Search results for: Simon Thomas

Authors: Wilhelm Hoeflinger, Thomas Laminger, Johannes Wolfslehner

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For vacuum cleaned dust filters, used e. g. in textile industry, there exist no calculation methods to determine design parameters (e. g. traverse speed of the nozzle, filter area...). In this work a method to calculate the optimum traverse speed of the nozzle of an industrial-size flat dust filter at a given mean pressure drop and filter face velocity was elaborated. Well-known equations for the design of a cleanable multi-chamber bag-house-filter were modified in order to take into account a continuously regeneration of a dust filter by a nozzle. Thereby, the specific filter medium resistance and the specific cake resistance values are needed which can be derived from filter tests under constant operation conditions. A lab-scale filter test rig was used to derive the specific filter media resistance value and the specific cake resistance value for vacuum cleaned filter operation. Three different filter media were tested and the determined parameters were compared to each other.

Keywords: design of dust filter, dust removing, filter regeneration, operation parameters

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Authors: Luong A. Nguyen, Elihu Deneke, Thomas L. Harman

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This paper describes a multibody dynamics algorithm formulated for parallel implementation on multiprocessor computing platforms using the divide-and-conquer approach. The system of interest is a general topology of rigid and elastic articulated bodies with or without loops. The algorithm is an extension of Featherstone’s divide and conquer approach to include the flexible-body dynamics formulation. The equations of motion, configured for the International Space Station (ISS) with its robotic manipulator arm as a system of articulated flexible bodies, are implemented in separate computer processors. The performance of this divide-and-conquer algorithm implementation in multiple processors is compared with an existing method implemented on a single processor.

Keywords: multibody dynamics, multiple processors, multithreading, divide-and-conquer algorithm, computational efficiency, flexible body dynamics

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Authors: Schulz Peter, Kee Kalya, Lwin May, Goh Wilson, Chia Kendrikck, Chueng Max, Lam Thomas, Sung Joseph

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As Artificial Intelligence (AI) is progressively making inroads into clinical practice, questions have arisen as to whether acceptance of AI is skewed toward certain medical practitioner segments, even within particular specializations. This study examines distinct AI acceptance among gastroenterologists with contrasting levels of seniority/experience when interacting with AI typologies. Data from 319 gastroenterologists show the presence of four distinct clusters of clinicians based on experience levels and perceived risk typologies. Analysis of cluster-based responses further revealed that acceptance of AI was not uniform. Our findings showed that clinician experience and risk perspective have an interactive role in influencing AI acceptance. Senior clinicians with low-risk perceptions were highly accepting of AI, but those with high-risk perceptions of AI were substantially less accepting. In contrast, junior clinicians were more inclined to embrace AI when they perceived high risk, yet they hesitated to adopt AI when the perceived risk was minimal.

Keywords: risk perception, acceptance, trust, medicine

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Authors: Merle Bischoff, Thomas Gries, Gunnar Seide

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Nanocomposites have become more and more important as the implementation of nanoparticles in polymer allows additional functions in common industrial parts. Especially in the fabrication of filaments or fibres nanomodification is important, as only very small fillers can be added to the very fine fibres (common diameter is 20 µm, fine filament are 1 µm). Discharging fibres, conductive fibres, and many other functional fibres raise in their importance nowadays. Especially the dispersion quality is essential for the final enhancement of the filament propertied. In this paper, the dispersion of carbon nanoparticles in polymer melt is enhanced by a newly developed sonication unit of ITA and BANDELIN electronic GmbH & Co. KG. The first development steps of the unit fabrication, as well as the first experimental results of the modification of the dispersion, are shown. Special focus will be laid on the sealing of the new sonication unit as well as the positioning and equipment size when being implemented in an existing melt spinning unit. Furthermore, the influence on the thereby manufactured nano-modified filaments will be shown.

