Caregiver Perceptions of Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disabilities in New Delhi, India

Evidence suggests that parenting an autistic child or a child with neurodevelopmental disabilities can be more challenging than parenting a child meeting their developmental milestones, especially when there is a dearth of support services, such as in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Despite the majority of the world’s children residing in LMICs, there are limited studies examining the understanding of developmental disorders and autism in these regions. We therefore aim to investigate perceptions of autism and developmental disabilities in caregivers of children in an urban setting in New Delhi, India. Thirteen semi-structured interviews with parents/caregivers of children were conducted in three groups: (1) caregivers with a child with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD); (2) caregivers with a child with a diagnosis of intellectual disability (ID); (3) and caregivers with children meeting their developmental milestones. Transcripts were analysed using framework analysis. Three themes on the impact of cultural and contextual factors on the recognition, interpretation, and reporting of autistic symptoms are discussed, and additional themes focus on the impact of diagnosis and family support. Our findings highlighted a vital need for greater community awareness and recognition of autism in India, for example through community and healthcare training, which may help to reduce stigma and facilitate wider family support

System for Detection of Malicious Wireless Device Patterns

The research within presents the use of Hidden Markov Models (HMM) for the detection of wireless devices in highly noisy environments using their unintended electromagnetic emissions (UEE). All electromagnetic devices emit such radiation that is unique to the electronics, housing, and other device attributes. This pattern recognition system can provide continuous detection analysis and can provide ideal information regarding the distance to an unknown device. An experiment was performed where UEE of a device was detected by a spectrum analyzer. Experimental result shows that our model can accurately detect if there is a device nearby emitting UEE or not

Tripartite to Bipartite Entanglement Transformations and Polynomial Identity Testing

We consider the problem of deciding if a given three-party entangled pure state can be converted, with a non-zero success probability, into a given two-party pure state through local quantum operations and classical communication. We show that this question is equivalent to the well-known computational problem of deciding if a multivariate polynomial is identically zero. Efficient randomized algorithms developed to study the latter can thus be applied to the question of tripartite to bipartite entanglement transformations

Is England's public health nutrition system in crisis? A qualitative analysis of the capacity to feed all in need during the COVID-19 pandemic

Methodology: An exploratory methodology was adopted to examine experiences relating to capability and capacity among formal and informal helpers within the PHN domain. An online survey, mainly open-ended questions, was used to capture experiences over the period 2010 - 2020. A mixed sampling strategy, including snowball and convenience sampling, via social media and social network contact-sharing approaches, was adopted. Data was analysed using an inductive thematic approach. Results: A total of 89 participants representing the PHN system in England were recruited over two months. Three main themes and eight sub-themes were identified. The first reflected unequivocal accounts of the impact of austerity and the inability of PHN services to meet demand for food security. The second articulated capacity and capability issues within the system, with geographical variations in service delivery, and a lack of connectivity between central, local government, and third sector providers. These were attributed to widening nutrition and health inequalities. Participants felt that the government needed to invest more technical and financial resources to support public health nutrition. They also felt that schools could play a larger role at local level, but there was a need for a clear national recovery plan, setting out a comprehensive and fully supported national strategy to eradicate food insecurity in England Conclusions: Further in-depth research is needed to continue to track the impact of recovery strategies on food insecure people and the capacity of the PHN system. Urgent investment in the capacity and coordination of PHN services is needed to support food insecure people in England. The UK could include the ratification of the right to food in national laws, in line with global commitments already agreed to by the UK State Party

Approximability of Capacitated Network Design

In the capacitated survivable network design problem (Cap- SNDP), we are given an undirected multi-graph where each edge has a capacity and a cost. The goal is to find a minimum cost subset of edges that satisfies a given set of pairwise minimum-cut requirements. Unlike its classical special case of SNDP when all capacities are unit, the approximability of Cap-SNDP is not well understood; even in very restricted settings no known algorithm achieves a o(m) approximation, where m is the number of edges in the graph. In this paper, we obtain several new results and insights into the approximability of Cap-SNDP. We give an O(log n) approximation for a special case of Cap-SNDP where the global minimum cut is required to be at least R, by rounding the natural cut-based LP relaxation strengthened with valid knapsackcover inequalities. We then show that as we move away from global connectivity, the single pair case (that is, when only one pair (s, t) has positive connectivity requirement) captures much of the difficulty of Cap-SNDP: even strengthened with KC inequalities, the LP has an Ω(n) integrality gap. Furthermore, in directed graphs, we show that single pair Cap-SNDP is 2log1−3 n-hard to approximate for any fixed constant δ \u3e 0. We also consider a variant of the Cap-SNDP in which multiple copies of an edge can be bought: we give an O(log k) approximation for this case, where k is the number of vertex pairs with non-zero connectivity requirement. This improves upon the previously known O(min{k, log Rmax})-approximation for this problem when the largest minimumcut requirement, namely Rmax, is large. On the other hand, we observe that the multiple copy version of Cap-SNDP is Ω(log log n)-hard to approximate even for the single-source version of the problem

