Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determining insulin sensitivity from glucose tolerance tests in Iberian and landrace pigs

As insulin sensitivity may help to explain divergences in growth and body composition between native and modern breeds, metabolic responses to glucose infusion were measured using an intra-arterial glucose tolerance test (IAGTT). Iberian (n = 4) and Landrace (n = 5) barrows (47.0 ± 1.2 kg BW), fitted with a permanent carotid artery catheter were injected with glucose (500 mg/kg BW) and blood samples collected at −10, 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120 and 180 min following glucose infusion. Plasma samples were analysed for insulin, glucose, lactate, triglycerides, cholesterol, creatinine, albumin and urea. Insulin sensitivity indices were calculated and analyed. Mean plasma glucose, creatinine and cholesterol concentrations were lower (P < 0.01) in Iberian (14, 68 and 22%, respectively) compared with Landrace pigs during the IAGTT. However, mean plasma insulin, lactate, triglycerides and urea concentrations were greater (P < 0.001) in Iberian (50, 35, 18 and 23%, respectively) than in Landrace pigs. Iberian pigs had larger area under the curve (AUC) of insulin (P < 0.05) and lactate (P < 0.1), and smaller (P < 0.05) AUC for glucose 0-60 min compared with Landrace pigs. Indices for estimating insulin sensitivity in fasting conditions indicated improved β-cell function in Iberian compared with Landrace pigs, but no difference (P > 0.10) in calculated insulin sensitivity index was found after IAGTT between breeds. A time response (P < 0.05) was obtained for insulin, glucose and lactate so that maximum concentration was achieved 10 and 15 min post-infusion for insulin (Iberian and Landrace pigs, respectively), immediately post-infusion for glucose, and 20 min post-infusion for lactate, decreasing thereafter until basal levels. There was no time effect for the rest of metabolites evaluated. In conclusion, growing Iberian pigs challenged with an IAGTT showed changes in biochemical parameters and insulin response that may indicate an early stage of insulin resistance.
Responsive Behaviours in Dementia: Developing and Implementing the Behavioural Supports Ontario Initiative

Behavioural Supports Ontario (BSO) was developed and implemented in Ontario from 20092013. This thesis used case study methodology to identify the factors that led to BSO’s development and explore the factors that may have influenced its implementation. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interview and document data sources identified the factors leading to the development of the BSO initiative included: (1) an increasing awareness of the negative effects of inappropriate care; (2) the ineffective use of emergency departments; (3) high numbers of alternate level of care days; (4) uncoordinated care across care provider organizations; and (5) ongoing staffing issues related to lack of time and training on how to provide appropriate care to people with problematic (responsive) behaviours. Factors which influenced BSO implementation included the expansion of funds for the long-term care sector, a growing sense of implementation fatigue, and the loss of knowledge when BSO trained staff left their positions.
A New Window into the Nature of X-Ray Binaries in M101 from Their Optical Emission

The high-energy emission from nearby, star-forming galaxies is dominated by X-ray binaries, where a neutron star or black hole is accreting mass from either a low-mass (≲3 M⊙) or high-mass (≳8 M⊙) star. Donor stars with intermediate masses ≈3–7 M⊙ are also possible, but rarer in our Galaxy. Since it is not possible to separate low-, intermediate-, and high-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs, IMXBs, and HMXBs) from their X-ray properties alone, we use optical images of M101 taken with the Hubble Space Telescope to directly constrain the masses of donor stars in X-ray binaries down to ≈3 M⊙. For X-ray binaries that still live within their parent star cluster, the age of the cluster provides strong constraints on the mass of the donor and hence type of binary. We present the classification, on a source-by-source basis, of 140 X-ray point sources in the nearby spiral galaxy M101 (D = 6.4 ± 0.2 Mpc). We find that, overall, HMXBs appear to follow the spiral arms, while LMXBs dominate the bulge region as expected, but also appear to form an inter-arm disk population. The X-ray luminosity functions for HMXBs and LMXBs are well fit by a power-law distribution, dN/dLX ∝ Lα, with α = −1.71 ± 0.06 (HMXBs) and α = −1.96 ± 0.08 (LMXBs), and the brightest sources are consistent with the expectations from sampling statistics without requiring a physical cutoff. Overall, our results for HMXB and LMXB populations agree well with the specific star formation rate map presented for M101 recently by Lehmer and collaborators.
Current concepts in the management of the axilla in early breast cancer: proposed standard of practice in Sri Lanka

