The Smart House Intelligent Management System : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Information Engineering at Massey University

In October 2002, Massey University embarked on the Smart House Project. It was intended to be a test bed of different technologies that improve the safety and quality of life within the home. This thesis presents the design and current status of the Smart House Intelligent Management System, a management system for processing the commands received in the Massey University Smart House. There will be two parts to this Management System: an Expert System which will be responsible for the supervision of the house, its rules and its devices, as well as a conversation module which will converse with the occupant/s of the Smart House. The system will receive voice or text commands from the user as input and process the information through performing database queries about the received command, to ascertain whether it is valid. Validity is dependent on the command's adhering to house rules, which have been set by the user beforehand. This Management System will communicate with three other modules: the Bluetooth Smart Watch, the Speech Recognition/Generation System and the Ethernet Switching System, which enables access to the house devices

The desert\u27s canary: a narrative examination of the socio-political role of the threatened desert tortoise

Through story, personal experience is connected to broader meaning. The stories that individuals tell about a flagship species contribute not only to the animal’s role in conservation, but also to collective human imagination and culture. The purpose of this research is to reveal the roles (social, cultural, political, and ecological) that the desert tortoise plays in the California Desert, and to uncover how these roles are demonstrated through conservationist’s narratives. This study utilizes mixed qualitative methods with the goal of discovering why the Mojave Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii), an iconic and threatened species, has particular significance within the desert conservation community. Results suggest that the desert tortoise plays several salient roles in the socio-ecological landscape of the California Desert that fundamentally reflect the place-based values of residents. Six specific themes were found that reify the tortoise’s place as a surrogate species and spotlight the place of the species in the human imagination. A discussion of the results illuminates how the conservation-reliant status of the tortoise, coupled with protection of biodiversity that is accomplished by deploying the species in development debates, highlights the need for more research on the social, political, and cultural significance of the tortoise. Further research exploring how narrative demonstrates socio-cultural dimensions of flagship conservation could be beneficial to understanding human perceptions of iconic wildlife and anthropogenic impacts on a broad scale

Determinación de los principios bioactivos, propiedades farmacológicas y antioxidantes de tres extractos medicinales de Echinacea para su control de calidad y estandarización