Underwater blast loading of partially submerged sandwich composite materials in relation to air blast loading response

The research presented in this paper focusses on the underwater blast resilience of a hybrid composite sandwich panel, consisting of both glass-fibre and carbon-fibre. The hybrid fibres were selected to optimise strength and stiffness during blast loading by promoting fibre interactions. In the blast experiment, the aim was to capture full-field panel deflection during large-scale underwater blast using high-speed 3D Digital Image Correlation (DIC). The composite sandwich panel was partially submerged and subjected to a 1 kg PE7 charge at 1 m stand-off. The charge was aligned with the centre of the panel at a depth of 275 mm and mimicked the effect of a near-field subsurface mine. The DIC deflection data shows that the horizontal cross-section of the panel deforms in a parabolic shape until excessive deflection causes core shear cracking. The panel then forms the commonly observed “bathtub” deformation shape. DIC data highlighted the expected differences in initial conditions compared to air-blast experiments, including the pre-strains caused by the mass of water (hydrostatic pressure). Furthermore, water depth was shown to significantly influence panel deflection, strain and hence damage sustained under these conditions. Panel deformations and damage after blast was progressively more severe in regions deeper underwater, as pressures were higher and decayed slower compared to regions near the free surface.An identical hybrid composite sandwich panel was subjected to air blast; one panel underwent two 8 kg PE7 charges in succession at 8 m stand-off. DIC was also implemented to record the panel deformations during air blast. The air and underwater blast tests represent two different regimes of blast loading: one far-field in air and one near-field underwater. The difference in deflection development, caused by the differing fluid mediums and stand-off distances, is apparent from the full-field results. During underwater blast the panel underwent peak pressure loading of approximately 52.6 MPa whilst during air blast the panel was subjected to 67.7 kPa followed by 68.9 kPa peak pressure loads in succession. The two experiments demonstrate the response of the same hybrid composite sandwich panel under two differing blast regimes.The post-blast damage and strength of the hybrid panels following air and underwater blasts were evaluated. Post-blast testing revealed that the underwater blast causes significantly more damage compared to air blast, particularly debonding between the skins and core. The air blast panel sustains no visible rear skin/core debonding, whereas 13 regions of rear-face debonds are identified on the underwater blast panel. Sustaining no front-skin breakage was advantageous for retaining a high proportion of the compressive modulus for this hybrid layup following underwater blast. Damage mechanisms were interrelated. Determining the most detrimental type is not straightforward in real explosive and non-idealised experiments, however debonding was understandably shown to be significant. A further study to isolate failure modes and improve in situ instrumentation is ongoing

Pathological Staging of Renal Cell Carcinoma: A Review of 300 Consecutive Cases

Aims: Pathological staging of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) can be challenging compared to other cancer types, as invasion often manifests as finger‐like protrusions into vascular spaces or renal sinus tissue. Although prior studies have shown larger tumour size to be correlated highly with renal sinus invasion, prospective data on evaluating pathological stage are limited. We evaluated a large series reported by one urological pathologist. Methods and results: Three hundred consecutive specimens were reviewed. Tumours larger than 5 cm were routinely sampled extensively or grossly re‐reviewed when no extrarenal extension was identified on initial examination. Apparent multifocal disease was assessed critically for intravascular spread. Retrograde venous invasion was reported in 15 of 300 (5%) cases, 13 of 15 of which were clear cell RCC. Of a total of 163 specimens with clear cell histology, only five of 34 (15%) tumours 7 cm or larger were reported as pT2, all of which had an explanatory comment indicating the absence of definitive extrarenal spread. In contrast, 15 of 20 (75%) pT2 tumours were non‐clear cell histology (papillary, chromophobe and translocation‐associated). Comparing pT3a or higher tumours, the median tumour size in cases with retrograde venous invasion was 8.0 cm, compared to 6.2 cm in cases without retrograde venous invasion (P = 0.005). ConclusionsOur findings support that retrograde venous invasion should be considered carefully before diagnosing multifocal clear cell RCC, which is rare in the sporadic setting. In the absence of vascular invasion, multifocal clear cell papillary RCC can be a mimic. pT2 occurs more frequently with non‐clear cell histology (particularly papillary or chromophobe RCC).https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/merf2019basicsci/1002/thumbnail.jp

