Progressive ShallowNet for large scale dynamic and spontaneous facial behaviour analysis in children

COVID-19 has severely disrupted every aspect of society and left negative impact on our life. Resisting the temptation in engaging face-to-face social connection is not as easy as we imagine. Breaking ties within social circle makes us lonely and isolated, that in turns increase the likelihood of depression related disease and even can leads to death by increasing the chance of heart disease. Not only adults, children's are equally impacted where the contribution of emotional competence to social competence has long term implications. Early identification skill for facial behaviour emotions, deficits, and expression may help to prevent the low social functioning. Deficits in young children's ability to differentiate human emotions can leads to social functioning impairment. However, the existing work focus on adult emotions recognition mostly and ignores emotion recognition in children. By considering the working of pyramidal cells in the cerebral cortex, in this paper, we present progressive lightweight shallow learning for the classification by efficiently utilizing the skip-connection for spontaneous facial behaviour recognition in children. Unlike earlier deep neural networks, we limit the alternative path for the gradient at the earlier part of the network by increase gradually with the depth of the network. Progressive ShallowNet is not only able to explore more feature space but also resolve the over-fitting issue for smaller data, due to limiting the residual path locally, making the network vulnerable to perturbations. We have conducted extensive experiments on benchmark facial behaviour analysis in children that showed significant performance gain comparatively

Some Mineralogical Characteristics of the Egyptian Black Sand Beach Ilmenite Part I: Homogeneous Ilmenite and Titanhematite-Ferriilmenite Grains

The high-grade Egyptian beach ilmenite concentrate contains various mineral textures in addition to the main homogeneous ilmenite grains (63%), which may contain solid solutions of geikielite (MgTiO3) and pyrophanite (MnTiO3) mineral components. Few homogeneous ferrilmenite grains (2%) associated with the concentrated ilmenite grains are detected. The contents of Fe2O3, MgO, Al2O3, and Cr2O3 in the ferrilmenite grains range between 7.3% and 22.8%, 3.4% and 6.6%, 0.2% and 0.7%, and 0% and 1.2% respectively. The detected hematite-ilmenite exsolved intergrowths (21.4%) have titanhematite exsolutions of different shapes, sizes, and orientations. They occupy 5%-40% of the whole intergrowth and may show one or two distinct generations. In some ferrilmenite components, MnO ranges between 1.5% and 8.6%. The Cr2O3 and Al2O3 contents range between 0% and 1.2% and 0% and 3.2% respectively. They are mostly between 0% and 0.1% for either of the ferrilmenite components, while relatively greater content is present in the titanhematite components. In some grains, the titanhematite exsolution bodies are replaced by goethite or hydrated iron oxides. In others, the ferrilmenite intergrowth may be partially or completely altered into leucoxene. Some minor composite grains are detected in the concentrate, where each grain consists of two parts, one part is titanhematite-ferrimenite and the other is ferrilmenite-titanhematite. The titanhematite exsolved components have relatively lower TiO2 content (5.8%-23.8%). Both MgO and MnO are positively correlated with FeO rather than Fe2O3. The presence of sphenes in the obtained ilmenite concentrate may be responsible for the recorded amounts of SiO2 (30.1%-30.8%) and CaO (28.1% and 28.8%). The Cr2O3 content is relatively much higher in sphene spots than in ilmenite spots, ensuring that Cr2O3 neither follows TiO2 nor FeO. The nature of the problem of the relatively lower Ti content and the relatively higher Fe and Cr contents of the obtained ilmenite concentrates is the target of the article. The problem is related to the mineralogy of ilmenite or to the used physical concentration flowsheet of the separated concentrate and the ability to improve the ilmenite concentrate’s specifications. It is concluded that although the homogeneous ilmenite is characterized by low Cr2O3 content, some of the other exsolved texture components, e.g. titanhematite and sphenes, have relatively higher Cr2O3, in addition to Fe2O3, SiO2, or CaO. They can negatively affect the marketable specifications of the separated Egyptian black sand ilmenite concentrate

Some Mineralogical Characteristics of the Egyptian Black Sand Beach Ilmenite Part IΙ: Rutile-Ilmenite and the Various Titanhematite Grains

