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Editor’s notes: Controller synthesis using formal specifications has shown considerable promise in recent years. However, it is computationally very expensive. This article shows how cloud computing can come to the rescue. —Samarjit Chakraborty, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Fuel Cells (FCs) have witnessed phenomenal improvements in operation and utilization for different stationary and mobile applications. Scaling up limitations of FCs and their integration restrictions into high energy applications because of maldistribution of the reactants’ (fuel and oxidant) flow become among the major drawbacks. The relevant non-uniform electrochemical reactions may result in the FC performance degradation and decrease in lifetime. Therefore, this paper aims at introducing a comprehensive review on the advances in the methods of flow distribution in FCs. The levels in FC design either individual cell or FC stack that introduce non-uniformities are highlighted. The negative impacts on the FC performance, mainly the thermal and water management aspects, have been explicitly introduced. The consequent phenomena the FC experiences such as non-uniform heating, water flooding and membrane drying are presented. Based on the literature review, the critical insights and recommendations are provided alongside a suggestion of a cellular level flow distributor design to be investigated in future studies.

Hair dye poisoning is an emerging big problem in Upper Egypt. The main component of hair dye causing toxicity is para-phenylenediamine (PPD). Ingestion of PPD could be accidental or suicidal. After oral intake it is metabolized in the liver into N-mono- (MAPPD) and N,N′- diacetylated (DAPPD) metabolites. Tissue damage after PPD ingestions occurs due to increased levels of free radical and oxidative stress that deplete tissue glutathione. Cardiac toxicity is a complication of PPD poisoning. It could be manifested by hypotension, different patterns of arrhythmia; in addition, myocarditis and elevated cardiac biomarkers were also found. Serum and urinary levels of PPD, N-acetyl-p-phenylenediamine (MAPPD) and N--diacetyl-p-phenylenediamine (DAPPD) were measured by HPLC. A prospective cohort study was planned to determine relation between the serum and urinary PPD, N-acetyl-p-phenylenediamine (MAPPD) and N,on -diacetyl-p-phenylenediamine (DAPPD) levels with cardiac manifestations of poisoned patient. Forty patients completed the diagnosis to have acute poisoning following hair dye ingestion. PPD and its metabolite concentrations did not show any significant correlation with the prevalence of cardiac toxicity and could not predict its occurrence among studied patient (p-value< .05)

Brain tumor detection successfully in early-stage plays important role in improving patient treatment and survival. Evaluating magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images manually is a very difficult task due to the numerous numbers of images produced in the clinic routinely. So, there is a need for using a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for early detection and classification of brain tumors as normal and abnormal. The paper aims to design and evaluate the convolution neural network (CNN) Transfer Learning state-of-the-art performance proposed for image classification over the recent years. Five different modifications have been applied to five different famous CNN to know the most effective modification. Five-layer modifications with parameter tuning are applied for each architecture providing a new CNN architecture for brain tumor detection. Most brain tumor datasets have a small number of images to train the deep learning structure. Therefore, two datasets are used in the evaluation to ensure the effectiveness of the proposed structures. Firstly, a standard dataset from the RIDER Neuro MRI database including 349 brain MRI images with 109 normal images and 240 abnormal images. Secondly, a collection of 120 brain MRI images including 60 abnormal images and 60 normal images. The results show that the proposed CNN Transfer Learning with MRI’s can learn significant biomarkers of brain tumor, however, the best accuracy, specificity, and sensitivity gained is 100% for all of them.

Accurate and automatic localization of the common carotid artery (CCA) is extremely important because the narrowing of the CCA is a silent disease. CCA disease doesn't cause any symptoms in its early stages, and people don't realize that they usually have a problem until they have a stroke. A stroke occurs when the brain doesn't receive enough blood for a long time. Brain damage from a stroke can lead to loss of speech or vision, and major strokes can cause death. In this paper, we proposed a technique to localize the CCA in transverse section ultrasound (US) images using deep learning. First, we applied preprocessing to the images in the dataset before detecting the bounding box containing the CCA. We used a faster regional proposal convolutional neural network (Faster R-CNN) to detect the rectangular region(bounding box) around the CCA. Then we applied a circle localization technique to contour and localize the CCA in the US images. The proposed method has been performed on ultrasonic transverse images of the signal processing (SP) Lab. We compared our results with the clinicians' contours obtaining a great match between them. The accuracy of the bounding box detection was 97.5 and a Jaccard similarity of 90.86% between our proposed system and the clinicians' manual contours. Our proposed system has shown results that outperform other systems in Literature.

Common carotid artery (CCA) diagnosis is very important for carrying out an assessment of the severity of vascular disease and being able to suggest treatment solutions, whether with careful surgical planning or even an interventional radiological surgery. Early diagnosis of carotid atherosclerosis is an essential step in preventing stroke from occurring. This is the motivation for us to develop a novel Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system for CCA disease diagnosis. Our novel CAD system contains four phases named: segmentation, localization, intima-media thickness (IMT) measurement, and classification of the CCA as normal and abnormal. Each phase in our integrated system has its role and novelty contribution that distinguishes it from any previous studies and researches. These roles and contributions of all phases will be discussed later in this paper. These phases have been applied for the CCA in transverse and longitudinal sections to help in the early diagnosis of atherosclerosis providing a complete diagnosis approach. The CCA has been localized in the transverse section images based on a deep learning technique called faster regional proposal convolutional neural network (Faster R-CNN). The IMT measurement of the CCA has been accomplished in a longitudinal section based on edge detection techniques. The CCA-lumen segmentation has been made in a longitudinal section using active contour criteria. The CCA longitudinal section has been classified as normal and abnormal using the transfer learning of the pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) called AlexNet. Experiments have been performed on three different ultrasound image datasets that were manually collected. The comparison between our suggested localization phase circles and the clinician’s delineations shows an average Jaccard similarity of 90.86% with an accuracy of 97.5%. The mean ± standard deviation (SD) of our method and the experts for IMT measurements are 0.7573 ± 0.52 mm and 0.7604 ± 0.52, respectively. The obtained classification results show 100% for specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy. These results, show the superiority of the proposed system over other systems in the literature.

