Combining EEG source connectivity and network similarity: Application to object categorization in the human brain

A major challenge in cognitive neuroscience is to evaluate the ability of the human brain to categorize or group visual stimuli based on common features. This categorization process is very fast and occurs in few hundreds of millisecond time scale. However, an accurate tracking of the spatiotemporal dynamics of large-scale brain networks is still an unsolved issue. Here, we show the combination of recently developed method called dense-EEG source connectivity to identify functional brain networks with excellent temporal and spatial resolutions and an algorithm, called SimNet, to compute brain networks similarity. Two categories of visual stimuli were analysed in this study: immobile and mobile. Networks similarity was assessed within each category (intra-condition) and between categories (inter-condition). Results showed high similarity within each category and low similarity between the two categories. A significant difference between similarities computed in the intra and inter-conditions was observed at the period of 120-190ms supposed to be related to visual recognition and memory access. We speculate that these observations will be very helpful toward understanding the object categorization in the human brain from a network perspective.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for 2016 IEEE Workshop on Statistical Signal Processin

The amazing effects and role of PVP on the crystallinity, phase composition and morphology of nickel ferrite nanoparticles prepared by thermal treatment method

Nickel ferrite nanocrystals were prepared from an aqueous solution containing metal nitrates and various concentrations of poly(vinylpyrrolidone) followed by calcination temperature. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis was performed to determine the degree of crystallinity of the ferrite nanoparticles. By transmission electron microscopy, the morphology and average particle size of the nickel ferrite nanoparticles were evaluated which had good agreement with the XRD results. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy suggested the presence of metal oxide bands in all samples as well as the effective elimination of organic constituents after calcinations. Measurements of the extent of magnetization of the nickel ferrite nanoparticles synthesized in different concentrations were obtained at room temperature using a vibrating sample magnetometer

Multimodal Transport in Jordan according to the Multimodal International Transport Law No. 29 of 2018 (Comparative Study)

This research aims to evaluate the provisions of Multimodal International Transport Law No. 29 of 2018 in comparison with the latest international conventions in this field (Rotterdam Convention of 2008 and Multimodal Arabic Transport Convention of 2009). The problem of the research was concerned with answering the following question: did the national legislations and international or regional conventions succeed in achieving the unity of the legislative regulation of multimodal transport contracts at the international level? Or are we still in need of a binding, unified, international convention under the lack of enforcement of United Nations Convention of 1980? To answer these questions, the study was divided into two parts. The first part discussed the establishment of Multimodal International Transport Law by stating its concept, parties, and form. The second part was concerned with the implementation of multimodal international transport contract according to the provisions of Law No. 29 of 2018, where the contract parties’ responsibility and the claims and suits were explained. After analyzing the Law of (2018), the researcher came to believe that it is beneficiary to conclude a developed and balanced international convention which regulates multimodal transport in hope that it will be more effective than the United Nations Convention of 1980 to bridge the legislative gap in multimodal transport contracts at the international level

Evaluation of the electronic bill of lading as an alternative to the traditional bill of lading in proving the maritime transport contract in the light of Jordanian legislation, a comparative study with modern international agreements

This research aims to evaluate the electronic bill of lading as an alternative to the traditional bill of lading in proving the contract of sea carriage of goods. The problem of our research revolved around knowing the extent to which the electronic bill of lading serves as a guide to the traditional bill of lading in proving the contract of maritime transport of goods in the light of Jordanian legislation. In order to answer this problem, we divided this study into two sections: The first topic dealt with the nature of the traditional bill of lading and its role in proving the maritime transport contract. The second topic is devoted to presenting the electronic bill of lading and its role in proving the electronic shipping contract Returning to the answer to the problem of our research, it became clear to us the need for the Jordanian legislator to intervene, whether in the Maritime Trade Law No. 12 of 1972 or in the International Multimodal Transport of Goods Law No. 29 of 2018 by establishing a direct legislative regulation of the electronic bill of lading, as such direct regulation will help to Apply unified legal rules to the transfers that take place with the electronic bill of lading, without referring to the Electronic Transactions Law No. 15 of 2015 as the general law that regulates electronic transactions in general. Consequently, the door will remain open for the implementation of the Hamburg Agreement in force in the Kingdom without any complications

Influence of feed form and age of broilers on energy utilisation of feed ingredients : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Animal Science (Poultry Nutrition) at Massey University, Palmerston North, Manawatu, New Zealand

