Synopsis:

Obesity is a rising modern pandemic: today more than one-third of the American adults are obese, and another third are overweight. While the rising trends in the prevalence of obesity seem to have reached a plateau in the US and some European countries, many developing countries are still experiencing a surge. The rise in the prevalence of childhood obesity has probably been faster, with the rates almost tripling in the US since 1980, and reaching 16.9% among children and adolescents in 2010. In the year 2010, almost 43 million preschool children were obese, and almost 80% of them lived in developing countries. Obesity, directly or indirectly, is responsible for a large proportion of the leading causes of preventable death including heart disease, stroke, and certain types of cancer. Obesity and diabetes are very closely related as parts of a spectrum called “the metabolic syndrome”, and thus are sometimes referred to as “diabesity”. This presentation reviews the epidemiology of “diabesity”, its complications and prevention, from a public health perspective.

About the Speaker:

Synopsis:

In the last two decades, more attention has been given to Neural Networks and their applications. The ability of Neural Networks to solve complex problems in control, system identification, signal processing, communication, pattern recognition, etc. is well understood. Feed-forward Neural Network with feed-back connections is called Recurrent Neural Network. Recurrent Neural Networks are more powerful than feed-forward networks because of internal feed-back connections; this comes at the expense of more difficult training and the potential for instabilities. It has become more and more important to have efficient methods for determining the stability of Recurrent Neural Networks. The main contribution of this research is to develop improved methods for determining the stability of Recurrent Neural Networks.

About the Speaker:

Synopsis:

Iranians are generally aware of their old, but not their more recent, contributions to medical research. Avecinna’s book, the Canon of Medicine, and Rhazes’s discovery of alcohol are often quoted as salient examples of Iran’s contributions to medicine. However, few are aware that substantial medical research is currently ongoing in Iran, and that despite the tense political relationships, the research is being conducted in collaboration with the United States, the United Kingdom, and the World Health Organization. This presentation reviews some statistics on recent research in Iran, provides some examples of collaborations between Iran and other nations, in particular with the United States, and recounts some success stories.

About the Speaker: