cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
Paying attention to the evidence: a comparison of perception and decision making processes in novice and experienced scene of crime officers using eye tracking in simulated crime scene scenarios
Creators: name: Ozger, Murat
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2024
Subjects: C800 - Psychology
F410 - Forensic science

description: Research on crime scene investigation has strongly focused on the technical aspects of the process, while cognitive aspects (searching, reasoning and perception) have often been overlooked. Textbooks on forensic sciences tend to focus on identifying and processing evidence, and the use of equipment while it can be argued that cognitive factors in processing such evidence and using equipment are equally important. This thesis studies the cognitive aspects of crime scene investigation by comparing eye movement patterns in experts and novices. Studies in various domains, including surgery, sports, and chess playing have shown that eye movements differ between experts and novices, providing a tool towards a more objective assessment of skill than is possible with peer assessment. In four experiments eye movements of experts and novices were examined during (1) inspection of photographs of crime scenes on a computer screen (2) a change blindness task on crime and non-crime scene images, (3) active exploration of a simulated crime scene and (4) the assessment of emotional crime and natural scenes. While some trends in eye movement differences, such as a tendency on longer fixation durations and a broader focus on the overall scene and less on the direct evidence could be found in experts compared to novices, differences between experts and novices were considerably smaller than in other domains, despite the broad range of measures extracted from the data. This lack of clear expertise effects may relate to the rather diverse range of perceptual layouts of crime scenes, reducing possible top-down effects of expertise on the deployment of attention. The results will be discussed with a view of possible directions of future research in this domain.
Group Regularized Estimation under Structural Hierarchy
Creators: name: Yiyuan She
name: Zhifeng Wang
name: Jiang, He
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2016
Subjects: subject: Evolutionary Biology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Ecology
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: 80699 Information Systems not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: Science Policy
subject: 110309 Infectious Diseases
subject: FOS: Health sciences

description: Variable selection for models including interactions between explanatory variables often needs to obey certain hierarchical constraints. Weak or strong structural hierarchy requires that the existence of an interaction term implies at least one or both associated main effects to be present in the model. Lately this problem has attracted a lot of attention, but existing computational algorithms converge slow even with a moderate number of predictors. Moreover, in contrast to the rich literature on ordinary variable selection, there is a lack of statistical theory to show reasonably low error rates of hierarchical variable selection. This work investigates a new class of estimators that make use of multiple group penalties to capture structural parsimony. We show that the proposed estimators enjoy sharp rate oracle inequalities, and give the minimax lower bounds in strong and weak hierarchical variable selection. A general-purpose algorithm is developed with guaranteed convergence and global optimality. Simulations and real data experiments demonstrate the efficiency and efficacy of the proposed approach.
Paying attention to the evidence: a comparison of perception and decision making processes in novice and experienced scene of crime officers using eye tracking in simulated crime scene scenarios
Creators: name: Author, Unknown
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2023
Subjects: C800 - Psychology
F410 - Forensic science

description: Research on crime scene investigation has strongly focused on the technical aspects of the process, while cognitive aspects (searching, reasoning and perception) have often been overlooked. Textbooks on forensic sciences tend to focus on identifying and processing evidence, and the use of equipment while it can be argued that cognitive factors in processing such evidence and using equipment are equally important. This thesis studies the cognitive aspects of crime scene investigation by comparing eye movement patterns in experts and novices. Studies in various domains, including surgery, sports, and chess playing have shown that eye movements differ between experts and novices, providing a tool towards a more objective assessment of skill than is possible with peer assessment. In four experiments eye movements of experts and novices were examined during (1) inspection of photographs of crime scenes on a computer screen (2) a change blindness task on crime and non-crime scene images, (3) active exploration of a simulated crime scene and (4) the assessment of emotional crime and natural scenes. While some trends in eye movement differences, such as a tendency on longer fixation durations and a broader focus on the overall scene and less on the direct evidence could be found in experts compared to novices, differences between experts and novices were considerably smaller than in other domains, despite the broad range of measures extracted from the data. This lack of clear expertise effects may relate to the rather diverse range of perceptual layouts of crime scenes, reducing possible top-down effects of expertise on the deployment of attention. The results will be discussed with a view of possible directions of future research in this domain.
An investigation into combining both facial detection and landmark localisation into a unified procedure using GPU computing
Creators: name: McDonagh, JA MA
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2024
Subjects: I140 - Human-computer interaction