Keywords: dispersion, sonication, carbon nanoparticles, filaments

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Authors: M. V. Manoj Kumar, Likewin Thomas, Annappa

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Process mining provides methods and techniques for analyzing event logs recorded in modern information systems that support real-world operations. While analyzing an event-log, state-of-the-art techniques available in process mining believe that the operational process as a static entity (stationary). This is not often the case due to the possibility of occurrence of a phenomenon called concept drift. During the period of execution, the process can experience concept drift and can evolve with respect to any of its associated perspectives exhibiting various patterns-of-change with a different pace. Work presented in this paper discusses the main aspects to consider while addressing concept drift phenomenon and proposes a method for detecting and localizing the sudden concept drifts in control-flow perspective of the process by using features extracted by processing the traces in the process log. Our experimental results are promising in the direction of efficiently detecting and localizing concept drift in the context of process mining research discipline.

Keywords: abrupt drift, concept drift, sudden drift, control-flow perspective, detection and localization, process mining

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Authors: Justin Reverdi, Sixin Zhang, Serge Gratton, Said Aoues, Thomas Pellegrini

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In Vapor Cycle Systems, the flow sensor plays a key role in different monitoring and control purposes. However, physical sensors can be expensive, inaccurate, heavy, cumbersome, or highly sensitive to vibrations, which is especially problematic when embedded into an aircraft. The conception of a virtual sensor based on other standard sensors is a good alternative. In this paper, a data-driven model using a Convolutional Neural Network is proposed to estimate the flow of the compressor. To fit the model to our dataset, we tested different loss functions. We show in our application that a Dynamic Time Warping based loss function called DILATE leads to better dynamical performance than the vanilla mean squared error (MSE) loss function. DILATE allows choosing a trade-off between static and dynamic performance.

Keywords: deep learning, dynamic time warping, vapor cycle system, virtual sensor

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Authors: Jinah Kwon

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Why are there North Korean women who prefer their life in China, living as an undocumented migrant, to legal residence in South Korea? What is the line between choice and coercion in trafficking and how does it relate to family, especially in Asian culture? Is family function as a haven in the unsecured world or a fetter against the better world? Are the current international mechanisms on trafficked victims fully reflecting the voices of the victims? This study is about the paradoxical conditions of North Korean women situated in China as the trafficked victim and as members of their Chinese family. In order to answer the questions above, this study explored the case of trafficked North Korean women in China. This mixed-methods study employed in-depth interviews of 18 trafficked women living in China and a survey of 98 North Korean origin women residing in South Korea. From the survey, 40 out of 98 women from the survey indicated an unexpected function of trafficking, which was used as a channel of supporting the subjectivity of women in the North Korean context. Such results supported the actual observation and narratives of North Korean women who experienced trafficking from the author’s two visits to the Northeastern area of China in 2012 and 2018, respectively. Based on the findings, the last part of the study makes policy implications on international trafficking mechanisms—theories by Gayatri Spivak and Herbert A. Simon was employed to approach the relatively less dealt aspect of trafficking.

Keywords: China, North Korean women, trafficking, victimhood

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Authors: Harriet Najjemba, Simon Peter Rutabajuuka, Deo Katono Nzarwa

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Scientific agricultural knowledge was introduced in Africa, including Uganda, during colonial rule. While this form of knowledge was introduced as part of Western scientific canon, African indigenous knowledge was not destroyed and has remained vital in food production. Modern scientific methods were devoted to export crops while food crop production was left to Africans who continued to use indigenous knowledge. Today, indigenous agricultural knowledge still provides farming skills and practices, more than a century since modern scientific agricultural knowledge was introduced in Uganda. It is evident that there is need to promote the still useful and more accessible indigenous agricultural practices in order to sustain increased food production. It is also important to have a tailor made agricultural knowledge system that combines practical indigenous practices with financially viable western scientific agricultural practices for sustained food production. The proposed paper will explain why the African indigenous agricultural knowledge has persisted and survived for over a century after colonial introduction of western scientific agricultural knowledge. The paper draws on research findings for a PhD study at Makerere University, Uganda. The study uses both written and oral sources, including colonial and postcolonial archival documents, and interviews. It critiques the parameters within which Western farming methods were introduced to African farmers.

