Detection of Atrial Fibrillation from Single Lead ECG Signal Using Multirate Cosine Filter Bank and Deep Neural Network.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a cardiac arrhythmia which is characterized based on the irregsular beating of atria, resulting in, the abnormal atrial patterns that are observed in the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal. The early detection of this pathology is very helpful for minimizing the chances of stroke, other heart-related disorders, and coronary artery diseases. This paper proposes a novel method for the detection of AF pathology based on the analysis of the ECG signal. The method adopts a multi-rate cosine filter bank architecture for the evaluation of coefficients from the ECG signal at different subbands, in turn, the Fractional norm (FN) feature is evaluated from the extracted coefficients at each subband. Then, the AF detection is carried out using a deep learning approach known as the Hierarchical Extreme Learning Machine (H-ELM) from the FN features. The proposed method is evaluated by considering normal and AF pathological ECG signals from public databases. The experimental results reveal that the proposed multi-rate cosine filter bank based on FN features is effective for the detection of AF pathology with an accuracy, sensitivity and specificity values of 99.40%, 98.77%, and 100%, respectively. The performance of the proposed diagnostic features of the ECG signal is compared with other existing features for the detection of AF. The low-frequency subband FN features found to be more significant with a difference of the mean values as 0.69 between normal and AF classes.

Prevalence of pharyngeal infection by Neisseria gonorrhoeae among human immunodeficiency virus-positive men who have sex with men in downtown Madrid, 2011.

The prevalence of pharyngeal gonorrhoea in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive men who have sex with men (MSM) is not entirely known. We cultured the pharynx of 264 asymptomatic HIV-positive MSM in downtown Madrid. A questionnaire on sexual and drug use risk behaviours was also administered. Gonococci were isolated in 25 (9.5%). Among the whole study population, 65% had a history of sexual intercourse with two or more partners on a single day and 26% were involved in group sex with other men. Only 29% regularly used condoms in all sexual encounters and 63% used condoms only in insertive anal intercourse. When asked about oral sex, 89% of patients engaged in insertive and/or receptive oral sex and 86% recognized that they did not regularly request the use of condoms when practising "fellatio" on a partner. Cocaine, crystal methamphetamine or alcohol use and a previous history of ≥1 sexually transmitted infection were significantly more common among culture-positive patients. Gonococcal colonization of the pharynx was self-limited in patients that were not treated and re-cultured a mean 18.5 ± 5.2 days after diagnosis. Asymptomatic pharyngeal gonorrhoea is common among HIV-positive MSM and may contribute to the increasing epidemic of gonorrhoea in Madrid.

Fast and reliable calibration of solid substrate fermentation kinetic models using advanced non-linear programming techniques

Calibration of mechanistic kinetic models describing microorganism growth and secondary metabolite production on solid substrates is difficult due to model complexity given the sheer number of parameters needing to be estimated and violation of standard conditions of numerical regularity. We show how advanced non-linear programming techniques can be applied to achieve fast and reliable calibration of a complex kinetic model describing growth of Gibberella fujikuroi and production of gibberellic acid on an inert solid support in glass columns. Experimental culture data was obtained under different temperature and water activity conditions. Model differential equations were discretized using orthogonal collocations on finite elements while model calibration was formulated as a simultaneous solution/optimization problem. A special purpose optimization code (IPOPT) was used to solve the resulting large-scale non-linear program. Convergence proved much faster and a better fitting model was achieved in comparison with the standard sequential solution/optimization approach. Furthermore, statistical analysis showed that most parameter estimates were reliable and accurate.

El perfeccionamiento y la educación permanente de los recursos humanos de salud / Continuing education improvement of the health manpower

Se presentan los antecedentes de la educación o perfeccionamiento de los recursos humanos en el Sistema Nacional de Salud y se analizan los diferentes factores que han impulsado la transformación de los programas de desarrollo de los recursos humanos en salud. A continuación se plantean la estrategia y política que se pretende seguir para reorientarlos hacia la Educación Permanente a partir de la creación del nuevo modelo de Atención Primaria, con el médico y la enfermera de familia y la especialidad de medicina general integral y el programa de propósitos, objetivos y directrices para incrementar la salud de la poblacion cubana en el período de 1992 al año 2000. Por último se hace una valoración de la aplicación actual de la nueva política de educación permanente mediante un estudio piloto que se está llevando a cabo en una provincia, así como de los pasos que se están dando para implementarla en todo el país (AU)