Characterizing the symmetry of amyloid beta protein retention in Alzheimer's disease using florbetapir positron emission tomography - a study using data from the Alzheimer's disease neuroimaging initiative

Progression of Alzheimer's disease has been associated with the deposition of aggregated amyloid beta (Aβ) protein in the brain. Though first described in post-mortal tissue, the development of Aβ specific tracers for positron emission tomography (PET) permits in-vivo mapping of its distribution in the brain. One of the well-known and early-developed tracers is the Pittsburgh Compound B (PiB) (Klunk et al., 2004). However, the challenge with PiB lies in the stability of the radioisotope 11C. 11C's short half-life of only 20 minutes hinders its transportation and usage at imaging facilities that are not in close proximity with the radioisotopes manufacturer. Recently, an alternative Aβ tracer has been developed, Florbetapir (Wong et al, 2010.), with a half-life of 110 minutes that should allow wider accessibility to imaging sites while improve the detection of Aβ. To define better the specificity and utility of Florbetapir, we propose to utilize existing PET data acquired with the radioactive tracer Florbetapir from the Alzheimer's disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). Our goal is to characterize the symmetry of Aβ protein deposition in the brain of patients with Alzheimer's disease. While a previous study has investigated this issue using PiB, Florbetapir has not been used. Our project will involve data post-processing by segmenting out non-brain tissues. Segmented data is then normalized by the pixel intensity and a distribution curve is created using MathCad program. In addition, we will calculate the asymmetry score for Regions of Interest. This will permit comparison of the uptakes of tracer between brain hemispheres to be made. Results from our project can provide insight into Florbetapir's binding affinity for Aβ. In addition, Florbetapir's potential as a better alternative to PiB can also be evaluated

STOCK MARKET AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN VIETNAM

For many years, the relationship between the financial system and economic growth has attracted the attention of scholars intending to uncover the direction of the relationship. The stock market is a part of the financial system and plays an essential role in channelling equity funds into the economy and creating liquidity for the equity instruments. A substantial empirical study postulates that the stock market can boost the economic growth of an economy. However, other studies assert that, at best, the stock market is an unimportant economic driver

Institutional Resilience Along The Mississippi Gulf Coast in The Context of Pre- And Post-Hurricane Katrina

Building resilience to disasters helps reduce loss of life and property, allowing communities to recover more quickly from shocks and disruptions. Governing institutions are tasked with tremendous responsibility in terms of mitigating risks and enhancing resilience of local communities through proactive planning and policies. It is important to examine how institutional policies have changed pre- and post-disaster to determine their contribution to community resilience. Metrics and indicators can be used to quantitatively assess, establish baseline, track, and monitor resilience at the community level. Few studies have attempted to measure institutional resilience using a set of indicators and metrics, and even fewer explore the conceptual gaps between academic research on hazards and emergency management practice. This research investigates the utility of the Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC) institutional resilience (IR) sub-index in a context-specific case study. This study replicates the BRIC IR sub-index, aggregated at the state scale, for eighty-two counties in Mississippi in the context of pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina. Difference of means and median tests along with evaluating of change in ranking were utilized to determine the drivers of change in institutional resilience from 2000 to 2010 for the state of Mississippi and for Hancock, Harrison, and Jackson counties. In addition, content analysis of state and local hazard mitigation plans (HMPs) provides contextual information to explain observed changes in institutional resilience metrics as well as in post-disaster mitigation practice. Mitigation spending, flood insurance coverage, disaster aid experience, jurisdictional coordination, and crop insurance coverage are the drivers of change in institutional resilience for the state of Mississippi, while only the first three indicators along with population stability are the drivers for Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties. Increases in mitigation spending and flood insurance coverage can be directly attributed to Hurricane Katrina. Content analysis of state and local HMPs suggests that the theoretical basis of BRIC IR indicators is reflective of mitigation practice. In addition, there are substantial improvements in the post-Hurricane Katrina HMPs in the categories of hazard identification, jurisdictional coordination, reporting of loss data, hazard modeling, participation in the National Flood Insurance Program, and social vulnerability assessment

Analyzing repetitiveness in big code to support software maintenance and evolution

Software systems inevitably contain a large amount of repeated artifacts at different level of abstraction---from ideas, requirements, designs, algorithms to implementation. This dissertation focuses on analyzing software repetitiveness at implementation code level and leveraging the derived knowledge for easing tasks in software maintenance and evolution such as program comprehension, API use, change understanding, API adaptation and bug fixing. The guiding philosophy of this work is that, in a large corpus, code that conforms to specifications appears more frequently than code that does not, and similar code is changed similarly and similar code could have similar bugs that can be fixed similarly. We have developed different representations for software artifacts at source code level, and the corresponding algorithms for measuring code similarity and mining repeated code. Our mining techniques bases on the key insight that code that conforms to programming patterns and specifications appears more frequently than code that does not. Thus, correct patterns and specifications can be mined from large code corpus. We also have built program differencing techniques for analyzing changes in software evolution. Our key insight is that similar code is likely changed in similar ways and similar code likely has similar bug(s) which can be fixed similarly. Therefore, learning changes and fixes from the past can help automatically detect and suggest changes/fixes to the repeated code in software development. Our empirical evaluation shows that our techniques can accurately and efficiently detect repeated code, mine useful programming patterns and API specifications, and recommend changes. It can also detect bugs and suggest fixes, and provide actionable insights to ease maintenance tasks. Specifically, our code clone detection tool detects more meaningful clones than other tools. Our mining tools recover high quality programming patterns and API preconditions. The mined results have been used to successfully detect many bugs violating patterns and specifications in mature open-source systems. The mined API preconditions are shown to help API specification writer identify missing preconditions in already-specified APIs and start building preconditions for the not-yet-specified ones. The tools are scalable which analyze large systems in reasonable times. Our study on repeated changes give useful insights for program auto-repair tools. Our automated change suggestion approach achieves top-1 accuracy of 45%-51% which relatively improves more than 200% over the base approach. For a special type of change suggestion, API adaptation, our tool is highly correct and useful

Design and implementation of embedded adaptive controller using ARM processor.

