171 research outputs found

    International Student Orientations: Indian Students at American Universities Around the Turn of the Twentieth Century

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    This dissertation examines the writings and experiences of five Indian international students in the United States during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By drawing attention to these students, I attend to the ways in which notions of freedom, progress, and inclusivity associated with American higher education, and liberalism more generally, are related to structures of racialized and colonial dispossession in India. I build these arguments by reading archival sources such as university administrative records, student publications, personal and official correspondence, as well as understudied aesthetic works, such as memoirs, travel narratives, essays, doctoral dissertations, and public lectures. These historical materials show us how Indian international students oriented themselves amidst the shifting power relations between British colonialism, Indian anticolonial nationalism, and American higher education. I explore how the American university became a site that both encouraged Indian international students’ anticolonial political work, while simultaneously managing and curtailing their sense of political possibility. I discuss how some Indian international students were drawn to the emancipatory tendencies of liberalism that they encountered on campus, but they never pushed their analysis to probe the ways in which racism and colonialism created the material conditions that guaranteed rights, liberties, and economic prosperity only for some sections of society. Conducting a historical analysis of the Indian international student therefore reveals the American university to be a paradoxical space. On the one hand, we find ample evidence that suggests that international students were welcomed into the campus community and supported in their educational and political endeavors by their alma mater. On the other hand, the international student’s experiences also reveal how racism operated both within and outside the university. Furthermore, the international student draws attention towards how the larger context of British colonialism in India pushed students to attend American universities, and correspondingly, how the American exceptionalist nationalist ideology functioning on campuses pulled Indian students into their orbit of influence

    A study of thrombocytopenia in malaria and its prognostic significance

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    Background:Malaria is one of the most common infectious diseases of tropics, affecting 300-500 million people and causing over 1 million deaths each year in the world. Malaria is a multisystem infection and can be associated with many complications. Thrombocytopenia is the most common hematological complication of malaria, but association of thrombocytopenia with different types of malaria and its prognostic implications in context with severity of low platelet count has not been evaluated in many of previous studies. Objectives of the study was to study the incidence, correlation of severity and prognostic significance of thrombocytopenia in malaria.Methods: A total of 100 cases were included in the study and identified positive for malaria parasites on peripheral smear examination with conventional microscopy and /or by rapid diagnostic test.Results: Present study includes 100 patient with malaria from which 78% were males and 22% were females. Most of the patients were suffering from P. vivax malaria (65%), and rest suffered from P. falciparum malaria (32%) and mixed infection (03%). Incidence of thrombocytopenia was 79%, of which mild, moderate and severe thrombocytopenia was 35.44%, 41.77% and 22.78% respectively. Complicated and uncomplicated malaria cases were 22.79% and 77.21% respectively.Conclusion: Clinical bleeding in severe malaria is not a common feature and occurred in 5.5% of individuals with severe disease. Unnecessary platelet transfusion is not required for mild to moderate degree of thrombocytopenia in malaria patients which further avoids an unnecessary cost burden in the poor group of patients.

    Algorithm Selection Framework for Cyber Attack Detection

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    The number of cyber threats against both wired and wireless computer systems and other components of the Internet of Things continues to increase annually. In this work, an algorithm selection framework is employed on the NSL-KDD data set and a novel paradigm of machine learning taxonomy is presented. The framework uses a combination of user input and meta-features to select the best algorithm to detect cyber attacks on a network. Performance is compared between a rule-of-thumb strategy and a meta-learning strategy. The framework removes the conjecture of the common trial-and-error algorithm selection method. The framework recommends five algorithms from the taxonomy. Both strategies recommend a high-performing algorithm, though not the best performing. The work demonstrates the close connectedness between algorithm selection and the taxonomy for which it is premised.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, accepted to WiseML '2

    The non-Verbal Structure of Patient Case Discussions in Multidisciplinary Medical Team Meetings