Despite breast conservation surgery frequently been done for early breast cancers, mastectomy is still considered as the gold standard in surgical management. However, the management of the axilla has been published following many randomized clinical trials and debated at numerous forums and has gradually become less extensive than the radical axillary clearance done in the past. The reasons are multifactorial and could be attributed for the technological advances in surgery, radiology, systemic therapy and specially radiation therapy. Hence, intense attentiveness on the preoperative status of the axilla has become important in the management of early breast cancer at present. The global recommendation in managing the axilla for early breast cancer is sentinel lymph node dissection. Currently, with the availability of mammography in most provinces in Sri Lanka, more early cancers with clinically node negative axilla are been detected. Unfortunately, the sentinel lymph node dissection been offered for them are limited, mainly due to the absence of insight on the technique. The current recommendations, and techniques to overcome these recommendations with the limited resources in our country are reviewed in this article.
Detection of Cervical Cancer at an Early Stage Using Hybrid Segmentation Techniques from PAP Smear Images

Cervical cancer is the abnormal cell growth on cervix. The lower part of the uterus or womb that opens top of the birth canal is called cervix. Unlike other cancer cervical cancer has no telltale symptoms so cannot be detected at an early stage thus mortality rate is very among woman. PAP smear test is an efficient and popular screening procedure to detect the presence of abnormal cells in cervix. Manual screening is not always perfect, quantifying and analyzing the abnormal cells from the large number of PAP smear images is a tedious task. A novel approach has been proposed to detect and analyze the abnormal cells from PAP smear images at an early stage, that it will help for fast and proper treatment. The proposed method carried out four stages: preprocessing, pre-segmentaion, segmentation and feature extraction. In preprocessing stage, unwanted noise and artifacts have been removed. In pre-segmentation stage, histogram has been computed first then morphological operation followed by edge detection techniques have been performed. In segmentation phase nucleus has been segmented by hybrid segmentation method which consists of thresholding and watershed segmentation. Two types of feature extractions like (a) morphological feature extraction, (b) texture feature extraction GLCM (Gray Level Co-Occurance Matrix) have been performed in this stage for accurate detection of abnormalities in cervical region. This paper presents a complete qualitative assessment which is used to develop a self-constructing algorithm for diagnosis the cancerous cell from PAP smear images.
Chitinous polymers: extraction from fungal sources, characterization and processing towards value‐added applications

Chitin, chitosan and their complexes with β‐glucan (chitin–glucan complex, CGC, and chitosan–glucan complex, ChGC) are value‐added polysaccharides extracted from the cell‐walls of many fungi. Commercial chitin and its deacetylated form, chitosan, are currently obtained from marine waste material, mostly animal sources (crustaceans and marine invertebrates), through harsh chemical procedures that have low reproducibility due to the variability of the composition of the sources and their seasonal character. These disadvantages are overcome by using fungi as sources of chitinous polymers. The extraction of chitin/chitosan from fungi cell‐walls has the great advantage of yielding products with stable composition and properties, using simpler procedures, with the added benefit of also generating CGC and ChGC, two copolymers that combine the proven properties of chitin/chitosan with those of β‐glucans. Over the last decades, fungal chitinous polymers have been the focus of extensive research that included optimization of the cultivation conditions of a wide range of species and the development of optimized extraction, purification and characterization techniques, as well as the demonstration of the biopolymers' biological properties, which include immunomodulatory, anticancer, antioxidant and antimicrobial activity. Given these properties, several attempts were made to develop applications for them in areas ranging from biomedicine and pharmaceuticals to food and agriculture. Despite their wide range of proven functional properties that include the ability to form different polymeric structures, as well as biological activity, fungal chitinous biopolymers are still underexplored. Nevertheless, these biopolymers hold great potential for development into valuable products or applications that are surely worth further investigation. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry
Modeling and Design Optimization of Capacitive Touch Sensor Panels