description: This thesis describes the design and implementation of a unified framework for facedetection and landmark alignment in arbitrary in the wild images. Traditionally, both ofthese problems have been addressed separately in literature with impressive resultsbeing recently reported in both of these fields. But, if one was to construct a pipelineconsisting of a state-of-the-art face detection method followed by a state-of-the-artfacial landmark localisation algorithm, the overall performance outcome would not beproficient enough to be used in high level algorithms such as face recognition andfacial expression. This is because the accuracy produced by the face detector is notsufficiently high enough to initialise the landmark localisation algorithm.To address this aforementioned limitation, this thesis aims to propose an approachthat combines both of these tasks into a single unified algorithm that can be run in realtime, by utilising the parallel computing architecture of the graphics processing unit(GPU). This will be done by using a Cascaded-Regression (CR) algorithm in a slidingwindow fashion. The proposed system will exploit the CR algorithms ability to computethe 2D pose of a face from rough initial estimates, in order to generate a Hough-Transform voting scheme for detecting candidate faces and filtering out irrelevantbackground. The obtained detection surface will then be further refined using SVM toyield both face detections and the location of their parts.The proposed system for this thesis will be built within the MATLAB environment, usinga MEX-file which will provide an interface to the proposed CUDA algorithm. The resultsof which, will be tested against current state-of-the-art methods for both face detectionand landmark localisation.We evaluate performance on the most widely used data sets in face detection, namelyannotated faces in-the-wild (AFW) (Zhu and Ramanan, 2012), Face Detection Datasetand Benchmark (FDDB) (Jain and Learned-Miller, 2010) and Caltech Occluded Facesin the Wild (COFW) (Burgos-Artizzu, Perona and Dollár, 2013). The empirical resultsdemonstrate that the proposed unified framework achieves state-of-the-artperformance in both face detection and facial alignment, and that our detector clearlyoutperforms all commercial and published methods by a margin of over 10% indetection accuracy on the AFW dataset.
An investigation into combining both facial detection and landmark localisation into a unified procedure using GPU computing
Creators: name: Author, Unknown
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2023
Subjects: I140 - Human-computer interaction

description: This thesis describes the design and implementation of a unified framework for facedetection and landmark alignment in arbitrary in the wild images. Traditionally, both ofthese problems have been addressed separately in literature with impressive resultsbeing recently reported in both of these fields. But, if one was to construct a pipelineconsisting of a state-of-the-art face detection method followed by a state-of-the-artfacial landmark localisation algorithm, the overall performance outcome would not beproficient enough to be used in high level algorithms such as face recognition andfacial expression. This is because the accuracy produced by the face detector is notsufficiently high enough to initialise the landmark localisation algorithm.To address this aforementioned limitation, this thesis aims to propose an approachthat combines both of these tasks into a single unified algorithm that can be run in realtime, by utilising the parallel computing architecture of the graphics processing unit(GPU). This will be done by using a Cascaded-Regression (CR) algorithm in a slidingwindow fashion. The proposed system will exploit the CR algorithms ability to computethe 2D pose of a face from rough initial estimates, in order to generate a Hough-Transform voting scheme for detecting candidate faces and filtering out irrelevantbackground. The obtained detection surface will then be further refined using SVM toyield both face detections and the location of their parts.The proposed system for this thesis will be built within the MATLAB environment, usinga MEX-file which will provide an interface to the proposed CUDA algorithm. The resultsof which, will be tested against current state-of-the-art methods for both face detectionand landmark localisation.We evaluate performance on the most widely used data sets in face detection, namelyannotated faces in-the-wild (AFW) (Zhu and Ramanan, 2012), Face Detection Datasetand Benchmark (FDDB) (Jain and Learned-Miller, 2010) and Caltech Occluded Facesin the Wild (COFW) (Burgos-Artizzu, Perona and Dollár, 2013). The empirical resultsdemonstrate that the proposed unified framework achieves state-of-the-artperformance in both face detection and facial alignment, and that our detector clearlyoutperforms all commercial and published methods by a margin of over 10% indetection accuracy on the AFW dataset.
The effect of quinine products on tamoxifen resistant breast cancer cells
Creators: name: Osei-Baidoo, Jeremiah SA
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2024
Subjects: B200 - Pharmacology, toxicology & pharmacy

description: In the ongoing quest to further expand the repertoire of drugs for cancer therapy, sights have turned on the machinations of the anti-malarial drug, chloroquine as an untapped prospective drug for use in such treatments.In order to establish the nature of chloroquine diphosphate (CQ) on differing breast cancers subtypes and to explore its relationship with tamoxifen (TAM) both in comparative effect and in conjunction, three phenotypically disparate cell lines were investigated; oestrogen receptor positive (ER+) MCF-7 WT, tamoxifen resistant subtype MCF-7 TMX and oestrogen receptor negative (ER-) MDA-MD-231. In order to establish a baseline, each cell line was investigated first independently with various concentrations of tamoxifen (2-30 ?M) and chloroquine (10-140 ?M) for 48 hours, the results of which were used to design a combined treatment modality to assay the effect of both drugs on the cells in tandem. The preliminary results showed that response to the initial two single drug treatment studies were dose dependent with lower concentrations of tamoxifen (2-10 ?M) and chloroquine (10-20 ?M) inhibiting growth and increasing vacuolation in all cell lines evidenced by increased uptake in Neutral Red (NR) stain and increased volume of acidic compartments (VAC). Higher treatment concentrations (12-32 ?M TAM, 40-120 ?M CQ) were seen to have a cytotoxic effect on all the cell lines in conjunction with a decrease in NR uptake and VAC. All three cell lines exhibited analogous response to CQ and singular treatment with tamoxifen resulted in similar dose-dependent responses albeit with higher doses of the drug necessary for MCF-7 TAM and MDA-MB-231 to develop any significant (P? 0.05, n=3) cytotoxic deviation. This effect on the ER- and oestrogen resistant cell lines imply exogenous cytotoxic pathways independent of the oestrogen receptor. Combination treatment, using the same range of TAM with a static dose (10 ?M) Studies combining the two drugs were performed using the preliminary data as rationale for dosage. Using variable concentrations of tamoxifen (2-30 ?M) and keeping that of CQ (10 ?M) saw changes in cell morphology mimicking more closely that of high dose CQ treatment in qualitative NR and acridine orange (AO) staining from relatively low doses of TAM as well as substantially decreasing the ED50 (minimum dosage to kill 50% of cells) in all cell lines. Caspase 3 colorimetry and Annexin V ELISA was used for the quantification of apoptosis and to help determine the mechanism of cell death utilised by these drugs and implied Caspase dependent apoptosis was occurring alongside the more visible caspase-independent cytotoxic events.The results suggest that CQ may potentiate cell death of breast cancer cells treated with tamoxifen through the abrogation of autophagy and potentially re-sensitising resistant and ER- cells to hormone therapy treatment.
Multi-Armed Bandit for Species Discovery: A Bayesian Nonparametric Approach
Creators: name: Battiston, Marco
name: Favaro, Stefano
name: Teh, Yee Whye
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2019
Subjects: subject: Evolutionary Biology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: 59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: Ecology
subject: 19999 Mathematical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: 110309 Infectious Diseases
subject: FOS: Health sciences
subject: Computational Biology

description: Let (P1, …, PJ) denote J populations of animals from distinct regions. A priori, it is unknown which species are present in each region and what are their corresponding frequencies. Species are shared among populations and each species can be present in more than one region with its frequency varying across populations. In this article, we consider the problem of sequentially sampling these populations to observe the greatest number of different species. We adopt a Bayesian nonparametric approach and endow (P1, …, PJ) with a hierarchical Pitman–Yor process prior. As a consequence of the hierarchical structure, the J unknown discrete probability measures share the same support, that of their common random base measure. Given this prior choice, we propose a sequential rule that, at every time step, given the information available up to that point, selects the population from which to collect the next observation. Rather than picking the population with the highest posterior estimate of producing a new value, the proposed rule includes a Thompson sampling step to better balance the exploration–exploitation trade-off. We also propose an extension of the algorithm to deal with incidence data, where multiple observations are collected in a time period. The performance of the proposed algorithms is assessed through a simulation study and compared to three other strategies. Finally, we compare these algorithms using a dataset of species of trees, collected from different plots in South America. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
Factor Copula Models for Replicated Spatial Data
Creators: name: Krupskii, Pavel
name: Huser, Raphaël
name: Genton, Marc G.
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2016
Subjects: subject: Ecology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: 80699 Information Systems not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: 19999 Mathematical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: Cancer
subject: Science Policy

