Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference Proceedings Volume 2016 Issue 1

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are still the number one cause of morbidity and mortality both in Qatar and worldwide. A major risk factor of CVDs is atherosclerosis, the hardening of blood vessels caused by decreased diameter and formation of plaque. A key player in atherosclerosis prognosis is the switch of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) phenotype from their undifferentiated state to a synthetic one. The synthetic state Read More

Background & Aim: People with diabetes carry a 25% lifetime risk of foot ulceration. It is well-established that high plantar pressures increase the risk of developing foot ulcers, and that managing peak pressure is an important strategy in reducing such risk. This study tested a novel smart insole system designed to reduce ulceration risk by alerting patients using a smartwatch when their plantar pressure was too high. The Read More

Pancreatic cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related mortality worldwide and is highly therapy-resistant, e.g. toward the standard chemotherapy gemcitabine. Glucocorticoids like dexamethasone (DEX) are often co-medicated to reduce inflammation and side effects of tumor growth and therapy. Our group showed DEX to be a potent stimulator of epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), cancer progression Read More

Background: In Qatar and GCC countries, palm trees are considered as a symbol of culture due the great number of palm trees. Qatar classified as the third country import the dates for consumption among the world, it produces around 16,500 tons of dates every year mostly for local consumption. Though the high production and consumption of dates in GCC countries, there are no enough studies and investigations of Read More

Objectives: HER2 status of breast carcinoma is a powerful prognostic and predictive biomarker-particularly in the metastatic setting. Limited data is available regarding assessment of HER2 on cell block preparations (CBP). The primary objective of this study was to assess correlation between HER2 results obtained via immunohistochemistry (IHC) and fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH) in cases of metastatic breast carcino Read More

Globally, gender based violence effects one out of every three women. Recently, the alarming rise in reported cases of domestic violence in Qatar has led to a national call to find an effective way to deal with the issue. This paper documents the efforts of a group of Qatar University students to do just that: draft legislation to criminalize domestic violence. The research project involves eight Qatar University male and female und Read More

PAC system is extending increasingly from the now well-established radiology applications into a hospital-wide PACS. New challenges are accompanying its spread into other clinical fields. With awareness of the importance of PAC systems among various medical experts, this system has been enhanced through the PAC system's pipeline, and simplification of image display for analysis via an interaction with the user. G Read More

Electronic noses (EN) or machine olfaction are systems used for the detection and identification of odorous compounds and gas mixtures. The accuracy of such systems is as important as the processing time. Therefore, the choice of the algorithm and the implementation platform are both crucial. In this abstract, a design and implementation of a gas identification system on the Zynq platform which shows promising results Read More

1. Introduction Machine translation (MT) became widely used by translation companies to reduce their costs and improve their speed. Therefore, the demand for quick and accurate machine translations is growing. Machine translation (MT) systems often produce incorrect output with many grammatical and lexical choice errors. Correcting machine-produced translation errors, or MT Post-Editing (PE) can be done automatical Read More