Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perceived causes of postnatal depression

Summary This thesis aims to provide an understanding of the perceived causes of Postnatal Depression (PND). Despite increasing research exploring the aetiology and risk factors for PND, to date, little research has explored how individuals perceive the causes of PND. The first part of this thesis reviews the literature on causal beliefs in adults in clinical, community and general population samples. Thirteen papers were critically appraised to reveal insights into these perceived causes. Beliefs were grouped into four emergent themes: (1) biological; (2) psychological; (3) social; and (4) cultural (including religious). The review identified a need to explore how PND is understood culturally, particularly amongst lay individuals from minority faith and ethnic groups. In accordance with these recommendations, the second part of this thesis is a Q-methodological study of the perceived causes of PND amongst British Muslim women of Arab origin. The sample comprised eleven participants recruited from a community organisation. Participants sorted 50 statements, each detailing a possible cause of PND, according to how much they believed them to be causes of PND. Findings identified two clear and distinct accounts: stress-generation and diathesis-stress, significant in causing PND. Although both accounts were clearly embedded in faith and values, the viewpoints operated with a subtly different interpretation of the role of faith in relation to PND. The third paper provides a reflective commentary on the research process, including a methodological critique of the research project and reflections on the personal impact of the research on the researcher. Contrary to the dominant biomedical model, the thesis highlights the existence of wide-ranging, multi-factorial explanatory models for PND. Eliciting and understanding these causal models can help to engage clients and provide culturally sensitive interventions.
Role of high power semiconductor devices in hybrid electric vehicles

A couple of decade ago when auto engineers decided to increase the voltage level of electrical power system drive, it was the advancement of silicon technology supporting their dream. Today the power electronics circuits play an important role in the success of electric, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles. Typical power electronics circuits in hybrid vehicles include electric motor drive circuits and DC/DC converter circuits. Conventional circuit topologies, such as buck converters, voltage source inverters and bidirectional boost converters are facing several challenges such as voltage level, cost, efficiency, size etc. This paper aims at reviewing the use of different power electronics devices in hybrid electric vehicles. The paper will first introduce the power system architectures for HEVs and then go on to exhaustive discussion on the specific applications of DC/DC and DC/AC power electronic converters and other device used in advanced automotive power systems. It also gives responses of converter using PSEVI, which matches the theory.
Contextual Classification of Hyperspectral Remote Sensing Images Using SVM-PLR

In this paper, we propose a novel contextual classification of hyperspectral data. We use probabilistic label relaxation (PLR) process to incorporate context information into the spectral pixelwise classification procedure. In conventional PLR procedure, first a maximum likelihood classification is performed and class probabilities are computed by using multivariate normal models. However this method is not efficient for hyperspectral data with limited training samples. In this paper we suggest to use support vector machine (SVM) in order to initial classification and also use class probability estimates which are obtained from SVM classification for PLR postprocess. We call this proposed method as SVM-PLR. Experimental results are presented for two types of hyperspectral images, agricultural and urban data. The proposed method improves dramatically classification accuracies, when compare to spectral pixelwise classification. Moreover our proposed method can improve performance of conventional PLR postprocess for hyperspectral data.
Runtime Monitoring of Cyber-Physical Systems Under Timing and Memory Constraints