description: We propose a new copula model that can be used with replicated spatial data. Unlike the multivariate normal copula, the proposed copula is based on the assumption that a common factor exists and affects the joint dependence of all measurements of the process. Moreover, the proposed copula can model tail dependence and tail asymmetry. The model is parameterized in terms of a covariance function that may be chosen from the many models proposed in the literature, such as the Matérn model. For some choice of common factors, the joint copula density is given in closed form and therefore likelihood estimation is very fast. In the general case, one-dimensional numerical integration is needed to calculate the likelihood, but estimation is still reasonably fast even with large datasets. We use simulation studies to show the wide range of dependence structures that can be generated by the proposed model with different choices of common factors. We apply the proposed model to spatial temperature data and compare its performance with some popular geostatistics models. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
The effect of quinine products on tamoxifen resistant breast cancer cells
Creators: name: Author, Unknown
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2023
Subjects: B200 - Pharmacology, toxicology & pharmacy

description: In the ongoing quest to further expand the repertoire of drugs for cancer therapy, sights have turned on the machinations of the anti-malarial drug, chloroquine as an untapped prospective drug for use in such treatments.In order to establish the nature of chloroquine diphosphate (CQ) on differing breast cancers subtypes and to explore its relationship with tamoxifen (TAM) both in comparative effect and in conjunction, three phenotypically disparate cell lines were investigated; oestrogen receptor positive (ER+) MCF-7 WT, tamoxifen resistant subtype MCF-7 TMX and oestrogen receptor negative (ER-) MDA-MD-231. In order to establish a baseline, each cell line was investigated first independently with various concentrations of tamoxifen (2-30 ?M) and chloroquine (10-140 ?M) for 48 hours, the results of which were used to design a combined treatment modality to assay the effect of both drugs on the cells in tandem. The preliminary results showed that response to the initial two single drug treatment studies were dose dependent with lower concentrations of tamoxifen (2-10 ?M) and chloroquine (10-20 ?M) inhibiting growth and increasing vacuolation in all cell lines evidenced by increased uptake in Neutral Red (NR) stain and increased volume of acidic compartments (VAC). Higher treatment concentrations (12-32 ?M TAM, 40-120 ?M CQ) were seen to have a cytotoxic effect on all the cell lines in conjunction with a decrease in NR uptake and VAC. All three cell lines exhibited analogous response to CQ and singular treatment with tamoxifen resulted in similar dose-dependent responses albeit with higher doses of the drug necessary for MCF-7 TAM and MDA-MB-231 to develop any significant (P? 0.05, n=3) cytotoxic deviation. This effect on the ER- and oestrogen resistant cell lines imply exogenous cytotoxic pathways independent of the oestrogen receptor. Combination treatment, using the same range of TAM with a static dose (10 ?M) Studies combining the two drugs were performed using the preliminary data as rationale for dosage. Using variable concentrations of tamoxifen (2-30 ?M) and keeping that of CQ (10 ?M) saw changes in cell morphology mimicking more closely that of high dose CQ treatment in qualitative NR and acridine orange (AO) staining from relatively low doses of TAM as well as substantially decreasing the ED50 (minimum dosage to kill 50% of cells) in all cell lines. Caspase 3 colorimetry and Annexin V ELISA was used for the quantification of apoptosis and to help determine the mechanism of cell death utilised by these drugs and implied Caspase dependent apoptosis was occurring alongside the more visible caspase-independent cytotoxic events.The results suggest that CQ may potentiate cell death of breast cancer cells treated with tamoxifen through the abrogation of autophagy and potentially re-sensitising resistant and ER- cells to hormone therapy treatment.
Error Variance Estimation in Ultrahigh-Dimensional Additive Models
Creators: name: Chen, Zhao
name: Jianqing Fan
name: Runze Li
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: Biotechnology
subject: 59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: Sociology
subject: FOS: Sociology
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: 19999 Mathematical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Mathematics

description: Error variance estimation plays an important role in statistical inference for high-dimensional regression models. This article concerns with error variance estimation in high-dimensional sparse additive model. We study the asymptotic behavior of the traditional mean squared errors, the naive estimate of error variance, and show that it may significantly underestimate the error variance due to spurious correlations that are even higher in nonparametric models than linear models. We further propose an accurate estimate for error variance in ultrahigh-dimensional sparse additive model by effectively integrating sure independence screening and refitted cross-validation techniques. The root n consistency and the asymptotic normality of the resulting estimate are established. We conduct Monte Carlo simulation study to examine the finite sample performance of the newly proposed estimate. A real data example is used to illustrate the proposed methodology. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
The materials, construction and conservation of eighteenth century women's shoes
Creators: name: Fairhurts, Alison RA GA
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2024
Subjects: P131 - Museum studies
W160 - Fine art conservation