Keywords: food production, food shortage, indigenous agricultural knowledge, western scientific agricultural practices

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Authors: Elaheh Hosseini, Otmar Bock, Monika Thomas

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The purpose of the present study was to determine the effect of climbing therapy on the components of attention of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Forty children with ADHD were assigned to either an intervention group or a control group. The exercise group participated in a climbing therapy program for ten weeks, whereas no intervention was administered to the control group. All two groups were then assessed with the same battery of attention tests used in our earlier study. We found that compared to the ‘intervention’ group, performance was higher in the ‘control’ group on tests of sustained, divided and distributed attention, on all four tests. The intervention group showed a significant improvement in components of attention after ten weeks. From this we conclude that climbing therapy can improve the attention of children with ADHD and can be considered as a promising intervention and a standalone treatment for children with ADHD.

Keywords: ADHD, climbing therapy, distributed attention, divided attention, selective attention, sustained attention

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Authors: Thomas L. McCullough, John D. Hague, Marylesa M. Howard, Matthew K. Kiser, Michael A. Mazur, Lance K. McLean, Johanna L. Turk

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Radiological search and mapping depends on the successful recognition of anomalies in large data sets which contain varied and dynamic backgrounds. We present a new algorithmic approach for real-time anomaly detection which is resistant to common detector imperfections, avoids the limitations of a source template library and provides immediate, and easily interpretable, user feedback. This algorithm is based on a continuous wavelet transform for variance reduction and evaluates the deviation between a foreground measurement and a local background expectation using methods from linear algebra. We also present a technique for recognizing and visualizing spectrally similar clusters of data. This technique uses Laplacian Eigenmap Manifold Learning to perform dimensional reduction which preserves the geometric "closeness" of the data while maintaining sensitivity to outlying data. We illustrate the utility of both techniques on real-world data sets.

Keywords: radiological search, radiological mapping, radioactivity, radiation protection

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Authors: Ani Thomas

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Every narrative is a temporal construct. Every narrative creates a qualitative experience of time for the viewer. The paper argues for the concept of a qualified time that emerges from the interaction between the narrative and the audience. The paper also challenges the conventional understanding of narrative time as either story time, real time or discourse time. Looking at narratives through the medium of Cinema, the study examines how narratives create and manipulate duration or durée, the qualitative experience of time as theorized by Henri Bergson. The paper further analyzes how Cinema and, by extension, narratives are nothing but Durée and the filmmaker, the artist of durée, who shape and manipulate the perception and emotions of the viewer through the manipulation and construction of durée. The paper draws on cinematic works to look at the techniques to demonstrate how filmmakers use, for example, editing, sound, compositional and production narratives etc., to create various modes of durée that challenge, amplify or unsettle the viewer’s sense of time. Bringing together the Viewer’s durée and exploring its interaction with the narrative construct, the paper explores the emergence of the new qualitative time, the narrative durée, that defines the audience experience.

Keywords: cinema, time, bergson, duree

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Authors: Syed M. Rizvi, Yiqing Meng, Simon Iwnicki

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With an increased demand in the land cargo industry, it is predicted that the freight trade will rise to a record $1.1 trillion in revenue and volume in the following years to come. This increase is mainly driven by the e-commerce model ever so popular in the consumer market. Many innovative ideas have stemmed from this demand and change in lifestyle likes of which include e-bike cargo and drones. Rural and urban areas are facing air quality challenges to keep pollution levels in city centre to a minimum. For this purpose, this paper presents the design and implementation of a non-linear PID control system, employing a micro-controller and low cost sensing technique, for controlling an electrical motor based cargo vehicle with various loads, to follow a leading vehicle (bike). Within using this system, the cargo vehicle will have no load influence on the bike rider on different gradient conditions, such as hill climbing. The system is being integrated with a microcontroller to continuously measure several parameters such as relative displacement between bike and the cargo vehicle and gradient of the road, and process these measurements to create a portable controller capable of controlling the performance of electrical vehicle without the need of a PC. As a result, in the case of carrying 180kg of parcel weight, the cargo vehicle can maintain a reasonable spacing over a short length of sensor travel between the bike and itself.