The accurate determination of the available energy of feed ingredients is crucial to optimise their inclusion in feed formulations and to improve the profitability and sustainability of poultry production. The metabolisable energy (ME) is commonly used for energy evaluation and formulating the diets for poultry. However, there are some limitations and several factors that influence the precision of the evaluation of the ME content of feed ingredients and diets. The current thesis investigated some of the unexplored research gaps on the ME of the commonly used feed ingredients in broiler diets. The first study presented in Chapter 3 was conducted to investigate the influence of feed form (FF; mash vs. pellet) on the apparent metabolisable energy (AME) and nitrogen-corrected AME (AMEn) of 7 single feed ingredients, four cereal grains (wheat, sorghum, barley, and maize) and three protein sources (soybean meal; SBM, canola meal; CM, and meat and bone meal; MBM). The influence of broiler age AMEn of cereal grains was investigated in Chapter 4 (direct method) and Chapter 5 (substitution method). The fourth experiment reported in Chapter 6 examined the effect of broiler age on the AMEn of protein sources. The experiments discussed in Chapter 7 were unique in that a novel methodology was developed for the quantification of the ileal endogenous energy losses (IEEL) in broiler chickens and for the correction of apparent ileal digestible energy (AIDE) to true (TIDE) ileal digestible energy of cereal grains (wheat, sorghum, barley and maize). The last trial of the thesis reported in Chapter 8 was conducted to refine-tune the IEEL methodology developed in Chapter 7 and to determine the influence of age and dietary cellulose contents on the IEEL estimates in broiler chickens. Data reported in Chapter 3 demonstrated that FF influenced the AMEn of feed ingredients. Pelleting increased the AMEn of all cereal grains by an average of 0.22 MJ/kg. However, for protein source ingredients, FF influence was ingredient-dependent. Pelleting increased the AMEn of CM by 0.57 MJ/kg, had no effect on that of SBM and decreased the AMEn of MBM by 0.56 MJ/kg. The experiment reported in Chapter 4 investigated the influence of broiler age on the AMEn of cereal grains using the direct method. The assay diets were formulated with an inclusion of 962 g/kg of each grain in the diet and pelleted. The data revealed that the age of broiler chickens has a significant impact on the AMEn of cereal grains. The first week of age recorded the highest AMEn for all cereal grains. Thereafter, the AMEn decreased either linearly (sorghum) or quadratically (wheat, barley and maize) with the advancing age of broilers. In the study reported in Chapter 5, the effect of broiler age on the AMEn of cereal grains, from the same batches used in Chapter 4, was examined using the substitution method. A maize-SBM basal diet was formulated and test diets were developed by replacing (w/w) 300 g/kg of the basal diet with each cereal grain. The results showed that the effect of broiler age on the AMEn varied depending on the grain type. Whilst the AMEn of barley and maize were unaffected by age, the AMEn of wheat and sorghum increased with the advancing age of broiler chickens. The determined AMEn values differed between direct and substitution methods, with the substitution method generating lower AMEn values. Data reported in Chapter 6 demonstrated that the AMEn content of SBM and CM was influenced by age of broilers. The first week showed the highest AMEn value for both SBM and CM, followed by reductions for both ingredients up to week 3 and increases thereafter. The studies reported in Chapter 7 present a novel approach to quantify the IEEL in broilers and correct the AIDE of cereal grains (wheat, sorghum, barley and maize) to TIDE enabling comparisons with AMEn. The IEEL was estimated to be 1.45 MJ/kg dry matter intake (DMI) in 21-d old broilers, following the feeding of a glucose-based purified diet and used to calculate the TIDE. The apparent ileal digestibility of dry matter, nitrogen and starch were positively and highly correlated with the TIDE than the AIDE or AMEn. The studies reported in Chapter 8 were conducted to refine the proposed methodology for the estimation of IEEL proposed in Chapter 7 and to investigate the influence of age of broilers and the dietary cellulose contents on IEEL estimates. It was found that the age of broilers had no impact on the IEEL estimates. The IEEL was affected by the cellulose content and the IEEL increased from 0.37 MJ/kg DMI for the diet without cellulose to 1.80 MJ/kg DMI for the diet with 75 g/kg inclusion of cellulose. The findings reported in the current thesis demonstrate that the application of AMEn values determined based on assays using mash diets might result in over- or under-estimation of the available energy content of ingredients in commercial pelleted broiler diets and highlights the need for the use of pelleted diets in energy evaluation assays. The findings also revealed that the effects of age and methodology are relevant in the determination of AMEn of feed ingredients and question the validity of using single AME or AMEn values for feed ingredients in broiler diet formulations across different ages. Another notable contribution was to develop a novel approach to quantify the IEEL in broiler chickens for the first time. The thesis research also provides preliminary data on the TIDE of common cereal grains and highlights the possibility of applying the TIDE as an alternative to the ME system in poultry feed formulation

