333 research outputs found
Mooring the global archive: a Japanese ship and its migrant histories
Martin Dusinberre follows the Yamashiro-maru steamship across Asian and Pacific waters in an innovative history of Japan's engagement with the outside world in the late-nineteenth century. His compelling in-depth analysis reconstructs the lives of some of the thousands of male and female migrants who left Japan for work in Hawai'i, Southeast Asia and Australia. These stories bring together transpacific historiographies of settler colonialism, labour history and resource extraction in new ways. Drawing on an unconventional and deeply material archive, from gravestones to government files, paintings to song, and from digitized records to the very earth itself, Dusinberre addresses key questions of method and authorial positionality in the writing of global history. This engaging investigation into archival practice asks, what is the global archive, where is it cited, and who are 'we' as we cite it? This title is also available as Open Access
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Meets Deep Learning
This reprint focuses on the application of the combination of synthetic aperture radars and depth learning technology. It aims to further promote the development of SAR image intelligent interpretation technology. A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an important active microwave imaging sensor, whose all-day and all-weather working capacity give it an important place in the remote sensing community. Since the United States launched the first SAR satellite, SAR has received much attention in the remote sensing community, e.g., in geological exploration, topographic mapping, disaster forecast, and traffic monitoring. It is valuable and meaningful, therefore, to study SAR-based remote sensing applications. In recent years, deep learning represented by convolution neural networks has promoted significant progress in the computer vision community, e.g., in face recognition, the driverless field and Internet of things (IoT). Deep learning can enable computational models with multiple processing layers to learn data representations with multiple-level abstractions. This can greatly improve the performance of various applications. This reprint provides a platform for researchers to handle the above significant challenges and present their innovative and cutting-edge research results when applying deep learning to SAR in various manuscript types, e.g., articles, letters, reviews and technical reports
Examining the Relationships Between Distance Education Students’ Self-Efficacy and Their Achievement
This study aimed to examine the relationships between students’ self-efficacy (SSE) and students’ achievement (SA) in distance education. The instruments were administered to 100 undergraduate students in a distance university who work as migrant workers in Taiwan to gather data, while their SA scores were obtained from the university. The semi-structured interviews for 8 participants consisted of questions that showed the specific conditions of SSE and SA. The findings of this study were reported as follows: There was a significantly positive correlation between targeted SSE (overall scales and general self-efficacy) and SA. Targeted students' self-efficacy effectively predicted their achievement; besides, general self- efficacy had the most significant influence. In the qualitative findings, four themes were extracted for those students with lower self-efficacy but higher achievement—physical and emotional condition, teaching and learning strategy, positive social interaction, and intrinsic motivation. Moreover, three themes were extracted for those students with moderate or higher self-efficacy but lower achievement—more time for leisure (not hard-working), less social interaction, and external excuses. Providing effective learning environments, social interactions, and teaching and learning strategies are suggested in distance education
Cyberbullying in educational context
Kustenmacher and Seiwert (2004) explain a man’s inclination to resort to technology in his interaction with the environment and society. Thus, the solution to the negative consequences of Cyberbullying in a technologically dominated society is represented by technology as part of the technological paradox (Tugui, 2009), in which man has a dual role, both slave and master, in the interaction with it. In this respect, it is noted that, notably after 2010, there have been many attempts to involve artificial intelligence (AI) to recognize, identify, limit or avoid the manifestation of aggressive behaviours of the CBB type. For an overview of the use of artificial intelligence in solving various problems related to CBB, we extracted works from the Scopus database that respond to the criterion of the existence of the words “cyberbullying” and “artificial intelligence” in the Title, Keywords and Abstract. These articles were the subject of the content analysis of the title and, subsequently, only those that are identified as a solution in the process of recognizing, identifying, limiting or avoiding the manifestation of CBB were kept in the following Table where we have these data synthesized and organized by years
Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad: actas de las VIII Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en ciberseguridad: Vigo, 21 a 23 de junio de 2023
Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad (8ª. 2023. Vigo)atlanTTicAMTEGA: Axencia para a modernización tecnolóxica de GaliciaINCIBE: Instituto Nacional de Cibersegurida
Treatment of mild mental disorders in pregnancy: how safe are phytomedicines?
