La reforma de la OCM del plátano de la Unión Europea: estudio comparado de sus efectos sobre las exportaciones de Canarias y las Islas Barlovento

Tesis doctoral inédita. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Departamento de Estructura Económica y Economía del Desarrollo. Fecha de lectura: 27-2-0

Taraba State University Campus LAN

This research is necessitated because of under-utilization of computing resources due to lack of a campus local area network in Taraba State University (TSU), Jalingo. Related literatures on design and implementation of campus local area network were reviewed. A hybrid Bus-Star topology and hierarchical model were in the design. This was achieved using Edraw Max 7.9 Network Design Software, AutoCAD, Global Positioning System (GPS) and Google Earth Pro. The research presented a comprehensive TSU–Campus LAN and recommendation for implementation to facilitate enhanced e-learning, online applications and multimedia communication services for all campus residents in TSU, Jalingo. Keywords: Campus, LAN, Edraw, Topology, TS

Social Media in Relation to Cooperate Social Responsibility in Fast Food Industry

This paper focuses on analyzing the role of social media (Facebook, Twitter, Google+,Youtube) with regards to corporate social responsibility (CSR), specifically in the fast food industry. The objectives are to identify the use of social media platforms by fast food restaurants, identify if social media integrate corporate social responsibility in their business thereby limiting marketing of unhealthy meals on their websites, and lastly, to find out if marketing of fast food products on social platforms affect users, especially the young people between the age of 15 to 25. The study analyzed and monitored 70 fast food restaurants and their social media activities. 63 0ut of 70 were found to have at least three social media platforms where they promote their products to end users and none of the restaurants have any restriction in marketing any kind of product using social media. Results from questionnaire survey also found that many social media users get adverts from fast food restaurants with 13.85% being affected to buy the food most times and 47.69% sometimes. 81.54% of the participants also agreed that social media can do a great job in limiting the free marketing of unhealthy products by fast food restaurants. Keywords: Social Media, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Stakeholders, fast food

Description of School Health Program in SDI Oesapa Kecil I Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara

School Health Program (UKS) is the main channel for health education in schools to improve the ability to live healthily, and subsequently from healthy living behaviors, which will result in the optimal health status of students. At the time in October 2019, the implementation of UKS at SDI Oesapa Kecil I was not fully following the standards of a healthy school. This study aimed to determine the description of health education, health services, and the development of a healthy school environment in the healthy school model at SDI Oesapa Kecil I. This is a descriptive study and was carried out at SDI Oesapa Kecil I, Oesapa Barat. The research population is teachers and students in classes V and VI. This study used a probability sampling technique, namely proportionate stratified random sampling. Sample size is 71 people. The results showed not all routine activities of the school health program in the health education section were carried out, such as the use of health literacy hours, nutritious breakfast together and students brushing teeth together at school. The program for the health services section of this school also was not carried out all routine activities, such as the absence of reports on the results of health screening and periodic examinations from the health center to the school or from school to parents or guardians

Automatic Annotation of Retinal Layers in Optical Coherence Tomography Images

Early diagnosis of retinal OCT images has been shown to curtail blindness and visual impairments. However, the advancement of ophthalmic imaging technologies produces an ever-growing scale of retina images, both in volume and variety, which overwhelms the ophthalmologist ability to segment these images. While many automated methods exist, speckle noise and intensity inhomogeneity negatively impacts the performance of these methods. We present a comprehensive and fully automatic method for annotation of retinal layers in OCT images comprising of fuzzy histogram hyperbolisation (FHH) and graph cut methods to segment 7 retinal layers across 8 boundaries. The FHH handles speckle noise and inhomogeneity in the preprocessing step. Then the normalised vertical image gradient, and it’s inverse to represent image intensity in calculating two adjacency matrices and then the FHH reassigns the edge-weights to make edges along retinal boundaries have a low cost, and graph cut method identifies the shortest-paths (layer boundaries). The method is evaluated on 150 B-Scan images, 50 each from the temporal, foveal and nasal regions were used in our study. Promising experimental results have been achieved with high tolerance and adaptability to contour variance and pathological inconsistency of the retinal layers in all (temporal, foveal and nasal) regions. The method also achieves high accuracy, sensitivity, and Dice score of 0.98360, 0.9692 and 0.9712, respectively in segmenting the retinal nerve fibre layer. The annotation can facilitate eye examination by providing accurate results. The integration of the vertical gradients into the graph cut framework, which captures the unique characteristics of retinal structures, is particularly useful in finding the actual minimum paths across multiple retinal layer boundaries. Prior knowledge plays an integral role in image segmentation