description: This thesis analyses a 12% sample of the 900 extant pairs of eighteenth-century women’s shoes in British museums and argues that shoes are a valuable but currently underused historical resource. The analysis is supported by both primary and secondary literature and contemporary images and much of the research is presented in a visual format such as images, diagrams and tables. The thesis revolves around the following questions: What can women’s shoes tell us about eighteenth-century culture? How can object based analysis of shoes enhance our current understanding of women’s footwear in the eighteenth century? How can we characterise materials, construction and manufacture of such shoes based on extant examples? What implications do these findings have for conservators and others responsible for the survival and management of the extant corpus? By recording the complexity of shoes as composite objects and examining how they are made; from what and how their components were processed and manufactured the thesis greatly increases the current available knowledge. It proposes a methodology for studying shoes and recording subsequent findings. The thesis also recognises the potential of shoes as historical sources. In addition it examines how we might seek to manage shoes as heritage assets in the future and acknowledges the significant role of the conservator in this. A holistic approach involving both curators and conservators in the decision making process relating to conservation and preservation is given. The appendices give full details of the sampled shoes and show the completed survey forms.
The materials, construction and conservation of eighteenth century women's shoes
Creators: name: Author, Unknown
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2023
Subjects: P131 - Museum studies
W160 - Fine art conservation

description: This thesis analyses a 12% sample of the 900 extant pairs of eighteenth-century women’s shoes in British museums and argues that shoes are a valuable but currently underused historical resource. The analysis is supported by both primary and secondary literature and contemporary images and much of the research is presented in a visual format such as images, diagrams and tables. The thesis revolves around the following questions: What can women’s shoes tell us about eighteenth-century culture? How can object based analysis of shoes enhance our current understanding of women’s footwear in the eighteenth century? How can we characterise materials, construction and manufacture of such shoes based on extant examples? What implications do these findings have for conservators and others responsible for the survival and management of the extant corpus? By recording the complexity of shoes as composite objects and examining how they are made; from what and how their components were processed and manufactured the thesis greatly increases the current available knowledge. It proposes a methodology for studying shoes and recording subsequent findings. The thesis also recognises the potential of shoes as historical sources. In addition it examines how we might seek to manage shoes as heritage assets in the future and acknowledges the significant role of the conservator in this. A holistic approach involving both curators and conservators in the decision making process relating to conservation and preservation is given. The appendices give full details of the sampled shoes and show the completed survey forms.
Collagegrids: thinking it through, a practice-led investigation into artistic cognition
Creators: name: Eisner, Cilla
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2024
Subjects: W100 - Fine art

description: This PhD by practice comprises a body of work accompanied by written critical commentary. A six part collage composition produced over a period of three years is the core of this project, dimensions 4900 x 1524 mm. The research project interrogates creative studio practice with the specific intention of articulating the artistic thinking of collagegrids and to present this to a wider audience. Identified as mutually exclusive or conflicting discourses in the history of art, grids and collage exist in parallel, each having its own discourse, strategy and associations. This PhD project investigates the interplay between collage and grids in collagegrids practice, interrogating the through of thinking through art, where the insights lie in how they function together, in the how rather than the what of art practice. The project methodology is hybrid, employing Active Documentation of the PhD iteration of collagegrids to record the processes, theoretical, personal and practical involved in a ‘complexity of overlap’ of practice. It utilises contextual study with which to elucidate the mode of constructive composition at the crux of collagegrids and to situate the practice and its conceptual framework in the wider field of knowledge. The project, collagegrids: thinking it through argues for a materially anchored thinking process, a non-linear logic of association, where meaning lies in the links and connections made in resolving tensions that arise in the juxtaposition of difference. This argument is made by testing theories of cognition through the new domain of collagegrids. By correlating existing research methods the project forms a new paradigm for artistic research, which recognises both empirical and embodied philosophies, and uses a connective model in the presentation of the exegesis. Finally it articulates a fundamentally constructive way of world-making, introducing to the linguistically based theory of metaphor, a materially anchored cognitive processing of artwork, which is a new contribution to thinking and telling the cognition of creative practice.
Collagegrids: thinking it through, a practice-led investigation into artistic cognition
Creators: name: Author, Unknown
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2023
Subjects: W100 - Fine art

