Advances on the morphological classification of radio galaxiesreview: A review

Modern radio telescopes will generate, on a daily basis, data sets on the scale of exabytes for systems like the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). Massive data sets are a source of unknown and rare astrophysical phenomena that lead to discoveries. Nonetheless, this is only plausible with the exploitation of machine learning to complement human-aided and traditional statistical techniques. Recently, there has been a surge in scientific publications focusing on the use of machine/deep learning in radio astronomy, addressing challenges such as source extraction, morphological classification, and anomaly detection. This study provides a comprehensive and concise overview of the use of machine learning techniques for the morphological classification of radio galaxies. It summarizes the recent literature on this topic, highlighting the main challenges, achievements, state-of-the-art methods, and the future research directions in the field. The application of machine learning in radio astronomy has led to a new paradigm shift and a revolution in the automation of complex data processes. However, the optimal exploitation of machine/deep learning in radio astronomy, calls for continued collaborative efforts in the creation of high-resolution annotated data sets. This is especially true in the case of modern telescopes like MeerKAT and the LOw-Frequency ARray (LOFAR). Additionally, it is important to consider the potential benefits of utilizing multi-channel data cubes and algorithms that can leverage massive datasets without relying solely on annotated datasets for radio galaxy classification.<br/

The flip side of Cell Talk in Exercise: Cell Noise

The article makes an effort to study, assess, and bring additional depth to the concept of cell talk, crosstalk, and cell noise -highlighting molecular-level occurrences such as signaling activity that affect different metabolic processes, gene expression, and protein synthesis. It also establishes the idea of "cell noise," or "dysregulated cell signaling," which is defined as cell activity that may worsen or result in cellular injury, oxidative stress, and inflammation. There is abundant evidence that consistent, lifelong exercise extends lifespan and delays the onset of chronic illnesses like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, hypertension, obesity, depression, and osteoporosis. The aforementioned highlights the need for metered or regulated physical training that takes into account genetic and environmental variances among individuals. Everyone is advised to engage in structured, well-chosen workouts that will promote longevity of life and result in the human body functioning at its best. Keywords: Cell Talk in Exercise, Cell Noise DOI: 10.7176/JBAH/13-8-05 Publication date:May 31st 202

The Work of a Woman is to give Birth to Children: Cultural Constructions of Infertility in Nigeria

Infertility is a condition loaded with meaning spanning across biomedical, psychological, social, economic, cultural and religious spheres. Given its disruptive power over women’s lives, it provides a unique lens through which issues of kinship, gender, sexuality, cosmology and religion can be examined. The paper presents the results of an ethnographic study of infertility in Central Nigeria. Explanatory models of infertility were variegated, encompassing biomedical, folk and religious elements. Like other ethnographic studies of help seeking for infertility in Nigeria, among this group resort was made to biomedical treatments, traditional healers and religious healing with no one system being hegemonic. The findings of this study accord with studies of infertility in other cultural groups indicating the disruptive influence of missing motherhood (Afr J Reprod Health 2013; 17[2]: 102-117.La stérilité est une condition chargée de sens enjambant les biomédicaux, psychologiques, social, économique, culturel et religieux. Compte tenu de son pouvoir perturbateur sur la vie des femmes, il offre une perspective unique par laquelle les questions de la parenté, du sexe, de la sexualité, de la cosmologie et de la religion peuvent être examinées. L’article présente les résultats d&apos;une étude ethnographique de l&apos;infertilité dans le centre du Nigeria. Les modèles explicatifs de la stérilité ont varié, englobant les éléments biomédicaux, folkloriques et religieux. Tout comme d&apos;autres études ethnographiques de recherche d&apos;aide pour la stérilité au Nigeria, au sein de ce groupe on a eu recours aux traitements biomédicaux, aux guérisons traditionnels et religieux, aucun système n’étant hégémonique. Les résultats de cette étude avec s’accordent avec des études sur la stérilité chez les autres groupes culturels indiquant l&apos;influence perturbatrice du manque de maternité. (Afr J Reprod Health 2013; 17[2]: 102-117)

Classification of radio galaxies with trainable COSFIRE filters

Radio galaxies exhibit a rich diversity of morphological characteristics, which make their classification into distinct types a complex challenge. To address this challenge effectively, we introduce an innovative approach for radio galaxy classification using COSFIRE filters. These filters possess the ability to adapt to both the shape and orientation of prototype patterns within images. The COSFIRE approach is explainable, learning-free, rotation-tolerant, efficient, and does not require a large training set. To assess the efficacy of our method, we conducted experiments on a benchmark radio galaxy data set comprising of 1180 training samples and 404 test samples. Notably, our approach achieved an average accuracy rate of 93.36 %. This achievement outperforms contemporary deep learning models, and it is the best result ever achieved on this data set. Additionally, COSFIRE filters offer better computational performance, ∼20 × fewer operations than the DenseNet-based competing method (when comparing at the same accuracy). Our findings underscore the effectiveness of the COSFIRE filter-based approach in addressing the complexities associated with radio galaxy classification. This research contributes to advancing the field by offering a robust solution that transcends the orientation challenges intrinsic to radio galaxy observations. Our method is versatile in that it is applicable to various image classification approaches

