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This paper considers the bit loading problem for communication systems that utilize orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) in conjunction with precoding (POFDM) or time-domain interleaving (IOFDM). In particular, we propose a new bit loading algorithm for P/I-OFDM that has substantially higher effective throughput and less computational complexity, when compared to bit loading in conventional OFDM systems. The obtained results show that the effective throughput of P/I-OFDM can be more than fourfold the conventional OFDM while the complexity is less than $1.5\%$ . Moreover, the results show that the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) properties of the considered systems are preserved under the adaptation process.

Aim To quantify the risk of different non‐invasive arterial stiffness measurements with macrovascular disease and all‐cause mortality in high‐risk people with Type 2 diabetes. Methods We conducted a prospective cohort study of 1910 people with Type 2 diabetes included in the Second Manifestations of ARTerial disease (SMART) study. Arterial stiffness was assessed by brachial artery pulse pressure, normal range (≥0.9) ankle–brachial index and carotid artery distension. Cox regression was used to evaluate the effects of arterial stiffness on risk of cardiovascular events (composite of myocardial infarction, stroke and vascular mortality) and all‐cause mortality. Results A total of 380 new cardiovascular events and 436 deaths occurred during a median (interquartile range) follow‐up of 7.5 (4.1–11.0) years. A 10‐mmHg higher brachial pulse pressure was related to higher hazard of cardiovascular events (hazard ratio 1.09, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.16) and all‐cause mortality (hazard ratio 1.10, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.16). A 0.1‐point lower ankle–brachial index within the normal range was related to a higher hazard of cardiovascular events (hazard ratio 1.13, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.27) and all‐cause mortality (hazard ratio 1.17, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.31). A one‐unit (10−3×kPa−1) lower carotid artery distensibility coefficient was related to a higher hazard of vascular mortality (hazard ratio 1.04, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.09) and all‐cause mortality (hazard ratio 1.04, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.07). Conclusion Increased arterial stiffness, as measured by either increased pulse pressure, normal‐range ankle–brachial index or carotid artery distensibility coefficient, is related to increased hazard of cardiovascular events and all‐cause mortality in people with Type 2 diabetes., What's new? Increased arterial stiffness has been related to microvascular complications in people with Type 2 diabetes; however, there are few published studies on the relationship between arterial stiffness and macrovascular disease specifically in people with Type 2 diabetes.The vasculature in people with Type 2 diabetes is characterized by increased arterial stiffness and might partly explain the observed elevated cardiovascular risk in this population.Increased arterial stiffness, as measured by brachial pulse pressure, normal range ankle–brachial index and carotid artery distensibility coefficient, is related to increased risk of cardiovascular events and all‐cause mortality.

Palm oil fuel ash (POFA) was considered as a one of waste product in oil palm industry whereas the abundant of that waste contributed to environmental effects. Strong interest in the development of renewable products to reduce the environmental effects was focus on used the waste source as reinforcements in polymer matrix composites. In 3D Printing Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), composite filament material was started used for patterns development application. However, in FDM pattern development, composite filament have common issue especially on nozzle clogging problem that relate to the critical process in composition mixing and filament preparation. Therefore, this research is aimed to investigate the capability of different percentage composition in range 20–60 vt.% of POFA with polypropylene (PP) materials to be formed into solid composite filament for FDM machine. The composite material was mixed well used brabender mixer machine and added 5 and 8 vt.% maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene (MAPP) as compatibilizer to improve the bonding ability of the PP matrix and POFA. The Melt Flow Index (MFI) test was conducted on all POFA-PP composition to investigate the data of viscosity which important for filament extrusion process. The single screw extrusion machine was used to form a composite filament with diameter and length range 1.70–1.80 mm and 60–70 cm respectively. The observation result of POFA filament deposition test on FDM showed that 40 vt.% POFA, 55 vt.% PP and 5 vt.% MAPP was the best composition of filament and give the best deposition result of printed the ISO527-1 (dog bone sample).

