This study assesses the dietary exposure of Lebanese adults to 47 pesticide residues from both foods of plant origin and drinks. The study was conducted using the Total Diet Study protocol in two different areas of Lebanon: Greater Beirut (urban) and Keserwan (semi-rural). A total of 1860 individual foods were collected, prepared, and cooked prior to analysis. Composite samples of similar foods...

The aim of this paper is to examine the factors associated with the belief that vegetarian diets provide health benefits. A random population mail survey about food choice was conducted among a sample of 1000 South Australians. An additional (non-random) survey of 106 vegetarians and semi-vegetarians was also conducted, giving a total of 707 participants from both samples. The main predictors o...

This prospectus proposes a preliminary research topic about fusing the kernel-based SVM method and the similarity-based spectral clustering into a semi-supervised learning algorithm under the scope of learning from both labeled and unlabeled data. For the past nine months before the prospectus comes out, much effort has been put to extend the bloomed SVM to more practicable multi-class learning...

Semi-supervised clustering under pairwise constraints (i.e. must-links and cannot-links) has been a hot topic in the data mining community in recent years. Since pairwise constraints provided by distinct domain experts may conflict with each other, a lot of research work has been conducted to evaluate the effects of noise imposing on semi-supervised clustering. In this paper, we introduce elite...

This work is focused on the susceptibility of integrated circuits (ICs) to electromagnetic interference (EMI). The main issue is simulation and measurement on device level and circuit level. The work gives an overview of the overall electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) issues, and shows Direct Power Injection (DPI) measurement technique for conducted electromagnetic interference. Related researc...

The high-noise environments in and around modern military jet aircraft can impair voice communications and cause permanent damage to the hearing of pilots and maintenance crews if adequate hearing protection is not worn. With external noise levels of some aircraft approaching 150 dBA, adequate hearing protection must provide better than 50 dB of attenuation. In order to reach such a high level ...