Skin Cancer Detection in Dermoscopy Images Using Sub-Region Features

Abstract. In the medical field, the identification of skin cancer (Malignant Melanoma) in dermoscopy images is still a challenging task for radiologists and researchers. Due to its rapid increase, the need for decision support systems to assist the radiologists to detect it in early stages becomes essential and necessary. Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD) systems have significant potential to increase the accuracy of its early detection. Typically, CAD systems use various types of features to characterize skin lesions. The features are often concatenated into one vector (early fusion) to represent the image. In this paper, we present a novel method for melanoma detection from images. First the lesions are segmented by combining Particle Swarm Optimization and Markov Random Field methods. Then the K-means is applied on the segmented lesions to separate them into homogeneous clusters, from which important features are extracted. Finally, an Artificial Neural Network with Radial Basis Function is applied for the detection of melanoma. The method was tested on 200 dermoscopy images. The experimental results show that the proposed method achieved higher accuracy in terms of melanoma detection, compared to alternative methods

Characterization of West and Central African accessions from a pearl millet reference collection for agro-morphological traits and Striga resistance

To promote the utilization of West and Central African (WCA) genetic resources of pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.], this study aimed at agro-morphological characterization of selected accessions from the pearl millet reference collection, established by the Generation Challenge Program and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). A total of 81 accessions were included, comprising 78 landraces originating from 13, predominantly WCA countries and three improved cultivars. All 81 accessions were evaluated together with 18 checks for resistance to the parasitic weed Striga hermonthica (Del.) Benth. in an artificially infested field at one location in Niger. Determined by available seed quantity, 74 accessions were characterized together with seven checks in the rainy season 2009 in field trials under low-input and fertilized conditions in Nigeria, Niger and Mali, respectively. Wide ranges were observed for various traits. Several accessions were identified as sources for specific traits of interest, i.e. long panicles, high-grain density, earliness, Striga resistance and stable yielding across environments. The observed yield inferiority of all Genebank accessions compared with checks may indicate lost adaptation or inbreeding depression due to an insufficient effective population size during multiplication. A principal component analysis revealed an immense diversity but also strong admixture among the tested accessions, i.e. there were no clearly distinct groups. The seed of all genotypes is available from ICRISAT. The online availability of the characterization data is expected to facilitate efficient use of these pearl millet accessions by breeding programmes in WCA and worldwide

The acrylic vessel for JSNS2^{2}-II neutrino target

The JSNS$^{2}$ (J-PARC Sterile Neutrino Search at J-PARC Spallation Neutron Source) is an experiment designed for the search for sterile neutrinos. The experiment is currently at the stage of the second phase named JSNS$^{2}$-II with two detectors at near and far locations from the neutrino source. One of the key components of the experiment is an acrylic vessel, that is used for the target volume for the detection of the anti-neutrinos. The specifications, design, and measured properties of the acrylic vessel are described

Characterization of the correlated background for a sterile neutrino search using the first dataset of the JSNS^2 experiment

JSNS2 (J-PARC Sterile Neutrino Search at J-PARC Spallation Neutron Source) is an experiment that is searching for sterile neutrinos via the observation of ν¯μ→ν¯e appearance oscillations using muon decay-at-rest neutrinos. Before dedicated data taking in the first-half of 2021, we performed a commissioning run for 10 days in June 2020. Using the data obtained in this commissioning run, in this paper, we present an estimate of the correlated background which imitates the ν¯e signal in a sterile neutrino search. In addition, in order to demonstrate future prospects of the JSNS2 experiment, possible pulse shape discrimination improvements towards reducing cosmic ray induced fast neutron background are described