We analyze the implementation and capabilities of a silicon photonics transmitter capable of modulating and multiplexing groups of four solitons with different frequency and time spacing based on the nonlinear Fourier transform., in Proc. 2020 European Conference on Integrated Optics (ECIO)

We experimentally validate a 10-channel polarization diverse WDM receiver with only one ring based add-drop multiplexer per channel and on-chip optical delay lines balancing the two polarization paths for speeds up to 28 Gb/s.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been recently proposed as a viable technology that can potentially improve the spectral efficiency of fifth generation wireless networks and beyond. However, in practical communication scenarios, transceiver architectures inevitably suffer from radio-frequency (RF) front-end related impairments that can lead to degradation of the overall system performance with in-phase/quadrature-phase imbalance (IQI) constituting a major impairment in direct-conversion transceivers. In this paper, we quantify the effects of IQI on the performance of NOMA-based single-carrier (SC) and multi-carrier (MC) systems under multipath fading conditions. This is realized by first deriving analytic expressions for the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and the outage probability of both SC and MC NOMA systems subject to IQI at the transmitter and/or receiver (RX) side. Furthermore, we derive asymptotic diversity orders for all considered impairment scenarios. Capitalizing on these results, we demonstrate that the effects of IQI differ considerably among NOMA users and depend on the underlying systems’ parameters. For example, for a target data rate and power allocation ratio satisfying a given condition, IQI does not affect the asymptotic diversity of SC NOMA systems, whereas the asymptotic diversity of MC NOMA systems, suffering from RX IQI, is always zero. Moreover, it is shown that for both SC and MC NOMA systems, the first sorted user appears more robust to IQI, which indicates that higher order users are more sensitive to the considered impairment.

Context: Prolonged exposure to stress can lead to psychological distress, emotional exhaustion, burnout, and impaired resilience in nursing students. However, resilience is known to mitigate the detrimental impacts of stress. Resilience plays a significant role in students' academic success and retention in academic nursing programs. Aim: This review aimed to conduct a scoping review of the literature addressing the relationship between resilience and stress among nursing students. Methods: A scoping review, based on PRISMA guidelines, of studies of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method research designs that focus on resilience and stress relationships among nursing students. The search was conducted using PubMed, CINAHL, EBSCO, ProQuest, and Medline electronic databases, via the Saudi Digital Library. It included studies published during the last six years. For this review, publications about undergraduate nursing students only were considered. All the included studies were critically appraised using the critical appraisal tool. Results: The screening method yielded 22 studies that met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Six main themes have emerged throughout this review which were: Sources of stress, resilience and stress levels among nursing students, the importance of resilience to nursing students, the relationship between stress and resilience, strategies to improve resilience in nursing students, and key variables in understanding resilience among nursing students. Conclusion: This review synthesized the evidence relating to the relationship between resilience and stress among nursing students. Evidence highlighted the importance of resilience in dealing with nursing students' stressors in their academic and practical life. This review showed that the educational programs that focus on building and enhancing resilience among nursing students were disparate, and they were not of direct and significant impact on improving resilience. Therefore, further research on introducing interventional educational programs that target enhancing resilience among nursing students based on their personality is recommended.

Visible light communication (VLC) has been proposed as a promising and efficient solution to indoor ubiquitous broadband connectivity. In this paper, non-orthogonal multiple access, which has been recently introduced as an effective scheme for fifth generation (5G) wireless networks, is considered in the context of VLC systems under different channel uncertainty models. To this end, we first derive a novel closed-form expression for the bit-error-rate (BER) under perfect channel state information (CSI). Capitalizing on this, we then quantify the effect of noisy and outdated CSI by deriving a simple and accurate approximation for the former and a tight upper bound for the latter. The offered results are corroborated by respective results from extensive Monte Carlo simulations and assist in developing useful insights on the effect of imperfect CSI knowledge on the overall system performance. Furthermore, it was shown that while noisy CSI leads to slight degradation in the BER performance, outdated CSI can cause considerable performance degradation, if the order of the users’ channel gains change due to the involved mobility.

This paper presents two architectures for prototyping an advanced carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation technique for OFDM systems on field programmable gate array (FPGA). The parallel stream architecture (PSA) exploits the FPGA parallelism while the multiplexed stream architecture (MSA) employs multiplexing for more efficient hardware implementation. The dual-mode of operation for the proposed architectures has been proposed to achieve optimum performance depending on channel conditions. The proposed architectures with different implementation alternatives have been simulated and verified for FPGA implementation using the Xilinx’s DSP design flow. The estimation accuracy and the resource utilization for the proposed architectures have been evaluated. The prototyping results showed that MSA allows for more resource efficient implementation, where a single FFT core can be shared between parallel streams compared with PSA.

