Feature selection using expected attainable discrimination

We propose expected attainable discrimination (EAD) as a measure to select discrete valued features for reliable discrimination between two classes of data. EAD is an average of the area under the ROC curves obtained when a simple histogram probability density model is trained and tested on many random partitions of a data set. EAD can be incorporated into various stepwise search methods to determine promising subsets of features, particularly when misclassification costs are difficult or impossible to specify. Experimental application to the problem of risk prediction in pregnancy is described.

Health communication: A pilot study comparing perceptions of women with and without high functioning autism spectrum disorder

Research indicates significant health disparities for individuals with autism. Insight into characteristic sensory, cognitive, communication, social, emotional, and behavioural challenges that may influence health communication for patients with autism is vital to address potential disparities. Women with high functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may have specific healthcare needs, and are likely to independently represent themselves and others in healthcare. A pilot study compared perceptions of healthcare experiences for women with and without ASD using on-line survey based on characteristics of ASD likely to influence healthcare. Fifty-eight adult female participants (32 with ASD diagnosis, 26 without ASD diagnosis) were recruited on-line from autism support organisations. Perceptions measured included self-reporting of pain and symptoms, healthcare seeking behaviours, the influence of emotional distress, sensory and social anxiety, maternity experiences, and the influence of autistic status disclosure. Results partially support the hypothesis that ASD women experience greater healthcare challenges. Women with ASD reported greater challenges in healthcare anxiety, communication under emotional distress, anxiety relating to waiting rooms, support during pregnancy, and communication during childbirth. Self-disclosure of diagnostic status and lack of ASD awareness by healthcare providers rated as highly problematic. Results offer detailed insight into healthcare communication and disparities for women with ASD.

The clinical utility of the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia as a routine assessment in nursing homes

Objective To examine the clinical utility of the Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia (CSDD) in nursing homes. Setting 14 nursing homes in Sydney and Brisbane, Australia. Participants 92 residents with a mean age of 85 years. Measurements Consenting residents were assessed by care staff for depression using the CSDD as part of their routine assessment. Specialist clinicians conducted assessment of depression using the Semi-structured Clinical Diagnostic Interview for DSM-IV-TR Axis I Disorders for residents without dementia or the Provisional Diagnostic Criteria for Depression in Alzheimer Disease for residents with dementia to establish expert clinical diagnoses of depression. The diagnostic performance of the staff completed CSDD was analyzed against expert diagnosis using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results The CSDD showed low diagnostic accuracy, with areas under the ROC curve being 0.69, 0.68 and 0.70 for the total sample, residents with dementia and residents without dementia, respectively. At the standard CSDD cutoff score, the sensitivity and specificity were 71% and 59% for the total sample, 69% and 57% for residents with dementia, and 75% and 61% for residents without dementia. The Youden index (for optimizing cut-points) suggested different depression cutoff scores for residents with and without dementia. Conclusion When administered by nursing home staff the clinical utility of the CSDD is highly questionable in identifying depression. The complexity of the scale, the time required for collecting relevant information, and staff skills and knowledge of assessing depression in older people must be considered when using the CSDD in nursing homes.

A novel ambiguity acceptance test threshold determination method with controllable failure rate

Ambiguity validation as an important procedure of integer ambiguity resolution is to test the correctness of the fixed integer ambiguity of phase measurements before being used for positioning computation. Most existing investigations on ambiguity validation focus on test statistic. How to determine the threshold more reasonably is less understood, although it is one of the most important topics in ambiguity validation. Currently, there are two threshold determination methods in the ambiguity validation procedure: the empirical approach and the fixed failure rate (FF-) approach. The empirical approach is simple but lacks of theoretical basis. The fixed failure rate approach has a rigorous probability theory basis, but it employs a more complicated procedure. This paper focuses on how to determine the threshold easily and reasonably. Both FF-ratio test and FF-difference test are investigated in this research and the extensive simulation results show that the FF-difference test can achieve comparable or even better performance than the well-known FF-ratio test. Another benefit of adopting the FF-difference test is that its threshold can be expressed as a function of integer least-squares (ILS) success rate with specified failure rate tolerance. Thus, a new threshold determination method named threshold function for the FF-difference test is proposed. The threshold function method preserves the fixed failure rate characteristic and is also easy-to-apply. The performance of the threshold function is validated with simulated data. The validation results show that with the threshold function method, the impact of the modelling error on the failure rate is less than 0.08%. Overall, the threshold function for the FF-difference test is a very promising threshold validation method and it makes the FF-approach applicable for the real-time GNSS positioning applications.

