Multimodal Speech Enhancement Using Burst Propagation

This paper proposes the MBURST, a novel multimodal solution for audio-visual speech enhancements that consider the most recent neurological discoveries regarding pyramidal cells of the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions. The so-called burst propagation implements several criteria to address the credit assignment problem in a more biologically plausible manner: steering the sign and magnitude of plasticity through feedback, multiplexing the feedback and feedforward information across layers through different weight connections, approximating feedback and feedforward connections, and linearizing the feedback signals. MBURST benefits from such capabilities to learn correlations between the noisy signal and the visual stimuli, thus attributing meaning to the speech by amplifying relevant information and suppressing noise. Experiments conducted over a Grid Corpus and CHiME3-based dataset show that MBURST can reproduce similar mask reconstructions to the multimodal backpropagation-based baseline while demonstrating outstanding energy efficiency management, reducing the neuron firing rates to values up to \textbf{$70\%$} lower. Such a feature implies more sustainable implementations, suitable and desirable for hearing aids or any other similar embedded systems

Health education in diabetic population: Current practice and future challenges.

The aim of this review is to discuss the role of health education, self-management and multidisciplinary approach and how they can improve to produce a framework for better practice. Diabetes is a growing problem in all over the world. It is associated with severe complications if it is not adequately controlled. Diabetes patients need to develop a range of com-petencies that allow them to take greater control over the treatment of their disease. This requires education that promotes health whilst respecting individuals' self-perceived needs and voluntary choices. However, such concept is not new in the field of diabetes; health professionals are still struggling with how to administer it successfully. Diabetic patients can be educated toward greater autonomy, but all health professionals are not ready to work in partnership with them. This review indicates that there are number of important changes which need to be taken. There is a need to gain better understanding of diabetes management and theoretical principles underlying patient empowerment and education. In order to achieve better outcomes and effective health care services, collaboration of different health care professional working in different setup is required.sch_pod2inpress2778inpress

Economic Emergency Program: St. Cloud Printing Plant Closure

On May 30 2014, Quad/Graphics announced the completion of its acquisition of Brown Printing Company. As part of integration plans following the acquisition, the company later announced the closure of the Quad/Graphics printing plant in St. Cloud, Minnesota. The plant closure will result in the loss of 280 jobs at the St. Cloud plant. It is estimated that the closure will result in the total loss of 475 jobs, $72.7 million of sales, and$24.6 million of labor income in Stearns and Benton counties. In addition to the direct loss of jobs in the printing industry, the industries of food service and drinking places, wholesale trade, real estate establishments, and private hospitals will be most affected by the closure of the plant. The St. Cloud State University School of Public Affairs Research Institute and the University of Minnesota Extension have prepared this economic emergency report to highlight the potential economic impact of the plant closure. This report is presented with support from the EDA Center at the University of Minnesota-Crookston

Effects of cultural shock on foreign health care professionals: An analysis of key factors.

This review is based upon the foreign health care professionals (FHCP) who goes to various developed countries (United Kingdom, United States of America, Australia, Germany and France) from developing countries (India, Pakistan, Africa, Philippines etc) for work to have a better life style, good income, more opportunities, but experienced cultural shock with other types of problem. Cultural shock- is the mixture of anxiety and feelings of confusion, excitement and insecurity and each person feels it differently. To explore this topic in depth, we divided the topic into separate themes to achieve maximum knowledge that followed by reflection, recommendations and conclusion. FHCP generally feel the unfamiliar environment when they visit to a completely different culture in a foreign country and feel certain problems (familial, professionals, technical etc.) along with cultural shock. Following these findings, we have identified three themes: The first theme will discuss about the cultural shock among FHCP and its impact. The second theme will be a focus on different issues of FHCP about their failure or struggle due to culture shock and third theme which is management challenges in order to establish appropriate culture in organization. For this review, we searched and selected various peer reviewed articles online using search engines and databases including Medline, Scopus, Cinhail and Cochrane and books from the University of Northampton library and peer reviewed journals including International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Human Resources for Health, British Medical Journal and Bulletin of The World Health Organization as well. This review will help to explore different aspects of FHCP such as adjustment with entirely different culture, lack of experience, different lifestyles, face problems being immigrants, and working in a completely different setup with certain rules and regulations.sch_pod1pub2777pub

Organ preservation for advanced laryngeal cancer: Experience with concurrent chemoradiation therapy