The goal of runtime monitoring is to inspect the well-being of a system by employing a monitor process that reads the state of the system during execution and evaluates a set of properties expressed in some specification language. The main challenge in runtime monitoring is dealing with the costs imposed in terms of resource utilization. In the context of cyber-physical systems, it is crucial for a software monitoring solution to be time predictable to improve scheduling, as well as support composition of monitoring solutions with an overall predictable behavior. Moreover, a small memory footprint is often required in components of cyber-physical systems, especially in deeply embedded systems. In this article, we propose a novel control-theoretic software monitoring solution for coordinating time predictability and memory utilization in runtime monitoring of systems that interact with the physical world. The controllers attempt to reduce monitoring jitter and maximize memory utilization while simultaneously ensuring the soundness of evaluation of properties. For systems where multiple properties are required to be monitored simultaneously, we construct a buffer sharing mechanism in which controllers dynamically share the memory space to negate the effect of bursts of environment actions, thus reducing jitter due to transient high loads. To validate our design choices, we present three case studies: (1) a Bluetooth mobile payment system, which shows a sporadic rate of events during peak hours; (2) a laser beam stabilizer for target tracking, and (3) a monitoring system for air/fuel ratio in a car engine exhaust and the CAM inlet position in the engine’s cylinders. The experimental results of the case studies demonstrate up to 40% improvement in time predictability of the monitoring solution when compared to a basic event-triggered approach. Moreover, memory utilization reaches an average of 90% when using our dynamic buffer resizing mechanism.
Prevalence of Opisthorchis viverrini-Like Fluke Infection in Ducks in Binh Dinh Province, Central Vietnam

Following the first report of Opisthorchis viverrini infection in a domestic duck in Phu My District of Binh Dinh Province, Central Vietnam, many other cases were observed in the province. We determined the infection rate and intensity of O. viverrini infection in ducks in 4 districts of the province. A total of 178 ducks were randomly selected from 34 farms for examination of flukes in the liver and gall bladder. An infection rate of 34.3% (range 20.7-40.4% among districts) was found; the intensity of infection was 13.8 worms per infected duck (range 1-100). These findings show the role of ducks as a host for O. viverrini, duck genotype, which is sympatric with the human O. viverrini genotype in this province. It also stresses the need for investigations on the zoonotic potential and the life cycle of this parasite.
Boundary handling mechanism for lifting-based spatial adaptation of filter banks

Time/space varying filter banks (FBs) are proved to be useful in building signal adaptive transforms. Lifting factorization of FBs allows to spatially adapt between arbitrary FBs, avoiding the need to design border FBs to complete perfect reconstruction (PR) during the transition. However, lifting based switching between arbitrarily designed FBs induces spurious transients into the resulting subbands during the transition. In this paper we propose a boundary handling mechanism that maintains good frequency response and eliminates the transients during the transition. We successfully show spatial adaptation between JPEG2000 9/7 and 5/3 FBs to reduce the ringing artifacts in images.
Prospective evaluation of p16/Ki‐67 dual‐stained cytology for managing women with abnormal Papanicolaou cytology: PALMS study results

Testing for the presence of the human papillomavirus (HPV) is widely accepted for triaging Papanicolaou cytology results categorized as atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASC‐US). In contrast, HPV testing has limited use in triaging cytological low‐grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (LSILs) due to prevalence rates of typically >80%. In the current study, the authors assessed the diagnostic performance of p16/Ki‐67 dual‐stained cytology in triaging ASC‐US and LSIL cases within the prospective, multicentric Primary ASC‐US LSIL Marker Study (PALMS).
Analysis of Human Small Nucleolar RNAs (snoRNA) and the Development of snoRNA Modulator of Gene Expression Vectors

In this manuscript we describe the characterisation of human snoRNAs that co-purify with nucleoli and develop a new vector based system for targeted gene knock down. We demonstrate that this novel vector system (snoMEN) can deliver effective, sequence-specific knock down of endogenous cellular genes as well as GFP and GFP-fusion proteins.
3D segmentations of neuronal nuclei from confocal microscope image stacks

In this paper, we present an algorithm to create 3D segmentations of neuronal cells from stacks of previously segmented 2D images. The idea behind this proposal is to provide a general method to reconstruct 3D structures from 2D stacks, regardless of how these 2D stacks have been obtained. The algorithm not only reuses the information obtained in the 2D segmentation, but also attempts to correct some typical mistakes made by the 2D segmentation algorithms (for example, under segmentation of tightly-coupled clusters of cells). We have tested our algorithm in a real scenario—the segmentation of the neuronal nuclei in different layers of the rat cerebral cortex. Several representative images from different layers of the cerebral cortex have been considered and several 2D segmentation algorithms have been compared. Furthermore, the algorithm has also been compared with the traditional 3D Watershed algorithm and the results obtained here show better performance in terms of correctly identified neuronal nuclei.
The planarian HOM/HOX homeobox genes (Plox) expressed along the anteroposterior axis.