Modeling and Design Optimization of Capacitive Touch Sensor Panels Degen Zhou Master of Applied Science Graduate Department of Electrical And Computer Engineering University of Toronto 2019 Nowadays, devices with capacitive touch sensors are more and more popular in our daily life. So far, engineers have mostly designed such sensors on a trial-and-error basis. This thesis introduces an efficient and systematic methodology for design, analysis, and optimization of capacitive Touch Sensor Panels (TSPs). It incorporates hybrid quasi-static/circuit simulations and applications of localization algorithms. An approach for optimizing electrode patterns of TSPs is also proposed. Pattern Search (PS) algorithm is applied to search for a TSP electrode pattern that provides high touch response and high localization accuracy. The optimized TSP has been validated by robust measurements using a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) controller. Finally, results obtained from this optimized TSP have been compared with those of TSPs designed before. The end-to-end modeling tool developed in this thesis provides great insights for researchers in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) community.
Latent Class Conjoint Choice Models: A Guide for Model Selection, Estimation, Validation, and Interpretation of Results

The consideration of preference heterogeneity in consumer choice behavior has become state of the art. In addition, the identification of consumer segments remains essential for marketing managers. For disaggregate consumer choice data representing the basis of segmentation, the latent class multinomial logit (MNL) model is currently the most popular approach for estimating segment-specific preferences. After addressing the theoretical background of the latent class MNL model, we use an empirical choice-based conjoint data set to illustrate model estimation and validation, as well as how the estimation results should be interpreted. A particular focus lies on the model selection process, i.e. the determination of an appropriate number of segments. We further work out interpretation pitfalls when the existing preference heterogeneity of consumers is ignored. This will ultimately provide a guide for applying the latent class MNL model regarding model selection, estimation, validation, and interpretation of results both from a statistical and managerial perspective.
Quasi Delay Insensitive Majority Voters for Triple Modular Redundancy Applications

Mission- and safety-critical applications tend to incorporate triple modular redundancy (TMR) in their hardware implementation to reliably withstand the fault or failure of any one of the function modules during normal operation, and the function module may be a circuit or a system. In a TMR implementation, two identical copies of a function module are used in addition to the original function module, and the correct operation of at least two function modules is required. In TMR, the corresponding primary outputs of the three function modules are combined using majority voters, which determine the actual primary outputs based on the Boolean majority. Hence, the majority voter is an important component that is useful for conveying the correct operation of a TMR implementation. In the existing literature, many designs of three-input majority voters for TMR have been discussed. However, most of these correspond to the synchronous design style and just one corresponds to the bundled-data asynchronous design style, which is not delay insensitive and hence non-robust. To our knowledge, a robust delay insensitive design of the three-input majority voter has not been considered. In this context, this article presents the designs of robust quasi delay insensitive (QDI) three-input majority voters based on QDI logic synthesis methods, and analyzes which majority voters are preferable in terms of speed, power, and area. We implement example QDI TMR circuits using a QDI full adder as the function module and QDI majority voters using 32/28 nm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The QDI TMR implementations use the delay insensitive dual rail code for data encoding, and four-phase return-to-zero and four-phase return-to-one handshake protocols for data communication.
Medios étnicos, adaptación al ecosistema digital y usos de la diáspora migrante