Introduction: The larynx is a part of the upper respiratory tract that performs many essential functions including breathing, speaking, and swallowing. For this reason, the quality of life is significantly affected by laryngeal cancer and its treatment. Therefore, the focus of management for the last few decades has been on preserving the function of a larynx without compromising survival. This study was done with the purpose of reviewing our experience of organ preservation approach with concurrent chemoradiation therapy (CCRT) for locally advanced cancers of larynx.Methods: A retrospective chart review was carried out for the data of pathology reports and clinical notes of the patients who were diagnosed with laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma and primarily treated with CCRT at our tertiary care institute from November 2010 to June 2015.Results: Of 25 patients included in the study, there were 19 males and six females. The mean age was 56 years. On comparison of post-treatment CT scan following eight weeks of completion of therapy, 21 patients showed complete resolution of the disease and four patients had persistent disease who were later treated with salvage laryngectomy. The speech was understandable in 18 patients and poor or not understandable in seven patients. Three patients had chronic aspiration and breathing difficulties necessitating permanent tracheostomy. Three patients required permanent gastrostomy due to chronic dysphagia, one of them belonged to those who were also tracheostomized.Conclusions: Our experience with CCRT as an organ preservation approach for advanced laryngeal cancers was promising. When considering the functional organ preservation, the proportion of success is remarkably less; however, the overall impression is worthy enough to uphold the sentiment in favor of non-surgical organ preservation. The debate is ongoing in the quest of finding a balanced approach with acceptable toxicity and decent functional outcome with adequate speech, breathing, and swallowing

Flipped detection of psychoactive substances in complex mixtures using handheld Raman spectroscopy coupled to chemometrics

© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Raman Spectroscopy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/New psychoactive substance (NPS) misuse represents a critical social and health problem. Herein, a novel flipped approach is presented for the detection of psychoactive substances in complex mixtures using portable Raman spectroscopy. This consists firstly of evaluating the spectral dissimilarities of an NPS product to its constituent adulterants followed by detection of the NPS by means of key spectral signatures. To demonstrate it, three structurally diverse NPS and four commonly used adulterants were selected. A Design‐of‐Experiments guided approach was employed to determine the composition of simulate street samples, ranging from binary to quinary mixtures of varying concentrations. Spectra were acquired for all mixtures using a portable Raman spectrometer and examined using projection analysis on model systems, developed via principal component analysis using reference materials. For all 21 mixtures investigated, the innovative ‘flipped’ methodology resulted in isolated and unequivocal detection of the NPS. Interestingly, the NPS signatures were consistent across all mixtures investigated and were 1712, 1000, and 777/1022 cm−1 for 5F‐PB‐22, phenibut, and N‐Me‐2‐AI containing samples, respectively. Thus indicating that the developed model systems could be applicable to structural analogs. NPS were detected to concentrations as low as 6.0% w/w. This flipped methodology was benchmarked to the instrument's output algorithms and outperformed these in terms of NPS detection, particularly for low concentration ternary and quinary mixtures. As a result, this study represents a critical change in the conceptualization of novel approaches for the detection of psychoactive substances and further denotes a blueprint for the development of detection methodologies of target analytes in complex mixtures.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Knowledge, Attitude and Practices about Blood Donation among Undergraduate Medical Students in Karachi

Background: Blood donation is a major concern to the society as donated blood is lifesaving for individuals who need it. In Pakistan, the concept of voluntary blood donors is almost non-existent due to the absence of blood donor motivation and retention strategies. The healthy, active and receptive huge student population can be potential blood donor to meet the safe blood requirements. The objective of this study was to determine the knowledge, attitude and practices about blood donation among undergraduate medical students in Karachi. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in two public and one private medical college in Karachi from January to March 2012. A total of 600 medical students were interviewed with the help of structured questionnaire. Data analysis was performed in SPSS version 19. Multiple regressions were used to examine the effect of different independent variables on a single dependent variable to test the statistical significance at 95% confidence level. Results: The majority of participants (92%) had appropriate knowledge regarding the various aspects of blood donation. Attitude domain showed that around 42% of students were positive about blood donation. Around 50% of students showed willingness to donate blood. After adjusting for potential confounders, male gender was associated with appropriate knowledge, positive attitude and willingness for blood donation when compared against female gender. Conclusion: Good knowledge about blood donation practices is not transforming in donating blood. Interactive awareness sessions on blood donation should be organized during undergraduate years and opportunities for blood donation should be created for the students, which can greatly enhance the movement for voluntary non-remunerated blood donation-, to ensure good quality of blood and safe modern medical care.sch_pod2pub3848pub