Background: The Echinacea genus belongs to the Asteraceae family and is composed of 9 species, of which E. pallida, E. angustifolia and E. purpurea are used as medicinal plants. Sales of medicinal extractsderived from these three Echinacea species reached 21 million dollars in 2002, however, it is important to mention that these extracts are being commercialized without adequate control over the standardization process, defining standardization not only as phytosanitary and agronomic regulation but also including variables that correlate the chemical content with some biological effect, decreasing the therapeutic variability, which is the main problem with herbal treatments. Because of all the above, the principal objective of the present work was to evaluate the chemical, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, hypoglycemic and antiproliferative capacities of three hydro-alcoholic Echinacea extracts in order to establish the bases for their characterization and the future oftheir standardization. Materials and methods: Three Echinacea extracts were selected. These extracts meet the first step of the standardization process which implies the manufacturing standards described by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), where the main requirement is the traceability of the product and the guarantee of origin. The selected extracts were prepared by two different manufacturers using different organs or tissues. Extract A (Echinacea®) was prepared with roots of E. purpurea, extract B (Super Echinacea®) was prepared with roots, leaves, flowers and seeds of E. purpurea and extract C (Echinacea Supreme®) was prepared with roots and aerial parts of E. purpurea and roots of E. angustifolia. The three selected extracts were applied a standardization protocol as proposed by our investigation group and published in 2014, which takes into account three phases subsequent to those included in the post phytosanitary and agronomic production standards established by USDA.These steps were 1) Physical analyses; density and dry matter were assessed. 2) Chemical analyses; some qualitative tests were performed to determine the presence of some functional groups (tannins, saponins, coumarins, anthraquinones and alkaloids), as well as some specific constituents related to functional properties like total phenols, flavonoids, caffeic and chlorogenic acid, sugars and alkylamides. 3) Biological analyses; antioxidant and antiproliferative capacities were measured in vitro and the anti-inflammatory, hypoglycaemic and thermotolerance effects were measured in vivo. Finally, some associations were made between the chemical compounds and the biological measurements. Results: this study showed differences between the three stages of standardization, highlighting some observations that were considered relevant. At first, we observed that both the dry matter and the density were significantly higher in extract C. In the second stage we found that extract A presented higher amounts of total phenols (975.5 mg GAE/gdw) and total flavonoids (6.8 mg QE/ gdw) when expressed in terms of dry weight, a tendency that is modified when the results are expressed as mL of each Echinacea extract. In this case extract C presented higher amounts of phenols and flavonoids compared to the other extracts, which is very important because these types of compounds are dosed with mL of extract. Caffeic acid was only detected in extract C (0.048 ppm) and by analysis of the non-polar fraction of the hydro-alcoholic extracts, 11 alkylamides were determined for extracts A and B and 14 for extract C. In the third stage, extract C showed higher antioxidant capacity when determined by DPPH (19.97 mM TEAC/ gdw; 4.77 mM TEAC/ mL extract) and when determined by ABTS, extract A showed higher antioxidant capacity (70.09 mM TEAC/ gdw), however, when expressed as mL of extract, extract C showed a higher antioxidant capacity (10.45 mM TEAC/ mL extract). Only extract B showed anti-inflammatory activity, extract C showed antiproliferative capacity, extracts A and C showed hyperglycaemic capacity. Discussion: Certain tendencies can be observed that allow us to relate some of the chemical compounds with a biological effect. Extract C showed higher contents of phenols and flavonoids which can be related to higher antioxidant capacity by both DPPH and ABTS. Even when the content of total phenolic compounds was observed to be high, a very low content of caffeic acid was observed, leaving unknown which types of phenolic compounds are present. Extract C also showed a higher number of alkylamides which could be associated to its antiproliferative effect shown only in this extract. Three of these alkylamides were only observed in extract C which is the only one that contains E. angustioflia, which could indicate that they may be used as possible species markers. The anti inflammatory effect observed in extract B could be related to the presence of saponins observed in the qualitative analyses. There is evidence in related literature that these types of compounds are related to anti-inflammatory processes, even though it is important to note that saponins are a very diverse group and for this reason it would be interesting to study them in more detail, starting with the aerial parts of Echinacea which is what extract B is made of and focusing on terpenoids, because within the group of saponins, terpenoids are frequently associated with this kind of pharmacological effect. Conclusions: We observed differences in the physical, chemical and biological parameters showing the need to plan standardization strategies, carry out correlation studies in finer detail that allow us to conclude the proposed association raised in this study, advancethe adequate use of herbal medicine and generate chemical content data related to biological effects. These data need to be added to the current protocols, which are mostly based on ensuring the safety and identity of the product.Antecedentes: El género Echinacea pertenece a la familia Asteraceae y está compuesto de 9 especies de las cuales sólo E. pallida, E. angustifolia y E. purpurease emplean como plantas medicinales. Las ventas de los