Pregnancy and associated physiological changes, which begin in the first trimester and are most pronounced in the third trimester, alter the pharmacokinetics of drugs. In addition, most drugs enter the fetal-placental unit, which pose several challenges to medical care, as it affects both the unborn child as well as the expectant mother. This also applies to the treatment of non-psychotic mental disorders (NMDs) such as depression, restlessness, sleep disorders, and anxiety since the use of synthetic, central nervous system (CNS)-active drugs for treatment should be carefully considered in a risk-benefit ratio. Nevertheless, pregnancy is a vulnerable period for such disorders and preexisting mental illnesses may even worsen or relapse. Alternatively, there are some herbal medicines, so called phytopharmaceuticals, which possess antidepressant, sedative, or anxiolytic properties. St. John’s wort, for example, is used to treat mild to moderate depression, whereas California poppy, valerian, and hops are mainly known for their sleep-inducing effects. Finally, lavender essential oil represents an option for the treatment of restlessness and anxiety due to its calming, sedative, and anxiolytic effects. Most products based on these phytopharmaceuticals are available over the counter (OTC) and are generally recommended by a considerable proportion of health care professionals who deal with pregnant women, such as midwives and obstetricians. Despite the limited experimental and clinical evidence, and especially lack of safety data, pregnant women often resort to herbal medicines and perceive them as safe.
We designed a cross-sectional survey with which we determined the use of most common herbal medicines in pregnancy by obstetrics patients. Furthermore, some questions targeted the perceived effectiveness and tolerability of some of these plants. The survey revealed that a large majority of pregnant women make use of herbal medicines, and lavender (22%), valerian (4.7%), St. John’s wort (3.0%), and hops (1.7%) were among the most mentioned pharmaceutical herbal products for the treatment of mental disorders and/or symptoms (MDS). Although 52.0% of all participants suffered from MDS during pregnancy, only 1.3% reported taking (synthetic) psychoactive medications. The fact that the prevalence of MDS was higher in pharmaceutical herbal products users than in non-users suggests that pregnant women rely on herbal medicines to treat mild MDS. St. John’s wort, valerian, hops, and lavender were used to reduce mood and sleep disorders, restlessness, and stress with perceived good to very good effectiveness and tolerability; no participant reported the use of California poppy.
To verify whether various herbal extracts such as St. John's wort, California poppy, valerian, hops, and lavender can be used for the treatment of NMD in pregnancy, their safety must be thoroughly investigated with a palette of in vitro assays. Those extracts and some of their active marker compounds were therefore evaluated for their cytotoxic and genotoxic potential and for their effects on metabolism and cell differentiation. The in-depth in vitro safety assessment indicates that extracts of St. John’s wort, California poppy, valerian, hops, and lavender – at concentrations up to 30 µg/mL – have no cytotoxic or genotoxic potential and do not compromise the viability, metabolic activity, and differentiation of placental cells. Moreover, none of the five extracts was able to significantly alter protein expression of BeWo b30 cells. For active marker substances, protopine (found in California poppy), valerenic acid (in valerian), and linalool (in lavender) showed no adverse effects in all experiments performed. The following phytochemicals might conceivably cause safety issues: hyperforin (in St. John’s wort) induced cell apoptosis (≥ 3 µM) and inhibited BeWo b30 cell differentiation (≥ 1 µM). Hypericin (in St. John's wort) decreased cell viability (≥ 1 µM) and induced cell apoptosis (30 µM). Valtrate (in valerian) decreased cell viability (≥ 10 µM), induced cell apoptosis (≥ 10 µM), and decreased the metabolic cell activity by reducing glucose consumption and concomitant lactate production. However, none of the tested phytochemicals resulted in genotoxic effects and thus are not DNA damaging. In summary, most of the phytochemicals were not of concern, but the attainment of high plasma concentrations of a few relevant phytochemicals – hyperforin, hypericin, and valtrate – deserves special attention.
In addition to investigating effects on placental cells, the question of transplacental permeation of certain phytochemicals needs to be addressed in order to better assess the risk of fetal exposure. For this purpose, an ex vivo placental perfusion model was optimized and modified that it can be used for the application of phytochemicals. Furthermore, an in vitro Transwell model with placental cells was established which served to complement the placental perfusion model. We successfully used the human ex vivo placental perfusion model for the first time for transport experiments with phytochemicals, after a thorough validation with various compounds, such as antipyrine, citalopram, and diazepam.
Only a small fraction of the initially present hyperforin (< 10%) reached the fetal circuit after 4 h, whereas hypericin did not cross the placental barrier and therefore remained in the maternal circuit. In contrast, protopine was transferred from the maternal to the fetal circuit, reaching a steady state after 90 min with no further changes in concentration. Also, valerenic acid was transferred gradually over a 4-hour period and reached an equilibrium with the maternal concentration. None of the phytochemicals affected placental viability or functionality, and histopathological evaluation of all placental specimens revealed no pathologic findings. In addition, in vitro translocation studies have confirmed that valerenic acid, from valerian, cannot cross the placental cell layer within 60 min, which might indicate that this phytochemical is not accessible to the unborn child in early pregnancy.
