1,053 research outputs found
Twin Peaks - The Legal and Regulatory Anatomy of Australia's System of Financial Regulation
Australia adopts a functionally-based model – the ‘twin peaks’ model – under which the functions for financial regulation are consolidated into two regulators: the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), which is responsible for the regulation of companies, market conduct and consumer protection; and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), which is responsible for prudential regulation. This paper examines the anatomy of the Australian twin peaks model from a legal and regulatory perspective. It also reflects on the work of the Financial System Inquiry (FSI) of 2014, which reviewed Australia’s financial system and examined issues that are relevant to the operation of the twin peaks model
Attention control comparisons with SLT for people with aphasia following stroke: methodological concerns raised following a systematic review
Objective: Attention control comparisons in trials of stroke rehabilitation require care to minimize the risk of comparison choice bias. We compared the similarities and differences in SLT and social support control interventions for people with aphasia. Data sources: Trial data from the 2016 Cochrane systematic review of SLT for aphasia after stroke. Methods: Direct and indirect comparisons between SLT, social support and no therapy controls. We double-data extracted intervention details using the template for intervention description and replication. Standardized mean differences and risk ratios (95% confidence intervals (CIs)) were calculated. Results: Seven trials compared SLT with social support (n  =  447). Interventions were matched in format, frequency, intensity, duration and dose. Procedures and materials were often shared across interventions. Social support providers received specialist training and support. Targeted language rehabilitation was only described in therapy interventions. Higher drop-out (P  =  0.005, odds ratio (OR) 0.51, 95% CI 0.32–0.81) and non-adherence to social support interventions (P  <  0.00001, OR 0.18, 95% CI 0.09–0.37) indicated an imbalance in completion rates increasing the risk of control comparison bias. Conclusion: Distinctions between social support and therapy interventions were eroded. Theoretically based language rehabilitation was the remaining difference in therapy interventions. Social support is an important adjunct to formal language rehabilitation. Therapists should continue to enable those close to the person with aphasia to provide tailored communication support, functional language stimulation and opportunities to apply rehabilitation gains. Systematic group differences in completion rates is a design-related risk of bias in outcomes observed
Ovarian Cancer Genetics: Subtypes and Risk Factors
The genetics of ovarian cancer are a complex, ever evolving concept that presents hurdles in classification, diagnosis, and treatment in the clinic. Instead of common driver mutations, genomic instability is one of the hallmarks of ovarian cancer. While ovarian cancer is stratified into different clinical subtypes, there still exists extensive genetic and progressive diversity within each subtype. In high-grade serous ovarian cancer, the most common subtype, TP53 is mutated in over 90% of all patients while the next most common mutation is less than 20%. However, next-generation sequencing and biological statistics have shown that mutations within DNA repair pathways, including BRCA1 and BRCA2, are common in about 50% of all high-grade serous patients leading to the development of a breakthrough therapy of poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors. This is just one example of how a better understanding of the complex genetic background of ovarian cancer can improve clinical treatment. A thorough review of ovarian cancer genetics and the effect it has on disease development, diagnosis, progression, and treatment will enhance the understanding of how to better research and treat ovarian cancer
Compute-Bound and Low-Bandwidth Distributed 3D Graph-SLAM
This article describes a new approach for distributed 3D SLAM map building.