In the freshwater planarian Dugesia japonica, five cDNAs for HOM/HOX homeobox genes were cloned and sequenced. Together with sequence data on HOM/HOX homeobox genes of platyhelminthes deposited in databases, comparison of the deduced amino acid sequences revealed that planarians have at least seven HOM/HOX homeobox genes, Plox1 to Plox7 (planarian HOM/HOX homeobox genes). Whole-mount in situ hybridization and RT-PCR revealed that Plox4 and Plox5 were increasingly expressed along a spatial gradient in the posterior region of intact animals. During regeneration, Plox5 was expressed only in the posterior region of regenerating body pieces, suggesting that the gene is involved in the anteroposterior patterning in planarians. Plox5 was not found to be expressed in a blastema-specific manner, which contradicts a previous report (J. R. Bayascas, E. Castillo, A. M. Muños-Mármol, and E. Saló. Development 124, 141-148, 1997). X-ray irradiation experiments showed that Plox5 was expressed at least in some cells other than neoblasts, but that the induction of Plox5 expression during regeneration might require neoblasts.
Optimal Tracking Control for a Class of Nonlinear Discrete-Time Systems With Time Delays Based on Heuristic Dynamic Programming

In this paper, a novel heuristic dynamic programming (HDP) iteration algorithm is proposed to solve the optimal tracking control problem for a class of nonlinear discrete-time systems with time delays. The novel algorithm contains state updating, control policy iteration, and performance index iteration. To get the optimal states, the states are also updated. Furthermore, the “backward iteration” is applied to state updating. Two neural networks are used to approximate the performance index function and compute the optimal control policy for facilitating the implementation of HDP iteration algorithm. At last, we present two examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed HDP iteration algorithm.
How Does Pioglitazone Prevent Progression of Impaired Glucose Tolerance to Diabetes?

It is now common knowledge that we are in the midst of a worldwide epidemic of type 2 diabetes (T2D). This disease occurs disproportionately in African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and other minorities. T2D is a major cause of cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality, and these unfavorable outcomes are greatly increased in the presence of T2D (1–4). Impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) is itself a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (5). Obesity and IGT are each major risk factors for T2D, with yearly incidence of T2D in individuals with IGT ranging from 3.9 to 8.7% in various American populations, with an average of 5.7% (6), and averaging 6.5% in a meta-analysis of global studies (7). Both insulin resistance and diminished β-cell function (insulin secretion) are crucial pathogenetic factors in the progression from IGT to T2D, with the proportional impact of these defects varying in different reports and populations (8). The rate of progression can be reduced by lifestyle modification leading to weight loss (9) and the use of metformin (9), the thiazolidinedione drugs pioglitazone (PIO) (10) and rosiglitazone (11), α-glucosidase inhibitors (12), sulfonylureas (13), and insulin (14). Selection of therapeutic agents could be enhanced by matching their dominant actions on insulin resistance and/or β-cell dysfunction to the relative dominance of these abnormalities in specific individuals or populations with IGT. For the above reasons, the study by DeFronzo et al. (15) in this issue is of particular interest. In the Actos Now for the prevention of diabetes (ACT NOW) study (10), which included 602 high-risk IGT patients, PIO reduced the progression to T2D over 2.4 years from an annual incidence of 7.6% in the placebo (PLAC) group by 72% (95% …
What else are psychotherapy trainees learning? A qualitative model of students' personal experiences based on two populations