Deformation of a single red blood cell in a microvessel

Red blood cells (RBCs) are the most common type of cells in human blood and they exhibit different types of motions and deformed shapes in capillary flows. The behaviour of the RBCs should be studied in order to explain the RBC motion and deformation mechanism. This article presents a numerical simulation method for RBC deformation in microvessels. A two dimensional spring network model is used to represent the RBC membrane, where the elastic stretch/compression energy and the bending energy are considered with the constraint of constant RBC surface area. The forces acting on the RBC membrane are obtained from the principle of virtual work. The whole fluid domain is discretized into a finite number of particles using smoothed particle hydrodynamics concepts and the motions of all the particles are solved using Navier--Stokes equations. Minimum energy concepts are used to simulate the deformed shape of the RBC model. To verify the model, the motion of a single RBC is simulated in a Poiseuille flow and the characteristic parachute shape of the RBC is observed. Further simulations reveal that the RBC shows a tank treading motion when it flows in a linear shear flow.

Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) for electric vehicles (EVs) - present and future trends

100 year old gasoline engine technology vehicles have now become one of the major contributors of greenhouse gases. Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) have been proposed to achieve environmental friendly transportation. Even though the PEV usage is currently increasing, a technology breakthrough would be required to overcome battery related drawbacks. Although battery technology is evolving, drawbacks inherited with batteries such as; cost, size, weight, slower charging characteristic and low energy density would still be dominating constrains for development of EVs. Furthermore, PEVs have not been accepted as preferred choice by many consumers due to charging related issues. To address battery related limitations, the concept of dynamic Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) enabled EVs have been proposed in which EV is being charged while it is in motion. WPT enabled infrastructure has to be employed to achieve dynamic EV charging concept. The weight of the battery pack can be reduced as the required energy storage is lower if the vehicle can be powered wirelessly while driving. Stationary WPT charging where EV is charged wirelessly when it is stopped, is simpler than dynamic WPT in terms of design complexity. However, stationary WPT does not increase vehicle range compared to wired-PEVs. State-of-art WPT technology for future transportation is discussed in this chapter. Analysis of the WPT system and its performance indices are introduced. Modelling the WPT system using different methods such as equivalent circuit theory, two port network theory and coupled mode theory is described illustrating their own merits in Sect. 2.3. Both stationary and dynamic WPT for EV applications are illustrated in Sect. 2.4. Design challenges and optimization directions are analysed in Sect. 2.5. Adaptive tuning techniques such as adaptive impedance matching and frequency tuning are also discussed. A case study for optimizing resonator design is presented in Sect. 2.6. Achievements by the research community is introduced highlighting directions for future research.

Compensation for higher order mode coupling between inclined coupling slots and radiating slots in planar slotted waveguide arrays

Summary form only given. Geometric simplicity, efficiency and polarization purity make slot antenna arrays ideal solutions for many radar, communications and navigation applications, especially when high power, light weight and limited scan volume are priorities. Resonant arrays of longitudinal slots have a slot spacing of one-half guide wavelength at the design frequency, so that the slots are located at the standing wave peaks. Planar arrays are implemented using a number of rectangular waveguides (branch line guides), arranged side-by-side, while waveguides main lines located behind and at right angles to the branch lines excite the radiating waveguides via centered-inclined coupling slots. Planar slotted waveguide arrays radiate broadside beams and all radiators are designed to be in phase.

Unmodified silver nanoparticles for rapid analysis of the organophosphorus pesticide, dipterex, often found in different waters

A novel, uncomplicated and rapid method of analysis for organophosphorus (OP) pesticides was researched and developed using the important, common OP, dipterex, as a typical example. The basis of the method involved the citrate-capped silver nanoparticles (citrate-capped AgNPs) and Acetylthiocholine (ATCh). The latter compound can be catalyzed by Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) to form thiocholine (TCh), which induces the aggregation of AgNPs. Correspondingly, the color of AgNPs in solution changes from bright yellow to pink, and the UV–vis characteristic absorption peak of AgNPs at about 400 nm decreases; simultaneously, a new absorption band appears at about 520 nm. Irreversible inhibition of AChE activity caused by dipterex, prevents the aggregation of AgNPs. Thus, a UV–vis spectrophotometric method was developed for the analysis of dipterex. The absorbance ratio A396 nm/A520 nm was found to be linearly related to the concentration of dipterex in the range of 0.25–37.5 ng mL−1 with a detection limit of 0.18 ng mL−1. This method was used successfully to analyse dipterex in spiked, different water samples.