Sinalbin (SNB) and 4-hydroxybenzyl isothiocyanate (4-HBITC) were isolated from Lepidium densiflorum Schrad. seeds, while glucoerucin (GER) and erucin (ER) from Eruca sativa Mill. seeds. Free-radical scavenging assays (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and hydroxyl radicals ( OH)) were used. The amount of plant extract required to scavenge 50% of the DPPH radicals (SC50) was 0.35 ± 0.053 mg mL−1 for L. densiflorum and 0.55 ± 0.067 mg mL−1 for E. sativa extract. The latter, however, was a better scavenger towards OH (3.4 ± 0.38 mg mL−1 for L. densiflorum vs. 1.0 ± 0.081 mg mL−1 for E. sativa). 4-HBITC was more active towards DPPH and just as active as ER towards OH. As expected, 4-HBITC was a better scavenger than SNB towards DPPH and OH. On the contrary, GER was found to be more efficient at scavenging DPPH than ER while their activities towards OH were the same. Overall, the compounds were not very efficient antioxidants.

The potential of laser-driven ion beam applications is limited by high quality requirements. The excellent "point-source" characteristics of the laser accelerated proton beam in a broad energy range were found by using proton radiographs of a mesh. The "virtual source" of protons, the point where the proton trajectories are converging and form a waist, gradually decreases and moves asymptotically to the target with increasing particles' energy. Computer simulations confirmed that the beam profile at the center is fully conserved, the virtual source of higher energy protons gradually moves closer to the target, and if the particle energy is further increased, the virtual source will be located on the target front surface (for portions above 13 MeV, in this case) with a size comparable to the laser spot size. The laser ponderomotive force pushes the electrons deep into the target creating a bipolar charge structure, i.e., an electron cavity and spike which produces strong accelerating field, realizing a point-size source of accelerated protons. This behavior has not previously been predicted. These results contribute to the development of next generation laser-accelerators suitable for many applications.

Cattle besnoitiosis caused by Besnoitia besnoiti (Eucoccidiorida: Sarcocystidae) is a re‐emerging disease in Europe. Its mechanical transmission by biting flies has not been investigated since the 1960s. The aim of this study was to re‐examine the ability of Stomoxys calcitrans (Diptera: Muscidae) to transmit virulent B. besnoiti bradyzoites from chronically infected cows to susceptible rabbits. Three batches of 300 stable flies were allowed to take an interrupted bloodmeal on chronically infected cows, followed by an immediate bloodmeal on three rabbits (Group B). A control group of rabbits and a group exposed to the bites of non‐infected S. calcitrans were included in the study. Blood quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) analyses, and clinical, serological and haematological surveys were performed in the three groups over 152 days until the rabbits were killed. Quantitative PCR analyses and histological examinations were performed in 24 tissue samples per rabbit. Only one rabbit in Group B exhibited clinical signs of the acute phase of besnoitiosis (hyperthermia, weight loss, regenerative anaemia and transient positive qPCR in blood) and was seroconverted. Parasite DNA was detected in four tissue samples from this rabbit, but no cysts were observed on histological examination. These findings indicate that S. calcitrans may act as a mechanical vector of B. besnoiti more efficiently than was previously considered., This is the first reproduction of the mechanical transmission of Besnoitia besnoiti by stable flies in a heterologous model.A batch of 300 stable flies was sufficient to transmit virulent B. besnoiti bradyzoites from chronically infected cattle to rabbit.Transmission was effective: one infected rabbit exhibited clinical signs of acute besnoitiosis and seroconversion. MVE-12356-toc-0001-c