Deep supervised hashing for fast retrieval of radio image cubes

The shear number of sources that will be detected by next-generation radio surveys will be astronomical, which will result in serendipitous discoveries. Data-dependent deep hashing algorithms have been shown to be efficient at image retrieval tasks in the fields of computer vision and multimedia. However, there are limited applications of these methodologies in the field of astronomy. In this work, we utilize deep hashing to rapidly search for similar images in a large database. The experiment uses a balanced dataset of 2708 samples consisting of four classes: Compact, FRI, FRII, and Bent. The performance of the method was evaluated using the mean average precision (mAP) metric where a precision of 88.5% was achieved. The experimental results demonstrate the capability to search and retrieve similar radio images efficiently and at scale. The retrieval is based on the Hamming distance between the binary hash of the query image and those of the reference images in the database.</p

Combining horizontal and vertical composition of services

Service composition is a well-established field of research in the service community. Services are commonly regarded as black boxes with well-defined interfaces that can be recursively aggregated into new services. The black-box nature of services does not only include the service implementation but also implies the use of middleware and hardware to run the services. Thus, service composition techniques are typically limited to choosing between a set of available services. In this paper, we keep the black-box nature and the principle of information hiding of services, but in addition we break up services vertically. By introducing vertical service composition, we allow services to be provisioned on demand using the middleware and runtime environment that specifically meets user-required quality of services. Therefore, a service is setup individually for services requestors instead of providing them with a pre-determined list of available services to choose from. We introduce the concept of vertical service composition and present an extension to an enterprise service bus that implements the concept of vertical service composition by combining concepts from provisioning with those of (dynamic) service binding

Adding content to contacts: measurement of high quality contacts for maternal and newborn health in Ethiopia, north east Nigeria, and Uttar Pradesh, India.

BACKGROUND: Families in high mortality settings need regular contact with high quality services, but existing population-based measurements of contacts do not reflect quality. To address this, in 2012, we designed linked household and frontline worker surveys for Gombe State, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Uttar Pradesh, India. Using reported frequency and content of contacts, we present a method for estimating the population level coverage of high quality contacts. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Linked cluster-based household and frontline health worker surveys were performed. Interviews were conducted in 40, 80 and 80 clusters in Gombe, Ethiopia, and Uttar Pradesh, respectively, including 348, 533, and 604 eligible women and 20, 76, and 55 skilled birth attendants. High quality contacts were defined as contacts during which recommended set of processes for routine health care were met. In Gombe, 61% (95% confidence interval 50-72) of women had at least one antenatal contact, 22% (14-29) delivered with a skilled birth attendant, 7% (4-9) had a post-partum check and 4% (2-8) of newborns had a post-natal check. Coverage of high quality contacts was reduced to 11% (6-16), 8% (5-11), 0%, and 0% respectively. In Ethiopia, 56% (49-63) had at least one antenatal contact, 15% (11-22) delivered with a skilled birth attendant, 3% (2-6) had a post-partum check and 4% (2-6) of newborns had a post-natal check. Coverage of high quality contacts was 4% (2-6), 4% (2-6), 0%, and 0%, respectively. In Uttar Pradesh 74% (69-79) had at least one antenatal contact, 76% (71-80) delivered with a skilled birth attendant, 54% (48-59) had a post-partum check and 19% (15-23) of newborns had a post-natal check. Coverage of high quality contacts was 6% (4-8), 4% (2-6), 0%, and 0% respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Measuring content of care to reflect the quality of contacts can reveal missed opportunities to deliver best possible health care

Smooth Muscle Motility: Comparing the Effect of a Synthetic Anti-Diarrhoeal Drug with a Probiotic on an Isolated Rabbit Intestine

Background: Diarrhoea exerts an enormous toll in terms of mortality, morbidity, social inconvenience, loss of work productivity, and consumption of medical resources. Acute infectious diarrhea remains one of the most common causes of mortality in developing countries, particularly among children, accounting for 2-3 million deaths per year. Aim: To compare the contractile effect of a synthetic anti-spasmotic and a probiotic drug on an isolated rabbit intestine. Method: A healthy rabbit weighing 300g was humanely sacrificed and a length of a small intestine (ileum) was isolated and submerged in a tissue bath. The test solutions (Saccharomyces boulardii, Synthetic anti-spasmodic) were then applied in graded doses and the final bath concentration calculated. Results: The experimental data was analyzed using T-test of Independent variable and the output clearly revealed that there was no significant difference (p = 0.73) in the Amplitude between the two drugs. But there was a significant difference observed in the frequency between the two drugs (p = 0.002). Conclusion: S. boulardii is a well tolerated probiotic with little or no side effects that has some effect on intestinal motility