Gender Estimation from Fingerprints Using DWT and Entropy

Gender estimation from fingerprints have wide range of applications, especially in the field of forensics where identifying the gender of a criminal can reduce the list of suspects significantly. Although there have been quite a few research papers in the field of gender estimation from fingerprints most of those experiments used a lot of features but were only able to achieve poor classification results. That being the motivation behind the study we successfully proposed two different approaches for gender estimation from fingerprints and achieved high classification accuracy.;In this study we have developed two different approaches for gender estimation from fingerprints. The dataset used consists of 498 fingerprints of which 260 are male and 238 are female fingerprints. The first approach is based on wavelet analysis and uses features obtained from a six level discrete wavelet transform (DWT). Classification is performed using a decision stump classifier implemented in weka and was able to achieve a classification accuracy of 95.38% using the DWT approach. The second approach uses wavelet packet analysis and extracted the Shannon entropy and log-energy entropy from the coefficients of wavelet packet transform and provided a classification accuracy of 96.59% on the same dataset using decision stump classifier implemented in weka

2013 IMSAloquium, Student Investigation Showcase

This year, we are proudly celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of IMSA’s Student Inquiry and Research (SIR) Program. Our first IMSAloquium, then called Presentation Day, was held in 1989 with only ten presentations; this year we are nearing two hundred.https://digitalcommons.imsa.edu/archives_sir/1005/thumbnail.jp

Myths and Misconceptions of the Orthodox View of AIDS in Africa

This article rebuts conventional claims that AIDS in Africa is a microbial problem to be controlled through sexual abstinence, behavior modification, condoms, and drugs. The orthodox view mistakenly attributes to sexual activities the common symptoms that define an AIDS case in Africa - diarrhea, high fever, weight loss and dry cough. What has really made Africans increasingly sick over the past 25 years are deteriorating political economies, not people’s sexual behavior. The establishment view on AIDS turned poverty into a medical issue and made everyday life an obsession about safe sex. While the vast, selfperpetuating AIDS industry invented such aggressive phrases as “the war on AIDS” and “fighting stigma,” it viciously denounced any physician, scientist, journalist or citizen who exposed the inconsistencies, contradictions and errors in their campaigns. Thus, fighting AIDS in Africa degenerated into an intolerant religious crusade. Poverty and social inequality are the most potent co-factors for an AIDS diagnosis. In South Africa, racial inequalities rooted in apartheid mandated rigid segregation of health facilities and disproportionate spending on the health of whites, compared to blacks. Apartheid policies ignored the diseases that primarily afflicted Africans - malaria, tuberculosis, respiratory infections and protein anemia. Even after the end of apartheid, the absence of basic sanitation and clean water supplies still affects many Africans in the former homelands and townships. The article argues that the billions of dollars squandered on fighting AIDS should be diverted to poverty relief, job creation, the provision of better sanitation, better drinking water, and financial help for drought-stricken farmers. The cure for AIDS in Africa is as near at hand as an alternative explanation for what is making Africans sick in the first place

Primary Health Care

This book presents examples from various countries about the provision of health services at the primary care level. Chapters examine the role of professionals in primary healthcare services and how they can work to improve the health of individuals and communities. Written by authors from Africa, Asia, America, Europe, and Australia, this book provides up-to-date information on primary health care, including telehealth services in the era of COVID-19

Classification of microarray gene expression cancer data by using artificial intelligence methods

Günümüzde bilgisayar teknolojilerinin gelişmesi ile birçok alanda yapılan çalışmaları etkilemiştir. Moleküler biyoloji ve bilgisayar teknolojilerinde meydana gelen gelişmeler biyoinformatik adlı bilimi ortaya çıkarmıştır. Biyoinformatik alanında meydana gelen hızlı gelişmeler, bu alanda çözülmeyi bekleyen birçok probleme çözüm olma yolunda büyük katkılar sağlamıştır. DNA mikroarray gen ekspresyonlarının sınıflandırılması da bu problemlerden birisidir. DNA mikroarray çalışmaları, biyoinformatik alanında kullanılan bir teknolojidir. DNA mikroarray veri analizi, kanser gibi genlerle alakalı hastalıkların teşhisinde çok etkin bir rol oynamaktadır. Hastalık türüne bağlı gen ifadeleri belirlenerek, herhangi bir bireyin hastalıklı gene sahip olup olmadığı büyük bir başarı oranı ile tespit edilebilir. Bireyin sağlıklı olup olmadığının tespiti için, mikroarray gen ekspresyonları üzerinde yüksek performanslı sınıflandırma tekniklerinin kullanılması büyük öneme sahiptir. DNA mikroarray’lerini sınıflandırmak için birçok yöntem bulunmaktadır. Destek Vektör Makinaları, Naive Bayes, k-En yakın Komşu, Karar Ağaçları gibi birçok istatistiksel yöntemler yaygın olarak kullanlmaktadır. Fakat bu yöntemler tek başına kullanıldığında, mikroarray verilerini sınıflandırmada her zaman yüksek başarı oranları vermemektedir. Bu yüzden mikroarray verilerini sınıflandırmada yüksek başarı oranları elde etmek için yapay zekâ tabanlı yöntemlerin de kullanılması yapılan çalışmalarda görülmektedir. Bu çalışmada, bu istatistiksel yöntemlere ek olarak yapay zekâ tabanlı ANFIS gibi bir yöntemi kullanarak daha yüksek başarı oranları elde etmek amaçlanmıştır. İstatistiksel sınıflandırma yöntemleri olarak K-En Yakın Komşuluk, Naive Bayes ve Destek Vektör Makineleri kullanılmıştır. Burada Göğüs ve Merkezi Sinir Sistemi kanseri olmak üzere iki farklı kanser veri seti üzerinde çalışmalar yapılmıştır. Sonuçlardan elde edilen bilgilere göre, genel olarak yapay zekâ tabanlı ANFIS tekniğinin, istatistiksel yöntemlere göre daha başarılı olduğu tespit edilmiştir