A comparative study of online translation services for cross language Information retrieval

Technical advances and its increasing availability, mean that Machine Translation (MT) is now widely used for the translation of search queries in multilingual search tasks. A number of free-to-use high-quality online MT systems are now available and, although imperfect in their translation behaviour, are found to produce good performance in CrossLanguage Information Retrieval (CLIR) applications. Users of these MT systems in CLIR tasks generally assume that they all behave similarly in CLIR applications, and the choice of MT system is often made on the basis of convenience. We present a set of experiments which compare the impact of applying two of the best known online systems, Google and Bing translation, for query translation across multiple language pairs and for two very different CLIR tasks. Our experiments show that the MT systems perform differently on average for different tasks and language pairs, but more significantly for different individual queries. We examine the differing translation behaviour of these tools and seek to draw conclusions in terms of their suitability for use in different settings

Simple model of adsorption on external surface of carbon nanotubes: a new analytical approach basing on molecular simulation data

Nitrogen adsorption on carbon nanotubes is wide- ly studied because nitrogen adsorption isotherm measurement is a standard method applied for porosity characterization. A further reason is that carbon nanotubes are potential adsorbents for separation of nitrogen from oxygen in air. The study presented here describes the results of GCMC simulations of nitrogen (three site model) adsorption on single and multi walled closed nanotubes. The results obtained are described by a new adsorption isotherm model proposed in this study. The model can be treated as the tube analogue of the GAB isotherm taking into account the lateral adsorbate-adsorbate interactions. We show that the model describes the simulated data satisfactorily. Next this new approach is applied for a description of experimental data measured on different commercially available (and characterized using HRTEM) carbon nanotubes. We show that generally a quite good fit is observed and therefore it is suggested that the observed mechanism of adsorption in the studied materials is mainly determined by adsorption on tubes separated at large distances, so the tubes behave almost independently

Targeting BRCA1-BER deficient breast cancer by ATM or DNA-PKcs blockade either alone or in combination with cisplatin for personalized therapy

BRCA1, a key factor in homologous recombination repair may also regulate base excision repair (BER). Targeting BRCA1-BER deficient cells by blockade of ATM and DNA-PKcs could be a promising strategy in breast cancer. We investigated BRCA1, XRCC1 and pol β protein expression in two cohorts (n=1602 sporadic and n=50 germ-line BRCA1 mutated) and mRNA expression in two cohorts (n=1952 and n=249). Artificial neural network analysis for BRCA1-DNA repair interacting genes was conducted in 249 tumours. Pre-clinically, BRCA1 proficient and deficient cells were DNA repair expression profiled and evaluated for synthetic lethality using ATM and DNA-PKcs inhibitors either alone or in combination with cisplatin. In human tumours, BRCA1 negativity was strongly associated with low XRCC1, and low pol β at mRNA and protein levels (p<0.0001). In patients with BRCA1 negative tumours, low XRCC1 or low pol β expression was significantly associated with poor survival in univariate and multivariate analysis compared to high XRCC1 or high pol β expressing BRCA1 negative tumours (ps<0.05). Pre-clinically, BRCA1 negative cancer cells exhibit low mRNA and low protein expression of XRCC1 and pol β. BRCA1-BER deficient cells were sensitive to ATM and DNA-PKcs inhibitor treatment either alone or in combination with cisplatin and synthetic lethality was evidenced by DNA double strand breaks accumulation, cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. We conclude that XRCC1 and pol β expression status in BRCA1 negative tumours may have prognostic significance. BRCA1-BER deficient cells could be targeted by ATM or DNA-PKcs inhibitors for personalized therapy