Keywords: cargo, e-bike, microcontroller, embedded system, nonlinear pid, self-adaptive, inertial measurement unit (IMU)

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Authors: Michael Koblischka, Yassine Slimani, Thomas Karwoth, Anjela Koblischka-Veneva, Essia Hannachi

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On bulk FeSe superconductors containing different additions of Ag, a thorough investigation of the microstructures was performed using optical microscopy, SEM and TEM. The electrical resistivity was measured using four-point measurements in the temperature range 2 K ≤ T ≤ 150 K. The data obtained are analyzed in the framework of the excess conductivity approach using the Aslamazov-Larkin (AL) model. The investigated samples comprised of five distinct fluctuation regimes, namely short-wave (SWF), onedimensional (1D), two-dimensional (2D), three-dimensional (3D), and critical (CR) fluctuation regimes. The coherence length along the c-axis at zero-temperature (ξc(0)), the lower and upper critical magnetic fields (Bc1 and Bc2), the critical current density (Jc) and numerous other superconducting parameters were estimated with respect to the Ag content in the samples. The data reveal a reduction of the resistivity and a strong decrease of ξc(0) when doping the 11-samples with silver. The optimum content of the Ag-addition is found at 4 wt.-% Ag, yielding the highest critical current density.

Keywords: iron-based superconductors, FeSe, Ag-addition, excess conductivity, microstructure

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Authors: Fiona Tan, Cheryl Tan, Thomas Wong, Remesh

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Background: An increasing number of working adults undergo knee arthroplasty in Singapore. There is limited data concerning Southeast Asian patients returning to work (RTW) following knee replacement surgery. Our aim was to identify and study factors influencing patients' RTW following total knee arthroplasty (TKA) or unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA). Methods: Patients who underwent TKA or UKA between August 2017 to March 2020 in our center were included in this study. Outcomes include RTW and duration prior to RTW. Results: 441 patients underwent TKA (295 women, 146 men, mean age 67.3 years), and 69 underwent UKA (48 women, 21 men, mean age 61.1 years). Patients who underwent TKA returned to work earlier (mean 83.7 ± 27.1 days) compared to UKA (mean 94.4 ± 42.3 days). 90.0% of TKA patients RTW compared to 95.5% who underwent UKA. Of patients who RTW, 94.3% of the TKA group returned to employment of the same nature compared to 92.9% of UKA patients. Patients who RTW were of a younger age (p = 0.03), white-collared workers (p = 0.04), and had independent preoperative ambulatory status (p <0.01). Conclusion: Younger and independently ambulating patients may have a better capacity for rehabilitation and RTW post-arthroplasty surgery.

Keywords: return to work, total knee arthroplasty, unilateral knee arthroplasty, employment

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Authors: Sean W. T. Bayly, Daniel Glover, Don Horrell, Simon Horrocks, Barnes Callum, Stuart Gibson, Mac Misuira

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We assess suitability of recent, ∼7B parameter, instruction-tuned Language Models for Generative Named Entity Recognition (GNER). Alongside Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), and supported by task-specific prompting, our proposed Multi-Level Information Retrieval method achieves notable improvements over finetuned entity-level and sentence-level methods. We conclude that language models directed toward this task are highly capable when distinguishing between positive classes (precision). However, smaller models seem to struggle to find all entities (recall). Poorly defined classes such as ”Miscellaneous” exhibit substantial declines in performance, likely due to the ambiguity it introduces to the prompt. This is partially resolved through a self-verification method using engineered prompts containing knowledge of the stricter class definitions, particularly in areas where their boundaries are in danger of overlapping, such as the conflation between the location ”Britain” and the nationality ”British”. Finally, we explore correlations between model performance on the GNER task with performance on relevant academic benchmarks.

Keywords: generative named entity recognition, information retrieval, lightweight artificial intelligence, prompt engineering, personal information identification, retrieval augmented generation, self verification

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Authors: Thomas Ogilegwu Orohu

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This paper presents agricultural education as a vocational study, an impetus for youths, economic empowerment. The survival of Nigeria’s agriculture rests squarely on the youth who are the farmers and leaders of tomorrow. Hitherto, the teaching and learning of agriculture has proceeded in such a manner that graduates of such programs have failed to make the successful launch into the world of agricultural enterprises (entrepreneurship). Major constraints that predisposed this anomalous situation were identified to include poor policy framework, socio-economic pressures, undue parental and peer influences, improper value orientation and of course, the nature of curricula. In response to the situation, some programs and/or initiatives aimed at inculcating entrepreneurial skills were proposed by this paper with identified target beneficiaries. The initiatives bordered on curricular reorientation that integrate entrepreneurship/enterprise education, retraining of graduates, financial support system among others.

