the proposed online HAR method using the proposed multi-fused features outperforms the state-of-the-art HAR methods in terms of recognition accuracy.

Modern techniques to optimize neuraxial labor analgesia

Jalal A. Nanji,Brendan Carvalho 대한마취통증의학회 2018 Anesthesia and pain medicine Vol.13 No.3

Neuraxial analgesia is the gold standard method for pain relief in labor. Several techniques can optimize both the initiation and maintenance of neuraxial labor analgesia. Initiation techniques such as combined spinal-epidural or dural puncture epidural may offer some advantages over standard epidural insertion. The use of ultrasound to assist with landmarking and optimizing block placement improves neuraxial success, and is particularly useful in certain patient populations. Maintaining labor analgesia with a regimen that includes background programmed intermittent boluses with a patientcontrolled epidural analgesia component affords the best combination of pain relief and avoidance of undesired effects. These techniques are most effective when dilute local anesthetics with lipophilic opioids are utilized.

Using the capture-recapture method to estimate the human immunodeficiency virus-positive population

Jalal Poorolajal,Younes Mohammadi,Farzad Farzinara 한국역학회 2017 Epidemiology and Health Vol.39 No.-

OBJECTIVES: The capture-recapture method was applied to estimate the number of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive individuals not registered with any data sources. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted in Lorestan Province, in the west of Iran, in 2016. Three incomplete sources of HIV-positive individuals, with partially overlapping data, were used, including: (a) transfusion center, (b) volunteer counseling and testing centers (VCTCs), and (c) prison. The 3-source capture-recapture method, using a log-linear model, was applied for data analysis. The Akaike information criterion and the Bayesian information criterion were used for model selection. RESULTS: Of the 2,456 HIV-positive patients registered in these 3 data sources, 1,175 (47.8%) were identified in transfusion center, 867 (35.3%) in VCTCs, and 414 (16.8%) in prison. After the exclusion of duplicate entries, 2,281 HIV-positive patients remained. Based on the capture-recapture method, 14,868 (95% confidence interval, 9,923 to 23,427) HIV-positive individuals were not identified in any of the registries. Therefore, the real number of HIV-positive individuals was estimated to be 17,149, and the overall completeness of the 3 registries was estimated to be around 13.3%. CONCLUSIONS: Based on capture-recapture estimates, a huge number of HIV-positive individuals are not registered with any of the provincial data sources. This is an urgent message for policymakers who plan and provide health care services for HIV-positive patients. Although the capture-recapture method is a useful statistical approach for estimating unknown populations, due to the assumptions and limitations of the method, the population size may be overestimated as it seems possible in our results.

The Impact of Financial Risks on the Performance of Russian Banks

Jalal Hafeth Ahmad Abu-Alrop 대한산업공학회 2020 Industrial Engineeering & Management Systems Vol.19 No.4

This study uses multiple regression analysis with financial ratios to determine the impact of financial risks and financial leverage on the financial performance of Russian commercial banks in the period 2008-17. This study involves 85 Russian banks, whose total assets comprise 87% of the total assets of the Russian banking sector. The study used six indicators to measure five types of financial risks and an indicator to measure the financial leverage: interest rate risk, foreign exchange risk, liquidity risk, credit risk, operational risk, and financial leverage risk. The study also used three indicators to measure bank performance: Net Interest Margin, Return on Assets, and Return on Equity. The study found that Over the 10 years of the study, the risk contributed to the formation of net interest margin by 87%, return on equity by 50%, and return on assets by 53%. The impact of credit risk, operational risk, and liquidity risks on performance indicators in Russian banks were very positive and significant. The effect of leverage and interest rate risk on performance indicators was negative and very limited. The foreign exchange risks had no effect on performance indicators. The study also found that the other variables (without risk and leverage) had a positive effect on the net interest margin, but their effect on the return on assets, and the return on equity was negative and significant. The study concluded It is important for Russian banks to search for these factors, which led to the negative impact, Russian banks should study these factors and correct their positions.