A high performance liquid chromatography and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry method for the analysis of the natural medicine, Forsythia suspensa

Samples of Forsythia suspensa from raw (Laoqiao) and ripe (Qingqiao) fruit were analyzed with the use of HPLC-DAD and the EIS-MS techniques. Seventeen peaks were detected, and of these, twelve were identified. Most were related to the glucopyranoside molecular fragment. Samples collected from three geographical areas (Shanxi, Henan and Shandong Provinces), were discriminated with the use of hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA), discriminant analysis (DA), and principal component analysis (PCA) models, but only PCA was able to provide further information about the relationships between objects and loadings; eight peaks were related to the provinces of sample origin. The supervised classification models-K-nearest neighbor (KNN), least squares support vector machines (LS-SVM), and counter propagation artificial neural network (CP-ANN) methods, indicated successful classification but KNN produced 100% classification rate. Thus, the fruit were discriminated on the basis of their places of origin.

Memory and Epileptogenesis in Complex Biological and Simulated Systems

Oscillations of neural activity may bind widespread cortical areas into a neural representation that encodes disparate aspects of an event. In order to test this theory we have turned to data collected from complex partial epilepsy (CPE) patients with chronically implanted depth electrodes. Data from regions critical to word and face information processing was analyzed using spectral coherence measurements. Similar analyses of intracranial EEG (iEEG) during seizure episodes display HippoCampal Formation (HCF)—NeoCortical (NC) spectral coherence patterns that are characteristic of specific seizure stages (Klopp et al. 1996). We are now building a computational memory model to examine whether spatio-temporal patterns of human iEEG spectral coherence emerge in a computer simulation of HCF cellular distribution, membrane physiology and synaptic connectivity. Once the model is reasonably scaled it will be used as a tool to explore neural parameters that are critical to memory formation and epileptogenesis.

Design democratisation and its understandings through the meaning of the word “design” in Portuguese colonised countries

This paper explores the literature and analyses the different uses and understandings of the word “design” in Portuguese colonised countries, using Brazil as the main example. It investigates the relationship between the linguistic existence of terms to define and describe “design” as an activity and field, and the roles and perceptions of Design by the general society. It also addresses the effects that the lack of a proper translation causes on the local community from a cultural point of view. The current perception of Design in Portuguese colonies is associated to two main aspects: linguistic and historical. Both of them differentiate the countries taken into consideration from other countries that have a different background. The changes associated to the meaning of “design” throughout the years, caused a great impact on the perceptions that people have about Design. On the other hand, the development of Design has also influenced the changes on the meaning of the term, as a result of the legacy from the colonisation period and also as a characteristic of the Portuguese language. Design has developed and reached a level of excellence in Portuguese colonised countries that competes with the most traditional Design cultures in the world. However, this level of Design is enmeshed into an elite belonging to universities and specialised markets, therefore Design is not democratised. The ultimate aim of this study is to promote discussions on how to make the discourse surrounding this area more accessible to people from non-English speaking countries that do not have the word “design” in their local language.

Food neophobia and its association with diet quality and weight in children aged 24 months : a cross sectional study

Background Food neophobia, the rejection of unknown or novel foods, may result in poor dietary patterns. This study investigates the cross-sectional relationship between neophobia in children aged 24 months and variety of fruit and vegetable consumption, intake of discretionary foods and weight. Methods Secondary analysis of data from 330 parents of children enrolled in the NOURISH RCT (control group only) and SAIDI studies was performed using data collected at child age 24 months. Neophobia was measured at 24 months using the Child Food Neophobia Scale (CFNS). The cross-sectional associations between total CFNS score and fruit and vegetable variety, discretionary food intake and BMI (Body Mass Index) Z-score were examined via multiple regression models; adjusting for significant covariates. Results At 24 months, more neophobic children were found to have lower variety of fruits (β=-0.16, p=0.003) and vegetables (β=-0.29, p<0.001) but have a greater proportion of daily energy from discretionary foods (β=0.11, p=0.04). There was no significant association between BMI Z-score and CFNS score. Conclusions Neophobia is associated with poorer dietary quality. Results highlight the need for interventions to (1) begin early to expose children to a wide variety of nutritious foods before neophobia peaks and (2) enable health professionals to educate parents on strategies to overcome neophobia.