description: This PhD by practice comprises a body of work accompanied by written critical commentary. A six part collage composition produced over a period of three years is the core of this project, dimensions 4900 x 1524 mm. The research project interrogates creative studio practice with the specific intention of articulating the artistic thinking of collagegrids and to present this to a wider audience. Identified as mutually exclusive or conflicting discourses in the history of art, grids and collage exist in parallel, each having its own discourse, strategy and associations. This PhD project investigates the interplay between collage and grids in collagegrids practice, interrogating the through of thinking through art, where the insights lie in how they function together, in the how rather than the what of art practice. The project methodology is hybrid, employing Active Documentation of the PhD iteration of collagegrids to record the processes, theoretical, personal and practical involved in a ‘complexity of overlap’ of practice. It utilises contextual study with which to elucidate the mode of constructive composition at the crux of collagegrids and to situate the practice and its conceptual framework in the wider field of knowledge. The project, collagegrids: thinking it through argues for a materially anchored thinking process, a non-linear logic of association, where meaning lies in the links and connections made in resolving tensions that arise in the juxtaposition of difference. This argument is made by testing theories of cognition through the new domain of collagegrids. By correlating existing research methods the project forms a new paradigm for artistic research, which recognises both empirical and embodied philosophies, and uses a connective model in the presentation of the exegesis. Finally it articulates a fundamentally constructive way of world-making, introducing to the linguistically based theory of metaphor, a materially anchored cognitive processing of artwork, which is a new contribution to thinking and telling the cognition of creative practice.
The autobiographical pact and the selection of self in memoir
Creators: name: Palmer, Andrew William
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2024
Subjects: Q323 - English literature by topic

description: This thesis examines the influence of spiritual conversion narratives onautobiography and the novel. It traces a lineage from Augustine, to Bunyan,Rousseau, early novels of the eighteenth century, bildungsromans of the nineteenthcentury, and on to the modern memoir of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.It argues that spiritual autobiography was foundational to these other literarygenres and that its proto-psychological processes can be seen as having influencedself-life writing from one of its earliest applications with Augustine right throughto the present day. It also argues that, even though the classics of spiritualautobiography were seminal texts with original thought and style that this startedto be eroded with the more formulaic Puritan texts and that spiritual conversionnarratives of the last two centuries have fallen out of favour and the narrative ofconversion has become the mainstay of more compelling memoirs of addiction andrecovery.In comparing the styles of the classics of spiritual autobiography withcontemporary spiritual conversion narratives, it is argued that the latter areformulaic and lack a deep analysis of the self and its relationship to the divine.They rely on a set structure and suggest that the conversion episode is acompletion of their faith, unlike the classics that show a continual process ofchange. It is also argued that modern spiritual conversion narratives should followthe example of the novel as a basis for creating a compelling story with a vibrantnarrative if they are ever to be read by the mainstream again. Integral to this is arigorous selection process of the material to be included in the narrative; a processthat will produce a stronger and more unique narrative arc.Drowning, the memoir written as part of this thesis, is a spiritual conversionnarrative taking influence from the classics with regard to the psychologicalprocesses of analysing the self and the conversion experience. It departs from thecontemporary conversion narratives, eschewing their typical shape and prosaicstyle and instead borrows from the narrative arc, style and voice of the novel inorder to create an immersive reading experience. Drowning presents theconversion experience as the first step of spiritual rejuvenation and leaves thenarrative open-ended to allow the reader to formulate their own understanding ofthe events and how they affect their understanding of spiritual epiphany.
The Spike-and-Slab LASSO
Creators: name: Ročková, Veronika
name: George, Edward I.
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2019
Subjects: subject: Space Science
subject: Medicine
subject: Genetics
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Neuroscience
subject: Evolutionary Biology
subject: Ecology
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: 19999 Mathematical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Mathematics