Keywords: Program initiatives. vocational agriculture, youths’ empowerment, introduction

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Authors: Thanduxolo Nomngcoyiya, Simon M. Kang’ethe

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The aim of this article is to explore whether a relationship exists between traditional male circumcision mishaps and level of education in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, exemplified by an empirical case study. The study used qualitative paradigm; was exploratory in nature and used case study design that was descriptive and exploratory; and entailed interviewing twenty-eight (28) research participants comprising of eleven (11) newly initiated men and their families on one-on-one in-depth interviews, twelve (12) traditional nurses and community members in focus group discussions; and five (5) society key informants on key informant method. An interview guide served as a data collection instrument for focus group discussions, key informant method and in-depth interviews with unstructured open-ended questions. Findings indicated an array of traditional male circumcision (TMC) gaps, some of which were indicative of a relationship between the mishaps and level of education: the phenomenon of schooling became secondary in newly initiated men’s lives; TMC mishaps became a drawback towards the newly initiated men’s education progression; the newly initiated men are sacrificed at the altar of culture, and TMC mishaps ushered in socioeconomic setback to the newly initiated men. The study suggested that: TMC be developmental; TMC as a cultural endeavor be educational and human rights friendly; and the need to identify and integrate all other players with diverse specialties.

Keywords: culture, education for all, EFA, millennium development goals, traditional male circumcision

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Authors: Christoph Linse, Thomas Martinetz

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Recent findings have shown that Neural Networks generalize also in over-parametrized regimes with zero training error. This is surprising, since it is completely against traditional machine learning wisdom. In our empirical study we fortify these findings in the domain of fine-grained image classification. We show that very large Convolutional Neural Networks with millions of weights do learn with only a handful of training samples and without image augmentation, explicit regularization or pretraining. We train the architectures ResNet018, ResNet101 and VGG19 on subsets of the difficult benchmark datasets Caltech101, CUB_200_2011, FGVCAircraft, Flowers102 and StanfordCars with 100 classes and more, perform a comprehensive comparative study and draw implications for the practical application of CNNs. Finally, we show that VGG19 with 140 million weights learns to distinguish airplanes and motorbikes with up to 95% accuracy using only 20 training samples per class.

Keywords: convolutional neural networks, fine-grained image classification, generalization, image recognition, over-parameterized, small data sets

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Authors: Katie Jerram, Jacqui Nevols, Rebecca Howes, Hayley Richardson, Debbie Suso, Thomas Batten, Reny Mathai

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Pyomyositis is an uncommon acute purulent skeletal muscle infection, usually caused by Staphylococcus aureus, occurring either spontaneously or following local trauma. Immunocompromise is a risk factor. It presents with pyrexia, pain, and tenderness of the affected muscle, which may have a firm ‘woody’ feel. Management usually involves surgery and prolonged courses of antibiotics, but alongside these active treatments, palliation of symptoms such as pain is also a priority. A short case series of diabetic inpatients under the care of the Renal Medicine team with pyomyositis is presented, demonstrating that Hospital Palliative Care Teams may be well placed to provide symptom management advice by working jointly with the patient’s medical or surgical team. A review of the literature on the management of pain in pyomyositis is also presented, and there was no clear consensus on the best strategy. It may be that a combination of analgesics and adjuncts is the most effective strategy, perhaps combined with the holistic approach used within palliative care.

Keywords: pyomyositis, pain, palliation, analgesia

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Authors: Emily J. Morey, Kevin Galvin, Thomas Riley, R. Eddie Wilson

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The key challenges faced by integrating autonomous rail operations into the existing mainline railway environment have been identified through the understanding and framing of the problem space and stakeholder analysis. This was achieved through the completion of the first four steps of Soft Systems Methodology, where the problem space has been expressed via conceptual models. Having identified these challenges, we investigated one of them, namely capacity, via the use of models and simulation. This paper examines the approach used to move from the conceptual models to a simulation which can determine whether the integration of autonomous trains can plausibly increase capacity. Within this approach, we developed an architecture and converted logical models into physical resource models and associated design features which were used to build a simulator. From this simulator, we are able to analyse mixtures of legacy-autonomous operations and produce fundamental diagrams and trajectory plots to describe the dynamic behaviour of mixed mainline railway operations.