Conceptual framework of a novel hybrid methodology between computational fluid dynamics and data mining techniques for medical dataset application

This thesis proposes a novel hybrid methodology that couples computational fluid dynamic (CFD) and data mining (DM) techniques that is applied to a multi-dimensional medical dataset in order to study potential disease development statistically. This approach allows an alternate solution for the present tedious and rigorous CFD methodology being currently adopted to study the influence of geometric parameters on hemodynamics in the human abdominal aortic aneurysm. This approach is seen as a “marriage” between medicine and computer domains

3D printed microfluidic devices for particle and cell analysis

Particle/cell analysis is crucial in many health, industrial and environmental monitoring processes. Its integration into miniaturised lab-on-a-chip systems enables a host of portable technologies. However, current lab-on-a-chip lithographical fabrication methods are costly, time-consuming and restrictive in design, impeding their widespread implementation. This has led to 3D printing being explored as an alternative in recent years, due to its ability to form devices in a single step, and its three-dimensional freedom. [Continues.

Suicide by Democracy: An Obituary for America and the World 2nd Edition

Among the millions of pages of print and web pages and incessant chat and chatter on TV and blogs and speeches, there is a notable absence of a short clear honest, accurate, sane, intelligent summary of the catastrophe that is destroying America and the world. This is partly due to a lack of understanding and partly to the suppression of free speech by the leftist/liberal/progressive/democratic/socialist/multicultural/diverse/social democratic/communist/third world supremacist coalition. I attempt to fill that gap here. An integral part of modern democracy is The One Big Happy Family Delusion, i.e., that we are selected for cooperation with everyone, and that the euphonious ideals of Democracy, Diversity and Equality will lead us into utopia, if we just manage things correctly (the possibility of politics). The No Free Lunch Principle ought to warn us it cannot be true, and we see throughout history and all over the contemporary world, that without strict controls, selfishness and stupidity gain the upper hand and soon destroy any nation that embraces these delusions. In addition, the monkey mind steeply discounts the future, and so we cooperate in selling our descendant’s heritage for temporary comforts, greatly exacerbating the problems. I describe the great tragedy playing out in America and the world, which can be seen as a direct result of our evolved psychology, which, though eminently adaptive and eugenic on the plains of Africa ca. 6 million years ago, when we split from chimpanzees, to ca. 50,000 to 150,000 years ago, when many of our ancestors left Africa (i.e., in the EEA or Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation), is now maladaptive and dysgenic and the source of our Suicidal Utopian Delusions. So, like all discussions of behavior (philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, anthropology, politics, law, literature, history, economics, soccer strategies, business meetings, etc.), this book is ultimately about evolutionary strategies, selfish genes and inclusive fitness (kin selection, i.e., natural selection). One might take this to imply that a just, democratic and enduring society for any kind of entity on any planet in any universe is only a dream, and that no being or power could make it otherwise. It is not only ‘the laws’ of physics that are universal and inescapable, or perhaps we should say that inclusive fitness is a law of physics. The great mystic Osho said that the separation of God and Heaven from Earth and Humankind was the most evil idea that ever entered the human mind. In recent times an even more evil notion arose, that humans are born with rights, rather than having to earn privileges. The idea of human rights, as now commonly promulgated, is an evil fantasy created by leftists to draw attention away from the merciless destruction of the earth by unrestrained 3rd world motherhood. Thus, every day the population increases by 200,000, who must be provided with resources to grow and space to live, and who soon produce another 200,000 etc. And one almost never hears it noted that what they receive must be taken from those already alive, and their descendants. Their lives diminish those already here in both major obvious and countless subtle ways. Every new baby destroys the earth from the moment of conception. In a horrifically overcrowded world with vanishing resources, there cannot be human rights without destroying the earth and our descendant’s futures. It could not be more obvious, but it is rarely mentioned in a clear and direct way, and one will never see the streets full of protesters against motherhood. The most basic fact, almost never mentioned, is that there are not enough resources in America or the world to lift a significant percentage of the poor out of poverty and keep them there. The attempt to do this is bankrupting America and destroying the world. The earth’s capacity to produce food decreases daily, as does our genetic quality. And now, as always, by far the greatest enemy of the poor is other poor and not the rich. America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century, and now all of it, due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources, and the addition of some 3 billion more ca. 2100, will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. The earth loses at least 1% of its topsoil every year, so as it nears 2100, most of its food growing capacity will be gone. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America, this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a nightmare of crime and poverty. China will continue to overwhelm America and the world, as long as it maintains the dictatorship which limits selfishness and enables long term planning. The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests (which I suggest may be regarded as an unrecognized -- but the commonest and most serious-- psychological problem -- Inclusive Fitness Disorder). This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone else—there is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently, social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system. This is happening even without climate change or the evil designs of Seven Senile Sociopaths who rule China, but they make it happen much faster. The only major change from the first edition of this essay is the addition of a brief discussion of China, which represents by far the greatest threat to peace and freedom worldwide. The policy of appeasing them, which all countries and most businesses pursue, is the worst of the suicidal utopian delusions. Those wishing to read my other writings may see Talking Monkeys 2nd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle 2nd ed (2019), Suicide by Democracy 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Stucture of Human Behavior (2019) and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019