Cobalt chrome molybdenum (CoCrMo) alloy is among the biomedical materials which is considered difficult to cut materials due to their combination of high strength, high toughness, high wear resistance, and poor thermal conductivity. In this study, high speed end milling (HSEM) was performed experimentally to access the machinability of CoCrMo alloy using solid coated and uncoated tools at different cutting speeds of 125, 140 and 155 m/min under the minimum quantity lubricant (MQL) strategy. The axial and radial depth of cut were kept constant 4 mm and 1.5 mm respectively throughout the machining tests. The tool wear, tool life and tool wear mechanism were recorded and analyzed accordingly. It was observed that higher cutting speed significantly reduces the tool life due to rapid tool wear. Coated carbide tool performed better than uncoated carbide tool in terms of tool life for every cutting speed. It was also found that chipping, adhesion and cracks were the dominant wear mechanisms occurred on the cutting edge when high speed end milling of CoCrMo biomedical material.

What is the truth about the conspiracy theory of the COVID-19 microchip vaccine? The outbreak of the COVID-19 witnessed a vicious race of pharmaceutical firms to develop a vaccine that ends this disaster. Claims were forwarded that some firms funded by well-known foundations are in the process of developing such a vaccine so people wide world can be tracked. Such claims may have been based on Mr. Bill Gate’s announcement in an interview that through vaccination "we will have some digital certificates" which would be used to show who had recovered, been tested and ultimately who received a vaccine but he made no mention of microchips. The conspiracy theory is spreading around the world and its supporters are on the increase among the public as well as many healthcare professionals. The spread of the virus has been attributed to the introduction of 5G technology and many religious leaders attributed the crisis to punishment from God to the spread of local wars and mass killing, torturing and killing of Muslims in China and Myanmar gay and lesbian movement and marriages.

This paper presents an adaptive approach to address the two main problems associated with the time varying Doppler shift, the first being the acceleration effects on the cyclic-prefix (CP) correlation and the second, the effect of a sudden change in the velocity direction between packets on the entire orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols. In addition, this paper considers the residual Doppler shift or carrier frequency offset (CFO) that was estimated iteratively within a range according to a design based on the sub-carrier spacing using pilots, which are basically utilized for the purpose of channel estimation. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm adopts three estimations of the symbol timing offset. These estimations are centroid-based localization over an anticipated CP window, first order expectation and autocorrelation of the received CP with its replica. Subsequently, a penalization algorithm is applied in order to drop the anomalous parameter among them. Therefore, the consequences of the inflection point that accompanies the abrupt change in the velocity are mitigated and a reliable time varying Doppler shift is obtained. This Doppler shift is fine tuned in an iterative manner. Compared with the block-based Doppler compensation approach, the proposed technique works with variable speed during packet duration. In addition, it exploits the available bandwidth more efficiently by utilizing a single preamble of linear-frequency-modulation (LFM) to detect the start of the packet. The proposed receiver was evaluated through simulations and sea trials conducted over 500m and 1000m channel ranges. In simulations, a model was designed to imitate the time varying Doppler shift with two scenarios (expansion/compression) in combination with a various multipath delay spread. The simulation results confirm that the proposed system accommodates an acceleration up to ? 1 m/s2 during the packet time.

Context: Stigma-by-association affects not only people with mental health problems and psychiatric patients or their families but also nurses working in the mental health field. Stigma-by-association among nurses working in mental health units can lead to some nurses feeling ashamed and embarrassed when discussing their work. Aim: To assess stigma-by-association amongst nurses working in mental health units. Methods: Descriptive, cross-sectional design was utilized to achieve the aim of this study. The study was conducted at a governmental psychiatric and mental health hospital and two private general hospitals that were not specialized in psychiatric health but had mental health units in Jeddah City. A convenience sampling technique was implemented. The data were collected from 160 registered nurses working in mental health units. The study tools included the Clinician Associative Stigma Scale (CASS) used to measure stigma-by-association among nurses working in mental health units; it consists of 18 statements. Besides, two open-ended questions to measure suggestions and embarrassing situations of nurses working in mental health units about stigma-by- association. Results: The result of the current study revealed that embarrassing situations occurred to nurses working in mental health units that have caused the stigma-by-association. Nurses in both hospitals display a moderate level of stigma by association with a mean percentage of 65.68% among nurses in the government hospital and 69.4% among nurses in the private hospital. The nurses have also suggested that families, patients, and society could be educated on mental illnesses and the role of mental health nurses. Conclusions: This study concludes that the nurses working in mental health units in both government and private hospitals had a moderate stigma-by-association level. Stigma by association among nurses who work in mental health units has also been found to be related to age and years of experience. The study highlighted that psychiatry workshops could help nurses working in the mental health field. Future research is required to identify the causes of stigma-by-association among nurses working in mental health units in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