Keywords: autonomy, executable architecture, modelling and simulation, railway capacity

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Authors: Simon B. N. Thompson

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Cortisol is important to our immune system, regulates our stress response, and is a factor in maintaining brain temperature. Saliva cortisol is a practical and useful non-invasive measurement that signifies the presence of the important hormone. Electrical activity in the jaw muscles typically rises when the muscles are moved during yawning and the electrical level is found to be correlated with the cortisol level. In two studies using identical paradigms, a total of 108 healthy subjects were exposed to yawning-provoking stimuli so that their cortisol levels and electrical nerve impulses from their jaw muscles was recorded. Electrical activity is highly correlated with cortisol levels in healthy people. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Yawning Susceptibility Scale, General Health Questionnaire, demographic, health details were collected and exclusion criteria applied for voluntary recruitment: chronic fatigue, diabetes, fibromyalgia, heart condition, high blood pressure, hormone replacement therapy, multiple sclerosis, and stroke. Significant differences were found between the saliva cortisol samples for the yawners as compared with the non-yawners between rest and post-stimuli. Significant evidence supports the Thompson Cortisol Hypothesis that suggests rises in cortisol levels are associated with yawning. Ethics approval granted and professional code of conduct, confidentiality, and safety issues are approved therein.

Keywords: cortisol, diagnosis, neurological disease, thompson cortisol hypothesis, yawning

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Authors: Simon R. Melchioly, Ibrahimu C. Mjemah, Isaac M. Marobhe

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The main objective of this research was to identify new potential sources of groundwater resources using geophysical methods and also to demarcate the saltwater - freshwater interface. Kilwa Kisiwani Island geologically is covered mostly by Quaternary alluvial sediments, sand, and gravel. The geophysical techniques employed during the research include Vertical Electrical Sounding (VES), Earth Resistivity Tomography (ERT), and Transient Electromagnetics (TEM). Two-dimensional interpolated geophysical results show that there exist freshwater lenses formations that are potential aquifers on the Island with resistivity values ranging from 11.68 Ωm to 46.71 Ωm. These freshwater lenses are underlain by formation with brackish water in which the resistivity values are varying between 3.89 Ωm and 1.6 Ωm. Saltwater with resistivity less than 1 Ωm is found at the bottom being overlaid by brackish saturated formation. VES resistivity results show that 89% (16 out of 18) of the VES sites are potential for groundwater resources drilling while TEM results indicate that 75% (12 out of 16) of TEM sites are potential for groundwater borehole drilling. The recommended drilling depths for potential sites in Kilwa Kisiwani Island show that the maximum depth is 25 m and the minimum being 10 m below ground surface. The aquifer structure in Kilwa Kisiwani Island is a shallow, unconfined freshwater lenses floating above the seawater and the maximum thickness of the aquifer is 25 m for few selected VES and TEM sites while the minimum thickness being 10 m.

Keywords: groundwater, hydrogeophysical, Kilwa Kisiwani, freshwater, saltwater, resistivity

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Authors: Peter Sauer, Thomas Hinze, Petra Hofstedt

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To avoid obstacles in the surrounding environment and to navigate to a given target belong to the most important tasks for mobile robots. According to these tasks different data structures are suitable. To avoid near obstacles, occupancy grid maps are an ideal representation of the surroundings. For less fine grained tasks, such as navigating from one room to another in an apartment, pure grid maps are inappropriate. Grid maps are very detailed, calculating paths to navigate between rooms based on grid maps would take too long. Instead, graph-based data structures, so-called topologies, turn out to be a proper choice for such tasks. In this paper we present two methods to dynamically create topologies from grid maps. Both methods are based on non-uniform grid maps. The topologies are generated on-the-fly and can easily be modified to represent changes in the environment. This allows a hybrid approach to control mobile robots, where, depending on the situation and the current task, either the grid map or the generated topology may be used.