We were able to gain more detailed knowledge into the safety of St. John’s wort, California poppy, valerian, hops, and lavender extracts and a few of their active phytochemicals through in-depth in vitro assessments and an ex vivo model. In addition, we know that phytomedicines of these extracts, except California poopy, are already used in pregnancy in Switzerland with well-perceived effectiveness and tolerability. We hope that this thesis contributes to a rational basis for future decisions on the treatment of NMDs during pregnancy
Joe Pawsey and the Founding of Australian Radio Astronomy
This open access book is a biography of Joseph L. Pawsey. It examines not only his life but the birth and growth of the field of radio astronomy and the state of science itself in twentieth century Australia. The book explains how an isolated continent with limited resources grew to be one of the leaders in the study of radio astronomy and the design of instruments to do so. Pawsey made a name for himself in the international astronomy community within a decade after WWII and coined the term radio astronomy. His most valuable talent was his ability to recruit and support bright young scientists who became the technical and methodological innovators of the era, building new telescopes from the Mills Cross and Chris (Christiansen) Cross to the Parkes radio telescope. The development of aperture synthesis and the controversy surrounding the cosmological interpretation of the first major survey which resulted in the Sydney research group's disagreements with Nobel laureate Martin Ryle play major roles in this story. This book also shows the connections among prominent astronomers like Oort, Minkowski, Baade, Struve, famous scientists in the UK such as J.A. Ratcliffe, Edward Appleton and Henry Tizard, and the engineers and physicists in Australia who helped develop the field of radio astronomy. Pawsey was appointed the second Director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (Green Bank, West Virginia) in October 1961; he died in Sydney at the age of 54 in late November 1962. Upper level students, scientists and historians will find the information, much of it from primary sources, relevant to any study of Joseph L. Pawsey or radio astronomy. This is an open access book
Internet Localization of Multi-Party Relay Users: Inherent Friction Between Internet Services and User Privacy
Internet privacy is increasingly important on the modern Internet. Users are
looking to control the trail of data that they leave behind on the systems that
they interact with. Multi-Party Relay (MPR) architectures lower the traditional
barriers to adoption of privacy enhancing technologies on the Internet. MPRs
are unique from legacy architectures in that they are able to offer privacy
guarantees without paying significant performance penalties. Apple's iCloud
Private Relay is a recently deployed MPR service, creating the potential for
widespread consumer adoption of the architecture. However, many current
Internet-scale systems are designed based on assumptions that may no longer
hold for users of privacy enhancing systems like Private Relay. There are
inherent tensions between systems that rely on data about users -- estimated
location of a user based on their IP address, for example -- and the trend
towards a more private Internet.
This work studies a core function that is widely used to control network and
application behavior, IP geolocation, in the context of iCloud Private Relay
usage. We study the location accuracy of popular IP geolocation services
compared against the published location dataset that Apple publicly releases to
explicitly aid in geolocating PR users. We characterize geolocation service
performance across a number of dimensions, including different countries, IP
version, infrastructure provider, and time. Our findings lead us to conclude
that existing approaches to IP geolocation (e.g., frequently updated databases)
perform inadequately for users of the MPR architecture. For example, we find
median location errors >1,000 miles in some countries for IPv4 addresses using
IP2Location. Our findings lead us to conclude that new, privacy-focused,
techniques for inferring user location may be required as privacy becomes a
default user expectation on the Internet
A review of commercialisation mechanisms for carbon dioxide removal
The deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) needs to be scaled up to achieve net zero emission pledges. In this paper we survey the policy mechanisms currently in place globally to incentivise CDR, together with an estimate of what different mechanisms are paying per tonne of CDR, and how those costs are currently distributed. Incentive structures are grouped into three structures, market-based, public procurement, and fiscal mechanisms. We find the majority of mechanisms currently in operation are underresourced and pay too little to enable a portfolio of CDR that could support achievement of net zero. The majority of mechanisms are concentrated in market-based and fiscal structures, specifically carbon markets and subsidies. While not primarily motivated by CDR, mechanisms tend to support established afforestation and soil carbon sequestration methods. Mechanisms for geological CDR remain largely underdeveloped relative to the requirements of modelled net zero scenarios. Commercialisation pathways for CDR require suitable policies and markets throughout the projects development cycle. Discussion and investment in CDR has tended to focus on technology development. Our findings suggest that an equal or greater emphasis on policy innovation may be required if future requirements for CDR are to be met. This study can further support research and policy on the identification of incentive gaps and realistic potential for CDR globally
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