In addition to the grains of homogeneous ilmenite, ferriilmenite, hematite-ilmenite exsolved intergrowths, and the partially altered ilmenite grains, other textures are detected in the separated ilmenite concentrate. The grains of rutile-ilmenite exsolved intergrowth represent 0.8% of the detected ilmenite grains. The ilmenite component of this intergrowth is detected to be ferriilmenite associated with geikielite, pyrophanite, and rutile, with Cr2O3 content ranging between 0 and 0.5%. The exsolved rutile is ferriforrous rutile composed of rutile, hematite, geikielite, and pyrophanite, its Cr2O3 content ranging between 0 and 0.4%. The detected individual titanhematite grains represent 4.4% and include 3 textures arranged, in a decreasing order of abundance, as: ilmenite-hematite, rutile-hematite, and rutile-ilmenite-hematite exsolution intergrowths. MgO and MnO have minimum values and they do not follow Fe2O3. In some homogeneous titanhematite or exsolved rutile-hematite, Fe2O3 content may be replaced with SiO2. In all titanhematite intergrown textures, the Cr2O3 content ranges between 0 and 0.1%. Only in the case of the titanhematite host with exsolved rutile, the contained MgO ranges between 1.2 and 5.3%. Some ferromagnetic titanhematite grains separated with the fraction of magnetite are detected. In these grains, the Cr2O3, MgO, and MnO contents range between 0-0.2, 0-3, and 0-1.4% respectively. Several varieties of chromite and chromspinel mineral grains are found and represent 1.1% of the detected bulk ilmenite grains. In these grains, the Cr2O3, MgO, V2O3, and Al2O3 contents range between 16.69-56.72%, 0.54-17.33%, 0.14-0.58%, and 1.33-38.79% respectively. Although they are rarely met in the ilmenite concentrate, the relatively finer grain sizes could lead to the separation of some with ilmenite fraction rather than with the ferromagnetic one. It is concluded that the problem of high Cr2O3 and Fe2O3 contents of the Egyptian beach ilmenite concentrate is not only a mineralogical problem, but also an ore-dressing one

MISA (Minimally Invasive Surfactant Administration) Versus Insure (Intubation, Surfactant, Extubation) In Preterms Less Than 34 Weeks With RDS

Background: Newborn Respiratory Distress Syndrome (RDS) or what is known as surfactant deficiency disorder is a syndrome that affects premature infants who are born prematurely and is caused by a developmental deficiency in the production of pulmonary surfactant or as it is called immature formation of the lungs, or as a result of a defect in the protein gene that forms pulmonary surfactant. Non-invasive positive pressure ventilation (NIPPV) is the first technique for respiratory therapy while MISA and InSurE are both the most commonly used in RDS. Objective: To compare the use of the MISA method and the InSurE method in the treatment of premature infants less than 34 weeks of gestational age with respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). Patients and methods: The sample size was 70 infants with gestational age less than 34 weeks with RDS. 35 newborn were enrolled in each group. First group received surfactant via MIST technique and the other 35 newborn received it via InSurE technique. Infants in the InSurE group required intubation, according to previous collected data from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) center. Results: After the injection of surfactant, the 13 (37%) infants needed another dose in the MIST group, while only 3 (8.57%) infants in the InSurE group needed a second dose of the same substance. Accordingly, the response of the MIST group was shown to be a less improvement than the InSurE group in the child's breathing methods. Conclusion: The MIST method was the most successful with a rate of 96.5% in terms of time and the child's response to treatment, and the researcher recommended that the reasons for the effectiveness of MISA in treating RDS should be studied. However duration of invasive mechanical ventilation were higher in MIST group than InSurE group

Low-carbon fuels for aviation

The aviation industry is responsible for 2.1% of global CO2 emissions and represents 12% of CO2 emissions from all transport sources. Aviation is a particularly difficult sector to decarbonise because alternative fuels are relatively expensive, produce highly distributed greenhouse gas emissions in their production and combustion, and should preferably be compatible with existing aviation infrastructure. Emissions from aviation also include nitrogen oxides (NOx), water vapour, particulates, carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons, and sulfur oxides (SOx). These have a 2-3 times greater climate change impact than CO2 alone. The non-CO2 emissions of alternative low-carbon aviation fuels can differ significantly from those of kerosene and have not been fully evaluated. Biofuels • Bio-jet fuels are currently the most technologically mature option for low-carbon aviation fuels because some of these feedstocks and processes are already deployed at scale for other uses. • Bio-jet fuels must be blended with kerosene to achieve certification and can then be used with existing aviation infrastructure. This blending proportionally decreases any potential CO2 emission saving. • Bio-jet fuels can be made from a range of feedstocks, which are restricted in the UK to waste materials. UK biofuel feedstock availability is sufficient for only a small proportion of UK aviation fuel demand (<20%). With blending, their contribution to CO2 emissions saving is much less (<<10%). • Life cycle assessment scenarios show very variable impacts on CO2 emissions for biofuel processes: only some deliver emissions savings compared to fossil fuel kerosene. Calculations for forest residues appear to show consistent savings in CO2 emissions compared to jet fuel, but these do not take account of the difference in timescale between emission and re-absorption, leading to a major underestimation of emissions. The diversion of agricultural and forestry waste to bio-jet fuel production will have detrimental effects, for example on soil quality. Power-to-Liquid fuels • PtL fuels must be blended with kerosene to achieve certification and can then be used with existing aviation infrastructure. This blending proportionally decreases any potential CO2 emission saving. • PtL fuels are currently not produced at scale. Significant technological development is required to reduce production costs and increase production scale. • Use of PtL fuels in aviation would require a very significant increase of UK low-carbon electricity generation and storage capacity to power production of green hydrogen and CO2 from direct air capture. • Life cycle assessment scenarios show that PtL fuels could have 3-10 times lower emissions impact than fossil fuel kerosene if renewable electricity and CO2 from direct air capture are used to produce the fuel. Hydrogen • Hydrogen cannot be used as a drop-in fuel for aircraft, and its use will require significant redesign of aviation infrastructure. • The greenhouse gas emissions impact of hydrogen depends on its mode of production. Currently, global hydrogen production is mostly from fossil fuel sources, with much less than 1% generated from low-carbon sources. • Increasing low-carbon hydrogen production via electrolysis (green hydrogen) will require the building of additional low-carbon electricity generation capacity. • Low-carbon hydrogen production via methane reforming with carbon capture and storage (blue hydrogen) should use natural gas obtained from producers with low emissions intensity. The goal of policy will be to promote whichever technologies achieve the desired sustainability targets. A molecular science and engineering approach combines an understanding of molecular behaviour with a problem-solving mindset derived from engineering. This approach is crucial to the development and the eventual deployment of the fuel technologies discussed in this paper

