Marriage: every bride`s ambition satisfied?

It has been acknowledged through sociobiological research that women seek men who will provide good genes to produce strong healthy offspring, and men seek women who are attractive, because these women are seen to be most suitable for producing fit children. According to the author in last two centuries, in western societies, mate selection has also frequently led to marriage. If the man fails to meet these genetic standards, women may be driven to have extramarital affairs so that they can obtain good genetic stock, but will still keep their husband if he provides good support resources for her and her children.

Separation of conjoined twins: experiences of perioperative nurses and their recommendations

Background: Within an 8-month period, an unprecedented and historical first in Queensland, Australia, the perioperative nurses were members of teams involved in the surgical separation of two sets of conjoined twins. Little is known about the (dis)stress that some of these perioperative nurses experienced nor how best to support them during such experiences.

Aim: The aim of this paper is to report on the qualitiative study that explored the experiences of those perioperative nurses involved in the surgical separation of cojoined twins and from their stories propose recommendations to support perioperative nurses who are confronted with such workplace experiences.

Methods: Using a narrative methodology, nine perioperative nurses shared their stories of being involved in the surgical separation of conjoined twins in Australia. Narrative and thematic analyses were conducted and recommendations to support perioperative nurses through workplace (dis)stress were identified. Participants validated the findings and recommendations.

Findings: The analyses revealed the themes of professionalism, teamwork, 'them vs. us' and emotional loads.

Discussion: The sensationalism around the rarity of conjoined twins brought an intensive intrusiveness from the world media. As a result, secrecy within the hospital about the conjoined twin cases created divisions between those perioperative nurses on the teams and those not. The processes and outcomes of the two surgical cases were in contrast to each other. For some perioperative nurses this caused distress. It is essential that professional support is offered in a way in which the perioperative nurse can take it up without fear of negative judgement.

A new second order method for blind signal separation from convolutive mixtures

This paper presents a new approach to separate colored signals mixed by FIR (finite impulse response) and MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) channels. A cost function is proposed by employing linear constrainit to the de mixing vectors. The linear constraint is shown to be sufficient for avoiding trivial solution. The minimization of the cost function is performed using the Lagrangian method. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of the algorithm.

Blind separation of cyclostationary sources based on phase-frequency redundancy

Thin paper presents a new algorithm for blind source separation (BSS) by exploiting phase and frequency redundancy of cyclostationary signals in a complementary way. The separation criterion is to diagonalize a polynomial matrix whose coefficient matrices consist of the correlation and cyclic correlation matrices of multiple measurements. Computer simulation results illustrate, the performance of the new algorithm in comparison with some existing algorithms.

Blind separation of cyclostationary signals from instantaneous mixtures

This paper presents a new approach for blind separation of unknown cyclostationary signals from instantaneous mixtures. The proposed method can perfectly separate the mixed source signals so long as they have either different cyclic frequencies or clock phases. This is a weaker condition than those required by the algorithms. The separation criterion is to diagonalize a polynomial matrix whose coefficient matrices consist of the correlation and cyclic correlation matrices, at time delay τ=0, of multiple measurements.

Adaptive blind source separation using constant modulus criterion and signal mutual information

We address the problem of adaptive blind source separation (BSS) from instantaneous multi-input multi-output (MIMO) channels. It is known that the constant modulus (CM) criterion can be used to extract unknown source signals. However, the existing CM based algorithms normally extract the source signals in a serial manner. Consequently, the accuracy in extracting each source signal, except for the first one, depends on the accuracy of previous source extraction. This estimation error propagation (accumulation) causes severe performance degradation. In this paper, we propose a new adaptive separation algorithm that can separate all source signals simultaneously by directly updating the separation matrix. The superior performance of the new algorithm is demonstrated by simulation examples

A new blind signal separation algorithm for instantaneous MIMO system

We address the problem of adaptive blind source separation (BSS) from instantaneous multi-input multi-output (MIMO) channels. In this paper, we propose a new constant modulus (CM)-based algorithm which employ nonlinear function as the de-correlation term. Moreover, it is shown by theoretical analysis that the proposed algorithm has less mean square error (MSE), i.e., better separation performance, in steady state than the cross-correlation and constant modulus algorithm (CC-CMA). Numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed result.

A new algorithm for blind separation of cyclostationary source from linear mixtures

This paper addresses the problem of separating a cyclostationary source from linear mixtures. It first shows that if the cyclic frequencies of the source of interest are known and different from those of the interfering sources, perfect source separation can be achieved using the proposed separation criterion. Then an algorithm is derived to perform the blind source separation. Simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed algorithm

Blind source separation using second-order cyclostationary statistics

This paper studies the blind source separation (BSS) problem with the assumption that the source signals are cyclostationary. Identifiability and separability criteria based on second-order cyclostationary statistics (SOCS) alone are derived. The identifiability condition is used to define an appropriate contrast function. An iterative algorithm (ATH2) is derived to minimize this contrast function. This algorithm separates the sources even when they do not have distinct cycle frequencies .

Comments on "A blind signal separation method for multiuser communications"

This correspondence first shows that the global convergence analysis of the method proposed in the above paper is incomplete. Then we provide a counter example to show that the sufficient condition for global convergence is incorrect.

Improvements to separation and detection for forensic analysis of illicit substances

This article gives an overview of our recent research into separation and detection of analytes of forensic interest. This work has been carried out in collaboration with local forensic service providers and is based on our previous studies of chemiluminescence detection, flow analysis and capillary electrophoresis as applied to process analytical chemistry for the pharmaceutical industry. Chemiluminescence has the potential to provide low limits of detection in combination with high selectivity, while capillary electrophoresis allows for rapid, highly efficient separations. Examples of recent forensic applications are presented and future directions are discussed.