Volume measurement using 3D Range Imaging

The use of 3D Range Imaging has widespread applications. One of its applications provides us the information about the volumes of different objects. In this paper, 3D range imaging has been utilised to find out the volumes of different objects using two algorithms that are based on a straightforward means to calculate volume. The algorithms implemented succesfully calculate volume on objects provided that the objects have uniform colour. Objects that have multi-coloured and glossy surfaces provided particular difficulties in determining volume

Unsafe abortion: A cruel way of birth control

Background: Unsafe abortion refers to a procedure for terminating an unintended pregnancy performed either by persons lacking the necessary skills or in an environment that does not conform to minimal medical standards, or both.Objectives: The objectives of the study are to assess the factors  attributing to practice of unsafe abortion and to suggest feasible and cost-effective measures to counter the same.Methods: An extensive search of all materials related to the topic was made using library sources including Pubmed, Medline and World Health Organization. Keywords used in the search include unsafe abortion and unintended pregnancy.Results: Multiple socio-demographic determinants and barriers such as illiterate women, poor socio-economic status, poor awareness about  abortion services, associated stigma, and untrained health professionals have been identified resulting in restricted utilization/access of women to safe abortion services. Consequences of unsafe abortion have been  alarming, seriously questioning the quality of health care delivery system.Conclusion: Concerted and dedicated efforts of government in collaboration with the private sector, community members and non-governmental  organizations are needed to ensure that women have a better access to contraceptives, abortion services, and post-abortion care that are safe, affordable, and free from stigma.Keywords: Unsafe abortion, unintended pregnancy, Millennium development goals, Public healt

Utility of kangaroo mother care in preterm and low birthweight infants

Preterm birth (< 37 completed weeks of gestation) is the largest direct cause of neonatal mortality, accounting for an estimated 27% of the 4-million neonatal deaths every year. Kangaroo mother care (KMC) is a type of care for preterm and premature infants whereby the infant is placed in an upright position against the parent’s chest, with early  skin-to-skin contact between the parent and infant. Mothers who practise KMC exhibit less maternal stress and fewer symptoms of depression, and have a better sense of the parenting role and more confidence in meeting their babies’ needs than those who don’t. Despite the apparent feasibility of KMC, currently, only a few preterm babies in low-income countries haveaccess to this intervention. Knowledge of the effectiveness and safety of KMC in the community and home setting, and its effects on growth, is still incomplete. Only one study has examined KMC initiation at home. There is an immense need for the promotion of research to improve the delivery of existing cost-effective interventions in low-resource settings and to address key gaps in knowledge. KMC improves growth in low birthweight and preterm infants, and has a significant role to play in protecting them from hypothermia and sepsis, as well as promoting exclusive breastfeeding. KMC helps to reduce neonatal mortality, and inculcates confidence and a better sense of parenting in mothers with regard to their babies’ needs

Integration of Satellite and Financial Data to Model Future Economic Impact of Citrus Crops (Final Project Report)

This study analyzed the health and overall landcover of citrus crops in Florida. The analysis was completed using Landsat satellite imagery available free of charge from the University of Maryland Global Landcover Change Facility. The project hypothesized that combining citrus production (economic) data with citrus area per county derived from spectral signatures would yield correlations between observable spectral reflectance throughout the year, and the fiscal impact of citrus on local economies. A positive correlation between these two data types would allow us to predict the economic impact of citrus using spectral data analysis to determine final crop harvests

End-to-End Localization and Ranking for Relative Attributes

We propose an end-to-end deep convolutional network to simultaneously localize and rank relative visual attributes, given only weakly-supervised pairwise image comparisons. Unlike previous methods, our network jointly learns the attribute's features, localization, and ranker. The localization module of our network discovers the most informative image region for the attribute, which is then used by the ranking module to learn a ranking model of the attribute. Our end-to-end framework also significantly speeds up processing and is much faster than previous methods. We show state-of-the-art ranking results on various relative attribute datasets, and our qualitative localization results clearly demonstrate our network's ability to learn meaningful image patches.Comment: Appears in European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), 201

A new algorithm for instantaneous speed and position estimation of surface-mounted permanent magnet synchronous motors