Keywords: robot navigation, occupancy grids, topological maps, dynamic map creation

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Authors: Simon Arunga, Teddy Kwaga, Rita Kageni, Michael Gichangi, Nyawira Mwangi, Fred Kagwa, Rogers Mwavu, Amos Baryashaba, Luis F. Nakayama, Katharine Morley, Michael Morley, Leo A. Celi, Jessica Haberer, Celestino Obua

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Purpose: The main aim for creating the Multimodal Database of Retinal Images for Africa (MoDRIA) was to provide a publicly available repository of retinal images for responsible researchers to conduct algorithm development in a bid to curb the challenges of ophthalmic artificial intelligence (AI) in Africa. Methods: Data and retina images were ethically sourced from sites in Uganda and Kenya. Data on medical history, visual acuity, ocular examination, blood pressure, and blood sugar were collected. Retina images were captured using fundus cameras (Foru3-nethra and Canon CR-Mark-1). Images were stored on a secure online database. Results: The database consists of 7,859 retinal images in portable network graphics format from 1,988 participants. Images from patients with human immunodeficiency virus were 18.9%, 18.2% of images were from hypertensive patients, 12.8% from diabetic patients, and the rest from normal’ participants. Conclusion: Publicly available data repositories are a valuable asset in the development of AI technology. Therefore, is a need for the expansion of MoDRIA so as to provide larger datasets that are more representative of Sub-Saharan data.

Keywords: retina images, MoDRIA, image repository, African database

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Authors: Malgorzata J. Rybak-Smith, Benedicte Thiebaut, Simon Johnson, Peter Bishop, Helen E. Townley

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Gadolinium doped titania (TiO2:Gd) nanoparticles (NPs) can be activated by X-ray radiation to generate Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), which can be effective in killing cancer cells. As such, treatment with these NPs can be used to enhance the efficacy of conventional radiotherapy. Incorporation of the NPs in to tumour tissue will permit the extension of radiotherapy to currently untreatable tumours deep within the body, and also reduce damage to neighbouring healthy cells. In an attempt to find a fast and scalable method for the synthesis of the TiO2:Gd NPs, the use of Flame Spray Pyrolysis (FSP) was investigated. A series of TiO2 NPs were generated with 1, 2, 5 and 7 mol% gadolinium dopant. Post-synthesis, the TiO2:Gd NPs were silica-coated to improve their biocompatibility. Physico-chemical characterisation was used to determine the size and stability in aqueous suspensions of the NPs. All analysed TiO2:Gd NPs were shown to have relatively high photocatalytic activity. Furthermore, the FSP synthesized silica-coated TiO2:Gd NPs generated enhanced ROS in chemico. Studies on rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) cell lines (RD & RH30) demonstrated that in the absence of irradiation all TiO2:Gd NPs were inert. However, application of TiO2:Gd NPs to RMS cells, followed by irradiation, showed a significant decrease in cell proliferation. Consequently, our studies showed that the X-ray-activatable TiO2:Gd NPs can be prepared by a high-throughput scalable technique to provide a novel and affordable anticancer therapy.

Keywords: cancer, gadolinium, ROS, titania nanoparticles, X-ray

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Authors: Thomas Elliot, Javier Babi Almenar, Benedetto Rugani

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The integration of urban metabolism (UM) with spatially explicit ecosystem service (ES) stocks has the potential to advance sustainable urban development. It will correct the lack of spatially specificity of current urban metabolism models. Furthermore, it will include into UM not only the physical properties of material and energy stocks and flows, but also the implications to the natural capital that provides and maintains human well-being. This paper presents the first stages of a modelling framework by which urban planners can assess spatially the trade-offs of ES flows resulting from urban interventions of different character and scale. This framework allows for a multi-region assessment which takes into account sustainability burdens consequent to an urban planning event occurring elsewhere in the environment. The urban boundary is defined as the Functional Urban Audit (FUA) method to account for trans-administrative ES flows. ES are mapped using CORINE land use within the FUA. These stocks and flows are incorporated into a UM assessment method to demonstrate the transfer and flux of ES arising from different urban planning implementations.

Keywords: ecological economics, ecosystem services, spatial planning, urban metabolism

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Authors: Basil Manos, Thomas Bournaris, Christina Moulogianni

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The European agricultural policy supports all member states to apply agricultural development plans for the development of their agricultural sectors. A specific measure of the agricultural development plans refers to young people in order to enter into the agricultural sector. This measure helps the participating young farmers in achieving maximum efficiency, using methods and environmentally friendly practices, by altering their farm plans. This study applies a Multicriteria Mathematical Programming (MCDA) model for the young farmers to find farm plans that achieve the maximum gross margin and the minimum environmental impacts (less use of fertilizers and irrigation water). The analysis was made in the region of Central Macedonia, Greece, among young farmers who have participated in the “Setting up Young Farmers” measure during 2007-2010. The analysis includes the implementation of the MCDA model for the farm plans optimization and the comparison of selected environmental indicators with those of the existent situation.

Keywords: multicriteria, optimum farm plans, environmental impacts, sustainable management

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Authors: Roni Susman, Thomas Weith

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This article explores how institutional setting, mainly from institutionalism, could clearly explain the understanding of land use conflict analysis in coastal areas and has been used in current practices. Institutional setting appears as a guideline that is committed by the stakeholders who are involved directly or indirectly in land management process. This paper is aimed to identify the setting of institutional and to measure how the conflicts occur, how the actors act and influence the process, how is the condition to apply the appropriate framework for adequate solution of land use conflict in coastal area in order to enhance better decisions. To reflect the current practice and use of theories a qualitative review of 150 scientific peer-reviewed papers regarding the issue of land use conflicts in coastal areas as well as institutional process is included. The selection of peer-reviewed papers is obtained through a structured literature survey of the recently published database in a way to investigate the variances of institutional between theory and practices specifically in the case of coastal land management.

Keywords: coastal areas, institutional settings, land use conflict, land governance, actors’ constellation, analytical framework

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Authors: Lukumba Phiri, Simon Tembo, Kumbuso Joshua Nyoni

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In Zambia recent initiatives by various power operators like ZESCO, CEC, and consumers like the mines to upgrade power systems into smart grids target an even tighter integration with information technologies to enable the integration of renewable energy sources, local and bulk generation, and demand response. Thus, for the reliable operation of smart grids, its information infrastructure must be secure and reliable in the face of both failures and cyberattacks. Due to the nature of the systems, ICS/SCADA cybersecurity and governance face additional challenges compared to the corporate networks, and critical systems may be left exposed. There exist control frameworks internationally such as the NIST framework, however, there are generic and do not meet the domain-specific needs of the SCADA systems. Zambia is also lagging in cybersecurity awareness and adoption, therefore there is a concern about securing ICS controlling key infrastructure critical to the Zambian economy as there are few known facts about the true posture. In this paper, we introduce a stochastic Edged-based Anomaly Detection for SCADA systems (SEADS) framework for threat modeling and risk assessment. SEADS enables the calculation of steady-steady probabilities that are further applied to establish metrics like system availability, maintainability, and reliability.

Keywords: anomaly, availability, detection, edge, maintainability, reliability, stochastic

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Authors: Garry Miller, Thomas Alexander, Cameron Lee

Abstract:

There is belief that Building Information Modelling (BIM) will improve performance of the New Zealand (NZ) Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) sector, however, widespread use of BIM is yet to be seen. Previous research indicates there are many issues affecting the uptake of BIM in NZ; nevertheless the underlying benefits, drawbacks, and barriers preventing more widespread uptake are not fully understood. This investigation aimed to understand these factors more clearly and make suggestions on how to improve the uptake of BIM in NZ. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a range of industry professionals to gather a qualitative understanding. Findings indicated the ability to incorporate better information into a BIM model could drive many benefits. However scepticism and lack of positive incentives in NZ are affecting its widespread use. This concluded that there is a need for the government to produce a number of BIM case studies and develop a set of BIM standards to resolve payment issues surrounding BIM use. This study provides useful information for those interested in BIM and members of government interested in improving the performance of the construction industry. This study may also be of interest to small, developed countries such as NZ where the level of BIM maturity is relatively low.

Keywords: BIM, New Zealand, AEC sector, building information modelling

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