Loneliness and Drinking in an HIV Positive Population

Background: Loneliness is a common outcome in the HIV+ community due to the stigma associated with it leading to social isolation. Studies show HIV+ individuals who experience significant loneliness do engage in risky sexual behaviors. Alcohol use also has adverse consequences in this population, interfering with antiretroviral medication adherence thus an increased likelihood of further risky sexual behaviors. Hypothesis: HIV+ individuals who experience an increase in loneliness will have an increase in hazardous drinking behaviors. Methods: 100 patients from an HIV treatment clinic in Jacksonville, Florida were administered the AUDIT scale to measure drinking habits and UCLA loneliness scale. Descriptive statistics and correlations have been reported. Results: The sample included 67% female, 83% African American with a mean age of 45.2 years. 63% were single and 69% were living with a spouse, partner, children, friends or other family members. Mean AUDIT score was 2.8 (SD: 4.47) with a cut-off value of 8, mean UCLA score was 45 .86 (SD: 4.01). Spearman\u27s correlations revealed no significant relationship between age and loneliness (r=0.175) (95% Cl= -0.13, 0.385); or living alone and loneliness (r = 0.03) (95% Cl = -0.202, 0.208). Further, no significant correlations were found between drinking and loneliness (r= -0.083) (95% Cl= -0.208, 0.200). Conclusions: Participants who lived alone scored higher on the UCLA Loneliness Scale, however the relationship was not statistically significant. There was no significant correlation between loneliness and hazardous drinking. This is contrary to prior expectations that participants who have increased loneliness have an increase in hazardous drinking

Connected Component Algorithm for Gestures Recognition

This paper presents head and hand gestures recognition system for Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Head and Hand gestures are an important modality for human computer interaction. Vision based recognition system can give computers the capability of understanding and responding to the hand and head gestures. The aim of this paper is the proposal of real time vision system for its application within a multimedia interaction environment. This recognition system consists of four modules, i.e. capturing the image, image extraction, pattern matching and command determination. If hand and head gestures are shown in front of the camera, hardware will perform respective action. Gestures are matched with the stored database of gestures using pattern matching. Corresponding to matched gesture, the hardware is moved in left, right, forward and backward directions. An algorithm for optimizing connected component in gesture recognition is proposed, which makes use of segmentation in two images. Connected component algorithm scans an image and group its pixels into component based on pixel connectivity i.e. all pixels in connected component share similar pixel intensity values and are in some way connected with each other. Once all groups have been determined, each pixel is labeled with a color according to component it was assigned to

Vascular Dynamics Aid a Coupled Neurovascular Network Learn Sparse Independent Features: A Computational Model

Cerebral vascular dynamics are generally thought to be controlled by neural activity in a unidirectional fashion. However, both computational modeling and experimental evidence point to the feedback effects of vascular dynamics on neural activity. Vascular feedback in the form of glucose and oxygen controls neuronal ATP, either directly or via the agency of astrocytes, which in turn modulates neural firing. Recently, a detailed model of the neuron-astrocyte-vessel system has shown how vasomotion can modulate neural firing. Similarly, arguing from known cerebrovascular physiology, an approach known as “hemoneural hypothesis” postulates functional modulation of neural activity by vascular feedback. To instantiate this perspective, we present a computational model in which a network of “vascular units” supplies energy to a neural network. The complex dynamics of the vascular network, modeled by a network of oscillators, turns neurons ON and OFF randomly. The informational consequence of such dynamics is explored in the context of an auto-encoder network. In the proposed model, each vascular unit supplies energy to a subset of hidden neurons of an autoencoder network, which constitutes its “projective field.” Neurons that receive adequate energy in a given trial have reduced threshold, and thus are prone to fire. Dynamics of the vascular network are governed by changes in the reconstruction error of the auto-encoder network, interpreted as the neuronal demand. Vascular feedback causes random inactivation of a subset of hidden neurons in every trial. We observe that, under conditions of desynchronized vascular dynamics, the output reconstruction error is low and the feature vectors learnt are sparse and independent. Our earlier modeling study highlighted the link between desynchronized vascular dynamics and efficient energy delivery in skeletal muscle. We now show that desynchronized vascular dynamics leads to efficient training in an auto-encoder neural network

Making the Modern Slum: Housing, Mobility, and Poverty in Bombay and its Peripheries

This dissertation examines the formation of urban poverty and slums which have long stigmatized South Asian cities. It focuses on the emergence of markets in housing through the 19th and early 20th centuries in Bombay primarily, and Karachi and Aden secondarily. It is the first historical study of slums, or poor and stigmatized housing, in colonial Western India. It critically engages with the terms of global urban modernity and the historiography of colonialism in South Asia, challenging the broader nationalist frames in which scholars have understood South Asia's poverty. While this is not a comparative project, the dissertation interrogates many of the implicit and explicit comparative claims that have been made about colonial cities and their legibility in the discourse on global slums. Housing was a visible marker of inequality on the urban landscape and therefore a useful site through which to examine the changing relations between migrants and settlers, laborers and capitalists, and society and the state. The changing political economy of Western India resulted in a laboring and urban poor whose housing issues became productive of regional, colonial, and national difference. By following circular migrants across city and country, this study builds on the subcontinent's Early Modern history of a pervasive rural-urban continuum of human networks. Everyday workers used their mobility and habitation practices to negotiate a changing world, bringing cities like Bombay, Karachi, and Aden into their routes of mobility to earn a livelihood. Increased opportunities combined with the intensification of production, market crises, growing demographic pressures on the land, and the spread of indebtedness to produce and reproduce inequality. This dissertation also compares the subsequent management of the urban poverty problem in cities across Western India, which heightened concerns over public health and sanitation. Newly financed poor housing initiatives sought to correct these at the turn of the century, but their limitations made modern slums. By addressing the eventual obfuscation of the once-transitioned status of the modern slum-dweller, this study delineates the bases for the conceptualization of a distinctive third world poverty and urban form

Rothmund–Thomson syndrome: anaesthesia considerations

Rothmund–Thomson syndrome (RTS) or poikiloderma congenitale is a rare autosomal recessive disorder. Approximately 300 cases of this syndrome have been reported in the scientific literature worldwide. This study reports the case of an 11-yearold female child with RTS undergoing diagnostic oesophago-gastro-duodeno (OGD) scopy as a result of dysphagia to solids. Adequate knowledge of the condition is needed when planning anaesthesia in such a case as associated anomalies can interfere with anaesthesia management.Keywords: anaesthesia management, Rothmund–Thomson syndrom

Development of zebrafish and computational models of neurovascular coupling in health and disease

In this thesis, I have developed a novel zebrafish model of neurovascular coupling. Combining lightsheet imaging, compound transgenic zebrafish models and custom MATLAB based analysis pipelines, I characterised the neurovascular responses (neuronal calcium increases and change in red blood cell speed) in the optic tectum in response to visual stimulation. I determined the development stage at which neurovascular coupling in zebrafish larvae develops, followed by testing the requirement for nitric oxide or astrocyte cyclo-oxygenase in my model. I then used this model to investigate factors influencing neurovascular function. I first characterized the effect of glucose exposure and the role of nitric oxide in modulating neurovascular coupling. I then examined the effect of genetic mutation of Guanosine Triphosphate cyclohydrolase (an enzyme involved in nitric oxide and dopamine production in the brain) on neurovascular coupling. Finally, I have developed a minimal mathematical model of the neurovascular unit. To demonstrate the potential of this model I have simulated the effect of high blood glucose and low nitric oxide on neurovascular coupling and show this conforms with experimental data obtained in zebrafish