Raman spectroscopy and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy for diagnosis of human cancer and acanthosis nigricans

Cancer and diabetes are common chronic diseases in today\u27s world causing numerous deaths in adults as well as children. Most common types of cancers in adults include prostate, lung, breast, colorectal and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, while among children; leukemia, and brain and central nervous system cancers are quite common. In each of these cases, early detection of the cancer or disease dramatically increases the chances of successful treatment. In recent years, there has been much interest in using Raman spectroscopy and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy as analytical optical spectroscopic methods for early diagnosis of diseases. Raman spectroscopy can be used to measure changes in the bio-molecular composition of a tissue specimen, and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy can measure chromophores of the skin. In this research, archived (formalin-fixed paraffin processed) tissues of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, prostate, and pediatric tumors have been investigated using Raman spectroscopy. We have utilized statistical methods such as principal component analysis (PCA) and discriminant function analysis (DFA) to analyze the spectral output and distinguish between normal and cancerous tissues. The results show cancerous tissues can be successfully distinguished from normal tissues in three cancer types in ex vivo. However, due to loss of biochemical in the tissue processing (paraffinizing and deparaffinizing procedure), the prediction ability of the archived tissues are less compared to frozen tissues as observed in the pediatric tumor investigation. We also investigated the diagnostic capability of diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and colorimetry on a skin disease, acanthosis nigricans in vivo. The aim is to quantify and characterize the skin color change associated with acanthosis nigricans skin disease in insulin-resistant obese individuals. We observe both the instruments can be utilized to detect acanthosis nigricans with more than 87% sensitivity and 94% specificity when combined with advanced chemometric methods

SPILLOVER EFFECTS OF EXCHANGE RATE RETURNS IN SELECTED ASIAN COUNTRIES

We analyze the nature of exchange rate return spillovers for 16 currencies. We use 10 years of daily exchange rate data, covering January 01, 2010 to December 31, 2019. By using the spillover index proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2009, 2012), we provide empirical evidence on the spillover of exchange rate returns among the Asian countries. The largest spillover flows from the Singapore dollar to other currencies (16.49%). Overall, our results confirm the presence of exchange rate return spillovers within the Asian countries and about 22% of the forecast error variance is due to spillovers

Packet Compression in GPU Architectures

Graphical processing unit (GPU) can support multiple operations in parallel by executing it on multiple thread unit known as warp i.e. multiple threads running the same instruction. Each time miss happens at private cache of Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), the request is migrated over the network to shared L2 cache and then later down to Memory Controller (MC) for supplying memory block. The interconnect delay becomes a bottleneck due to a large number of requests from different SM and multiple replies from the MCs. The compression technique can be used to mitigate the performance bottleneck caused by a large volume of data. In this work, I apply various compression algorithms and propose a new compression scheme, Data Segment Matching (DSM). I apply approximation to the floating-point elements to improve compressibility and develop a prediction model to identify number of approximation bits. I focus on compression techniques to resolve this bottleneck. The evaluations using a cycle accurate simulator show that this scheme improves Instructions per Cycle (IPC) by 12% on an average across various benchmarks with compressibility 50% in integer type benchmarks and 35% in floating-point type benchmarks when the proposed scheme is applied to packet compression in the interconnection network

VOLATILITY SPILLOVER OF INTRADAY EXCHANGE RATES ON SOME SELECTED ASEAN COUNTRIES

In this paper, we use hourly exchange rate data for selected ASEAN countries (Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines) to test the hypothesis that exchange rate own shocks dominate exchange rate volatility. We find strong evidence that own exchange rate volatility explains between 64% to 86% of their own exchange rate volatility movements. These results do not change when we include the Chinese CNY currency in the analysis. Moreover, we find that exchange rate shocks of ASEAN countries explain 36%, 24% and 23% of exchange rate volatility movements of Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore, suggesting that for these countries are more synchronized