description: Despite the wide adoption of spike-and-slab methodology for Bayesian variable selection, its potential for penalized likelihood estimation has largely been overlooked. In this article, we bridge this gap by cross-fertilizing these two paradigms with the Spike-and-Slab LASSO procedure for variable selection and parameter estimation in linear regression. We introduce a new class of self-adaptive penalty functions that arise from a fully Bayes spike-and-slab formulation, ultimately moving beyond the separable penalty framework. A virtue of these nonseparable penalties is their ability to borrow strength across coordinates, adapt to ensemble sparsity information and exert multiplicity adjustment. The Spike-and-Slab LASSO procedure harvests efficient coordinate-wise implementations with a path-following scheme for dynamic posterior exploration. We show on simulated data that the fully Bayes penalty mimics oracle performance, providing a viable alternative to cross-validation. We develop theory for the separable and nonseparable variants of the penalty, showing rate-optimality of the global mode as well as optimal posterior concentration when p > n. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
Multi-armed bandit for species discovery: A Bayesian nonparametric approach
Creators: name: Battiston, Marco
name: Favaro, Stefano
name: Teh, Yee Whye
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2016
Subjects: subject: Evolutionary Biology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Ecology
subject: 19999 Mathematical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: 110309 Infectious Diseases
subject: FOS: Health sciences
subject: Computational Biology

description: Let (P1, …, PJ) denote J populations of animals from distinct regions. A priori, it is unknown which species are present in each region and what are their corresponding frequencies. Species are shared among populations and each species can be present in more than one region with its frequency varying across populations. In this paper we consider the problem of sequentially sampling these populations in order to observe the greatest number of different species. We adopt a Bayesian nonparametric approach and endow (P1, …, PJ) with a Hierarchical Pitman-Yor process prior. As a consequence of the hierarchical structure, the J unknown discrete probability measures share the same support, that of their common random base measure. Given this prior choice, we propose a sequential rule that, at every time step, given the information available up to that point, selects the population from which to collect the next observation. Rather than picking the population with the highest posterior estimate of producing a new value, the proposed rule includes a Thompson sampling step to better balance the exploration-exploitation trade-off. We also propose an extension of the algorithm to deal with incidence data, where multiple observations are collected in a time period. The performance of the proposed algorithms is assessed through a simulation study and compared to three other strategies. Finally, we compare these algorithms using a dataset of species of trees, collected from different plots in South America.
The autobiographical pact and the selection of self in memoir
Creators: name: Author, Unknown
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2024
Subjects: Q323 - English literature by topic

description: This thesis examines the influence of spiritual conversion narratives onautobiography and the novel. It traces a lineage from Augustine, to Bunyan,Rousseau, early novels of the eighteenth century, bildungsromans of the nineteenthcentury, and on to the modern memoir of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.It argues that spiritual autobiography was foundational to these other literarygenres and that its proto-psychological processes can be seen as having influencedself-life writing from one of its earliest applications with Augustine right throughto the present day. It also argues that, even though the classics of spiritualautobiography were seminal texts with original thought and style that this startedto be eroded with the more formulaic Puritan texts and that spiritual conversionnarratives of the last two centuries have fallen out of favour and the narrative ofconversion has become the mainstay of more compelling memoirs of addiction andrecovery.In comparing the styles of the classics of spiritual autobiography withcontemporary spiritual conversion narratives, it is argued that the latter areformulaic and lack a deep analysis of the self and its relationship to the divine.They rely on a set structure and suggest that the conversion episode is acompletion of their faith, unlike the classics that show a continual process ofchange. It is also argued that modern spiritual conversion narratives should followthe example of the novel as a basis for creating a compelling story with a vibrantnarrative if they are ever to be read by the mainstream again. Integral to this is arigorous selection process of the material to be included in the narrative; a processthat will produce a stronger and more unique narrative arc.Drowning, the memoir written as part of this thesis, is a spiritual conversionnarrative taking influence from the classics with regard to the psychologicalprocesses of analysing the self and the conversion experience. It departs from thecontemporary conversion narratives, eschewing their typical shape and prosaicstyle and instead borrows from the narrative arc, style and voice of the novel inorder to create an immersive reading experience. Drowning presents theconversion experience as the first step of spiritual rejuvenation and leaves thenarrative open-ended to allow the reader to formulate their own understanding ofthe events and how they affect their understanding of spiritual epiphany.
Correlated Random Measures
Creators: name: Ranganath, Rajesh
name: Blei, David M.
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2019
Subjects: subject: Biochemistry
subject: Genetics
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Pharmacology
subject: Biotechnology
subject: Ecology
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: 80699 Information Systems not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Computer and information sciences
subject: 19999 Mathematical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: Plant Biology