Combining solar energy systems that lead to the maximization of the avail solar energy have become a trend during the recent years. In this context, parabolic trough collector and solar photovoltaics are combined with each other to obtain parabolic trough Photovoltaic/Thermal hybrid system which enables simultaneous generation of electricity and production of hot water. The layout and cogeneration of the system are described comprehensively in this work. The novelty of this work is suggesting a new methodology for conducting thermal modeling of this system which is the thermal resistance analogy and simulating it using iterative procedure. Parametric analysis is carried out in order to investigate the influence of Reynolds number, receiver side length and receiver tube length and absorber thickness on the thermal and electrical performance of the system. The results show that the thermal efficiency decreases with the increase in Reynolds number, where it diminishes by 8.31% and 2.12% in the laminar and turbulent flow, respectively. However, it increases by about 35% when the receiver side length augments from 0.03 m to 0.2 m, and by 0.78% when receiver tube length increases from 4 m to 20 m. On the other hand, the electrical efficiency augments with the rise in Reynolds number where it increases by 38.25% in the laminar flow and 5.78% in the turbulent flow, while it decreases by 10.5% and 2% when the receiver side length and receiver tube length increases. Furthermore, the absorber thickness has no effect on the thermal and electrical behavior of the system where both efficiencies remains almost constant (thermal efficiency of 56.46% and electrical efficiency of 25.34%) with the increase in the absorber thickness from 0.02 m to 0.2 m.

Objectives: Assessment of suicidal ideation and planning (SIP) among a sample of tramadol users in comparison to users of other substances (heroin, cannabis, and poly-substances). Subjects & Method...

The continuous aggravation of environmental pollutions and the rapid increase in the conventional sources of energy price advocated scientists to search for solutions such as heat recovery and continual sources of energy. One of the most distinguished types of renewable energy is solar energy which is neat, free and environmentally friendly renewable energy. Indeed, there are several solar energy systems that need to be studied. At the same time, combining solar energy systems is a trend these days which aims to optimize the benefits from solar radiations. Photovoltaic/Thermal (PVT) hybrid solar system is obtained by combining solar thermal collectors and solar photovoltaics to enable a simultaneous generation of electricity and production of heat. The target of this paper is to proffer a review on PVT hybrid solar collectors which comprises the history of PVT hybrid solar systems, main concept, benefits and classifications according to various manners in addition to integration of thermoelectric generators with PVT system.

Purpose: To determine the prevalence of keratoconus (KC) among children with ocular allergy. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on all children presenting with ocular allergic disease from September 2017 to September 2018. All study participants were subjected to history taking (a specially designed questionnaire), routine ophthalmological examination, and corneal tomography. Results: A total of 79% of the study patients had vernal keratoconjunctivitis (VKC) while the remaining had perennial allergic conjunctivitis (10%), seasonal allergic conjunctivitis (9%) and atopic keratoconjunctivitis (2%). Manifest KC was seen in 7% of cases, suspect KC was found in 27% of cases, and 66% had no evidence of KC. For the manifest KC, 56% had clinical signs, while 44% were diagnosed by tomography. For the purpose of statistical analysis, the cohort was divided into group KC (manifest or suspicious KC) and group non-KC (no KC). The mean age was 11.2 years in group KC, and 9 years in group non-KC ( p < 0.001). The mean duration of allergic symptoms was 3.75 years in group KC, and 2.5 years in group non-KC ( p = 0.001). The mean duration of eye rubbing was 2.5 years in group KC, and 0.83 years in group non-KC ( p = 0.02). Systemic atopy was present in 35.3% of group KC, and in 12.5% in group non-KC ( p = 0.005). Conclusion: The overall prevalence of KC was 34%. Risk factors for the development of KC in patients with ocular allergy were age, duration of symptoms specially eye rubbing, systemic atopy and VKC. Tomographic diagnosis of KC can be present in absence of clinical signs.

Background: Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is a common urological problem more frequently seen in elderly people causing lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS). About 28% of patients with BPH have moderate or severe LUTS and a considerable portion of these patients require LUTS treatment, pressure flow studies PFS is the gold standard for diagnosing obstruction, however the test is invasive, unpleasant costly, time consuming and technically difficult with limited availability to the patient. Objective: To evaluate the accuracy of the bladder and prostate sonomorphologic parameters for the diagnosis of bladder outlet obstruction (BOO) in patients with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Patients and Methods: A prospective clinical trial was carried out during the period from January 2017 to January 2019 at the Urology Departments; Al-Hussein and Sayed Galal, Al-Azhar University Hospitals, and Police Authority Hospital, Cairo, Egypt to 512 patients seeking treatment for LUTS/BPH underwent a series of measurements, including medical history with LUTS assessment using the International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS), physical examination with digitorectal and focal neurological examinations, routine urinalysis, and serum creatinine and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) measurements. Results: During the study period, 209 patients completed the follow up protocol and included in the study, the mean age of the study population was 64.51 years, the mean total IPSS score was 19.18, the mean duration of symptoms was 6.4 mo., the mean total prostate volume, transitional zone volume, and transitional zone index were 42.5 g, 25.7 g, and 0.6 respectively. The mean bladder parameters studied intravesical prostatic protrusion, bladder wall thickness was 11.3 mm, 4.85 mm, 30.1 g respectively, the mean prostate parameters studied prostate urethral length, prostate urethral angel were 41.8 mm and 34.3˚. Out of 209 patients studied 113 (54.1%) patients were obstructed (BOO group) and 96 (45.9%) were not (non- BOO group). All parameters were comparable between the two groups. Conclusions: Some sonomorphologic parameters of bladder and prostate (IPP, PUA, BWT and Qmax) are useful alternative to PFS for diagnosis of symptomatic BOO/BPH.