Performance Benefits of Hybrid Control Design for Switched Linear Systems

Jalal Habibi,Behzad Moshiri,Ali Khaki Sedigh 제어로봇시스템학회 2006 제어로봇시스템학회 국제학술대회 논문집 Vol.2006 No.10

An Integrated Expert Model for Delay Management in Construction Projects

jalal, Majid Parchami,Yousefi, Elham Korea Institute of Construction Engineering and Ma 2017 Journal of construction engineering and project ma Vol.7 No.3

Delay claim should actually be supported by a set of proper information so that the contractors could prove their validity. The so-called information should be able to clarify the relationship between delay events and how they impact on the whole project. Therefore, exploiting an integrated system by people who are involved in construction business would certainly prove helpful. In the present study, delay analysis methods have been investigated along with selecting a relatively comprehensive method which has been modified, and eventually, a novel model and its required modules have been proposed for evaluating delay claims. The suggested integrated model is formed to identify delayed events, to classify delays, to measure the impacts of delays on the project scheduling, and finally to estimate the damages which were caused by those so-called delays. A decision support system (DSS) model which is related to the integrated system is actually extracted from Iran's general contract conditions, that is, 4311 magazine (equivalent to red FIDIC book). It is then programmed and coded by C# program. This DSS model can be used as an input of Easy Plan program. In addition, at the end of this research, the coded DSS has been used along with the so-called program so that a modified and developed model could be generated.

Facial Expression Recognition using 1D Transform Features and Hidden Markov Model

Jalal, Ahmad,Kamal, Shaharyar,Kim, Daijin The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers 2017 Journal of Electrical Engineering & Technology Vol.8 No.1

Facial expression recognition systems using video devices have emerged as an important component of natural human-machine interfaces which contribute to various practical applications such as security systems, behavioral science and clinical practices. In this work, we present a new method to analyze, represent and recognize human facial expressions using a sequence of facial images. Under our proposed facial expression recognition framework, the overall procedure includes: accurate face detection to remove background and noise effects from the raw image sequences and align each image using vertex mask generation. Furthermore, these features are reduced by principal component analysis. Finally, these augmented features are trained and tested using Hidden Markov Model (HMM). The experimental evaluation demonstrated the proposed approach over two public datasets such as Cohn-Kanade and AT&T datasets of facial expression videos that achieved expression recognition results as 96.75% and 96.92%. Besides, the recognition results show the superiority of the proposed approach over the state of the art methods.

Quality of Cohort Studies Reporting Post the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) Statement

Jalal Poorolajal,Zahra Cheraghi,Amin Doosti Irani,Shahab Rezaeian 한국역학회 2011 Epidemiology and Health Vol.33 No.-

The quality of reporting of cohort studies published in the most prestigious scientific medical journals was investigated to indicate to what extent the items in the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) checklist are addressed. Six top scientific medical journals with high impact factor were selected including New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, British Medical Journal, Archive of Internal Medicine, and Canadian Medical Association Journal. Ten cohort studies published in 2010 were selected randomly from each journal. The percentage of items in the STROBE checklist that were addressed in each study was investigated. The total percentage of items addressed by these studies was 69.3 (95% confidence interval: 59.6 to 79.0). We concluded that reporting of cohort studies published in the most prestigious scientific medical journals is not clear enough yet. The reporting of other types of observational studies such as case-control and cross-sectional studies particularly those being published in less prestigious journals expected to be much more imprecise.

Cylindrical Silicon Nanowire Transistor Modeling Based on Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS)

Jalal Rostamimonfared,Abolfazl Talebbaigy,Teamour Esmaeili,Mehdi Fazeli,Atena Kazemzadeh 대한전기학회 2013 Journal of Electrical Engineering & Technology Vol.8 No.5

In this paper, Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) is applied for modeling and simulation of DC characteristic of cylindrical Silicon Nanowire Transistor (SNWT). Device Geometry parameters, terminal voltages, temperature and output current were selected as the main factors of modeling. The results obtained are compared with numerical method and a good match has been observed between them, which represent accuracy of model. Finally, we imported the ANFIS model as a voltage controlled current source in a circuit simulator like HSPICE and simulated a SNWT inverter and common- source amplifier by this model.