description: We develop correlated random measures, random measures where the atom weights can exhibit a flexible pattern of dependence, and use them to develop powerful hierarchical Bayesian nonparametric models. Hierarchical Bayesian nonparametric models are usually built from completely random measures, a Poisson-process-based construction in which the atom weights are independent. Completely random measures imply strong independence assumptions in the corresponding hierarchical model, and these assumptions are often misplaced in real-world settings. Correlated random measures address this limitation. They model correlation within the measure by using a Gaussian process in concert with the Poisson process. With correlated random measures, for example, we can develop a latent feature model for which we can infer both the properties of the latent features and their dependency pattern. We develop several other examples as well. We study a correlated random measure model of pairwise count data. We derive an efficient variational inference algorithm and show improved predictive performance on large datasets of documents, web clicks, and electronic health records. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
The analysis of Caffeine in oral fluid using Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy and High-Performance Liquid Chromatography
Creators: name: Andrew, Kayleigh
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2024
Subjects: F180 - Analytical chemistry

description: Surface-Enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a technique that is preferred over conventional Raman spectroscopy. The main advantage of SERS is that the intensity of the Raman signal is enhanced up to 104 to 106 fold thus allowing low concentrations of the analyte to be detected. The use of oral fluid for detecting drugs of abuse is increasing in popularity as the methods of collecting saliva are not as invasive as other biological fluids (blood or urine). As SERS can detect low limits of substances, the use of this technique coupled with the analysis of oral fluid for the detection of drugs is becoming popular. This technique could have applications in roadside testing, drug testing and medical care. The constant appearance of caffeine present in new psychoactive substances is becoming increasingly common. There are a lot of the drugs that are being sold on the market that only contain caffeine rather than the stated drug. A market is opening up for the detection of drugs in saliva using a rapid portable testing kit. This work focuses on the analysis of caffeine as it is a common adulterant that it found in illegal and legal drugs of abuse. A reproducible silver colloid with strong surface-enhancement and good shelf life was used to optimise a method capable of analysing caffeine. The colloid was produced by the reduction of silver nitrate with hydroxylamine phosphate. An optimised SERS method was developed that was capable of detecting caffeine in methanolic solutions, however when analysing caffeine in saliva there were problems that meant a spectrum could not be obtained. A HPLC method was developed for the quantification of caffeine. The HPLC method was successfully able to detect and quantify caffeine in saliva using 8 independent participants, the participants were asked to go 24 hours without any form of caffeine, and they were then required to give a saliva sample before and after the consumption of caffeine. The caffeine concentrations ranged between 1.51-1.94 ?g/mL. The HPLC results show that caffeine was present at levels that should have been detected by the SERS method. Further investigation is needed to determine why SERS couldn’t detect caffeine in saliva; this could be due to other substances present in saliva.
The analysis of Caffeine in oral fluid using Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy and High-Performance Liquid Chromatography
Creators: name: Author, Unknown
Publisher: name: University of Lincoln
Year: 2023
Subjects: F180 - Analytical chemistry

description: Surface-Enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a technique that is preferred over conventional Raman spectroscopy. The main advantage of SERS is that the intensity of the Raman signal is enhanced up to 104 to 106 fold thus allowing low concentrations of the analyte to be detected. The use of oral fluid for detecting drugs of abuse is increasing in popularity as the methods of collecting saliva are not as invasive as other biological fluids (blood or urine). As SERS can detect low limits of substances, the use of this technique coupled with the analysis of oral fluid for the detection of drugs is becoming popular. This technique could have applications in roadside testing, drug testing and medical care. The constant appearance of caffeine present in new psychoactive substances is becoming increasingly common. There are a lot of the drugs that are being sold on the market that only contain caffeine rather than the stated drug. A market is opening up for the detection of drugs in saliva using a rapid portable testing kit. This work focuses on the analysis of caffeine as it is a common adulterant that it found in illegal and legal drugs of abuse. A reproducible silver colloid with strong surface-enhancement and good shelf life was used to optimise a method capable of analysing caffeine. The colloid was produced by the reduction of silver nitrate with hydroxylamine phosphate. An optimised SERS method was developed that was capable of detecting caffeine in methanolic solutions, however when analysing caffeine in saliva there were problems that meant a spectrum could not be obtained. A HPLC method was developed for the quantification of caffeine. The HPLC method was successfully able to detect and quantify caffeine in saliva using 8 independent participants, the participants were asked to go 24 hours without any form of caffeine, and they were then required to give a saliva sample before and after the consumption of caffeine. The caffeine concentrations ranged between 1.51-1.94 ?g/mL. The HPLC results show that caffeine was present at levels that should have been detected by the SERS method. Further investigation is needed to determine why SERS couldn’t detect caffeine in saliva; this could be due to other substances present in saliva.