Background: Transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) is still considered the gold standard in the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). However, open prostatectomy is indicated for prostate glands over 80 ml. There have been few reports concerning the use of TURP for large prostate glands over 100 ml. Objective: To prospectively compare the effectiveness and safety of bipolar TURP and open prostatectomy in prostate glands ranging from 80-120 ml. Patients and Methods: We reviewed the data of 60 patients with prostate glands ranging from 80-120 ml. which were randomized 30 patients underwent bipolar TURP (group A), and another 30 underwent open prostatectomy (group B). Preoperative International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS), flow rate (Qmax), prostate volume, resected tissue volume, and operative time were documented. Postoperative hemoglobin, serum sodium change, hospital stay, duration of catheter indwelling and postoperative 6-month IPSS and Qmax were evaluated. Results: The Bipolar TURP (B-TURP) and open prostatectomy (OP) emphasized similar mean operating durations as well as the mean hemoglobin drop, catheterization period and hospital stay were significantly improved for bipolar group. During the follow up period, no statistically significant difference was determined in terms of IPSS, Qmax, QOL, PVRU between the two series. Conclusion: Bipolar TURP represented a promising endoscopic approach in very large BPH cases compared with standard open prostatectomy as patients benefited from significantly satisfactory follow up symptom scores and voiding parameters.

One of the most challenging issues in the domain of renewable energy is the instability of produced power. To put it another way, renewable resources such as solar energy cannot provide continuous energy supply because they rely on natural phenomena that vary randomly. That said, to cover the potential lack of energy that may occur, hybrid renewable energy system can be adopted. In other terms, instead of using single renewable energy source, two different sources can be utilized in order to optimize the output power all over the year. Furthermore, complementary energy system is needed along with renewable sources, to store energy and insure the supply during shortage period. With this in mind, a Green-Green energy system can be constructed by using green storage system such as Fuel Cell to be coupled with the renewable sources. In the light of green-green energy concept, the present paper examines a triple wind-solar-fuel cell combination in the aim of overcoming the energy shortage that occurs during several months of the year. A case study on the region of Dahr Al-Baidar in Lebanon is conducted to present the advantage of the proposed system. Results show that combining wind energy system with thermal solar system allows overcoming the low power produced by solar thermal system especially in winter. For illustration 16 kW are produced by wind turbine during the month of January, by contrast the thermal solar system provides 2 kW during the same period. Nevertheless, in June thermal solar offers 17 kW and wind turbine produces 11 kW.

Prediction of heat exchangers performance is primordial in the world of machine design especially when the industrial environment becomes demanding in terms of size reducing or price lowering. The most common adopted procedure for this kind of investigation is defining the exchanger's overall heat transfer coefficient with a purely empiric way using interpolations and mathematical operations missing physical senses in the modeling. The present work offers a first step in theoretically modeling the heat transfer coefficient and presents a semi-empirical method which allows expressing the latter in function of the Reynolds' numbers of the fluids' flows when the variations of the Prandtl numbers of the two fluids are small. The method consists in an iterative technique based on a single test approach and allows the prediction of the heat exchanger performance for a large range of flowrates. Experimental validation of the method is performed for a cross-flow heat exchanger with water and air as working fluids, showing a relative error less than 1.6%. The relative error of the mathematical methods applied is less than 1.7%.

International audience; Electricity plays a significant role in daily life and is the main component of countless applications. Thus, ongoing research is necessary to improve the existing approaches, or find new approaches, to enhancing power generation. The thermoelectric generator (TEG) is among the notable and widespread technologies used to produce electricity, and converts waste energy into electrical energy using the Seebeck effect. Due to the Seebeck effect, temperature change can be turned into electrical energy; hence, a TEG can be applied whenever there is a temperature difference. The present paper presents the theoretical background of the TEG, in addition to a comprehensive review of the TEG and its implementation in various fields. This paper also sheds light on the new technologies of the TEG and their related challenges. Notably, it was found that the TEG is efficient in hybrid heat recovery systems, such as the phase change material (PCM), heat pipe (HP), and proton exchange membrane (PEM), and the efficiency of the TEG has increased due to a set of improvements in the TEG’s materials. Moreover, results show that the TEG technology has been frequently applied in recent years, and all of the investigated papers agree that the TEG is a promising technology in power generation and heat recovery systems.

International audience; Energy has become the backbone of humanities daily activities. Heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems (HVAC), which consume around 39% of energy in the residential sector, have turned into an essential constituent for providing fresh air, especially after COVD-19, not only in hospitals but also in any simple construction. Thus, decreasing this percentage or recovering part of the energy lost is an essential issue in today’s energy management scenarios. In this context, the present manuscript suggests a comprehensive review, classifications, critical analysis, and potential recommendations for energy recovery in air conditioning systems. It classifies energy recovery into two main categories: using lost energy for external uses, such as heating domestic water, or with other devices; and using lost energy for internal uses, such as the hot airflow which can be reused again for increasing efficiency of HVAC. In addition, this paper presents a summary of previous research and undertakes a review of the devices used for recovering energy. Furthermore, this review identifies superior devices in terms of climate and weather conditions. These objectives are accomplished by investigating around 190 published papers to conclude that energy recovery devices show a considerable effect on energy consumption in HVAC, mainly the heat pipe, fixed plate, and rotary wheel devices.