Mechanistic details of the membrane perforation and passive translocation of TAT peptides

The trans-activator of transcription (TAT) peptide is regarded as the “gold standard” for cell-penetrating peptides, capable of traversing a mammalian membrane passively into the cytosolic space. This characteristic has been exploited through conjugation of TAT for applications such as drug delivery. However, the process by which TAT achieves membrane penetration remains ambiguous and unresolved. Mechanistic details of TAT peptide action are revealed herein by using three complementary methods: quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D), scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). When combined, these three scales of measurement define that the membrane uptake of the TAT peptide is by trans-membrane insertion using a “worm-hole” pore that leads to ion permeability across the membrane layer. AFM data provided nanometre-scale visualisation of TAT punctuation using a mammalian-mimetic membrane bilayer. The TAT peptide does not show the same specificity towards a bacterial mimetic membrane and QCM-D and SECM showed that the TAT peptide demonstrates a disruptive action towards these membranes. This investigation supports the energy-independent uptake of the cationic TAT peptide and provides empirical data that clarify the mechanism by which the TAT peptide achieves its membrane activity. The novel use of these three biophysical techniques provides valuable insight into the mechanism for TAT peptide translocation, which is essential for improvements in the cellular delivery of TAT-conjugated cargoes including therapeutic agents required to target specific intracellular locations.

Optimizing search strategies for invasive pests: Learn before you leap

Strategic searching for invasive pests presents a formidable challenge for conservation managers. Limited funding can necessitate choosing between surveying many sites cursorily, or focussing intensively on fewer sites. While existing knowledge may help to target more likely sites, e.g. with species distribution models (maps), this knowledge is not flawless and improving it also requires management investment. 2.In a rare example of trading-off action against knowledge gain, we combine search coverage and accuracy, and its future improvement, within a single optimisation framework. More specifically we examine under which circumstances managers should adopt one of two search-and-control strategies (cursory or focussed), and when they should divert funding to improving knowledge, making better predictive maps that benefit future searches. 3.We use a family of Receiver Operating Characteristic curves to reflect the quality of maps that direct search efforts. We demonstrate our framework by linking these to a logistic model of invasive spread such as that for the red imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta in south-east Queensland, Australia. 4.Cursory widespread searching is only optimal if the pest is already widespread or knowledge is poor, otherwise focussed searching exploiting the map is preferable. For longer management timeframes, eradication is more likely if funds are initially devoted to improving knowledge, even if this results in a short-term explosion of the pest population. 5.Synthesis and applications. By combining trade-offs between knowledge acquisition and utilization, managers can better focus - and justify - their spending to achieve optimal results in invasive control efforts. This framework can improve the efficiency of any ecological management that relies on predicting occurrence. © 2010 The Authors. Journal of Applied Ecology © 2010 British Ecological Society.

The validity of personal disturbance scale (DSSI/sAD) in people with diabetes mellitus, using longitudinal data

Despite being used since 1976, Delusions-Symptoms-States-Inventory/states of Anxiety and Depression (DSSI/sAD) has not yet been validated for use among people with diabetes. The aim of this study was to examine the validity of the personal disturbance scale (DSSI/sAD) among women with diabetes using Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy (MUSP) cohort data. The DSSI subscales were compared against DSM-IV disorders, the Mental Component Score of the Short Form 36 (SF-36 MCS), and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Factor analyses, odds ratios, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses and diagnostic efficiency tests were used to report findings. Exploratory factor analysis and fit indices confirmed the hypothesized two-factor model of DSSI/sAD. We found significant variations in the DSSI/sAD domain scores that could be explained by CES-D (DSSI-Anxiety: 55%, DSSI-Depression: 46%) and SF-36 MCS (DSSI-Anxiety: 66%, DSSI-Depression: 56%). The DSSI subscales predicted DSM-IV diagnosed depression and anxiety disorders. The ROC analyses show that although the DSSI symptoms and DSM-IV disorders were measured concurrently the estimates of concordance remained only moderate. The findings demonstrate that the DSSI/sAD items have similar relationships to one another in both the diabetes and non-diabetes data sets which therefore suggest that they have similar interpretations.