Evaluation morphométrique des chevaux pur-sang Arabe en Algérie: mensurations corporelles et proposition d’équations barymétriques

Cette étude vise à la caractérisation morphobiométrique des chevaux de course pur-sang arabe et à l’estimation d’équations barymétriques adaptées à cette race. La caractérisation a concerné 98 chevaux, dont 44 femelles et 54 mâles, tous âgés de trois ans et plus, auprès de 77 propriétaires-éleveurs dans 3 hippodromes d’Algérie (Zemmouri, Tiaret et Caroubier). Dix-neuf mensurations étaient relevées ainsi que le poids vif (PV). Le poids moyen est de 456,2 +/- 43,0 kg, variant de 335 kg à 545 kg. La sélection des variables à inclure dans les équations barymétriques a été réalisée à l’aide de la procédure stepwise du SAS. Quatre mensurations parmi les 19 réalisées ont été retenues pour la proposition d’équations d’estimation du poids vif des chevaux : le périmètre thoracique (PT), la hauteur à la croupe (HC), la longueur de l’encolure (LE) et le tour de l’encolure (TE). Ainsi, les équations proposées pour les mâles et pour les femelles sont respectivement de : PV= 7,024*PT - 787,119 (R²=0,99); PV=6,207*PT + 0,633*HC + 0,668*TE - 0,878*LE - 746,370 (R²=0,96). Les résultats de cette étude devraient permettre aux propriétaires-éleveurs et entraineurs de suivre aisément le poids de leurs chevaux. Ce suivi est nécessaire pour adapter l’activité et l’alimentation des chevaux et favoriser leur performance en course

A Team Approach to Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) in Schools

Cortical visual impairment (CVI) is presently the fastest growing cause of visual impairment in children. The influx of children with CVI entering school districts requires Individualized Education Program (IEP) teams to gain expertise about CVI and learn best practices to work with these children. CVI experts agree that a collaborative transdisciplinary team can best serve the complex needs of the children. Written by an occupational therapist, this project designs a CVI manual, A Team Approach to CVI in Schools, which reviews current literature and provides support for client centered, occupational based education for children with CVI. The literature review points to a shortage of research-based guidance for working with children with CVI. Although recent CVI literature offers new strategies for improving the vision of children with CV, this CVI manual fills the need for a school guide that focuses on the children\u27s broad school participation by addressing the transactional components of child, context, occupation, and teacher/therapist in designing effective school programs. The manual strives to build capacity of school IEP teams to work collaboratively and effectively with children with CVI by increasing the teams\u27 knowledge base about CVI and helping the children participate fully in school. Best practices in education for children with CVI are presented in the areas of school evaluation, programming, and student engagement in meaningful activities within daily routines

Master of Science

thesisTraumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death and disability in children. One of the leading causes of severe TBI in infants is abusive head trauma (AHT). Shaken baby syndrome (SBS) is a subset of AHT in which brain injury is present without obvious signs of head impact, thus the head injury is thought to be caused by shaking. SBS is one of the most difficult forms of TBI to study as the injuries are complex and the histories surrounding the child's injuries are questionable, or unknown. In this thesis, we investigate potential mechanisms of brain and eye injury from AHT and SBS. In Chapter 2, we investigate the potential coupling effect of the physiological response to crying (i.e. increased intracranial pressure (ICP) and increased cerebral blood volume (CBV)) with repetitive head trauma. Increased ICP and CBV prior to and during head trauma did increase the amount of injury and there was some macroscopic findings unique to that group; however, levels of injury were not as severe as reported clinically in SBS. In Chapters 3 and 4, we investigated two potential mechanisms of retinal hemorrhage (RH), a common ocular injury reported in AHT. The first study investigated whether repetitive occlusion of the optic nerve (ON) could lead to RH. Occluding the ON for 1-10 minutes and then releasing resulted in large RH that spanned the posterior pole and periphery of the retina. Cyclic, repetitive occlusion of the ON, however, resulted in no hemorrhage. In the second study, rapid increases in intraocular pressure (IOP) were evaluated as a possible mechanism of RH from AHT. A device mechanically indented the eyes of 3-5-day-old piglets at different rates and depths to produce large changes in IOP. No hemorrhages were caused from the rapid changes in IOP, and it was concluded that rapid changes in IOP by itself does not cause RH. This work identified two mechanisms which can influence or cause injury from abuse, and another mechanism was shown to likely not be a factor in abuse

Shaken Baby Syndrome: Retinal Hemorrhaging. A Biomechanical Approach to Understanding the Mechanism of Causation

Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is a form of abuse where typically an infant, age six months or less, is held and shaken. There may or may not be direct impact associated with this action. Further, there is very little agreement on the actual mechanism of SBS. Clinical studies are limited in showing the exact mechanism of injury and only offer postulations and qualitative descriptions. SBS has received much attention in the media, has resulted in a great deal of litigation and can be the source of unfounded accusations. Therefore, it is necessary to try to quantify the forces that may cause injury due to SBS. The physiology of infants makes injury due to SBS more likely. Infants have relatively large heads supported by weak necks that simply act as tethers (Prange et al., 2003). Therefore, there is minimal resistance to shaking. In addition, the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) layer surrounding the infant\u27s brain is up to 10 mm thick as opposed to 1–2 mm in older children and adults (Morison, 2002). This thick layer reduces the resistance in rotation of the brain and can cause shearing injuries to the brain tissue. In addition, retinal hemorrhaging has been reported in SBS. The infant\u27s eyes have a vitreous that is typically more gelatinous and with a higher viscosity than in adult eyes. In addition, this vitreous is firmly attached to the retina and is difficult to remove (Levin, 2000). A preliminary parametric model of an infant eye will be presented so that resultant nodal retinal force of the posterior retina can be investigated and compared with a documented shaking frequency and a documented impact pulse. Retinal forces are then compared with various studies that investigate retinal detachment or adhesive strength. This eye model is built using a variety of material properties that have been reported for the sclero-cornea shell, choroids, retina, vitreous, aqueous, lens, ciliary, optic nerve, tendons, extra ocular muscles, optic nerve, and orbital fatty tissue. The geometry of the eye has been carefully optimized for this parametric model based on scaling to an infant from an adult using idealized eye globe geometry and transverse slice tracings of The Visible Human Project. This model shows promise in investigating the forces and kinematics of the infant eye exposed to harmonic shaking and further bolsters some of the few biomechanical studies investigating SBS. However, improvements are necessary to complete the eye model presented. Specifically, improvements on the mechanical properties for the components of the eye and especially the infant eye are needed. There is currently a deficit of biomechanical studies of the materials needed for the infant eye that is specifically geared for use in an explicit finite element code package. Conversions and adaptations of available materials are used in this first version of the infant eye model presented here and are in fair agreement with some of the clinical studies concerning SBS

Measuring Collagen Arrangement and Its Relationship with Preterm Birth using Mueller Matrix Polarimetry

Preterm birth (PTB) is defined as delivery prior to 37 weeks of gestation. It is the leading cause of infant death worldwide, responsible for infant neurological disorders, long-term cognitive impairment, as well as chronic health issues involving the auditory, visual, digestive, and respiratory systems. In expectant mothers, causes for PTB can include infection, inflammation, vascular disease, short intervals between pregnancies, multiple gestations and genetic factors. In the U.S., PTB occurs in over 11% of births and at an elevated 18.1% in Miami-Dade County, FL; while in the developing world the incidence of PB is over 15%. Early identification of at-risk pregnancies is important for the success of medical intervention. Current diagnosis methodologies of PTB include ultrasound imaging of cervical length and fetal fibronectin assay but have low positive predictive power. Compared to the markers targeted by current diagnosis methodologies, collagen content in the cervix changes more drastically throughout the course of gestation due to its link to changes in load bearing capacity that occur during the phases of pregnancy. Mueller matrix polarimetry is capable of characterizing changes in collagen without making contact with patients and may prove to be an improvement to current diagnosis methodologies. A clear difference is seen in collagen orientation between nonpregnant and pregnant patients. The development of a new imaging modality aimed at assessing early changes in collagen arrangement in the cervix may improve risk determination of PTB and reduce the morbidity of the condition. Earlier prediction of PTB could improve outcomes by allowing longer intervention times to prolong gestation time for the infant in the womb. A more reliable quantitative predictor may also lead to development of more treatment options

Feature based dynamic intra-video indexing

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyWith the advent of digital imagery and its wide spread application in all vistas of life, it has become an important component in the world of communication. Video content ranging from broadcast news, sports, personal videos, surveillance, movies and entertainment and similar domains is increasing exponentially in quantity and it is becoming a challenge to retrieve content of interest from the corpora. This has led to an increased interest amongst the researchers to investigate concepts of video structure analysis, feature extraction, content annotation, tagging, video indexing, querying and retrieval to fulfil the requirements. However, most of the previous work is confined within specific domain and constrained by the quality, processing and storage capabilities. This thesis presents a novel framework agglomerating the established approaches from feature extraction to browsing in one system of content based video retrieval. The proposed framework significantly fills the gap identified while satisfying the imposed constraints of processing, storage, quality and retrieval times. The output entails a framework, methodology and prototype application to allow the user to efficiently and effectively retrieved content of interest such as age, gender and activity by specifying the relevant query. Experiments have shown plausible results with an average precision and recall of 0.91 and 0.92 respectively for face detection using Haar wavelets based approach. Precision of age ranges from 0.82 to 0.91 and recall from 0.78 to 0.84. The recognition of gender gives better precision with males (0.89) compared to females while recall gives a higher value with females (0.92). Activity of the subject has been detected using Hough transform and classified using Hiddell Markov Model. A comprehensive dataset to support similar studies has also been developed as part of the research process. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) providing a friendly and intuitive interface has been integrated into the developed system to facilitate the retrieval process. The comparison results of the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) shows that the performance of the system closely resembles with that of the human annotator. The performance has been optimised for time and error rate

Aging-In-Place Home Modification: LED Lamp Color Temperature Preference Among Adults

This study evaluated LED color temperature preference and effectiveness in a task light setting for older adults with a comparison to younger adults. Test subjects included visually active adults, male and female, from 19 years to 96 years of age. The researcher tested one hundred participants from several test sites. The researcher ascertained conclusions based on the correlations of age, gender, visual acuity, time of day, and visual medical conditions to LED preference. A tunable lamp with four correlated color temperatures (CCT/K), 2700K, 3500K, 4100K, and 5000K was analyzed using timed and graded, reading and number comparison tasks. Lumen output between the correlated color temperatures was adjusted for consistency to prevent illuminance (lumens) from effecting the outcome. Test subjects choose a preferred correlated color temperature and completed a subjective survey accessing the preferred comfort level. Results indicated the test subjects performed better with the 4100K correlated color temperature. Regarding personal preference of correlated color temperature by test subjects on average: the 4100K correlated color temperature was preferred first (36%), the 3500K correlated color temperature was preferred second (28%), the 5000K was preferred third (24%), and the 2700K was preferred least (12%). A significant difference was discovered between men and women with men, on average, taking longer to complete the reading and number matching tasks than women