The use of phase change materials in buildings as a thermal energy storage system gained the attention of researchers all over the world. In the current study, coconut oil bio-based PCM is macro-encapsulated with enhanced thermal conductivity containers and coupled with hydronic radiant floor heating system. The study follows experimental aspect utilizing two identical small scale modular test prototypes. Investigations are directed toward studying the effect of the active CO-PCM system under different weather conditions, effect of combining active and passive systems, effect of PCM choice/type and effect of PCM location within the active floor, on the thermal and energy storage performances. Results revealed that coupling CO-PCM to active floor, passive wall and passive roof is capable of achieving load shifting and energy savings; and is affected by the control method, weather conditions, electricity tariff policy and PCM position and type. Further discussions, conclusions and perspective recommendations are summarized within the article.

The present work proposes the engagement of relatively cold air exhausted from Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, that exist in structures such as residential commercial and industrial, to reduce the PV modules’ operational temperature. To proceed, a thermal resistance model in steady state is developed along with its corresponding iterative procedure and calculations which are carried out for different configurations and scenarios. The thermal modeling was validated by comparing it to experimental measurement found in the literature. It was revealed that the PV modules’ temperature can be reduced with increasing the mass flow rate of the exhaust air. However, the air mass flow rate depends on the cooling load need; which increases with increasing the cooling load. The efficiency of the PV has shown an increase from 11 to 18% when the cooling load increases from 0 to 160 kW for a solar radiation of 500 W/m2. Moreover, there is an optimum height for the exhaust air duct for each cooling load that must be determined.

The successful early diagnosis of brain tumors plays a major role in improving the treatment outcomes and thus improving patient survival. Manually evaluating the numerous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images produced routinely in the clinic is a difficult process. Thus, there is a crucial need for computer-aided methods with better accuracy for early tumor diagnosis. Computer-aided brain tumor diagnosis from MRI images consists of tumor detection, segmentation, and classification processes. Over the past few years, many studies have focused on traditional or classical machine learning techniques for brain tumor diagnosis. Recently, interest has developed in using deep learning techniques for diagnosing brain tumors with better accuracy and robustness. This study presents a comprehensive review of traditional machine learning techniques and evolving deep learning techniques for brain tumor diagnosis. This review paper identifies the key achievements reflected in the performance measurement metrics of the applied algorithms in the three diagnosis processes. In addition, this study discusses the key findings and draws attention to the lessons learned as a roadmap for future research.

BACKGROUND: Patients undergoing heart surgery involving cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) experience global myocardial ischemia with subsequent reperfusion which, despite cardioplegic protection, may result in different degrees of transient ventricular dysfunction. Levosimendan is a “calcium sensitisers”, it improves myocardial contractility by sensitising troponin C to calcium without increasing myocardial oxygen consumption and without impairing relaxation and diastolic function. AIM: To evaluate the adding effect of a calcium sensitiser (levosimendan) compared to the conventional inotropic and vasoactive agent used in the patient with poor left ventricular function undergoing cardiac surgery on different measured hemodynamic variables and the effect on the outcome. METHODS: It is prospective observational studies were patients were divided into 2 groups of 30 patients each. The first Group received conventional inotropic and vasoactive treatment at different doses, while the other group received levosimendan additionally at a loading dose of 6-12mic/kg according to mean arterial pressure over 0.5 hr followed by 24 hrs infusion at 0.05 to 0.2 mic/kg/min. Hemodynamic data were collected at the end and 30 minutes after CPB, after that at 6, 12, 24, and 36 hours post CPB. Mean arterial pressure (MAP), central venous pressure (CVP), heart rate (HR), mixed venous saturation (Svo2), and base deficit (BD) were measured. RESULTS: Levosimendan had significantly improved postoperative hemodynamic values as in the mixed venous pressure at different times postoperative (p < 0.05), also the base deficit at different times postoperative (p < 0.05), while there was a significant reduction in systemic vascular resistance as decreased mean arterial pressure in levosimendan group compared to conventional group at 6hrs postoperative mean 77.50 ± 10.81 vs 83.73 ± 10.81 with (p = 0.029), and at 12 hrs postoperative mean 77.37 ± 10.10vs 84.23 ± 13.81 with (p = 0.032), and there was no significant difference in heart rate at different times postoperative between both groups (p > 0.05), while there was no significant effect on mortality between both groups (p = 0.781). CONCLUSION: Levosimendan had improved hemodynamic parameters significantly with no effect on mortality compared to conventional inotropic agents in a patient with poor left ventricular function undergoing cardiac surgery.

The energy crisis we are facing today has several aspects. Indeed, it not only concerns the fuel cost and reserve but also the level of pollution. That is why the last three decades had shown a tre...

The race between the development of technologies and energy demand has drawn the guidelines of energy strategies for the next two decades. Indeed, the governmental organizations as well as ...

Heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems operate on the principle of refrigeration cycle. At the condenser, heat is dissipated in form of hot air which represents a rich source of heat that could be utilized to supply other systems. In the frame of this paper a novel design allowing to recover the waste heat of condenser is proposed. The recovered heat is utilized to supply a dryer. In addition, an in-house code is developed allowing to simulate different scenarios. Moreover, the code is validated experimentally through a set up. Results show the accuracy of the code where the values, obtained experimentally and numerically, are almost the same. Furthermore, several key parameters are analyzed. It has been shown that an HVAC system of 12,000 Btu/h can cover the drying needs of 4 people if it operates for 6 h. To broaden the analysis, the system is assessed by performing economic and environmental studies, in order to examine the saving that could be provided by such system as well as the reduction in CO2 emissions for the case of Lebanon. It was interestingly found that utilizing the suggested system allows to yearly save up to 228.8$ and reduce CO2 emissions by 1249.6 kg. That said, a commercial version of the system is suggested and discussed as a first baseline toward the industrialization of the concept.