Abstract After an introductory course in experiential-integrative psychotherapy, 21 graduate students provided personal narratives of their experiences, which were analyzed using the grounded theory method. Results produced 37 hierarchically organized experiences, revealing that students perceived multiple changes in both professional (i.e., skill acquisition and learning related to the therapeutic process) and personal (i.e., self growth in a more private sphere) domains. Analysis also highlighted key areas of difficulties in training. By adding the personal accounts of graduate trainees, this study enriches and extends Pascual-Leone et al.'s (2012) findings on undergraduates' experiences, raising the number of cases represented in the model to 45. Findings confirm the model of novice trainee experiences while highlighting the unique experiences of undergraduate vs. graduate trainees.
Yearly reduction of glucocorticoid dose by 50% as tapering schedule achieves complete remission for 124 pemphigus vulgaris patients

Glucocorticoids are the first‐line treatment for pemphigus vulgaris. Among 140 patients receiving systemic glucocorticoids, 124 patients achieved complete remission off or on a prednisone dose of ≤10 mg/day or less for 6 months or more. The mean average steroid controlling doses were 0.65, 0.62, 0.80, 1.08 and 1.38 mg/kg per day for the mucosal‐dominant patients and the mild, moderate, severe and extensive cutaneous‐involved patients, respectively (P < 0.001). The mean durations of the initial tapering after controlling doses started were 77.98, 48.78, 31.74 and 28.83 days when the disease was controlled with doses of 40 mg/day or less, 45–60 mg/day, 65–80 mg/day and more than 80 mg/day for the cutaneous‐involved types, respectively (P < 0.005). Of the patients, 79.51% achieved complete remission within 3 years, 98.36% within 5 years and all within 6 years, which corresponded to a 50% yearly reduction of glucocorticoid dose. These successfully treated patients indicate that a severity‐tailored initial dose of glucocorticoids, an initial tapering duration based on the initial dose and a subsequent 50% yearly tapering regimen may cure pemphigus vulgaris within 3–6 years.
Omnidirectional vision system developed for a home service robot

An omnidirectional vision system developed for a home service robot is described. The system is built in low cost using off-the-shelf components. The vision system is mounted on a mobile home robot, which is controlled by a PC through wireless communication. Two applications of the vision system are developed; intruder and fire detection. An adaptive background subtraction technique is used to extract intruders in image sequence. A novel vision processing algorithm for fire alarm is also proposed. This algorithm processes images in three steps; pixel-level, block-level, and global level.
Knowledge Society vs. Knowledge Economy : knowledge, power, and politics

The Democratic Deficit of Knowledge Economies S.Sorlin & H.Vessuri Knowledge, Power and Politics: The Role of the Intellectual In An Age of Transition I.Wallerstein Modes of Knowledge and Patterns of Power M.Kogan Knowledge, Theory, and Tension Between Local and Universal Knowledge R.F. Retamar Universities and Society: Whose Terms of Engagement? M.Singh Knowledge Functions and the Role of the University A.Arimoto Knowledge, Culture, and Politics: The Status of Women in the Arab World F.Charaffeddine The Hybridization of Knowledge: Science and Local Knowledge in Support of Sustainable Development H.Vessuri Knowledge, Globalization, and Hegemony: The Production of Knowledge in the 21st Century P.T. Zeleza
A fast and efficient content aware downscaling based image compression method for mobile devices

Texture compression techniques have been of great interest especially for mobile phone industry due to the relatively smaller amount of memory available. Current texture compression encoding techniques are slow and CPU intensive, making it not suitable for on the fly encoding of uncompressed textures to compressed ones. To address this draw-back, we present a fast and effective approach to reduce the run-time memory footprint of images. We apply a compression mechanism which uses image downscaling adaptive to the image content. The compression technique does not cause any perceivable loss of quality. In our experiments we show that proposed method is on an average 6 dB higher in PSNR than Bi-linear uniform image downscaling technique at equal bits per pixel.
Higher order motion models and spectral clustering

