The ESI significantly improves the outcome of IUI in women with unexplained infertility especially when conducted 1 month prior to IUI.

Abstract. Bayesian networks (BNs) are powerful tools for knowledge representation and inference that encode (in)dependencies among random variables. A Bayesian network classifier is a special kind of these networks that aims to compute the posterior probability of each class given an instance of the attributes and predicts the class with the highest posterior probability. Since learning the optimal BN structure from a dataset is N P-hard, heuristic search algorithms need to be applied effectively to build high-quality networks. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm, called ABC-Miner, for learning the structure of BN classifiers using the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) meta-heuristic. We describe all the elements necessary to tackle our learning problem using ACO, and experimentally compare the performance of our ant-based Bayesian classification algorithm with other algorithms for learning BN classifiers used in the literature.

No abstract

The outcome of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection acquired in childhood is uncertain because of the diversity of the epidemiological and clinical features of infection and disease. The aim of this study was to determine the outcome of HCV infection in 105 Egyptian children who tested positive for HCV antibody (anti-HCV). The data of 105 anti-HCV-positive children presenting to the Pediatric Hepatology Unit, Cairo University Children's Hospital, between 1995 and 2002, were retrospectively analysed for risk factors. Seventy-four children with available polymerase chain reaction results were further analysed clinically, serologically and histologically. The age range was 1.3-22 years, with a mean of 11.2 +/- 4.9 years. History of blood transfusion was found in 81 children (77%). HCV RNA was detected in 58.1% of 74 children. Persistently elevated alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels were present in 40 patients (54.1%). Hepatitis B virus markers (HBsAg and/or anti-HBc) were detected in 18 patients (24.3%). Twenty-six of the 43 HCV RNA-positive children underwent a diagnostic liver biopsy that showed chronic hepatitis in 19 patients (73.1%), cirrhosis in one case only (3.8%), and normal biopsy findings in seven children (26.9%). Blood transfusion remains a major risk of HCV transmission among Egyptian children. HCV infection is not always benign in the childhood period. ALT levels remain elevated in half of the children and histological abnormalities are detected in three quarters of HCV RNA-positive cases.

Background This study demonstrates the experience of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of a tertiary referral center in Egypt in management of prematures with neonatal sepsis. This retrospective study included preterm neonates admitted to NICU with clinical and/or laboratory diagnosis of sepsis. Blood culture was done followed by antimicrobial susceptibility testing for positive cases. Neonates with sepsis were classified into early onset sepsis (EOS) and late onset sepsis (LOS). Hematological scoring system (HSS) for detection of sepsis was calculated. Results The study included 153 cases of neonatal sepsis; 63 (41.2%) EOS and 90 (58.8%) LOS. The majority of the neonates had very low or moderately low birth weight (90.9%). All neonates received first-line antibiotics in the form of ampicillin-sulbactam, and gentamicin. Second-line antibiotics were administered to 133 neonates (86.9%) as vancomycin and imipenem-cilastatin. Mortalities were more common among EOS group (p < 0.017). Positive blood cultures were detected in 61 neonates (39.8%) with a total number of 66 cultures. The most commonly encountered organisms were Klebsiella MDR and CoNS (31.8% each). Klebsiella MDR was the most predominant organism in EOS (28.9%), while CoNS was the most predominant in LOS (39.2%) The detected organisms were divided into 3 families; Enterobacteriaceae, non-fermenters, and Gram-positive family. There 3 families were 100% resistant to ampicillin. The highest sensitivity in Enterobacteriaceae and Non-fermenters was for colistin and polymyxin-B. An HSS of 3–8 had a sensitivity and specificity of 62.3% and 57.6%, respectively for diagnosis of culture-proven sepsis. Conclusion Neonatal sepsis was encountered in 21.5% of admitted preterm neonates; LOS was more common (58.8%). Mortality was 51.6%. Klebsiella MDR and CoNS were the most commonly encountered organisms in both EOS and LOS. The isolated families were 100% resistant to ampicillin. The hematological scoring system (HSS) showed limited sensitivity for detection of sepsis.

No abstract

Multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaboration can be an appropriate response to tackling the increasingly complex problems faced by today’s society. Scientific disciplines are not rigidly defined entities and their profiles change over time. No previous study has investigated multiple disciplinarity (i.e. the complex interaction between disciplines, whether of a multidisciplinary or an interdisciplinary nature) at scale with quantitative methods, and the change in the profile of disciplines over time. This article explores a dataset of over 21 million articles published in 8400 academic journals between 1990 and 2019 and proposes a new scalable data-driven approach to multiple disciplinarity. This approach can be used to study the relationship between disciplines over time. By creating vector representations (embeddings) of disciplines and measuring the geometric closeness between the embeddings, the analysis shows that the similarity between disciplines has increased over time, but overall the size of their neighbourhood (the number of neighbouring disciplines) has decreased, pointing to disciplines being more similar to each other over time, while at the same time displaying increased specialisation. We interpret this as a pattern of global convergence combined with local specialisation. Our approach is also able to track the development of disciplines’ profiles over time, detecting those that changed the most in the time period considered, and to treat disciplines as compositional units, where relationships can be expressed as analogy equations of the form Discipline1 + Discipline2 ≈ Discipline3. These findings can help researchers, academic institutions and organizations to better understand and react to the dynamics of scientific research, and can support the education sector in designing curricula or in the recruitment of academics and researchers.

No abstract