Background: about 25% of patients newly diagnosed with bladder cancer have muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC). Patients with MIBC have a worse prognosis than those with non-MIBC. Radical cystectomy with pelvic lymphadenectomy has been shown to be effective against MIBC. The pathologic stage of the primary tumor and regional lymph nodes status has been shown to be the most accurate predictors of disease recurrence after radical cystectomy. Aim of the Work: to evaluate the toxicity profile related to the adjuvant chemotherapy cisplatin, gemcitabine when added to radical cystectomy as primary treatment, and to estimate disease free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS). Patients and Methods: during the period between December 2013 and October, 2017, a total number of 42 patients were included in this study at Clinical Oncology and Nuclear Medicine Department, Al-Hussein University Hospital with a provisional diagnosis of invasive type bladder cancer. The cutoff date for the analysis of overall survival was 31st April, 2018 corresponding to 6 months of follow-up for the last patient enrolled in the study. All patients were subjected to radical cystectomy and pelvic lymphadenectomy and received four cycles of adjuvant chemotherapy cisplatin 70mg/m2 D1, gemcitabine 1000mg/m2 D1,8, every three weeks. Results: the most common grade 3 and 4 adverse events of hematological and non-hematological toxicities recorded during adjuvant chemotherapy were neutropenia (18.8%), grade 3 anemia (9.5%), grade 3 thrombocytopenia (2.3%), grade 3 nausea (28.5%), grade 3 and 4 vomiting (9.4%), grade 3 diarrhea (9.4%) while grade 3 renal toxicities observed in two patients (4.7%). As regard the survival analysis, the median disease-free survival (DFS) rate was not reached due to a relatively short follow up period and DFS was 82.9% at 1 year, 74% at 2 years, and 70.1% at 3 years. Concerning overall survival analysis, the median overall survival in our study was not reached due to a relatively short follow up period. Overall Survival rate at 1 year was 90.4%; at 2 years was 77.3% and 73.4% at 3 years. Conclusion: for patients with bladder cancer who were not treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy, we suggest not routinely administering chemotherapy following cystectomy. However, for patients with high-risk (T3 or higher, pathologic node involvement) urothelial carcinomas who are candidates for cisplatin -based combination chemotherapy and are willing to accept the risk for treatment-related toxicities in the absence of high level of evidence, adjuvant chemotherapy is a reasonable option. If administered, we prefer to use a cisplatin-based combination.

The present work examines the combination of solar energy systems with Fuel cell. Indeed, fuel cells are green storage systems without any pollution effects. They are supplied by oxygen and hydrogen to produce electricity. That is why it is inescapable to find a source of hydrogen in order to use fuel cell. Several techniques can be adopted to produce hydrogen depending on the availability and the cost of the sources. One of the most utilized techniques is electrolysers. They allow to obtain hydrogen from water by several technologies among them proton exchange membrane (PEM) which is considered in this work. On the other hand, electrolysers need electrical power to operate. A green-green energy system can be constructed by using a renewable energy source to supply fuel cell trough electrolysers. A comparison between two solar systems (Photovoltaic and Parabolic Trough) coupled to fuel cell is performed. A case study on the Lebanese city of Tripoli is carried out. The study shows the performance of each of both combined systems for different parameters and proposes recommendations depending on the considered configuration.

BACKGROUND: Weaning from invasive mechanical ventilation (MV) is considered as a daily challenging practice in the management of critically ill patients. The use of lung ultrasound and change in haemoglobin and hematocrit during weaning may help to predict weaning outcomes. AIM: We aimed in our study to make a focused view over the changes occurred in lungs during weaning from MV which were detected by lung ultrasound through increase in B lines with the occurrence of weaning induced pulmonary oedema (WIPE), coinciding with this changes the occurrence of hemoconcentration was detected through increase in Hb and HCT values after SBT. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Sixty patients who fulfilled readiness criteria for weaning from MV. Spontaneous breathing trial (SBT) on T-piece for 120 minutes was performed under close hemodynamic monitoring. Lung ultrasound was performed using eight lung zones protocol to detect both the presence and the trend of change in B lines before and after SBT. For all the studied patients, haemoglobin and hematocrit values were checked just before and at the end of SBT. RESULTS: Patient who failed to pass SBT showed significant increase in lung segments showing B pattern, haemoglobin and hematocrit levels (p-value < 0.001 for all) also those patients had significantly higher duration of ICU stay (p-value < 0.001) Despite mortality rate was higher among patients who failed SBT yet it was statistically insignificant (p-value 0.104). CONCLUSION: lung ultrasound and both haemoglobin and hematocrit levels correlate with weaning outcomes.