The key contribution of this article is the creation of a distributed
graph-SLAM map-building architecture responsive to bandwidth and computational
needs of the robotic platform. Responsiveness is afforded by the integration of
a 3D point cloud to plane cloud compression algorithm that approximates dense
3D point cloud using local planar patches. Compute bound platforms may restrict
the computational duration of the compression algorithm and low-bandwidth
platforms can restrict the size of the compression result. The backbone of the
approach is an ultra-fast adaptive 3D compression algorithm that transforms
swaths of 3D planar surface data into planar patches attributed with image
textures. Our approach uses DVO SLAM, a leading algorithm for 3D mapping, and
extends it by computationally isolating map integration tasks from local
Guidance, Navigation, and Control tasks and includes an addition of a network
protocol to share the compressed plane clouds. The joint effect of these
contributions allows agents with 3D sensing capabilities to calculate and
communicate compressed map information commensurate with their onboard
computational resources and communication channel capacities. This opens SLAM
mapping to new categories of robotic platforms that may have computational and
memory limits that prohibit other SLAM solutions
Hardware-Accelerated SAR Simulation with NVIDIA-RTX Technology
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a critical sensing technology that is
notably independent of the sensor-to-target distance and has numerous
cross-cutting applications, e.g., target recognition, mapping, surveillance,
oceanography, geology, forestry (biomass, deforestation), disaster monitoring
(volcano eruptions, oil spills, flooding), and infrastructure tracking (urban
growth, structure mapping). SAR uses a high-power antenna to illuminate target
locations with electromagnetic radiation, e.g., 10GHz radio waves, and
illuminated surface backscatter is sensed by the antenna which is then used to
generate images of structures. Real SAR data is difficult and costly to produce
and, for research, lacks a reliable source ground truth. This article proposes
a open source SAR simulator to compute phase histories for arbitrary 3D scenes
using newly available ray-tracing hardware made available commercially through
the NVIDIA's RTX graphics cards series. The OptiX GPU ray tracing library for
NVIDIA GPUs is used to calculate SAR phase histories at unprecedented
computational speeds. The simulation results are validated against existing SAR
simulation code for spotlight SAR illumination of point targets. The
computational performance of this approach provides orders of magnitude speed
increases over CPU simulation. An additional order of magnitude of GPU
acceleration when simulations are run on RTX GPUs which include hardware
specifically to accelerate OptiX ray tracing. The article describes the OptiX
simulator structure, processing framework and calculations that afford
execution on massively parallel GPU computation device. The shortcoming of the
OptiX library's restriction to single precision float representation is
discussed and modifications of sensitive calculations are proposed to reduce
truncation error thereby increasing the simulation accuracy under this
constraint.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, Algorithms for Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery
XXVII, SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing 202
Implementing effective trade remedy mechanisms : a critical analysis of Nigeria's Anti-Dumping and Countervailing Bill, 2010
Anti-dumping duties, safeguards and countervailing duties are collectively, within the context of the WTO, referred to as „trade remedies.‟ More specifically, the imposition of anti-dumping duties is a remedial measure for dealing with imports that cause or threatens to cause injury to local producers. Under the WTO framework, Article VI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 and the Agreement on the Implementation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 provides the rules for applying anti-dumping duties by member countries. Nigeria has been a member of the WTO since 1995 and can only apply anti-dumping duties provided it adheres to the rules governing anti-dumping. The purpose of this study is to ascertain whether the proposed Anti-dumping and Countervailing Bill, 2010 is consistent with WTO jurisprudence on anti-dumping. This study also highlights landmark developments in South Africa‟s anti-dumping system with a view to providing direction to Nigeria in order for its proposed national legislation on anti-dumping to be WTO compliant.Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2014gm2015Centre for Human RightsLLMUnrestricte
Integrated immunoisolation and protein analysis of circulating exosomes using microfluidic technology
Developing blood-based tests is appealing for non-invasive disease diagnosis, especially when biopsy is difficult, costly, and sometimes not even an option. Tumor-derived exosomes have attracted increasing interest in non-invasive cancer diagnosis and monitoring of treatment response. However, the biology and clinical value of exosomes remains largely unknown due in part to current technical challenges in rapid
isolation, molecular classification and comprehensive analysis of exosomes. Here we developed a new microfluidic approach to streamline and expedite the exosome analysis pipeline by integrating specific immunoisolation and targeted protein analysis of circulating exosomes. Compared to the conventional methods, our approach enables selective subpopulation isolation and quantitative detection of surface and intravesicular biomarkers directly from a minimally invasive amount of plasma samples (30 μL) within
~100 min with markedly improved detection sensitivity. Using this device, we demonstrated phenotyping of exosome subpopulations by targeting a panel of common exosomal and tumor-specific markers and multiparameter analyses of intravesicular biomarkers in the selected subpopulation. We were able to assess the total expression and phosphorylation levels of IGF-1R in non-small-cell lung cancer patients by probing
plasma exosomes as a non-invasive alternative to conventional tissue biopsy. We foresee that the microfluidic exosome analysis platform will form the basis for critically needed infrastructures for advancing the biology and clinical utilization of exosomes
Biosafety Research for Non-Target Organism Risk Assessment of RNAi-Based GE Plants
RNA interference, or RNAi, refers to a set of biological processes that make use of conserved cellular machinery to silence genes. Although there are several variations in the source and mechanism, they are all triggered by double stranded RNA (dsRNA) which is processed by a protein complex into small, single stranded RNA, referred to as small interfering RNAs (siRNA) with complementarity to sequences in genes targeted for silencing. The use of the RNAi mechanism to develop new traits in plants has fueled a discussion about the environmental safety of the technology for these applications, and this was the subject of a symposium session at the 13th ISBGMO in Cape Town, South Africa. This paper continues that discussion by proposing research areas that may be beneficial for future environmental risk assessments of RNAi-based genetically modified plants, with a particular focus on non-target organism assessment
- …