Session 5-5: Motor Drives II: paper 5-5-1This paper describes a patent-pending method that can be used to estimate the speed and position of surface-mounted permanent magnet synchronous motors (SMPMSM) with cylindrical rotor structure and sinusoidal back emf. The concept involves the use of the power inverter's switching actions and switching current to provide instantaneous real-time information for extracting the speed information. The theory and algorithm are included to explain the proposed concept, which has been verified by simulations on a SMPMSM drive under the control of a sensorless speed control scheme. © 2013 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Long term in vitro expansion of epithelial stem cells enabled by pharmacological inhibition of PAK1-ROCK-Myosin II and TGF-β signaling

Summary: Despite substantial self-renewal capability in vivo, epithelial stem and progenitor cells located in various tissues expand for a few passages in vitro in feeder-free condition before they succumb to growth arrest. Here, we describe the EpiX method, which utilizes small molecules that inhibit PAK1-ROCK-Myosin II and TGF-β signaling to achieve over one trillion-fold expansion of human epithelial stem and progenitor cells from skin, airway, mammary, and prostate glands in the absence of feeder cells. Transcriptomic and epigenomic studies show that this condition helps epithelial cells to overcome stresses for continuous proliferation. EpiX-expanded basal epithelial cells differentiate into mature epithelial cells consistent with their tissue origins. Whole-genome sequencing reveals that the cells retain remarkable genome integrity after extensive in vitro expansion without acquiring tumorigenicity. EpiX technology provides a solution to exploit the potential of tissue-resident epithelial stem and progenitor cells for regenerative medicine. : Zhang et al. screen a small-molecule collection and find that pharmacologic inhibition of TGF-β and PAK1-ROCK-Myosin II, in low calcium conditions, supports extended expansion of epithelial stem cells in 2D format. This approach enhances the potential of tissue-resident epithelial stem cells for cell therapy. Keywords: epithelial stem and progenitor cells, cell culture method, TGF-β, PAK1/ROCK/Myosin II, feeder-free, regenerative medicine, cell therap

Nonlinear fractional waves at elastic interfaces

We derive the nonlinear fractional surface wave equation that governs compression waves at an elastic interface that is coupled to a viscous bulk medium. The fractional character of the differential equation comes from the fact that the effective thickness of the bulk layer that is coupled to the interface is frequency dependent. The nonlinearity arises from the nonlinear dependence of the interface compressibility on the local compression, which is obtained from experimental measurements and reflects a phase transition at the interface. Numerical solutions of our nonlinear fractional theory reproduce several experimental key features of surface waves in phospholipid monolayers at the air-water interface without freely adjustable fitting parameters. In particular, the propagation distance of the surface wave abruptly increases at a threshold excitation amplitude. The wave velocity is found to be of the order of 40 cm/s in both experiments and theory and slightly increases as a function of the excitation amplitude. Nonlinear acoustic switching effects in membranes are thus shown to arise purely based on intrinsic membrane properties, namely, the presence of compressibility nonlinearities that accompany phase transitions at the interface

Culture and Colonial Legacy: Evidence from Public Goods Games

We conduct a public goods game in three small towns in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Due to historical military conquest, until 1947 these towns were on opposite sides of a colonial border separating British India from the Princely States. Our research design offers a treatment comparison between the towns of (British) Kekri and (Princely) Sarwar, and a control comparison between Princely Sarwar and Shahpura. We find that participants from (British) Kekri are more co-operative in mixed-town groups. The differences are driven by individuals with family ties to the towns, highlighting the enduring effects of colonial rule on co-operation norms

A Reflective Analysis of Image Processing Operations on Kato-Katz Images for the Pathological Diagnosis of Neglected Tropical Diseases

This paper gives an insight into the interdisciplinary work that has been carried out to diagnose some of the neglected tropical diseases, in particular micro-parasitic diseases, using image processing operations. The infections from micro-parasites are collectively called Helminthiasis. The Kato-Katz method is a slide scanning technique commonly used for the qualitative and semi-quantitative diagnosis of helminthiasis. This paper explains the image analysis and processing of Kato-katz images to extract meaningful information and convert the qualitative features of the images to quantitative data and thereby effectively diagnose the disease. This is the preliminary stage of a pioneering work done in the field of neglected tropical disease diagnosis and would be beneficial for thousands of people including children in the endemic region