Development of a novel bioreactor and systems for suspension cell culture in biopharmaceutical production

Mammalian cells offer superior cellular machinery for the production of complex biological products. These cells provide proper post-translational processing machinery for recombinant protein expression to acquire the desired folding for optimal activity. With this advantage, mammalian cells have become the preferred choice for the production of biological products. These cells may grow either attached to a solid surface (adherent cells) or, where adapted, as suspension cultures. In order to grow these cells efficiently in suspension, a bioreactor is therefore required. Bioreactors play a key role in the production of biologicals. Due to the continuous advancement of medicine and the healthcare industry, the demand for biological drugs has increased in the last three decades. This has placed a significant pressure on the biopharmaceutical industry to meet this increasing demand and has become a key driving force behind the need to develop better, safer and more economical bioreactor designs and culture processes. Continuous stirred tank bioreactor is the norm for production of many bioproducts. However, these bioreactors exert high shear forces to cells due to the impeller speed, bubble disruption, and foam formation. In addition, at a large scale, improper mass transfer impairs the performance of cell lines and achieving high cell densities and prolonged viability with correct glycosylation of a secreted proteins is still a challenge during scale-up. Many cell lines, for example Vero cells, which are widely used to produce human vaccines are difficult to adapt into suspension culture. Fixed-bed bioreactors and the use of microcarriers provide an alternative platform for their growth to produce biologicals. However, a high surface area is required to achieve the high cell density which leading to an elevated cost of production (mainly from microcarriers) and ensuing a costly and technically challenging scaling-up of these systems. Other designs such as single-use bioreactors and novel bioreactors based on different operating principles have been explored, but their utilisation is limited from laboratory to pilot scale. Hence, a comprehensive bioreactor design which would be suitable for a large variety of cell lines to produce high-yielding products in suspension culture with the lowest cost and risk in the shortest span of time is still sought. In the current research, two approaches were investigated to address these challenges. Firstly, a horizontal tubular bioreactor (HTB) with a spiral impeller was designed and fabricated for the propagation of suspended mammalian cells with a focus to achieve middle to high cell density by improving mass transfer whilst reducing hydrodynamic shear and energy requirements through surface aeration. The second approach is to test the adaptation of adherent Vero cells into single-cell suspension culture in serum-free media by treating them with an anti-cancer drug, Puromycin amino nucleoside (PAN). The absence of a supporting surface for cell growth (e.g. microcarriers) and serum-free conditions are expected to reduce the cost of manufacturing and to achieve higher productivity of biological production per unit volume of bioreactor. In the first approach, the horizontal tubular vessel was designed to achieve the final volume of approximately 5.0 L. Design of the impeller is a key component that dictates the mixing patterns and mass transfer efficiency. Different geometric configurations were used to design the spiral impeller by considering various parameters such as impeller diameter, the pitch of the blade, pitch angle, height of the blade, the thickness of the blade, clearance efficiency and the position of the heating element. Another important aspect of the prototype design was incorporating an external magnetically-coupled motor drive which assisted in not only in aseptic handling but also reduction in mechanical stress and generation of fewer particles for cleanroom operations. The side plate was designed with the appropriate number of addition ports to allow execution of batches with minimum cross-contamination and for the ease of operation. Thereafter, the engineering characterisation of the HTB was carried out. The performance of the HTB was evaluated for (i) oxygen mass transfer (kLa) through the dynamic gassing-in method, (ii) mixing time and fluid flow by tracer and phenolphthalein method, (iii) minimum stirring speed (Njs) through alginate beads mimicking cell loading and modelling through modifying Zwietering equation, (iv) power consumption through heat calorimetry (temperature method) and (v) shear stress by determining specific death constant (kd) at different impeller speeds. The general characterisation profile of HTB has shown that at high agitation speed, homogeneity and mass transfer efficiency improved while power consumption increases with an increase in agitation