This thesis is concerned with development of embedded adaptive controllers for industrial applications. Many industrial processes present challenging control problems such as high nonlinearity, time-varying dynamic behaviors, and unpredictable external disturbances. Conventional controllers are too limited to successfully resolve these problems. Therefore, the adaptive control strategy, an advanced control theory, is applied to overcome deficiencies of the conventional controllers

Clinical and pathophysiological aspects of severe falciparum malaria

Malaria is a major global public health problem. One-fifth of the world's population is at risk of malaria and drug resistance is spreading. Nearly five times as many cases of malaria were reported in 2000 as tuberculosis, AIDS, measles and leprosy cases combined. In the time it takes to say the word "malaria," ten children will contract the disease and begin fighting for their lives. Since the cinchona alkaloids were introduced as a specific treatment for agues 350 years ago, the treatment of severe malaria has changed little and therapy remains largely empirical. Quinine and quinidine remain the drugs of choice for severe chloroquine-resistant malaria due to Plasmodium falciparum, and with the spread of these resistant parasites, the usage of these drugs is increasing. In 1972 scientists in China discovered the antimalarial properties of a group of sesquiterpene lactone peroxides derived from the qinghao plant (Artemisia annua). The principal component, qinghaosu (artemisinin), and two derivatives - the water-soluble hemisuccinate artesunate and the oil-soluble artemether - are the most rapidly acting and potent of all antimalarial drugs. Although much research effort has been invested in optimizing antimalarial drug regimes, severe malaria remains a major cause of adult mortality in the Asiatic tropics. Despite many clinical trials reducing the mortality from severe malaria has proved difficult. Artemether has been shown to be as good as quinine but not better. This thesis set out to determine whether Artemether or Artesunate was the the better drug, how to manage acute renal failure in severe malaria, to design a severity score for malaria and assess whether there had been any change in the parasite clearance times in Viet Nam over a 18 year period. The results from a series of clinical trials and research from one hospital in Viet Nam are presented. This thesis undertook the following studies: 1. A randomised clinical trial of artesunate vs artemether in the treatment of severe malaria in adults in Viet Nam. 2. A randomized comparison of pumped venovenous haemofiltration and peritoneal dialysis in acute renal failure associated with severe infection. 3. Fluid management in severe malaria. 4. The stage of the development of the falciparum parasites at the time of clinical presentation with severe malaria is important in predicting outcome. 5. Development of a predictive score of outcome in adults with severe falciparum malaria. 6. Assessment of the efficacy of the artemisinin derivatives in the treatment of severe falciparum malaria in Viet Nam 1991-2008

STOCK MARKET DEVELOPMENT AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN VIETNAM

For many years, the relationship between the financial system and economic growth has attracted the attention of scholars intending to uncover the direction of the relationship. The stock market is a part of the financial system and plays an essential role in channelling equity funds into the economy and creating liquidity for the equity instruments. A substantial empirical study postulates that the stock market can boost the economic growth of an economy. However, other studies assert that, at best, the stock market is an unimportant economic driver. This thesis aims to examine the causal relationship between the stock market and economic growth in Vietnam in the period from 2000 to 2015. In order to examine the potential impact of the financial crisis and develop a well-functioning stock market in Vietnam, this study also undertakes a critical comparative quantitative research of a selected developing country in the South-East Asian region to identify potential policy implications. This analysis utilises the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model to investigate the causal linkage in the long and short-run between the stock market and economic growth. The determinant vectors present in the stock market are the price index and the size of market capitalisation. This study defines economic growth as a real increase in gross domestic product per capita. Then, to develop the well-functioning stock market in Vietnam, this study undertakes a critical comparative quantitative research of a selected developing country in the South- East Asian region for the implications. The findings of this study suggest that there are significant cointegration relationships between stock market development and economic growth in Vietnam from 2000 to 2015. Furthermore, there are also significant cointegration relationships between economic growth and the development of the banking sector and foreign direct investment. In the long run, the market capitalisation has a positive impact on economic growth. Conversely, economic growth has a negative long-run relationship with the stock market index. This negative relationship is significant, but the impact is low. In the short run, stock market capitalisation size, and the economic growth; stock market index and economic growth are pairly bi- directional short-run Granger causality relations. The findings also suggest that, from 2000 to 2015, economic growth supports the development of the money market and attracts more foreign direct investment inflows in Vietnam. However, in this period, the speed in increasing FDI was lower than speed of economic growth leads to the negative sign in the long run relationship between FDI and economic growth. Also, in the comparative study, the findings in the Vietnam case are consistent with the results obtained for the pre-crisis subsample in the case of Thailand. The findings suggest the causality runs from both directions between the stock market and economic growth. However, when the crisis data was taken into consideration, the significant estimated long-run coefficients give a stronger negative impact that confirms the financial crisis worsened the economic conditions in Thailand between 1994 and 2014

On the Mazur-Tate-Teitelbaum conjecture

This thesis is intended to explain the result proved by Greenberg and Stevens on the Mazur-Tate-Teitelbaum conjecture. Specially, the objective of the thesis is to develop all the necessary theory in order to understand Greenberg and Stevens' paper in detail.ope