Motion segmentation based on point trajectories can integrate information of a whole video shot to detect and separate moving objects. Commonly, similarities are defined between pairs of trajectories. However, pairwise similarities restrict the motion model to translations. Non-translational motion, such as rotation or scaling, is penalized in such an approach. We propose to define similarities on higher order tuples rather than pairs, which leads to hypergraphs. To apply spectral clustering, the hypergraph is transferred to an ordinary graph, an operation that can be interpreted as a projection. We propose a specific nonlinear projection via a regularized maximum operator, and show that it yields significant improvements both compared to pairwise similarities and alternative hypergraph projections.
Linker Flexibility Facilitates Module Exchange in Fungal Hybrid PKS-NRPS Engineering

Polyketide synthases (PKSs) and nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs) each give rise to a vast array of complex bioactive molecules with further complexity added by the existence of natural PKS-NRPS fusions. Rational genetic engineering for the production of natural product derivatives is desirable for the purpose of incorporating new functionalities into pre-existing molecules, or for optimization of known bioactivities. We sought to expand the range of natural product diversity by combining modules of PKS-NRPS hybrids from different hosts, hereby producing novel synthetic natural products. We succeeded in the construction of a functional cross-species chimeric PKS-NRPS expressed in Aspergillus nidulans. Module swapping of the two PKS-NRPS natural hybrids CcsA from Aspergillus clavatus involved in the biosynthesis of cytochalasin E and related Syn2 from rice plant pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae lead to production of novel hybrid products, demonstrating that the rational re-design of these fungal natural product enzymes is feasible. We also report the structure of four novel pseudo pre-cytochalasin intermediates, niduclavin and niduporthin along with the chimeric compounds niduchimaeralin A and B, all indicating that PKS-NRPS activity alone is insufficient for proper assembly of the cytochalasin core structure. Future success in the field of biocombinatorial synthesis of hybrid polyketide-nonribosomal peptides relies on the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of inter-modular polyketide chain transfer. Therefore, we expressed several PKS-NRPS linker-modified variants. Intriguingly, the linker anatomy is less complex than expected, as these variants displayed great tolerance with regards to content and length, showing a hitherto unreported flexibility in PKS-NRPS hybrids, with great potential for synthetic biology-driven biocombinatorial chemistry.
Kinase mutations and imatinib response in patients with metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumor.

PURPOSE Most gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) express constitutively activated mutant isoforms of KIT or kinase platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (PDGFRA) that are potential therapeutic targets for imatinib mesylate. The relationship between mutations in these kinases and clinical response to imatinib was examined in a group of patients with advanced GIST. PATIENTS AND METHODS GISTs from 127 patients enrolled onto a phase II clinical study of imatinib were examined for mutations of KIT or PDGFRA. Mutation types were correlated with clinical outcome. RESULTS Activating mutations of KIT or PDGFRA were found in 112 (88.2%) and six (4.7%) GISTs, respectively. Most KIT mutations involved exon 9 (n = 23) or exon 11 (n = 85). All KIT mutant isoforms, but only a subset of PDGFRA mutant isoforms, were sensitive to imatinib, in vitro. In patients with GISTs harboring exon 11 KIT mutations, the partial response rate (PR) was 83.5%, whereas patients with tumors containing an exon 9 KIT mutation or no detectable mutation of KIT or PDGFRA had PR rates of 47.8% (P =.0006) and 0.0% (P <.0001), respectively. Patients whose tumors contained exon 11 KIT mutations had a longer event-free and overall survival than those whose tumors expressed either exon 9 KIT mutations or had no detectable kinase mutation. CONCLUSION Activating mutations of KIT or PDGFRA are found in the vast majority of GISTs, and the mutational status of these oncoproteins is predictive of clinical response to imatinib. PDGFRA mutations can explain response and sensitivity to imatinib in some GISTs lacking KIT mutations.