extractos medicinales en donde se emplean estas tres especies ascendierona 21 millones de dólares en el 2002.Sin embargo, es importante aclarar que estos extractos son comercializados sin tener un control adecuado en el proceso de estandarización, definiendo estandarización no solo como la regulación fitosanitaria y agronómica sino incluyendo además variables que correlacionen el contenido químico con algún efecto biológico, disminuyendo con ello la variabilidad terapéutica la cual es el principal problema de los tratamientos herbales.Es por ello que en el presente trabajo se contempló comoobjetivo principal evaluar el contenido químico, capacidad antioxidante, antiinflamatoria, hipoglucemiante y antiproliferativa de tres extractos hidroalcohólicos de Echinacea, con el fin de establecer las bases para su caracterización y a futuro de su estandarización. Materiales y Métodos: Se seleccionaron tres extractos de Echinaceaque cumplen con la primera etapa de estandarización que corresponde a las normas de manufactura descritas por United States Department of Agriculture(USDA), en las que el principal requisito es la trazabilidad del producto y la garantía de origen.Los extractos seleccionados con esta condiciónfueron preparados por dos casas comerciales diferentes empleando distintos órganos o tejidos:extracto A (Echinacea®)el cual fue elaborado con raíces de Echinacea purpurea; extracto B (Super Echinacea®) elaborado con raíces, hojas, flores y semillas de E. purpurea y el extracto C (Echinacea Supreme®) elaborado con raíces y partes aéreas de E. purpurea y raíces de E. angustifolia. A los tres extractos seleccionados en el estudio,se lesaplicó un protocolo de estandarización propuesto por el grupo de investigación y publicado en el 2014,que contempla tres etapasadicionales a las incluidas en las normas fitosanitarias y de producción agronómicas establecidas por USDA.Estas etapasfueron: 1) Análisis físico:Se determinó la densidad y cantidad de materia seca. 2) Análisis químico: Se realizaron ensayos cualitativos para determinar la presencia de algunos grupos fitoquímicos(taninos, saponinas, cumarinas, antraquinonas y alcaloides), así como la determinación de algunos constituyentes específicos relacionados con las propiedades funcionales como son fenólicos totales, flavonoides totales, ácido cafeico, ácido clorogénico,azúcares yalquilamidas. 3) Análisis biológico: Se determinó la capacidad antioxidante yantiproliferativain vitro, así como el efecto antiinflamatorio, hipoglucemiante y de termotoleranciain vivo. Finalmente, se asoció la presencia de los compuestos químicos con algunos efectos biológicos.Resultados:El estudio mostródiferencias en los tres parámetros de estandarización.Seobservó que tanto la cantidad de materia secacomo la densidad fueron significativamente mayoresen el extracto C. En la segunda etapa se encontró queel extracto A presentóla mayor cantidad de compuestos fenólicos totales (975.5 mg EAG/gps) y flavonoides totales (6.8 mg EQ/gps), en base seca, tendencia que se modifica al analizarlo por mL de extracto hidroalcohólico, en queel extracto C mostró los valores más altos comparado con los otros dos extractos estudiados, lo cual es de suma importancia ya que este tipo de compuestos se dosifican por mL de extracto.La presencia del ácido cafeico sólo se encontró en el extracto C (0.048 ppm).Del análisis de la fracción no polar del extracto hidroalcohólico seencontraron11 alquilamidas para los extractos A y B, y 14 para el extracto C. En relación a la tercera etapa, la capacidad antioxidante fue mayor en el extracto C cuando se determinó por el método de DPPH (19.97 mM/ gps; 4.77 mM/ mL extracto)y cuando se determinó por ABTS, la capacidad antioxidantefue mayor en el extracto A (70.09 mM/ gps);sin embargo, la tendencia cambiócuando se expresó por mL de extracto, en que se observóla mayor capacidad antioxidanteen el extracto C (10.45 mM/mL extracto).Se observó también efecto antiinflamatorio para el extracto B, efecto antiproliferativo para el extracto C y efecto hipoglucemiante para los extractos A y C. Discusión. Se puedenobservar ciertas tendencias que nos permiten asociar algunos componentes químicos con los efectos biológicos, tales como mayores cantidades de compuestos fenólicos totales y flavonoides totales para el extracto Cexpresado por mL de extracto,esto se puede asociar con lo observado en la determinación de capacidad antioxidantes por los métodos deDPPH y ABTSen los que el extracto C mostró la mayor capacidad antioxidante.Aunque la cantidad de fenoles totales fue abundante, la cantidad de ácido cafeico fue muy baja, quedando la incógnita de qué tipo de compuestos polifenólicos están presentes en el extracto. Por otra parte, en el extracto C se encontró elmayor número dealquilamidas, lo cual podría asociarse al efecto antiproliferativo observado en este extracto.Tres de estas alquilamidas sólo se observaron en el extracto C que es el único que contiene E. angustifolia lo que podría indicar que pueden ser utilizadas como marcadores de especie. El efecto antiinflamatorio que se observó para el extracto B se podría correlacionar con la presencia de saponinas existiendo evidencia en la literatura de compuestos de este tipo asociados a procesos antiinflamatorios, aunque es importante mencionar que las saponinas son un grupo muy diverso lo cual sería interesante evaluar este grupo de compuestos de manera específica iniciando por parte aéreas donde observó la mayor cantidad y centrándonos en terpenoides que dentro de las saponinas son los que se asocian frecuentemente a este tipo de efecto farmacológico. Conclusiones. Se observaron diferencias en los parámetros físicos, químicos y biológicos en los tres extractos evaluados, mostrando la necesidad de plantear estrategias de estandarización llevando a cabo estudios que establezcan una correlación de una manera más fina y que permitan concluir la propuesta de asociación planteada en este estudio, avanzando con ello en el uso adecuado de los medicamentos herbales generando datos de composición química y efecto biológico, datos que se deben sumar a los protocolos actuales que se basan en su mayoría en garantizar la inocuidad e identidad del producto

