How automated image analysis techniques help scientists in species identification and classification?

Identification of taxonomy at a specific level is time consuming and reliant upon expert ecologists. Hence the demand for automated species identification incre­ased over the last two decades. Automation of data classification is primarily focussed on images while incorporating and analysing image data has recently become easier due to developments in computational technology. Research ef­forts on identification of species include specimens’ image processing, extraction of identical features, followed by classifying them into correct categories. In this paper, we discuss recent automated species identification systems, mainly for categorising and evaluating their methods. We reviewed and compared different methods in step by step scheme of automated identification and classification systems of species images. The selection of methods is influenced by many variables such as level of classification, number of training data and complexity of images. The aim of writing this paper is to provide researchers and scientists an extensive background study on work related to automated species identification, focusing on pattern recognition techniques in building such systems for biodiversity studies. (Folia Morphol 2018; 77, 2: 179–193

The Impact of Health Information Technology on Hospital Productivity

Health information technology (IT) has been championed as a tool that can transform health care delivery. We estimate the parameters of a value-added hospital production function correcting for endogenous input choices to assess the private returns hospitals earn from health IT. Despite high marginal products, the total benefits from expanded IT adoption are modest. Over the span of our data, health IT inputs increased by more than 210% and contributed about 6% to the increase in value-added. Not-for-profits invested more heavily and differently in IT. Finally, we find no compelling evidence of labor complementarities or network externalities from competitors’ IT investment

Is affect experiencing therapeutic in major depressive disorder? Examining associations between affect experiencing and changes to the alliance and outcome in intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy.

Affect experiencing (AE), defined as the facilitation of client in-session bodily arousal and visceral experiencing of affect, is a distinct theoretical process presumed to contribute to therapeutic improvement. This study examined the role of AE in the treatment of major depressive disorder by exploring its association to client distress and therapeutic alliance on a session-by-session basis. A case series design was used to conduct an intensive analysis of the treatment process of 4 clients who received time-limited intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy, 2 of whom were considered "recovered" and 2 who showed "no change" based upon posttreatment outcomes. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that cross-correlations between AE and client distress discriminated between "recovered" and "no change" clients. In "recovered" clients, there was evidence that higher in-session peak affect experience was associated with reduced distress 7 days later. The results did not provide consistent evidence for a reverse effect, showing that lower distress during the preceding week predicted higher AE in that session. Finally, there was evidence that AE is an in-session activity that can promote the strengthening of the therapeutic alliance. These collective findings suggest that AE is an important treatment process that contributes to alliance formation and psychotherapeutic improvement. Clinical implications include further evidence that psychodynamic therapists can utilize AE as an active change ingredient for depression

Survey of Infections Transmissible Between Baboons and Humans, Cape Town, South Africa

Baboons on South Africa’s Cape Peninsula come in frequent contact with humans. To determine potential health risks for both species, we screened 27 baboons from 5 troops for 10 infections. Most (56%) baboons had antibodies reactive or cross-reactive to human viruses. Spatial overlap between these species poses low but potential health risks

An aggregator-based-strategy to minimize the cost of energy consumption by optimal utilization of energy resources in an apartment building

© 2019 IEEE. Buildings and transport consume two thirds of the total global energy. It is desirable to maximize the use of renewable generation in these sectors, and to optimize the use of that energy by managing diverse sources and loads. This is particularly challenging in high-density residential premises where the space for such infrastructure is limited, and storage can have significant impact on energy utilization and demand. In this paper, we have proposed an aggregator-based-strategy (ABS) to optimally utilize the available energy resources and storage in an apartment building with twenty households, each having an electric vehicle (EV), and an aggregated solar photovoltaic (PV) energy and stationary battery storage (BS) system. The strategy is flexible and can be applied to any building with EVs, solar PV and BS to minimize the cost of energy consumption without compromising the flexibility of energy usage or travel requirements. The model also accounts for the battery capacity degradation and its associated cost to make it more realistic. The model is evaluated using real data and the results show that the strategy not only reduces the cost of energy consumption but also reduces the amount of energy drawn from the grid significantly

Broadband optical supercontinuum generation in a long cavity fibre laser

We describe optical supercontinuum generation in an actively mode-locked fibre ring laser using a pulsed mode-locking technique. Recirculation of a section of the continuum facilitated spectral broadening

Copolymer analysis by mass spectrometry

Polymeric materials have many functions in the modern world. This is due to their tuneable thermal and mechanical properties, the ease at which they can be functionalised, and the scalability of the synthetic methods. Advances in polymer synthetic chemistry have allowed more exact design of these materials for their function, leading to a rise in the complexity of the products and properties available. As the need for more precise synthetic procedures increases as does the need for analysis techniques to characterise their products. Polymers by definition are complex mixtures which makes characterisation challenging. Mass spectrometry is capable of rising to many of the challenges which polymer research presents. Many important features of polymers are capable of being determined by mass spectrometry such as, end groups, molecular weight, composition, and architecture. A commonly used technique for polymer mass spectrometry is matrix assisted laser/desorption time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-ToF-MS). In this thesis the author presents 3 published works which seek to improve the molecular information which can be gained from polymer mass spectrometry research, with a focus on the determination of monomer sequencing in copolymer samples. The first paper (chapter 2) shows a comparison between 2 commonly used tandem mass spectrometry MALDI-ToF techniques (MALDI-ToF/ToF), and their effect on the fragmentation species examined. These two techniques are post source decay (PSD) and collision-induced dissociation (CID). The methods are used on a variety of homopolymers, to examine the effect of different heteroatoms in the polymer backbone. It is found that PSD produces less fragments than CID in most of the homopolymers. The PSD fragments tend to be generated more often by rearrangements/fragmentation around the heteroatom, whereas CID will provide more fragments in carbon-carbon bonds 5 The second paper (chapter 3) is an investigation of PSD analysis of acrylate homopolymers and copolymers. The paper shows a fragmentation pathway which appears unique to the halide end group polymers. The paper also displays the qualitative differences between a diblock copolymer and a statistical copolymer, displaying the ease at which copolymer microstructure can be determined by tandem mass spectrometry. The diblock copolymer is then examined in more detail, displaying that there is a small amount of mixing discovered at the block boundary, despite the use of controlled radical polymerisation methods. This shows the powerful copolymer sequencing which can be provided by tandem mass spectrometry. The third paper (chapter 4) is centred on the development of a generic algorithm for automatic peak assignment of copolymer MALDI-ToF data. This algorithm allows quick assignment of the monomer composition of each peak present in the spectra, producing a table of these results. This data can then be displayed as a heatmap of the two monomers where the colour is the intensity of the peak. Here qualitative differences can be seen between different copolymer compositions and different copolymer microstructures. This is an examination of the composition distribution, an often-neglected part of a copolymer sample