The present work is concerned with the combination of solar energy systems with HVAC systems. Namely, the objective is finding a way of applying green energy concepts to HVAC systems. Particularly, solar concepts are employed to supply electrical power to HVAC systems. Hence, an innovative concept that permits the use of electrical energy provided by parabolic troughs to drive electrical components of the HVAC system is suggested. Thermal modeling along with governing equations of electricity production from parabolic troughs are presented. Calculations of the electrical power needed for HVAC system, showed that an order of magnitude of energy saving is attainable. Finally, the aforementioned concept was applied on a genuine case in Beirut city. It was shown that four mirrors with a 0.5 efficiency of the storage system are capable to drive the pumps of a HVAC system of a 4-floor building all over the year. Keywords: Parabolic trough, HVAC, Energy management, Solar energy, Electrical power, Saving energy

The current tendency in energy domain is to reduce fuel consumption in favor of sustainable energy approaches. In this frame, the present work suggests an efficient way of heat recovery from boilers using concentric tube. The motivation behind the suggested concept is that it could be considered the cheapest, easiest to construct and simplest to use among all the existing heat recovery systems. In other words, the goal is to suggest a technique that could be utilized by a wider range of users regardless their technical level. Another advantage of the proposed concept is that is can be applied even on small scale boilers. With this in mind, a numerical tool is also developed allowing to make pre-studies to optimize the geometric parameters such as diameters and length, as well as to perform post-studies that allows to optimize operational parameters such as flow rates and fluids configurations. Furthermore, an experimental study is carried-out to validate the numerical results of the adopted heat exchanger. It was shown that water can be heated up to 100 °C depending on the flow rate and that the recovered heat increases through a rational function.

In this paper, a review on solar drying is presented. The review comprises the main components, classifications and affecting parameters. Advantages, disadvantages and limitations of such technology are also investigated. That said, solar dryers are assessed according to three key-elements: way of air movement (passive and active), mode of transferring heat (direct and indirect, hybrid and mixed) and type of drying chamber (cabinet, greenhouse and tent). Moreover, economic and environmental studies are performed for the Lebanese case in order to assess the Payback Period (PP) and the amount of CO2 reduction. The examined parameters are the percentage of time where solar dryer is utilized (Pr), the mass of dried food and food type. Results show that for Pr equals to 0.6, when drying 120 kg of carrots using solar dryer the amount of Saved Money (SM) is 780 $/month, PP is 10 months and the amount of CO2 emissions decreases by 6400 kg/month.

To reduce the carbon dioxide foot print, it is unescapable to adopt an energy policy that incorporates simultaneously renewable energy systems as well as smart energy strategies such as heat recovery. In the frame of this view, a heat recovery approach is suggested. The heat is recovered from drain water. It is then utilized to enhance the performance of heat pump within two schemes. Directly by replacing the ambient air heating the evaporator and indirectly by preheating the air heated by the condenser. The suggested approach is a numerical and experimental method that, on one hand, relies on experiments to determine the temperature of the drain water and on the other hand, it uses an iterative procedure to solve the energy balance equation and the mass balance equation. To that end an in-house code is developed. It allows to evaluate the heat efficiency of the heat recovery system as well as the performance of the heat pump. It has been shown that using such system may enhance the Coefficient of Performance up to 400%. In addition, economic and environmental studies are performed to assess the economic and environmental impact of the proposed techniques.

Expectation of wastewater quality in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is significant and can decrease the sampling number, cost, decision time, and energy. This paper presents two methods for predicting and forecasting the removal efficiency of total suspended solids (TSS), chemical oxygen demand (COD), biological oxygen demand (BOD5), ammonia, and sulphide at El-Berka wastewater treatment plant, Egypt. The first method uses different prediction models, includes the use of traditional feed-forward (TF), deep feed-forward backpropagation (DFB), and deep cascade-forward backpropagation (DCB) networks. The TF was generated in three layers: input, hidden, and an output layer. The DFB network comprised of six layers: an input, four hidden, and an output layer. The DCB network was created with six layers (with skip connections): an input, four hidden, and an output layer. The other method is a forecasting model by using deep learning time series forecasting (DLTSF) with a long short-term memory (LSTM) network. The developed models were trained, validated, and tested on a real-life dataset over eight years. The results indicated that the presented models could effectively predict and forecast the future series values of the removal efficiency of the El-Berka WWTP. The DCB network achieved the highest accuracy as compared to those exhibited by the TF and DFB networks. The RMSE and R-squared for training with the DCB model are 1.95 and 0.90, respectively. The RMSE of DLTSF was 0.85 for forecasting of BOD5. Thus, the DCB and DLTSF models are recommended for evaluating and predicting the performance of WWTP.

One of the most promising solution for the current energy crisis is recovering lost energy. Indeed, in many energy systems the percentage of energy loss could exceed 60%. To put it another way, in some applications, recovering energy is as much beneficial as finding new source of energy. Moreover, finding new concepts of energy recovery offers wider horizons to reduce energy consumption. The present work investigates new energy recovery system that combines heat recovery and energy generation using thermoelectric generators (TEG). The proposed system is a triple Thermoelectric-Energy recovery coupled system that from one hand allows to recover the heat of condenser and to reuse the lost energy of exhaust airflow of HVAC all-air system and from the other hand it permits to produce green electricity using TEG. The air of the condenser is considered the heat source, whereas the exhaust air flow is utilized as cooler. To proceed, a mathematical tool is first developed it allows to thermally simulate TEGs for different boundary conditions. The heat and cold source are then modeled where the heat transfer coefficient is determined from the Nusselt number. Furthermore, a parametric analysis is then conducted to evaluate the power generated with the new concept when the air velocity of the exhaust airflow and that of the condenser vary. It is shown that for a space cooling load of 100 kW, a 40×40 cm 2 flat plate is capable to generate 90 W of electrical power.

In the last decade, studying of thermal energy storage systems using phase change material (PCM) in the field of building has been increasingly developed. Indeed, it decreases the energy consumption used for indoor heating system while maintaining maximum thermal comfort for the occupants. This paper presents a study on application of white petroleum jelly, which is used as a phase change material, with an electrical under floor heating system. To proceed, a prototype of a well-insulated house is constructed. An experimental study was carried out in a relatively cold weather to investigate the thermal behavior of using phase change material. Results show that at an average ambient temperature QUOTE of 14℃ the electrical consumption was shifted by an average of 6 hours due to the latent heat stored in PCM.

