Minia University

About: Minia University is a education organization based out in Minya, Egypt. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Medicine. The organization has 4967 authors who have published 8986 publications receiving 108384 citations.

NeuroPlace: Categorizing urban places according to mental states

Abstract: Urban spaces have a great impact on how people’s emotion and behaviour. There are number of factors that impact our brain responses to a space. This paper presents a novel urban place recommendation approach, that is based on modelling in-situ EEG data. The research investigations leverages on newly affordable Electroencephalogram (EEG) headsets, which has the capability to sense mental states such as meditation and attention levels. These emerging devices have been utilized in understanding how human brains are affected by the surrounding built environments and natural spaces. In this paper, mobile EEG headsets have been used to detect mental states at different types of urban places. By analysing and modelling brain activity data, we were able to classify three different places according to the mental state signature of the users, and create an association map to guide and recommend people to therapeutic places that lessen brain fatigue and increase mental rejuvenation. Our mental states classifier has achieved accuracy of (%90.8). NeuroPlace breaks new ground not only as a mobile ubiquitous brain monitoring system for urban computing, but also as a system that can advise urban planners on the impact of specific urban planning policies and structures. We present and discuss the challenges in making our initial prototype more practical, robust, and reliable as part of our on-going research. In addition, we present some enabling applications using the proposed architecture.

Optical and nuclear radiation shielding properties of zinc borate glasses doped with lanthanum oxide

Abstract: In this study, structure, optical and nuclear radiation shielding behaviors of (50-x)B2O3-30PbO-20ZnO-xLa2O3, (x = 0, 1.5, 3, 4.5, and 6) wt% glasses with various La2O3 concentrations were measured for their nuclear radiation shielding applications. Moreover, UV–visible absorption spectrum and the glass optical parameters were measured. The band gaps of optical energy for direct transition decreased from 3.90 eV for BPZLa1 glass sample to 2.78 eV for BPZLa5 glass, while it decreased from 2.58 eV to 1.83 eV glass for the indirect transition. The mass attenuation coefficient (μm) was experimentally measured using the HPGe spectrometer. The experimental results of shielding parameters were compared with values obtained using the XCOM program and FLUKA simulation code. The nuclear radiation shielding properties such as μm, HVL, Zeff, EBF and EABF were calculated for all glasses with various La2O3 concentrations. The results showed that μm and Zeff increased as the La2O3 concentration increased. The BPZLa5 glass sample had the minimum HVL, EBF and EABF. The BPZLa5 sample had the largest μm, Zeff.