We describe a resonantly enhanced Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) that can be operated over a wide temperature range of 55C without being actively biased, while providing a significant resonant enhancement of 6.8 at the nominal wavelength / temperature compared to a linear MZM driven with a distributed driver. More importantly, it enables a ~20X improvement in power consumption compared to a 50 {\Omega} matched linear traveling wave modulator with comparable phase shifter technology, drive voltage and output optical modulation amplitude. Passive biasing of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer is further implemented by replacing a splitter element in the MZM with a novel device combining splitting and fiber coupling functionalities in a single, multi-modal structure, that converts permanent fiber placement into a phase correction. Both concepts are combined in a single modulator device, removing the need for any type of active control in a wide temperature operation range., Comment: Proc. 2018 Int. IEEE Conf. on Nano/Micro Engineered and Molecular Systems (NEMS 2018)

The work reports the facile synthesis of novel &alpha, aminophosphonate derivatives coupled with indole-2,3-dione moieties, namely the diethyl(substituted phenyl/heteroaryl)(2-(2-oxoindolin-3-ylidene)hydrazinyl)methylphosphonates derivatives 4(a&ndash, n). One-pot three component Kabachnik-Fields reactions were used to synthesize these derivatives. The reaction was carried out at room temperature by stirring in presence of ceric ammonium nitrate (CAN) as a green catalyst. The structures of the synthesized compounds were established by spectral studies. The synthesized derivatives 4(a&ndash, n) were evaluated for their in vitro anticancer activity against six human cancer cell lines by the SRB assay method. The cancer cell lines used in this research work are SK-MEL-2 (melanoma), MCF-7 (breast cancer), IMR-32 (neuroblastoma) MG-63 (human osteosarcoma), HT-29 (human colon cancer) and Hep-G2 (human hepatoma). All the synthesized derivatives inhibited the cell proliferation. Importantly, all the target compounds showed no cytotoxicity towards normal tissue cells (GI50 &gt, 250 &micro, M). A docking study was performed to predict the mode of action. Docking results indicate that the compounds have good binding with the enzyme tyrosine kinase as well as with microtubules, which makes them dual inhibitors. The result of in-silico bioavailability studies suggests that the compounds from the present series have good oral drug-like properties and are non-toxic in nature. In vivo acute oral toxicity study results indicate that the compounds can be considered safe, and therefore could be developed in the future as good anticancer agents or as leads for the design and synthesis of novel anticancer agents.

Background: Vitamin D plays a major role in health. Several health disorders have been associated with its deficiency. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the knowledge of and attitude towards vitamin D of pharmacy and engineering students in the University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted during February-April, 2018. A 30 questions survey in English was designed, pre-validated and distributed to 250 students. The questionnaire was designed to evaluate and compare student’s knowledge and awareness of vitamin D.Results: 213 participants completed the survey producing a response rate of 85.2%. The majority of students were Arabs, females and of age ranging 21-23 years. Almost all pharmacy students were familiar with many aspects of vitamin D. Unlike engineering (66; 66.6%), most (113; 99.1%) pharmacy students know the meaning of osteoporosis. Knowledge of pharmacy students on vitamin D was generally better than that of engineering students particularly with questions on technical parameters of vitamin D levels and dosage. Students who took vitamin D test were advised by a physician. Most of the students from both colleges have a positive attitude to receive information on vitamin D through brochures, lectures/seminars and workshops.Conclusions: Awareness of non-health sciences and to some extent of pharmacy students seems to be inadequate and efforts are needed to increase awareness of the public in general of the importance of vitamin to health status.