Researchers are continually striving to improve the efficiency of photovoltaic panels which contain solar cells that convert light energy to electrical energy. The objective is to improve photovoltaic (PV) efficiency by maintaining it below maximum allowable temperature. Accordingly, the excess in heat must be dissipated efficiently in order to avoid excessive high temperatures, which have an adverse effect on the electrical performance of the cell. Therefore, in this paper an experimental study is presented to enhance the performance of PV panels using Aluminum finned plate, and cooling under natural convection. The use of heat sinks has been conducted to address this problem by using an optimum design of Aluminum finned plate. The results show that the use of an Aluminum finned plate has increased the solar to electrical conversion efficiency by 1.75%, and the output power by 1.86 Watt.

The electrical efficiency of a photovoltaic panel PV is highly dependent on its temperature. When the temperature of a PV increases, its electrical efficiency decreases. Using Phase Change Material PCM is one of the most promising tools nowadays to reduce and regulate the temperature of a PV panel and to increase its electrical efficiency. The current research is based on experimental studies of the effect of using pure (White petroleum jelly) and combined PCM (white petroleum jelly, copper, and graphite) on the thermal behavior and electrical performance of a PV panel. A transient energy balance is also presented to analyze the system thermal behavior and correlate it to the electrical outputs. To proceed, an appropriate experimental setup was devised and three prototypes were constructed and tested. Prototype 1 is formed from a reference case and consists of a stand, a PV panel, and an electrical circuit with a given load. Prototypes 2 and 3 are designed with a container added at the rear face of each PV panel that holds pure PCM and combined PCM respectively. It was shown that the electrical efficiency of PV panels has been increased by an average of 3% when using pure PCM and by an average of 5.8% when using combined PCM. These enhancements as well the corresponding behaviors were demonstrated by a transient energy balance approach.

Geothermal heat pump is an efficient application derived from geothermal energy. It exploits earth as a heat provenance to extract heat from it and heat space in winter, or it uses earth as heat sink to transform heat to it and cool the space during summer. This paper presents a parametric study to investigate the effects of inlet and outlet water temperatures and ground temperature on the length of the pipe of a horizontal geothermal heat pump system during cooling process. The type of the considered pipe is Poliplex - PE100 Series 1 – polyethylene of 16 mm inner diameter and 20 mm outer diameter. The obtained results revealed that at 30 °C water inlet temperature, 27 °C water outlet temperature and 21 °C ground temperature the length of pipe needed is 716 m. Also, the results showed that higher water inlet temperature and ground temperature increases the required pipe length; however, higher water outlet temperature decreases the needed length of the pipe.

International audience; Sharing of renewable energy and reduction of conventional energy consumption as an attempt to ameliorate environmental issues such as global warming has become the main concern for current developing scientific engineering research. Moreover, with the drastic increase in cooling and heating requirements in the building sector worldwide, the need for suitable technology that enables improvement in thermal performance of buildings is addressed. Utilizing phase change materials (PCMs) for thermal energy storage strategies in buildings can meet the potential thermal comfort requirements when selected properly. The current research article presents an overview of different PCM cooling applications in buildings. The reviewed applications are classified into active and passive systems. A summary of the used PCMs and their respective properties are presented as well. Primary results of the studied systems are demonstrated to be efficient in reducing indoor temperature fluctuations and energy demand during cold seasons along with the capability of triggering load reduction or shifting. Highlights  A state-of-the-art review on cooling applications of PCM in buildings  Cooling PCM applications are classified as active and passive systems  PCM serves as a promising technology for energy-efficient buildings  Combining active and passive systems can be a potential step toward NZEB

Heat recovery is the reutilization of lavished thermal energy. This paper proposes a hybrid heat recovery system that utilizes exhaust gases of a generator to heat water and produce electricity using thermoelectric generators. The system is composed of a concentric tank with a copper tube passing through it. At the inner surface of the tube, a layer of TEGs is located. The main purpose of the paper is to study the effect of changing the load of the generator on the water temperature and power generated. Knowing that 100 TEGs are utilized, results show that 47 °C hot water and 141 W are produced when load is 10 kW. It increases to 97 °C hot water and 1412 W when the generator load is 38 kW (14.12 W per TEG). Keywords: Heat recovery, Thermoelectric generators, Cogeneration, Domestic hot water, Generators, Exhaust gases

The utilization of different types of brain images has been expanding, which makes manually examining each image a labor-intensive task. This study introduces a brain tumor segmentation method that uses two parallel U-Net with an asymmetric residual-based deep convolutional neural network (TPUAR-Net). The proposed method is customized to segment high and low grade glioblastomas identified from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. Varieties of these tumors can appear anywhere in the brain and may have practically any shape, contrast, or size. Thus, this study used deep learning techniques based on adaptive, high-efficiency neural networks in the proposed model structure. In this paper, several high-performance models based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have been examined. The proposed TPUAR-Net capitalizes on different levels of global and local features in the upper and lower paths of the proposed model structure. In addition, the proposed method is configured to use the skip connection between layers and residual units to accelerate the training and testing processes. The TPUAR-Net model provides promising segmentation accuracy using MRI images from the BRATS 2017 database, while its parallelized architecture considerably improves the execution speed. The results obtained in terms of Dice, sensitivity, and specificity metrics demonstrate that TPUAR-Net outperforms other methods and achieves the state-of-the-art performance for brain tumor segmentation.

