Micro-a-fluidics ELISA for rapid CD4 cell count at the point-of-care

HIV has become one of the most devastating pathogens in human history. Despite fast progress in HIV-related basic research, antiretroviral therapy (ART) remains the most effective method to save AIDS patients' lives. Unfortunately, ART cannot be universally accessed, especially in developing countries, due to the lack of effective treatment monitoring diagnostics. Here, we present an inexpensive, rapid and portable micro-a-fluidic platform, which can streamline the process of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in a fully automated manner for CD4 cell count. The micro-a-fluidic CD4 cell count is achieved by eliminating operational fluid flow via “moving the substrate”, as opposed to “flowing liquid” in traditional ELISA or microfluidic methods. This is the first demonstration of capturing and detecting cells from unprocessed whole blood using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in a microfluidic channel. Combined with cell phone imaging, the presented micro-a-fluidic ELISA platform holds great promise for offering rapid CD4 cell count to scale up much needed ART in resource-constrained settings. The developed system can be extended to multiple areas for ELISA-related assays.the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology ; the U.S. Army Medical Research & Materiel Command (USAMRMC) ; the Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC).publisher versio

Gendered self-views across 62 countries: a test of competing models

Social role theory posits that binary gender gaps in agency and communion should be larger in less egalitarian countries, reflecting these countries’ more pronounced sex-based power divisions. Conversely, evolutionary and self-construal theorists suggest that gender gaps in agency and communion should be larger in more egalitarian countries, reflecting the greater autonomy support and flexible self-construction processes present in these countries. Using data from 62 countries (N = 28,640), we examine binary gender gaps in agentic and communal self-views as a function of country-level objective gender equality (the Global Gender Gap Index) and subjective distributions of social power (the Power Distance Index). Findings show that in more egalitarian countries, gender gaps in agency are smaller and gender gaps in communality are larger. These patterns are driven primarily by cross-country differences in men’s self-views and by the Power Distance Index (PDI) more robustly than the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI). We consider possible causes and implications of these findings

Sofrop: Self-Organizing And Fair Routing Protocol For Wireless Networks With Mobile Sensors And Stationary Actors

Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSAN) have become increasingly popular in recent years. The cooperative operation between sensor and actor nodes results in a major advantage against pure sensor networks and extends the range of possible application scenarios. One emerging application is the Amazon scenario in which stationary actors are deployed at accessible points in a thick forest structure and sensor nodes are thrown in a river flowing through the forest to gather observations from unreachable areas of the forest. This unprecedented and unique setting exposes two important challenges: (a) the dynamics of the river forms a continuously varying topology of sensor nodes requiring a highly adaptive network organization and (b) the inherent features of sensor and actor nodes, combined with rapid changes in the link structure of the network require efficient bandwidth utilization and data transmission. In this paper, we address these challenges by introducing SOFROP, a novel self-organizing and fair routing protocol for WSANs. The extensive simulations that are carried out for evaluation point out two highlights of SOFROP. These are the lightweight and efficient routing that is optimized for fairness and the locally acting adaptive overlay network formation. © 2010 IEEE

Local Positioning For Environmental Monitoring In Wireless Sensor And Actor Networks

Location estimation of sensor nodes is an essential part of most applications for wireless sensor and actor networks (WSAN). The ambiguous location information often makes the collected data useless in these applications. Environmental monitoring in particular, relies on an accurate position estimation in order to process or evaluate the collected data. In this paper, we present a novel and scalable approach for positioning of mobile sensor nodes with the goal of monitoring the Amazon river. The actors in the scenario are stationary and positioned at reachable spots on the land alongside the river whereas sensor nodes are thrown into the river to collect data such as water temperature, depth and geographical features. The actors are not equipped with positioning adaptors and they are only aware of their distances from the other actors. The sensor nodes collect data and forward it to the actors. While floating in the river, sensor nodes are often multiple hops away from the actor nodes, which makes it challenging to apply traditional positioning techniques. Through extensive simulations, we show that the positioning of the nodes is feasible using a multi-hop approach with local information exchange only. © 2010 IEEE

Sofrop: Self-Organizing And Fair Routing Protocol For Wireless Networks With Mobile Sensors And Stationary Actors

Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSAN) have become increasingly popular in recent years. The combined operation between sensor nodes and actors results in a major advantage compared to pure sensor networks extending the range of possible applications. One of the emerging applications is the Amazon scenario in which stationary actors are deployed at accessible points in a thick forest structure and sensor nodes are thrown in a river flowing through the forest to gather observations from unreachable areas. This unprecedented and unique setting exposes two important challenges: (a) the dynamics of the river forms a continuously varying topology of sensor nodes requiring a highly adaptive network organization and (b) the inherent features of sensor and actor nodes, combined with rapid changes in the link structure of the network requiring efficient bandwidth utilization and data transmission. In this paper, we address these challenges by introducing SOFROP, a self-organizing and fair routing protocol for WSANs. Through extensive simulations, we point out two highlights of SOFROP: the efficient lightweight routing that is optimized for fairness and the locally acting adaptive overlay network formation. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Multi-Hop Localization System For Environmental Monitoring In Wireless Sensor And Actor Networks

Location estimation of sensor nodes is an essential part of most applications for wireless sensor and actor networks. The ambiguous location information often makes the collected data useless in these applications. Environmental monitoring relies on an accurate position estimation to process or evaluate the collected data. In this paper, we present a novel and scalable approach for positioning of mobile sensor nodes with the goal of monitoring the Amazon river. The actors in the scenario are stationary and positioned at reachable spots on the land alongside the river whereas sensor nodes are thrown into the river to collect data such as water temperature, depth, and geographical features. The actors are not equipped with positioning adaptors, and they are only aware of their distances from the other actors. The sensor nodes collect data and forward it to the actors. While floating in the river, sensor nodes are often multiple hops away from the actors, which makes it challenging to apply traditional positioning techniques. Through extensive simulations, we show that the nodes can be efficiently positioned using a multi-hop approach with local information exchange only. The introduced approach is also applied to a scenario, where monkey swarm monitoring is simulated, to test the generalizability of the algorithm. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Multiplication-free Neural Networks [Çarpmasiz Yapay Sinir Aʇi]

In this article, a multiplication-free artificial Neural Network (ANN) structure is proposed. Inner products between the input vectors and the ANN weights are implemented using a multiplication-free vector operator. Training of the new artificial neural network structure is carried out using the sign-LMS algorithm. Proposed ANN system can be used in applications requiring low-power usage or running on microprocessors that have limited processing power. © 2015 IEEE

Use of the genogram technique in counseling with Turkish families

Genograms are widely used in practice because they are efficient tools that provide us with a profound understanding of our clients'family patterns, repetitive behaviors related to them, the effects their families have on their choices, and so on. However, not many of these applications have been reported and shared with other professionals. The aim of this study was to report experiences of using genogram technique in counseling with Turkish families. Case illustrations are discussed and a set of recommendations and ideas for further studies of this useful technique is provided. Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC