A new procedure for automatic diagnosis of pathologies of the larynx is presented. The new procedure has the advantage over other traditional techniques of being non-invasive, inexpensive and objective. The algorithms for determination of jitter and shimmer parameters by their Jitta, Jitt, RAP, ppq5 in case of jitter and Shim, SHDB, apq3 and apq5 in case of shimmer are presented. The algorithm developed and implemented for determining the HNR (Harmonic to Noise Ratio) are also presented. The developed tools allow the diagnosis that indicates whether or not the voice is pathologic

Background: Accelerated globalisation has substantially contributed to the rise of emerging markets worldwide. The G7 and Emerging Markets Seven (EM7) behaved in significantly different macroeconomic ways before, during, and after the 2008 Global Crisis. Average real GDP growth rates remained substantially higher among the EM7, while unemployment rates changed their patterns after the crisis. Since 2017, however, approximately one half of the worldwide economic growth is attributable to the EM7, and only a quarter to the G7. This paper aims to analyse the association between the health spending and real GDP growth in the G7 and the EM7 countries. Results: In terms of GDP growth, the EM7 exhibited a higher degree of resilience during the 2008 crisis, compared to the G7. Unemployment in the G7 nations was rising significantly, compared to pre-recession levels, but, in the EM7, it remained traditionally high. In the G7, the austerity (measured as a percentage of GDP) significantly decreased the public health expenditure, even more so than in the EM7. Out-of-pocket health expenditure grew at a far more concerning pace in the EM7 compared to the G7 during the crisis, exposing the vulnerability of households living close to the poverty line. Regression analysis demonstrated that, in the G7, real GDP growth had a positive impact on out-of-pocket expenditure, measured as a percentage of current health expenditure, expressed as a percentage of GDP (CHE). In the EM7, it negatively affected CHE, CHE per capita, and out-of-pocket expenditure per capita. Conclusion: The EM7 countries demonstrated stronger endurance, withstanding the consequences of the crisis as compared to the G7 economies. Evidence of this was most visible in real growth and unemployment rates, before, during and after the crisis. It influenced health spending patterns in both groups, although they tended to diverge instead of converge in several important areas.

With the accelerated spread of COVID-19 worldwide and its potentially fatal effects on human health, the development of a tool that effectively describes and predicts the number of infected cases and deaths over time becomes relevant. This makes it possible for administrative sectors and the population itself to become aware and act more precisely. In this work, a machine learning model based on the multilayer Perceptron artificial neural network structure was used, which effectively predicts the behavior of the series mentioned in up to six days. The model, which is trained with data from 30 countries together in a 20-day context, is assessed using global and local MSE and MAE measures. For the construction of training and test sets, four time series (number of: accumulated infected cases, new cases, accumulated deaths and new deaths) from each country are used, which are started on the day of the first confirmed infection case. In order to soften the sudden transitions between samples, a moving average filter with a window size 3 and a normalization by maximum value were used. It is intended to make the model’s predictions available online, collaborating with the fight against the pandemic.

This work proposes the application of a new electroencephalogram (EEG) signal processing tool - the lacsogram - to characterize the Alzheimer's disease (AD) activity and to assist on its diagnosis at different stages: Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), Mild and Moderate AD (ADM) and Advanced AD (ADA). Statistical analyzes are performed to lacstral distances between conventional EEG subbands to find measures capable of discriminating AD in all stages and characterizing the AD activity in each electrode. Cepstral distances are used for comparison. Comparing all AD stages and Controls (C), the most important significances are the lacstral distances between subbands θ and α (p = 0.0014 $<; $ 0.05). The topographic maps show significant differences in parietal, temporal and frontal regions as AD progresses. Machine learning models with a leave-one-out cross-validation process are applied to lacstral/cepstral distances to develop an automatic method for diagnosing AD. The following classification accuracies are obtained with an artificial neural network: 95.55% for All vs All, 98.06% for C vs MCI, 95.99% for C vs ADM, 93.85% for MCI vs ADM-ADA. In C vs MCI, C vs ADM and MCI vs ADM-ADA, the proposed method outperforms the state-of-art methods by 5%, 1%, and 2%, respectively. In All vs All, it outperforms the state-of-art EEG and non-EEG methods by 6% and 2%, respectively. These results indicate that the proposed method represents an improvement in diagnosing AD.