El artículo aborda la situación actual de los medios étnicos, espacios tradicionalmente destinados a las comunidades migrantes, que lejos de su preconizada extinción, han sobrevivido y encuentran nuevas posibilidades a través de la conservación y en muchos casos renovación de su papel como gratificadores identitarios. Hoy conservan aún un espacio de importancia en cuanto a las preferencias de consumo por parte de estos colectivos, aunque han debido adaptarse al ecosistema digital introduciendo cambios sustanciales en su modelo de negocio, estructuras y producción de contenidos adecuados al entorno digital. Estas páginas exploran y comparan de forma cualitativa contenidos, estructuras organizacionales, herramientas y líneas editoriales de dos medios étnicos relacionados con la comunidad migrante de mexicanos en Estados Unidos, uno nacido con vocación exclusivamente digital y transnacional como Conexión Migrante y el otro adaptado desde un formato impreso a la comunidad de mexicanos en Nueva York como Diario de México en U.S.A. El artículo pretende definir las nuevas estructuras, líneas de contenidos y modelos de negocios adoptados por los nuevos medios étnicos y qué conexiones guardan con sus funciones tradicionales. Del mismo modo investiga si estos medios estarían privilegiando el mantenimiento por parte de los migrantes de sus vínculos con la sociedad de origen o por el contrario la asimilación cultural en su nuevo destino, y de qué forma, el paso a un formato digital con estructuras más interactivas y horizontales ayuda en ese proceso.
Spectral Efficiency and Energy Harvesting in Multi-Cell SLIPT Systems

In this paper, we study the performance of simultaneous lightwave information and power transfer (SLIPT) systems in a multi-cell indoor scenario. We investigate the energy harvesting and data rate performance of multiple users while meeting the lighting constraints. To this end, we develop optimization frameworks that tune the parameters of transmitters or receivers to improve the SLIPT system performance. Firstly, we model the relationship between tunable lens-based optical receivers concentrator gain and their fields of view. Next, we develop algorithms to maximize the spectral efficiency (SE) considering per-user minimum harvested energy requirements and lightning constraints by controlling the average light emitting diode (LED) excitation current or tuning the optical receivers’ fields of view. Then, we study the joint system performance limits of SE and total harvested energy. Towards this aim, we formulate multi-objective optimization problems and propose algorithms to find the best SE - energy harvesting tradeoff for both designing strategies. Finally, we present some extensive simulations to explore the benefits of the proposed algorithms comparing with basic benchmarks. Besides, we monitor the effect of changing several system parameters on the two objectives and the behavior of the inherent trade-off between them under both transmitter and receiver sides designing strategies.
Child Stunting in Madagascar and Zambia: An Examination of Maternal and Child Characteristics, Household Water/Sanitation, and Armed Conflict Exposures

Author(s): Ly, Stephanie | Advisor(s): von Ehrenstein, Ondine S | Abstract: Child stunting, or linear growth faltering, affects 1 in 5 children under the age of five years. These 151 million stunted children predominantly live in low- and middle-income countries. For decades, clinicians and researchers considered stunting a form of chronic malnutrition but modest gains were made in eliminating stunting through nutritional interventions. This dissertation explored emerging areas in child stunting. Chapters 1 and 2 introduced stunting and provided backgrounds, respectively. The research was guided by the Social Ecological Model and Life Course Perspective in approaching stunting as embedded in macro structures at multiple levels over the life course of women and children. Chapter 3 described theoretical frameworks and an integrated model. The analyses focused on Madagascar and Zambia, which were ranked among countries with the highest proportions of child stunting. We used health data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and armed conflict data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) database in Madagascar and Zambia. Chapter 4 detailed the methodology, including multivariate logistic and linear regression models assessing child stunting and height-for-age z-score (HAZ) outcomes. Chapter 5 examined maternal anthropometry and child gender factors. Results indicated that short stature or underweight in mothers were associated with increased stunting odds while higher maternal height and BMI scores were associated with higher child HAZ. Chapter 6 investigated household water and sanitation measures. We found that households without piped water and finished flooring were associated with increased stunting odds. Stunting was associated with lack of an advanced flush toilet in Zambia but not in Madagascar. Chapter 7 explored proximity of armed conflict events during critical developmental periods with child stunting and height. Conflict exposure during pregnancy was associated with increased stunting odds and lower HAZ in Madagascar but decreased odds and higher HAZ in Zambia. This dissertation framed stunting as occurring over the life course and embedded in multiple external structures. These studies were among the first to examine population-level environmental enteric dysfunction risk factors and apply disaggregated conflict data to stunting. We also contributed stunting context in Madagascar and Zambia, which have been understudied.
Investigating Toxoplasma gondii peroxisome and the discovery of two bisabolane sesquiterpenes as anti-leshmanials