The explosive growth of connected devices and the increasing number of broadband users have led to an unprecedented growth in traffic demand. To this effect, the next generation wireless systems are envisioned to meet this growth and offer a potential data rate of 10 Gbps or more. In this context, an attractive solution to the current spectrum crunch issue is to exploit the visible light spectrum for the realization of high-speed commutation systems. However, this requires solutions to certain challenges relating to visible light communications (VLC), such as the stringent requirements of VLC-based intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD), which require signals to be real and unipolar. The present work proposes a novel power-domain multiplexing based optical asymmetric modulation (OAM) scheme for indoor VLC systems, which is particularly adapted to transmit high-order modulation signals using linear real and unipolar constellations that fit into the restrictions of IM/DD systems. It is shown that the proposed scheme provides improved system performance that outperforms alternative modulation schemes, at no extra complexity.

In-phase/quadrature-phase Imbalance (IQI) is considered a major performance-limiting impairment in direct-conversion transceivers. Its effects become even more pronounced at higher carrier frequencies such as the millimeter-wave frequency bands considered for 5G systems. In this work, we quantify the effects of IQI on the performance of different modulations under multipath fading channels. This is realized by developing a comprehensive framework for the symbol error rate (SER) analysis of coherent phase shift keying (PSK), noncoherent differential phase shift keying (DPSK) and noncoherent frequency shift keying (FSK) under IQI effects. In this context, the moment generating function of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio is first derived for single-carrier systems suffering from transmitter (TX) IQI only, receiver (RX) IQI only and joint TX/RX IQI. Capitalizing on this, we derive analytic expressions for the SER of the different modulation schemes considered. These expressions are corroborated with simulation results and they provide insights into the dependence of IQI on the system parameters. We further demonstrate that, while in some cases, IQI can cause a slight degradation of the SER performance and, hence, it can be neglected, in other cases it should be compensated in order to achieve a reliable communication link. acceptedVersion

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been recently proposed as a viable technology that has the potential to improve the spectral efficiency of fifth generation (5G) wireless networks and beyond. However, in practical communication scenarios, transceiver architectures inevitably suffer from radio-frequency (RF) front-end related impairments that can lead to non-negligible degradation of the overall system performance. In this context, in-phase/quadrature-phase imbalance (IQI) constitutes a major impairment in direct-conversion transceivers. Based on this, the present contribution quantifies the effects of IQI on the performance of NOMA based systems under multipath fading conditions. This is realized by first deriving novel analytic expressions for the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and the outage probability of NOMA systems subject to IQI at the transmitter and/or the receiver sites. Capitalizing on these results, we demonstrate that the effects of IQI differ considerably between the different NOMA users and depending on the considered system's parameters.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been recently proposed as a viable technology that can potentially improve the spectral efficiency of fifth generation (5G) wireless networks and beyond. However, in practical communication scenarios, transceiver architectures inevitably suffer from radio-frequency (RF) front-end related impairments that can lead to degradation of the overall system performance, with in-phase/quadrature-phase imbalance (IQI) constituting a major impairment in direct-conversion transceivers. In the present work, we quantify the effects of joint transmitter/receiver IQI on the performance of NOMA based multi-carrier (MC) systems under multipath fading conditions. Furthermore, we derive the asymptotic diversity order of the considered MC NOMA set up. Capitalizing on these results, we demonstrate that the effects of IQI differ considerably among NOMA users and depend on the underlying system parameters. For example, it is shown that the first sorted user appears more robust to IQI, which indicates that higher order users are more sensitive to the considered non-negligible impairment.

The global demand for good quality food indicates that consumers are more concerned about a particular diet associated with good health and lower risk for certain ailments. Mushrooms are widely used as healthy nutritious food. In the present study, the nutritional composition of four different Pleurotus sp. was determined. Prior to extraction, all the selected mushrooms were subjected for proximate composition analysis. The protein, fat, ash, total carbohydrate, fiber and energy contents were in the range of (16.07- 25.15%), (0.64-2.02%), (2.1-9.14%), (65.66-82.47%), (6.21-54.12%) and (342.20-394.30Kcal/100g), respectively. The spectrophotometric analysis showed that the concentration of protein was in the range of 45.78-33.47 mg/g in all Pleurotus sp. High performance liquid chromatographic analysis of sugars showed six different mono and disaccharides in all the selected mushrooms. The fatty acid profile by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry revealed that the main fatty acids in selected mushrooms were present in the order linoliec acidoleic acidpalmitic acid. The results suggested that all the Pleurotus sp. could be considered as a rich source of nutrients.