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    Meeting analysis has a long theoretical tradition in social psychology, with established practical rami?cations in computer science, especially in computer supported cooperative work. More recently, a good deal of research has focused on the issues of indexing and browsing multimedia records of meetings. Most research in this area, however, is still based on data collected in laboratories, under somewhat arti?cial conditions. This paper presents an analysis of the discourse structure and spontaneous interactions at real-life multidisciplinary medical team meetings held as part of the work routine in a major hospital. It is hypothesised that the conversational structure of these meetings, as indicated by sequencing and duration of vocalisations, enables segmentation into individual patient case discussions. The task of segmenting audio-visual records of multidisciplinary medical team meetings is described as a topic segmentation task, and a method for automatic segmentation is proposed. An empirical evaluation based on hand labelled data is presented which determines the optimal length of vocalisation sequences for segmentation, and establishes the competitiveness of the method with approaches based on more complex knowledge sources. The effectiveness of Bayesian classi?cation as a segmentation method, and its applicability to meeting segmentation in other domains are discusse

    Modelling the effects of glucagon during glucose tolerance testing.

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    From Europe PMC via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: ppub 2019-12-01, epub 2019-12-12Publication status: PublishedBACKGROUND:Glucose tolerance testing is a tool used to estimate glucose effectiveness and insulin sensitivity in diabetic patients. The importance of such tests has prompted the development and utilisation of mathematical models that describe glucose kinetics as a function of insulin activity. The hormone glucagon, also plays a fundamental role in systemic plasma glucose regulation and is secreted reciprocally to insulin, stimulating catabolic glucose utilisation. However, regulation of glucagon secretion by α-cells is impaired in type-1 and type-2 diabetes through pancreatic islet dysfunction. Despite this, inclusion of glucagon activity when modelling the glucose kinetics during glucose tolerance testing is often overlooked. This study presents two mathematical models of a glucose tolerance test that incorporate glucose-insulin-glucagon dynamics. The first model describes a non-linear relationship between glucagon and glucose, whereas the second model assumes a linear relationship. RESULTS:Both models are validated against insulin-modified and glucose infusion intravenous glucose tolerance test (IVGTT) data, as well as insulin infusion data, and are capable of estimating patient glucose effectiveness (sG) and insulin sensitivity (sI). Inclusion of glucagon dynamics proves to provide a more detailed representation of the metabolic portrait, enabling estimation of two new diagnostic parameters: glucagon effectiveness (sE) and glucagon sensitivity (δ). CONCLUSIONS:The models are used to investigate how different degrees of pax'tient glucagon sensitivity and effectiveness affect the concentration of blood glucose and plasma glucagon during IVGTT and insulin infusion tests, providing a platform from which the role of glucagon dynamics during a glucose tolerance test may be investigated and predicted

    Reconstructing promoter activity from Lux bioluminescent reporters

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    The bacterial Lux system is used as a gene expression reporter. It is fast, sensitive and non-destructive, enabling high frequency measurements. Originally developed for bacterial cells, it has also been adapted for eukaryotic cells, and can be used for whole cell biosensors, or in real time with live animals without the need for euthanasia. However, correct interpretation of bioluminescent data is limited: the bioluminescence is different from gene expression because of nonlinear molecular and enzyme dynamics of the Lux system. We have developed a computational approach that, for the first time, allows users of Lux assays to infer gene transcription levels from the light output. This approach is based upon a new mathematical model for Lux activity, that includes the actions of LuxAB, LuxEC and Fre, with improved mechanisms for all reactions, as well as synthesis and turn-over of Lux proteins. The model is calibrated with new experimental data for the LuxAB and Fre reactions from Photorhabdus luminescens --- the source of modern Lux reporters --- while literature data has been used for LuxEC. Importantly, the data show clear evidence for previously unreported product inhibition for the LuxAB reaction. Model simulations show that predicted bioluminescent profiles can be very different from changes in gene expression, with transient peaks of light output, very similar to light output seen in some experimental data sets. By incorporating the calibrated model into a Bayesian inference scheme, we can reverse engineer promoter activity from the bioluminescence. We show examples where a decrease in bioluminescence would be better interpreted as a switching off of the promoter, or where an increase in bioluminescence would be better interpreted as a longer period of gene expression. This approach could benefit all users of Lux technology
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