The use of natural products for treating protozoan infections can be traced back to Rome in 1631, where cinchona tree bark was used to cure malaria. The discovery of novel naturally derived compounds for the treatment of cutaneous leishmaniasis and toxoplasmosis is vital for many vaccine deficient protozoan infections today. Here, the assessment of natural products against Leishmania mexicana (L. mexicana) was explored using a library of compounds screened against the mammalian stage of L. mexicana in in vitro assays. Two hit compounds from the screen were then used in metabolomic studies to determine mode of action. In addition, another natural compound, Aureobasidin A and its derivatives, and peroxisome inhibitors were screened against Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii). Peroxisomes are organelles involved in the metabolism of fatty acids and choles- terol. Other than lipid metabolism, peroxisomes contain many enzymes involved in several different metabolic processes. Catalase is involved in the neutralization of hydrogen peroxide thereby, preventing toxic build up within cells. This enzyme over time has become a key identifier of peroxisomes in many organisms. However, this is controversial when it comes to T. gondii. The use of catalase as a marker for peroxisomes in this parasite has been disputed, and in some cases led to the belief that the T. gondii does not possess these organelles. In this thesis, we take a dif- ferent approach in to establishing the existence of peroxisomes. Through evolution T. gondii has maintained, within its genome, genes encoding peroxisomal proteins, named peroxins (Pex). Here we investigated the presence of peroxisomes within T. gondii using Pex proteins. Our experimental approach involved characterization of putative TgPex5 and protein ligand TgSCP2. Using molecular biology, reverse genetics and protein characterization, we show that through pull-down assays, lo- calisation and complementation of TgPex5 in yeast expression systems, we are able to provide evidence to prove the presence of peroxisomes within T. gondii.
An Improved Contact-Based High-Resolution Palmprint Image Acquisition System

Palmprints are a recognizable biometric feature that contains multimodal information. Contact-based high-resolution palmprints are the most commonly used image in automatic palmprint identification systems with high-level security requirements because of its high matching accuracy and robustness. Currently, the traditional contact-based high-resolution palmprint acquisition system only captures the total internal reflection (TIR) image, which is similar to fingerprint acquisition systems. However, it is worth noting that the palm is much larger than the finger, and different regions of the palm cannot be easily pressed to the same plane. We observed that the images obtained by these existing contact-based high-resolution palmprint image acquisition systems often have poor integrity and sharpness, especially in the center of the palm. Considering this problem, we proposed an improved contact-based high-resolution palmprint image acquisition system. In addition to the TIR image, it can also simultaneously acquire a diffuse reflection (DR) image. A high-resolution DR image has low contrast and is thus not suitable for direct identification. However, the high integrity and sharing of structural information with the TIR image make it possible to complement the TIR image. Our strategy is to transfer the DR image to the TIR domain through a convolution neural network (CNN) and then fuse it with the corresponding TIR image to obtain a higher quality TIR domain image. The partial-to-“full” identification experimental results show that the rank-1 accuracy of the fused TIR (FTIR) image is improved by approximately 23% compared with the traditional TIR image, which proves the effectiveness of our strategy.