Covering All Bases: The Next Inning in DNA Sequencing Efficiency

DNA emerges as a promising medium for the exponential growth of digital data due to its density and durability. This study extends recent research by addressing the \emph{coverage depth problem} in practical scenarios, exploring optimal error-correcting code pairings with DNA storage systems to minimize coverage depth. Conducted within random access settings, the study provides theoretical analyses and experimental simulations to examine the expectation and probability distribution of samples needed for files recovery. Structured into sections covering definitions, analyses, lower bounds, and comparative evaluations of coding schemes, the paper unveils insights into effective coding schemes for optimizing DNA storage systems

The effects of parental monitoring and communication on adolescent substance use and risky sexual activity: A systematic review

AIM: The aim of the systematic study was to determine the effect of parenting practices on adolescent risk behaviours such as substance use and sexual risk behaviour. METHOD: Quantitative research studies were systematically collected from various databases such as Academic Search Complete, MEDLINE (Pubmed), JSTOR, Project Muse and SAGE for the duration of 2003-2013 which was within the 10 year period of relevant literature to the date of study. RESULTS: Findings established that parental monitoring and communication prevented drug initiation, delayed alcohol initiation, and sexual debut, increased alcohol refusal efficacy, and decreased delinquent behaviour and risk taking behaviours in high risk adolescents. CONCLUSION: This review shows that parental practices play significant protective and promotive roles in managing adolescent risk behaviours

Eff ect of daily iron supplementation on health in children aged 4–23 months: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials

Background About 47% of preschool children worldwide are anaemic. Daily oral iron supplementation is a commonly recommended intervention for treatment and prevention of anaemia, but the effi cacy and safety of iron supplementation programmes is debated. Thus, we systematically reviewed the evidence for benefi t and safety of daily iron supplementation in children aged 4–23 months. Methods We searched Scopus and Medline, from inception to Feb 5, 2013, WHO databases, theses repositories, grey literature, and references. Randomised controlled trials that assigned children 4–23 months of age to daily oral iron supplementation versus control were eligible. We calculated mean diff erence (MD) or standard MD (SMD) for continuous variables, risk ratios for dichotomous data, and rate ratios for rates. We quantifi ed heterogeneity with the I2 test and synthesised all data with a random-eff ects model. This review is registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews, number CRD42011001208. Findings Of 9533 citations identifi ed by the search strategy, 49 articles from 35 studies were eligible; these trials included 42 306 children. Only nine studies were judged to be at low risk of bias. In children receiving iron supplements, the risk ratio for anaemia was 0·61 (95% CI 0·50–0·74; 17 studies, n=4825), for iron defi ciency was 0·30 (0·15–0·60; nine studies, n=2464), and for iron defi ciency anaemia was 0·14 (0·10–0·22; six studies, n=2145). We identifi ed no evidence of diff erence in mental (MD 1·65, 95% CI –0·63 to 3·94; six studies, n=1093) or psychomotor development (1·05, –1·36 to 3·46; six studies, n=1086). We noted no signifi cant diff erences in fi nal length or length-for-age, or fi nal weight or weight-for-age. Children randomised to iron had slightly lesser length (SMD –0·83, –1·53 to –0·12; eight studies, n=868) and weight gain (–1·12, –1·19 to –0·33) over the course of the studies. Vomiting (risk ratio 1·38, 95% CI 1·10–1·73) and fever (1·16, 1·02–1·31) were more prevalent in children receiving iron. Interpretation In children aged 4–23 months, daily iron supplementation eff ectively reduces anaemia. However, the adverse eff ect profi le of iron supplements and eff ects on development and growth are uncertain. Adequately powered trials are needed to establish the non-haematological benefi ts and risks from iron supplementation in this group

Reducing anaemia in low income countries: control of infection is essential.

In settings with high infection burdens, iron interventions for anaemia may be neither safe nor effective. Strategies to tackle the global burden of anaemia must take this into account, argue Sant-Rayn Pasricha and colleagues

O DIREITO AMBIENTAL NAS QUESTÕES INTERNACIONAIS

Este artigo aborda primeiramente o mercado de crédito de carbono entre os Estados desenvolvidos e em desenvolvimento, através do Protocolo de Kyoto. Em segundo momento a importância do direito internacional para as relações ambientais e de Direitos Humanos. Por último, trata da Segurança Humana e os novos atores do Sistema Internacional