International audience; In the present study, coconut oil was used as a new bio-based phase change material (PCM) to be integrated with a quarter-scale insulated prototype of an underfloor heating system and its performance was investigated. Two different cases were studied. In the first case, the PCM was placed in an aluminum container that was positioned above an electrical heater, and the adaptation of the PCM to the floor was investigated. The second case was a control test in the absence of PCM plates. To simulate real severe winter conditions, the prototype was tested in an agricultural refrigerator to ensure constant low ambient temperature. The versatility of the underfloor system with PCM facilitates a reduction in heating load during winter while maintaining residential thermal comfort. An economic study was then conducted based on contemporary electricity shifts to inspect the system's ability in peak load shifting. The results show that the PCM achieved an increase of 53.7 % in the duration of energy transfer across charging and discharging. Furthermore, the use of the bio-PCM facilitated a shift in electricity consumption from peak time to off-peak time, yielding an annual cost reduction of 58.9% when compared with that achieved in the control test.

The energy crisis impact is increasing at all levels and then requires a quick sustainable and robust response. The last two decades have witnessed huge efforts to find solutions that can be classified within two classes: renewable energy and energy recovery. Abundant researches have been dedicated to find carbon dioxide-free energy sources. Fuel Cell (FC) is one of the most promising solutions. It is fed by hydrogen and generates electricity without any carbon dioxide emissions. The hydrogen is supplied by an electrolyzer that requires an electrical current to decompose the water into hydrogen and oxygen. This paper aims at proposing a coupled system of hydrogen and solar energy. The solar thermal system is used as an energy source to supply the electrolyzer. The modeling of the FC and the Thermal Solar System (TSS) are comprehensively presented. A case study for a stand-alone system that supplies 3 kW in Beirut City is studied. Through the simulation results, the power over the year as well as the relevant number of mirrors needed to cover the power demand are properly calculated. For instance, 80 mirrors are needed in August 1st to provide 3 kW whereas 367 mirrors are required to provide the same load in January 1st.

The present work concerns heating fresh air by the hot exhaust air of all–air heating ventilating and air conditioning HVAC systems. To proceed, a prototype is implemented and a parametric analysis is carried out to test the effect of temperatures and mass flow rates on the performance of the heat recovery system. Experiments are performed under typical conditions simulating the HVAC operation in cold climates. On the other hand, a generalized procedure of calculation is suggested based on the experimental results. It allows to simulate heat recovery designs and to perform parametric study without need to perform new experimental studies. It was shown that powers up to 110 W can be economized in cold climates and for low air flow rates of around 0.1 kg/s and 0.005 kg/s for respectively the hot exhaust air and the fresh cold air. Extrapolation shows that economized power can exceed 1 kW for a room of heating load 4 kW if all of the supply air is exhausted.

We discuss a simulation program for indoor visible light communication system with hexagonal LED array shape that will allow us to focus the luminance of optical light for the room center with neglecting of the boundary since they will be occupied by furniture. It is assumed that users will not be in those areas. We are going to model OOK, PPM and QAM modulation techniques with varied semi-angle degrees, as a result we want to prove with hexagonal shape we could make and uniform luminance in the room. MATLAB and Simulink will be used for simulation.

Spoken Language Translation (SLT) is becoming more widely used and becoming a communication tool that helps in crossing language barriers. One of the challenges of SLT is the translation from a language without gender agreement to a language with gender agreement such as English to Arabic. In this paper, we introduce an approach to tackle such limitation by enabling a Neural Machine Translation system to produce gender-aware translation. We show that NMT system can model the speaker/listener gender information to produce gender-aware translation. We propose a method to generate data used in adapting a NMT system to produce gender-aware. The proposed approach can achieve significant improvement of the translation quality by 2 BLEU points., Comment: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Natural Language and Speech Processing, 2018 IEEE

International audience; In this paper, a domestic thermoelectric cogeneration system (DCS) is suggested. This system permits to use the lost heat of exhaust gases to simultaneously heat water and produce electricity via thermoelectric generators (TEG). To proceed, the concept of the system is drawn and the corresponding thermal modeling is developed. An optimization analysis, based on the position of the thermoelectric generators within the system, is carried out using the thermal modeling. The TEGs are places on the inner or outer walls of the tank or the pipe (cases 2–5), or on all of them (case 6). Results show that water can be heated to up to 97 °C, when TEGs are located on the inner wall of the tank. More the TEGs are nearer to the exhaust gases, higher is the total power produced by the TEGs and lower is the water temperature. The power produced by one TEG in direct contact with the exhaust gases is 0.35 W and the water temperature is 76 °C. Also, a DCS with TEG located at all layers can generate up to 52 W and 81 °C hot water, however this configuration has high initial cost. An economic and environmental concerns are considered. Results show that DCS with TEGs located on the inner wall of the pipe has a payback period of 1 year and 8 months when water is heated 60 times per month. In addition to that, it was shown that the location of TEGs do not affect the amount of CO2 gas reduced which is about 6 tons yearly. Finally, this study shows that the configuration where TEGs are placed at the inner wall of the pipe is the most cost-effective energy recovery configuration.

Stress induced cardiomyopathy complicated by refractory cardiogenic shock is challenging as treatment by inotropes and vasopressors may be ineffective. We present a case of female patient presented with cardiogenic shock after rupture globe operation, patient presented on mega doses of vasopressors and inotropes, peripheral percutaneous VA ECMO was instituted, IABP was put to deload leftventricle, 2 days later patient was shifted to VAV ECMO. After 4 days of ECMO run patient recovered left ventricular function and patient was weaned from all mechanical support devices. But patient developed septic shock refractory to vasopressors therapy and patient died. Keywords: Cardiogenic shock, Stress induced cardiomyopathy, Extracorporeal life support