Electrochemical Aptasensor for Detection of Dopamine

This work presents a proof of concept of a novel, simple, and sensitive method of detection of dopamine, a neurotransmitter within the human brain. We propose a simple electrochemical method for the detection of dopamine using a dopamine-specific aptamer labeled with an electrochemically active ferrocene tag. Aptamers immobilized on the surface of gold screen-printed gold electrodes via thiol groups can change their secondary structure by wrapping around the target molecule. As a result, the ferrocene labels move closer to the electrode surface and subsequently increase the electron transfer. The cyclic voltammograms and impedance spectra recorded on electrodes in buffer solutions containing different concentration of dopamine showed, respectively, the increase in both the anodic and cathodic currents and decrease in the double layer resistance upon increasing the concentration of dopamine from 0.1 to 10 nM L-1. The high affinity of aptamer-dopamine binding (KD ≈ 5 nM) was found by the analysis of the binding kinetics. The occurrence of aptamer-dopamine binding was directly confirmed with spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements

Art and Science: Utilizing Steam Education to Promote Empathetic Scientific Literacy and Global Citizenship

This research expounds on the history of, hurdles facing, and future goals and possibilities for STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics) education, including how it can create empathetic, scientifically literate global citizens. Reasons for the cultivation of empathy, scientific literacy, and global citizenship in the classroom are numerous; escalating worldwide nationalism, accelerated climate change, and the increased need to address sustainable development and poverty have produced particular urgency for such student development. Science educators today rarely prioritize the “art” in STEAM education, despite a panoply of cognitive benefits including perspective-taking, critical thinking, and increased personal connection to scientific content. Development of such skills is needed to ensure that well-informed democratic participation and scientific innovation can be relied upon to create an equitable and sustainable future for the planet and humanity. In addition to providing an analysis of piloted STEAM lessons, this paper urges a more robust understanding of effective STEAM education, including explicit emphasis on art, in order to prepare humankind to confront our most pressing issues

Association between disability measures and healthcare costs after initial treatment for acute stroke

<p><b>Background and Purpose:</b> The distribution of 3-month modified Rankin scale (mRS) scores has been used as an outcome measure in acute stroke trials. We hypothesized that hospitalization and institutional care home stays within the first 90 days after stroke should be closely related to 90-day mRS, that each higher mRS category will reflect incremental cost, and that resource use may be less clearly linked to the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) or Barthel index.</p> <p><b>Methods:</b> We examined resource use data from the GAIN International trial comparing 90-day mRS with total length of stay in hospital or other institutions during the first 90 days. We repeated analyses using NIHSS and Barthel index scores. Relationships were examined by analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Bonferroni contrasts of adjacent score categories. Estimated costs were based on published Scottish figures.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> We had full data from 1717 patients. Length of stay was strongly associated with final mRS (P<0.0001). Each mRS increment from 0 to 1–2 to 3–4 was significant (mean length of stay: 17, 25, 44, 58, 79 days; P<0.0005). Ninety-five percent confidence limits for estimated costs (£) rose incrementally: 2493 to 3412, 3369 to 4479, 5784 to 7008, 7300 to 8512, 10 095 to 11 141, 11 772 to 13 560, and 2623 to 3321 for mRS 0 to 5 and dead, respectively. Weaker relationships existed with Barthel and NIHSS.</p> <p><b>Conclusions:</b> Each mRS category reflects different average length of hospital and institutional stay. Associated costs are meaningfully different across the full range of mRS outcomes. Analysis of the full distribution of mRS scores is appropriate for interpretation of treatment effects after acute stroke and more informative than Barthel or NIHSS end points.</p&gt

Reply to comment by Eduardo Garzanti on "When and where did India and Asia collide"

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Adversarial Training for Free!

Adversarial training, in which a network is trained on adversarial examples, is one of the few defenses against adversarial attacks that withstands strong attacks. Unfortunately, the high cost of generating strong adversarial examples makes standard adversarial training impractical on large-scale problems like ImageNet. We present an algorithm that eliminates the overhead cost of generating adversarial examples by recycling the gradient information computed when updating model parameters. Our "free" adversarial training algorithm achieves comparable robustness to PGD adversarial training on the CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100 datasets at negligible additional cost compared to natural training, and can be 7 to 30 times faster than other strong adversarial training methods. Using a single workstation with 4 P100 GPUs and 2 days of runtime, we can train a robust model for the large-scale ImageNet classification task that maintains 40% accuracy against PGD attacks. The code is available at https://github.com/ashafahi/free_adv_train.Comment: Accepted to NeurIPS 201

Multi-Stakeholder Dispute Resolution: Building Social Capital Through Access to Justice at the Community Level

Systems of multi-stakeholder dispute resolution are increasingly recognized as objectives of good governance by international organizations such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Such objectives arise out of insights based on the dynamics of social capital that community based initiatives cannot succeed where trust is absent and mechanisms for collective decision-making do not exist. Yet localized decision-making can take many forms-whether distributional, competitive, or collaborative. This paper will examine, in particular, the impact of collaborative systems of decision-making on building social capital through access to justice in local communities. It will do this through examining participant feedback, meeting minutes, and post-consultation reports of a community multi-stakeholder dialogue process in Cajamarca, Peru. The creation of dispute resolution forums where community members can actively participate in the generation of shared objectives, collect and access information, and take action on issues of collective concern represents an important foundation for the development of social capital

Teaching for service learning and community leadership in the united Arab emirates

This chapter reports on one faculty member\u27s experience introducing a service learning component into a sequence of required courses in a College of education at a University in the United Arab Emirates. This study identifies local issues associated with introducing service learning into the curriculum and examines students\u27 perceptions of self, attitudes toward service to others, and service as leadership and outcomes. Relatively little evidence exists in the Middle East of the actual processes involved in developing and implementing service learning programs and the relevant connections that can be made to Islamic principles for community advocacy and leadership. Copyright © 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Pulse Regulation Control Technique for Flyback Converter

Pulse regulation, a fixed frequency control technique, is introduced and applied to flyback converter operating in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM). The control parameters are designed in a way that the converter operates as close as possible to the critical conduction mode. In contrast to the conventional pulsewidth modulation control scheme, the principal idea of pulse regulation is to achieve output voltage regulation using high and low-power pulses. Pulse regulation is simple, cost effective, and enjoys a fast dynamic response. The proposed technique is applicable to any converter operating in DCM. However, this work mainly focuses on flyback topology. In this paper, the main mathematical concept of the new control algorithm is introduced and simulations as well as experimental results are presented