Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

6-way classification model on TUH EEG data set

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that affects the brain, causing seizures to people globally. According to World Health Organisation (WHO), there are more than 50 million epileptic patients worldwide. Electroencephalogram (EEG) are widely used in the medical industry to detect electrical activities of the brain and primarily used by neurologists to diagnose brain-related disorders. Spikes detected during the EEG test indicates that a patient has epilepsy. However, experts who analyse the results may have different interpretation of the results. The project aims to develop a model using traditional classification techniques to detect spikes and epileptiform discharges from background artefacts accurately. The data set used in this project is obtained from Temple University Hospital (TUH). Cross validation of 4-folds is applied onto the data set using Support Vector Machine (SVM), K-Nearest neighbours (KNN), Decision Tree (DT) and Random Forest (RF) separately and compared using confusion matrix to obtain the best training model. KNN has the best accuracy for the targeted data set. Lack of sufficient training data makes the model not usable for actual implementation.Bachelor of Engineering (Information Engineering and Media

Influence maximization on dynamic graphs

In the real world, there are many applications of the stream such as social networks and telecommunication networks. Due to the great potential in targeted recommendations and viral marketing, there is a tremendous incentive to find the top k influencers. However, due to the nature of the dynamic graph, we will tackle the inherent problem of finding the top k influencers as the dynamic graph is constantly changing. We model the stream as slip shots of the static graph that changes over the time. From there, we take note of the incoming changes to the edges and attempt in handling those mutually exclusive cases. Under the popular use of the independent cascade model, we develop an algorithm that performs an update to the top k nodes based on the mutually exclusive cases of edge addition, edge deletion and edge modification. Using up to date research by other paper and the DBLP collaboration network dataset, we validate the use of our method on the network and present a timeline of the most influential authors in the network.Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Science

E-tutoring system for secondary 4 mathematics

In a concrete jungle like Singapore, the people make up for the lack of natural resources in one of the world’s smallest countries. The government therefore, invests heavily on constantly improving the already world-class education system. This cause schools to continually upgrade their education system to catch up with the world’s economic development trend – that is, to incorporate technology into a traditional classroom setting. This project aims to develop an interactive secondary 4 mathematics e-learning website whereby online courses and lectures will be created by teachers to facilitate teaching. Face to face interaction will be replaced virtually by a question and answer option. A question generator will be created to aid teacher in setting an unlimited number of questions and combinations. This project was written in Html, PHP, CSS and Javascript. Other software such as Jxsgraph, MySQL and Apache Tomcat server were also used to assist the development of the project.Bachelor of Engineerin

Fabrication of Yb:Lu2O3

The project aims to produce high quality power to develop high quality precursor which is fundamental and important factor for the fabrication and properties of the transparent ceramics. As commercial powder has big agglomeration of particles at the size of around 2-3µm which will develop strong bonding between the particles and makes it harder to break the bond despite further breakdown of particle size. With the liquid synthesis technique used in this project, we managed to develop our own powder which has lesser agglomeration of particles and particle size below 100nm which is a high quality factor. This allow a higher quality of optical transparent ceramic to be produced at the end with good optical transparency and high yield level.Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Effects of blood flow restriction (BFR) with resistance exercise on musculoskeletal health in older adults: a narrative review

10.1186/s11556-022-00294-0EUROPEAN REVIEW OF AGING AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY19

A study of trading strategies : average true range.

This research aims to examine the profitability of a trading strategy that utilizes Average True Range (ATR) as a technical indicator. Our strategy is adapted from the model used by Wilcox & Crittenden [2005] and trading is simulated using 104 stocks for two sampling periods, from 2002 to 2006, and from 2007 to 2011. Our results showed that our strategy produced significantly higher returns than the buy-and-hold strategy in the period from 2007 to 2011, but did not produce significantly different returns in the period lasting from 2002 to 2006. As compared to a buy-and-hold strategy, our proposed model may help to reduce losses to a trader when the market is experiencing a downturn, but performs sub-optimally during bullish conditionsBUSINES

The potential benefits of assessing post-cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) in aging: a narrative review

Abstract Cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) is an important tool to measure the cardiopulmonary fitness of an individual and has been widely used in athletic, clinical and research settings. Most CPET focus on analyzing physiological responses during exercise. We contend that the post-CPET recovery physiological responses offer further diagnostic and prognostic information about the health of the cardiopulmonary and metabolic systems, especially when testing apparently healthy middle-aged and older adults. However, there are limited studies that investigate physiological responses during the post-CPET recovery, and even less so in middle-aged and older adults. Therefore, this current review is aimed at discussing the contribution of post-CPET recovery parameters to cardiopulmonary health and their potential applications in aging populations. In addition to the existing methods, we propose to examine the aerobic and anaerobic recovery threshold post-CPET as novel potential diagnostic and/or prognostic tools