A Case-control Study of Haemorrhagic Septicaemia in Buffaloes and Cattle in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2012

A retrospective epidemiological case–control study was performed in Karachi, Pakistan, from January to April 2013. The owners of 217 dairy cattle and buffalo farms from six different locations in Karachi were interviewed. The aim of the study was to identify risk factors associated with the presence of haemorrhagic septicaemia (HS). Farms with a history of at least one instance of sudden death in a dairy animal during 2012 and a positive clinical HS diagnosis (made by local veterinarians) were defined as cases. Farms having no history of sudden deaths in 2012 were defined as controls. Univariable analyses were initially conducted, and factors with P ≤ 0.25 were offered to a multivariable logistic regression model to identify putative risk factors. The final multivariable logistic model contained five factors. Vaccination was found to be a protective factor (OR = 0.22) along with the length of time cattle were kept on farm (months). For every extra month cattle were kept, the odds of HS disease were reduced by a factor of 0.9. In contrast, for every extra animal in a herd, the risk of infection increased by a factor of 1.01. Supplying underground water and the presence of foot and mouth disease on the farm increased the risk by 2.90 and 2.37, respectively. To understand the epidemiology of HS in Karachi dairy herds, more in-depth research is required to study the risk and protective factors identified in this survey and to evaluate risk mitigation strategies, where possible

Recurrent scrotal Arteriovenous Malformation as a Slowly Increasing Left Testicular Swelling: A case report

Arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) are benign vascular lesions. Although, the majority of AVMs occur in the central nervous system, there are published reports of AVMs involving all systems including the scrotum, kidney, and uterus. Herein we report a case of 37 years old male presented with recurrent gradual scrotal swelling for 4 years attributed to scrotal AVM. Embolization was done but one year later his symptoms reoccurred. As a result, left partial scrotal wall excision was carried out without complications. Keywords: arteriovenous malformation, AVM, scrotal swelling, scrotal malformation

Chromatographic Separation, Total Determination and Chemical Speciation of Mercury in Environmental Water Samples Using 4-(2-Thiazolylazo) Resorcinol-Based Polyurethane Foam Sorbent-Packed Column

A simple method has been developed for quantitative retention of traces of mercury(II) ions from aqueous media using polyurethane foams (PUFs) loaded with 4-(2-thiazolylazo) resorcinol (TAR). The kinetics and thermodynamics of the sorption of mercury(II) ions onto PUFs were studied. The sorption of mercury(II) ions onto PUF follows a first-order rate equation with k = 0.176 ± 0.010 min−1. The negative values of ΔH and ΔS may be interpreted as the exothermic chemisorption process and indicative of a faster chemisorption onto the active sites of the sorbent. The sorption data followed Langmuir, Freundlich and Dubinin-Radushkevich (D–R) isotherm models. The D-R parameters β, KDR and E were 0.329 mol2 kJ−2, 0.001 μmol g−1 and 1.23 ± 0.07 kJ/mol for the TAR-loaded PUFs, respectively. An acceptable retention and recovery (99.6 ± 1.1%) of mercury(II) ions in water at ≤10 ppb by the TAR-treated PUFs packed columns were achieved. A retention mechanism, involving absorption related to “solvent extraction” and an “added component” for surface adsorption, was suggested for the retention of mercury(II) ions by the used solid phase extractor. The performance of TAR-immobilized PUFs packed column in terms of the number (N), the height equivalent to a theoretical plate (HETP), the breakthrough and critical capacities of mercury(II) ion uptake by the sorbent packed column were found to be 50.0 ± 1.0, 1.01 ± 0.02 mm, 8.75 and 13.75 mg/g, respectively, at 5 mL/min flow rate