Three essays on asset pricing

This study examined the predictability of two main popular asset classes, stocks and bonds. The findings are useful for investors to make their investments wisely and timely

On some multivariate descriptive statistics based on multivariate signs and ranks

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC

Effect of low-cost white reflecting sling application on efficacy of phototherapy in healthy term neonates with non-hemolytic jaundice: A randomized controlled trial

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of white reflecting material (slings) hung from the sides of compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) phototherapy equipment in reducing the duration of phototherapy in healthy term neonates with non-hemolytic jaundice. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Setting: Postnatal ward of a tertiary level neonatal unit. Participants and Intervention: Healthy term neonates with non-hemolytic jaundice between 24 h and 14 days of age were randomly assigned to receive single surface phototherapy with (n=50) or without slings (n=50). Outcome Measure: Primary outcome was rate of reduction of serum bilirubin levels and secondary outcome was duration of phototherapy (hour) required. Results: Birth weight (2780±360 vs. 2790±260 g), gestation (38.22±1.0 vs. 38.08±0.90 week), and initial serum total bilirubin (17.36±1.06 vs. 16.96±1.20 mg/dL) were comparable between the two groups. There was a significant difference in the duration of phototherapy (mean ± standard deviation [SD]) between the sling (53.28±21.02 h) and no sling (62.88±20.22 h) groups (p=0.02). The irradiance of phototherapy equipment (μW/cm2/nm, mean±SD) was higher in sling group compared to no sling group (24.17±0.13 vs. 22.11±0.21). Conclusion: Hanging of white reflective sling on sides of CFL phototherapy equipment resulted in marginal increase in irradiance and reduction in the duration of phototherapy

Degradation of Chrysene by Enriched Bacterial Consortium

Chrysene is a high molecular weight (HMW), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) known for its recalcitrance and carcinogenic properties and sparsely soluble (0.003 mg/L) in aqueous medium. Due to these refractory properties, bioavailability of chrysene is very low and therefore is persistence in the environment escaping the metabolism by microorganisms. However, few bacterial and fungal strains are reported to degrade chrysene, but with lower efficiency, requiring additional/extraneous carbon sources (co-substrates) for it’s complete mineralization. In this study, development, enrichment and characterization of bacterial consortium ASDC, consisting of Rhodococcus sp., ASDC1; Bacillus sp. ASDC2; and Burkholderia sp. ASDC3 were reported. Chrysene was utilized as a sole source of carbon and energy by the consortium, having maximum degradation rate of 1.5 mg/L/day and maximum growth rate of 0.125/h, under optimized conditions of pH 7.0, 37°C under aeration of 150 rpm on gyrating shaking. Chrysene degradation was unaffected in presence of other PAHs like pyrene, fluoranthene, naphthalene, phenanthrene, benzene, toluene and xylene, individually as well as in mixture. The results revealed that peptone, ammonium nitrate, sodium succinate have enhanced the chrysene degradation rate during first 24 h of experimentation, which was later on inhibited with increase in incubation time. The chrysene degradation was inhibited by mercury even at lower concentration (1 mM). The results also revealed that SDS has enhanced its degradation by 5.2-fold for initial 24 h of growth, but with increasing in the incubation period, it decreases by 1.2-fold on 7th day of experimentation. The HPLC studies suggested that chrysene was degraded through phthalic acid pathway by the consortium ASDC and the stoichiometric measurements indicated the complete mineralization of chrysene. The flask scale results were validated at simulated microcosm models, where enriched consortium ASDC exhibited maximum degradation (96%) in polluted, non-sterile soil sediment, indicating that consortial strains along with indigenous metabolism showed synergistic metabolism for degradation of chrysene. Thus, the above study revealed the useful enrichment of bacterial community for synergistic degradation of PAHs (chrysene) which could be further exploited for in situ remediation of PAH contaminated sites

Raman spectroscopic investigation of frozen and deparaffinized tissue sections of pediatric tumors: neuroblastoma and ganglioneuroma

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/97213/1/jrs4223.pd