speed. The bioreactor operated well at 2 L and 3 L capacity when the impeller is 40 - 90 % immersed in the liquid. The maximum mass transfer coefficient (kLa) of 16 h-1 was measured with a 3 L volume with an impeller speed of 500 rpm. These results are comparable with the other culture systems of the same scale. The HTB was also tested for suitability to grow mammalian cells. Three batches were carried out, of which one was with the Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells expressing the somatic angiotensinconverting enzyme (sACE) and the two with plain CHO cells without expressing any recombinant protein. The maximum cell density achieved was of 5.48 x 106 cells mL-1 with plain CHO cells and 4.14 x 106 cells mL-1 with CHO cells expressing sACE with a maximum protein productivity of 465 mg mL-1 . The specific death rate constant of 0.025 (h-1 ) was obtained when impeller speed was increase from 150 rpm (normal) to 300 rpm (induced shear) for 72 h. In this study, CHO cells have been successfully adapted to suspension in serum-free conditions using the slow weaning of serum method and propagated in the HTB whereas Vero cells have been adapted successfully to serum-free media in adherent conditions. Attempt to suspend Vero cells based on literature using the weaning method remains timeous. Therefore, an alternative approach was explored using an anti-cancer drug (PAN) which is known to suppress the expression of integrin (cell adhesion receptors). The expectations from this approach were that the suppression of integrin would allow cells to detach and grow as a suspended culture (Krishnamurti et al., 2001). The results indicated that the anti-cancerous drug may have modulated the structure and function of the integrin which resulted in dislodging of the cells from the surface and form clumps which were viable for a week in suspension culture without increase in cell density. The viability of the cell clumps and few suspended cells were tested by re-seeding of these cells back to tissue culture (TC) flasks in serum-containing media without the presence of PAN. The culture in the TC flask regained confluency in the 2-3 day which confirms the viability of the cells and the likeliness of integrin re-modulating itself in the absence of PAN. As the suspended Vero cells did not grow, they were not tested for growth in the HTB. To investigate the biological activity of these Vero cells, Isothermal microcalorimetry was used to evaluate the heat generation profile of the Vero cells quantitatively before and after drug treatment. The heat flow data (metabolic heat) from the treated and normal cells showed a distinct decrease in the heat generation profile which indicated that the treated cells were viable but not as active as the normal (non-treated) cells. It was evident from the heat flow data obtained for the PAN-treated Vero cells (-0.13 µW) from that of non-treated cells (13.12 µW) and thereafter when PAN-treated Vero cells regrown in serum-containing media, they regain their metabolic activities which were indicated by their heat flow values as positive control (9.30 µW), 100 µg mL-1 (10.12 µW), 200 µg mL-1 (10.18 µW), and 250 µg mL1 (9.15 µW). It is recommended that dielectric spectroscopy and total DNA in the culture from the lysed cells could also be used to measure the bioactivity of the pre and post treated cells and data can be compared with IMC for more insight into the behaviour of the cells It has been concluded that the horizontal tubular bioreactor (HTB) can sustain the middle to high cell density by imparting desired mixing and mass and heat transfer requirements whilst exerting minimum hydrodynamic shear. For the improvement of the design, it is recommended that more batches at different agitation speeds in combination with different airflow rate would further unravel the suitability of HTB to grow mammalian cells and stringently decode the optimum process conditions to achieve high cell densities with extended longevity. Additionally, changes in the pitch of the impeller blades could result in the improved fluid flow profile, mixing and mass transfer while drawing low power input. Subsequently, different modes of operation, e.g. fed-batch or continuous operation are suggested to investigate the suitability of the HTB for integrity, sterility, and possible higher productivities of products. In suspending Vero cells, it has been concluded that the presence of serum-containing media reversibly stimulates the re-modulation of the integrin which poses hurdles in suspending Vero cells by reattaching the cells to the TC flasks. Therefore, it is recommended that a thorough investigation of the drug-treated cell integrin profile is examined through fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) which would give details of the inhibition of the different integrin subunits. This information could form the basis of adapting cell-lines into suspension in a single step, which is otherwise difficult to adapt