The impact of hospital nurse staffing, work environment and patient-centeredness on the quality of care and patient safety

The healthcare industry is complex in nature. The quality of care and patient safety has become a national and international priority. Limited efforts have been made on improving nursing care in order to optimize the outcomes of care. This study empirically investigated the impact of hospital nurse staffing and work environment on the quality of care and patient safety in the medical and surgical wards in Malaysian private hospitals. The mediating effect of patient-centeredness on the effect of both hospital nurse staffing and work environment on the quality of care and patient safety was also investigated. A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 12 private hospitals. Data was collected, through questionnaires, from 652 nurses, with a 61.8 % response rate. The stratified simple random sampling was used to allow nurses from all shifts to participate in the study. Regression analyses and the Hayes PROCESS macro were conducted to test the hypotheses. The results showed that staffing had an insignificant negative impact on the outcomes of care, whereas work environment had a significant positive impact. Moreover, it was found that patient-centeredness significantly mediated the effect of both staffing and work environment upon the outcomes. A model for improving the quality of care and patient safety was proposed. The practical implications indicated that patientcenteredness suppresses the negative impact of nursing shortage and shift length, and complements the positive impact of work environment on the outcomes of care. Further mediators are recommended for future research on the impact of both hospital nurse staffing and work environment on the quality of care and patient safety

Exhaustive exercise and vitamins C and E modulate thyroid hormone levels at low and high altitudes

Thyroid hormones play an important role in cell growth and differentiation and regulation of oxygen consumption and thermogenesis. The effect of altitude and vitamin supplementation on thyroid hormone levels in animals or humans performing acute exhaustive exercise have not been investigated before. Therefore, we thought to test whether exhaustive exerciseinduced stress with antioxidant supplementation was capable of modulating the level of thyroid hormones at different altitudes. Serum levels of T4 (Thyroxin), T3 (Triiodothyronine), and TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone) were measured in rats (N=36) born and bred in low altitude (600 m above sea level) and high altitude (2200 m above sea level) following forced swimming with or without vitamins C and E (25 mg/kg) pre-treatments. Thyroid levels were significantly decreased in resting rats at high altitude compared to low altitude, and swimming exercise moderately increased T3 and TSH at both high and low altitudes, whereas T4 was markedly increased (62 %) at low altitude compared to a moderate high altitude increase (28 %). Co-administration of vitamins C and E augmented the observed forced swimminginduced thyroid release. However, the conversion of T4 to T3 was reduced in both altitude areas following swimming exercise and vitamin pre-treatment had no effect. We conclude that acute stress induced thyroidal hormones in rats, which was augmented by antioxidant drugs in both high and low altitude areas. These findings may play an important role in the human pathophysiology of thyroid gland at different altitudes

Enhanced Bounded Integral Control of Input-to-State Stable Nonlinear Systems

The bounded integral controller (BIC) was recently proposed to replace the traditional integral controller (IC) for the regulation of any input-to-state stable (ISS) nonlinear system and guarantee closed-loop system stability with a bounded control output. In this paper, an enhanced version of the BIC is presented to provide a better approximation of the traditional IC in the entire bounded range of the control output and relax the assumption on the selection of the initial conditions of the original BIC. Using Lyapunov methods, it is analytically proven that the enhanced BIC maintains the zero-gain property and guarantees closed-loop stability of any nonlinear ISS plant with a given bound at the control output, without suffering from integrator windup issues. The plant dynamics and structure can be unkown as long as the plant is ISS. Hence, the proposed enhanced version of the BIC can replace the traditional IC in many applications where closed-loop stability cannot be proven, without changing the controller operation. A practical example is simulated to verify the performance of the proposed enhanced BIC compared to the original version and the traditional IC