Analyzing the viability of direct PCR for use in conjunction with cyanoacrylate enhanced fingerprints

Efficient methods for DNA analysis are desperately needed in laboratories due to the influx in DNA analysis requests. The current DNA processing methods are costly, time consuming, and involve multiple tube changes, increasing the risk of contamination. However, the use of direct PCR can simplify the DNA analysis process by eliminating the extraction, purification and quantitation steps. Presently, the FBI Quality Assurance Standard 9.4 requires all evidence samples to be quantitated. As a result, the direct PCR method of DNA processing cannot be implemented on evidence samples at this time. Direct PCR presents the opportunity to provide efficient DNA analysis, making the investigation of this process an important endeavor for the forensic community. This study sought to evaluate the ability of direct PCR to generate DNA profiles from fingerprints that have been previously enhanced using cyanoacrylate. Traditional methods of DNA analysis used on fingerprints post chemical processing have resulted in full DNA profiles. In addition, direct PCR has been successful on a wide variety of samples containing potential inhibitors, even those visualized with various dactyloscopic powders. No studies have assessed the ability of using direct PCR to acquire DNA profiles from cyanoacrylate treated fingerprints, representing a gap in knowledge for the forensic community. An area of concern for the use of direct PCR is the loss of purification steps meant to remove PCR inhibitors, which could be problematic for analysis of chemically processed fingerprints. Therefore, the assessment of the viability of direct PCR on these types of evidence samples is of critical importance. Participants deposited fingerprints onto glass slides that were subsequently treated with cyanoacrylate. 60 samples were processed using direct PCR and 60 samples were processed through a traditional extraction method. Results were evaluated based on percent recoverability, calculated based on the number of alleles observed over the number of alleles expected. Traditional methods were shown to have the greatest success overall with 53% of samples having at least one correct allele call, however direct PCR showed some success with only 23%. These results indicate that processing cyanoacrylate fumed fingerprint samples using direct PCR is possible and further experimentation and optimization could potentially increase these success rates

FPGA Implementation of an Adaptive Noise Canceller for Robust Speech Enhancement Interfaces

This paper describes the design and implementation results of an adaptive Noise Canceller useful for the construction of Robust Speech Enhancement Interfaces. The algorithm being used has very good performance for real time applications. Its main disadvantage is the requirement of calculating several operations of division, having a high computational cost. Besides that, the accuracy of the algorithm is critical in fixed-point representation due to the wide range of the upper and lower bounds of the variables implied in the algorithm. To solve this problem, the accuracy is studied and according to the results obtained a specific word-length has been adopted for each variable. The algorithm has been implemented for Altera and Xilinx FPGAs using high level synthesis tools. The results for a fixed format of 40 bits for all the variables and for a specific word-length for each variable are analyzed and discussed

An evaluation of the effectiveness of the instructional methods used with a Student Response System at a large university

This study investigates the adoption of student response systems (SRS) across a large university campus. The study sought to understand how faculty members were using the SRS and what instructional strategies student and faculty found to be most valuable to their learning. The term “helpful” and the concept of “helpfulness” is used in place of “valuable” as it more clearly communicates to students and faculty the concept of how an SRS is of worth to them. Students were generally positive about the helpfulness of the instructional methods professors were using. Students found the ability to receive immediate feedback on their learning as the most helpful aspect of the SRS. They also felt their comprehension of course material, attendance to lecture, attentiveness/engagement during lecture, participation in lecture, and achievement in the course had increased from using the SRS. The cost of SRS transmitters had a negative effect on many students’ perceptions of the system’s overall utility. The least positive students felt that the cost of purchasing the clicker outweighed the benefits of using a student response system. These students rated the instructional methods as less helpful and rated their comprehension, attendance, engagement, participation, and achievement increasing less than those that felt the cost was worth the benefit.This study investigates the adoption of student response systems (SRS) across a large university campus. The study sought to understand how faculty members were using the SRS and what instructional strategies student and faculty found to be most valuable to their learning. The term “helpful” and the concept of “helpfulness” is used in place of “valuable” as it more clearly communicates to students and faculty the concept of how an SRS is of worth to them. Students were generally positive about the helpfulness of the instructional methods professors were using. Students found the ability to receive immediate feedback on their learning as the most helpful aspect of the SRS. They also felt their comprehension of course material, attendance to lecture, attentiveness/engagement during lecture, participation in lecture, and achievement in the course had increased from using the SRS. The cost of SRS transmitters had a negative effect on many students’ perceptions of the system’s overall utility. The least positive students felt that the cost of purchasing the clicker outweighed the benefits of using a student response system. These students rated the instructional methods as less helpful and rated their comprehension, attendance, engagement, participation, and achievement increasing less than those that felt the cost was worth the benefit

An evaluation of the effectiveness of the instructional methods used with a Student Response System at a large university

This study investigates the adoption of student response systems (SRS) across a large university campus. The study sought to understand how faculty members were using the SRS and what instructional strategies student and faculty found to be most valuable to their learning. The term “helpful” and the concept of “helpfulness” is used in place of “valuable” as it more clearly communicates to students and faculty the concept of how an SRS is of worth to them. Students were generally positive about the helpfulness of the instructional methods professors were using. Students found the ability to receive immediate feedback on their learning as the most helpful aspect of the SRS. They also felt their comprehension of course material, attendance to lecture, attentiveness/engagement during lecture, participation in lecture, and achievement in the course had increased from using the SRS. The cost of SRS transmitters had a negative effect on many students’ perceptions of the system’s overall utility. The least positive students felt that the cost of purchasing the clicker outweighed the benefits of using a student response system. These students rated the instructional methods as less helpful and rated their comprehension, attendance, engagement, participation, and achievement increasing less than those that felt the cost was worth the benefit.This study investigates the adoption of student response systems (SRS) across a large university campus. The study sought to understand how faculty members were using the SRS and what instructional strategies student and faculty found to be most valuable to their learning. The term “helpful” and the concept of “helpfulness” is used in place of “valuable” as it more clearly communicates to students and faculty the concept of how an SRS is of worth to them. Students were generally positive about the helpfulness of the instructional methods professors were using. Students found the ability to receive immediate feedback on their learning as the most helpful aspect of the SRS. They also felt their comprehension of course material, attendance to lecture, attentiveness/engagement during lecture, participation in lecture, and achievement in the course had increased from using the SRS. The cost of SRS transmitters had a negative effect on many students’ perceptions of the system’s overall utility. The least positive students felt that the cost of purchasing the clicker outweighed the benefits of using a student response system. These students rated the instructional methods as less helpful and rated their comprehension, attendance, engagement, participation, and achievement increasing less than those that felt the cost was worth the benefit

Sustainability of the Global Water Supply: An Exploratory Study of International Managers\u27 Perspectives

Water risk, both in terms of the risk to human life related to such threats as water scarcity and the risk to business related to such challenges as mismanagement of a critical resource, is a topic of increasing interest and importance to policymakers worldwide. The problems associated with water risk are being tackled by international development organizations such as the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development; by international business organizations such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the World Resources Institute; and by international aid organizations such as Water.org and countless corporate foundations. There is no shortage of brainpower, passionate commitment, or money spent on finding solutions to a growing problem. However, the problems continue. This research effort’s premise is that solutions to problems around the sustainability of the water supply remain elusive because such considerations have not yet become part of the day-to-day problem-solving routine of managers across the hierarchy of business organizations. In this study, managers in Brazil and South Korea were surveyed on their perspectives on the factors in their external environments that held promise for improving the sustainability of the world’s water supply. Our analysis identifies stakeholders in the external environment with whom managers might build effective coalitions for addressing this critical issue

Drosophila olfactory receptors as classifiers for volatiles from disparate real world applications

Olfactory receptors evolved to provide animals with ecologically and behaviourally relevant information. The resulting extreme sensitivity and discrimination has proven useful to humans, who have therefore co-opted some animals' sense of smell. One aim of machine olfaction research is to replace the use of animal noses and one avenue of such research aims to incorporate olfactory receptors into artificial noses. Here, we investigate how well the olfactory receptors of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, perform in classifying volatile odourants that they would not normally encounter. We collected a large number of in vivo recordings from individual Drosophila olfactory receptor neurons in response to an ecologically relevant set of 36 chemicals related to wine ('wine set') and an ecologically irrelevant set of 35 chemicals related to chemical hazards ('industrial set'), each chemical at a single concentration. Resampled response sets were used to classify the chemicals against all others within each set, using a standard linear support vector machine classifier and a wrapper approach. Drosophila receptors appear highly capable of distinguishing chemicals that they have not evolved to process. In contrast to previous work with metal oxide sensors, Drosophila receptors achieved the best recognition accuracy if the outputs of all 20 receptor types were used

Methodologies for teaching an engineering subject in different countries: comparison and results

Engineering or technical degrees are difficult to teach and, consequently, have always been characterized by a large number of academic failures. Therefore, continuous assessment has been applied to classes of similar content, related to Port and Coastal Engineering during these last years in three different Universities worldwide: University of La Republica (Montevideo, Uruguay), Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) and Cadiz (Spain). This paper presents different methodologies used to teach and evaluate these courses at each University, together with the results of the evaluations of the students who were enrolled during the current and previous stages. Generally, a decrease in the number of students who abandon the classes has been noticed together with an increase in the percentage of students who pass and an improvement of their grades, except at the University Nova de Lisboa were the results have remained stable. In addition, changes experienced in the courses are discussed herein by comparing the percentage of success in the different locations. Moreover, influence of the different methodologies and the possible reasons for these changes are also presented and analysed. As a conclusion, the improvement in educational outcomes has been achieved through the concurrence of different factors: the existence of more frequent written and/or oral exams, practical examples of case studies as well as access to specific tools of new technology and to documentation specifically prepared for the classes and available online. Evidently, the above mentioned tasks require a strong commitment and great effort by the teaching staff. If human resources diminish, as it is happening in Spain and Portugal due to the budget reduction in education, two difficult questions arise: For how long will teachers’ current effort be maintained? What impact will have their complete devotion to teaching in their research performance