Background: Falls in elderly people can lead to serious health problems. There is limited knowledge about the prevalence of falls, risk factors and causes of falls in the United Arab Emirates. Objective: To assess the prevalence of falls among older adults aged 60 years and above and to determine the risk factors associated with falls. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted using an anonymous, 20-item questionnaire which was developed in English and Arabic to be delivered as a semi-structured interview. The pre-piloted questionnaire was distributed to 510 families with at least one elderly person. The study was conducted in Sharjah and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from September to November 2017. Results: Participants were Arabs (368; 99.5%), living with family (339; 91.6%), females (256; 69.2%), married (240; 64.9%), holders of a university Bachelor’s degree (110; 29.7%), and unemployed (154; 41.6%). Almost half of the participants (188; 50.8%) had a fall in the past two years, and three quarters (141; 75%) of those claimed that their illness was the reason for their fall. The results indicate that female and 70 years and above old participants are more likely to experience falls than males and younger counterparts respectively. A larger proportion of elderly participants not taking medications did not experience falls, while those on 1-4 medications fallers were less than non-fallers. However as the number of medications increased to 5-8 and more than 8 the number of those experiencing falls was significantly higher than non-fallers. Conclusions: Falls are prevalent among the elderly population studied and efforts should be made to decrease the incidence of falls, identify those at risk and increase awareness about falls and their health consequences among the elderly and the general public.

Novel analytic solutions are derived for integrals that involve the generalized Marcum $Q$ -function, exponential functions and arbitrary powers. Simple closed-form expressions are also derived for specific cases of the generic integrals. The offered expressions are both convenient and versatile, which is particularly useful in applications relating to natural sciences and engineering, including wireless communications and signal processing. To this end, they are employed in the derivation of the average probability of detection in energy detection of unknown signals over multipath fading channels as well as of the channel capacity with fixed rate and channel inversion in the case of correlated multipath fading and switched diversity.

Dynamic power allocation and power splitting, in a multicarrier two-hop link with a wireless powered relay, is investigated. We first formulate the corresponding optimization problem, which consists of the joint optimization -in terms of achievable rate- of, 1) the dynamic power allocation among multiple channels and, 2) the selection of the power splitting ratio between information processing and energy harvesting at the relay, when amplify-and-forward is applied. This is a non-convex optimization problem, which is mapped to a convex one and optimally solved using one-dimensional search and dual decomposition, while a suboptimal efficient iterative method is also proposed. Simulations reveal a significant increase in the throughput, when comparing the proposed approach with two alternative power allocation schemes, while they verify the effectiveness of the fast-converging iterative solution.

Background: Data with regard to local drug prescribing in pediatric population is scarce. This study was carried out to investigate the patterns of drug prescribing for pediatric outpatient in a general hospital in the United Arab Emirates. Methods: A total of 707 prescriptions were collected from a governmental hospital in Umm Al Quwain, United Arab Emirates covering the months of June and July, 2014. Encounters issued for patients older than 12 years were rejected. A total of 520 prescriptions for age groups ranging from 1 week to 12 years were studied. Prescriptions were analyzed using WHO drug use indicators. Results: All prescriptions were electronic and head lettered by the name of the hospital. Average number of drugs per prescriptions was 2.6 and all drugs were generics. Name of patient, age and gender and prescriber’s name and E-signature were present in 100%. Patient’s address, allergy and diagnosis were present in 21.15%, 83.26% and 64.42% of prescriptions respectively. Complete dosage regimen was present in all encounters. Patients were prescribed one, two, three, four or more than four drugs per prescription in 23.84%, 27.88%, 26.53%, 12.69%, and 8.65% respectively. The most commonly prescribed therapeutic classes of drugs were antibiotics (44.60%), antihistamines (43.65%), and analgesics/antipyretics (32.30%). The most commonly prescribed drugs among each class were amoxicillin (40%), xylometazoline (61.23%), and paracetamol (87.5%). Conclusion: Present results indicate that prescribing trends for pediatric population seems to be rational. However, there is over use of antibiotics and there are some areas that warrant further attention by the prescribers for a more significantly rational prescribing.