Early pregnancy serum levels of folate and vitamin B12 in overweight and obese women in Khartoum, Sudan.

Background: This study was conducted to assess serum levels of folate and vitamin B12 in overweight and obese pregnant women.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at Saad Abualila Hospital, Sudan. Clinical data were collected through questionnaires and body mass index (BMI) was computed from weight and height.

Experimental demonstration of pre-electronic dispersion compensation in IM/DD systems using an iterative algorithm.

To combat chromatic dispersion (CD) in intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) systems, three chirp-free demonstrations are experimentally performed with an iterative pre-electronic dispersion compensation (pre-EDC) algorithm at the transmitter end, for 28 GBaud non-return-to-zero on-off keying (NRZ-OOK), 56 GBaud NRZ-OOK and 28 GBaud four-level pulse-amplitude-modulation (PAM-4) signals, over distances of 100 km, 50 km and 40 km of single mode fiber (SMF), respectively. The iterative pre-EDC algorithm is based on the Gerchberg-Saxton (GS) algorithm, which treats the unconstrained phase at the direct detection receiver as a degree of freedom. At the receiver side, only a linear fractionally-spaced (T/2) post-feed-forward equalizer (post-FFE) is employed to combat the residual inter-symbol interference (ISI).

Plasmon-Enhanced Light Absorption in (p-i-n) Junction GaAs Nanowire Solar Cells: An FDTD Simulation Method Study.

A finite-difference time-domain method is developed for studying the plasmon enhancement of light absorption from vertically aligned GaAs nanowire arrays decorated with Au nanoparticles. Vertically aligned GaAs nanowires with a length of 1 µm, a diameter of 100 nm and a periodicity of 165-500 nm are functionalized with Au nanoparticles with a diameter between 30 and 60 nm decorated in the sidewall of the nanowires. The results show that the metal nanoparticles can improve the absorption efficiency through their plasmonic resonances, most significantly within the near-bandgap edge of GaAs.

Micro-Fabricated RTD Based Sensor for Breathing Analysis and Monitoring.

The design, micro-fabrication, and characterization of a resistance temperature detector (RTD) based micro sensor for minimally invasive breathing analysis and monitoring is presented. Experimental results demonstrate that the change in air temperature while inhaling and exhaling can be transduced into a time varying electrical signal, which is subsequently used to determine the breathing frequency (respiratory rate). The RTD is placed into a Wheatstone bridge to simultaneously reduce the sensor's output noise and improve overall system accuracy.

Machine-Learning-Based Muscle Control of a 3D-Printed Bionic Arm.

In this paper, a customizable wearable 3D-printed bionic arm is designed, fabricated, and optimized for a right arm amputee. An experimental test has been conducted for the user, where control of the artificial bionic hand is accomplished successfully using surface electromyography (sEMG) signals acquired by a multi-channel wearable armband. The 3D-printed bionic arm was designed for the low cost of 295 USD, and was lightweight at 428 g.