The Most Poetic Subject in the World

THE MOST POETIC SUBJECT IN THE WORLD: OBSERVATIONS ON DEATH, (BEAUTIFUL) WOMEN AND REPRESENTATION IN BLADE RUNNER WESTERN culture has a long tradition of associating death with femininity and sex. Whether it is Snow White or Bluebeard's wives, Clarissa or Madame Bovary, Carmen or Madame Butterfly, representations of dead and dying women fascinate and disturb. A Greek motto from Palladas states that "Every woman is as bitter as gall; but she has two good moments, one in bed, the other at her death" (quoted by Mérimée, 181). According to Edgar Allan Poe, "the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic subject in the world" (19). Thomas de Quincey acknowledges ". . . with the love that burns in depths of admiration . . . that you [sister woman] can do one thing as well as the best of us men -- a greater thing than even..

Generalized Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithm Framework with a Mutation Operator Requiring no Adaptation

This paper presents a generalized hybrid evolutionary optimization structure that not only combines both nondeterministic and deterministic algorithms on their individual merits and distinct advantages, but also offers behaviors of the three originating classes of evolutionary algorithms (EAs). In addition, a robust mutation operator is developed in place of the necessity of mutation adaptation, based on the mutation properties of binary-coded individuals in a genetic algorithm. The behaviour of this mutation operator is examined in full and its performance is compared with adaptive mutations. The results show that the new mutation operator outperforms adaptive mutation operators while reducing complications of extra adaptive parameters in an EA representation

Economic burden of adverse drug reactions and potential for pharmacogenomic testing in Singaporean adults.

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) contribute to hospitalization but data on its economic burden is scant. Pre-emptive pharmacogenetic (PGx) testing can potentially reduce ADRs and its associated costs. The objectives of this study were to quantify the economic burden of ADRs and to estimate the breakeven cost of pre-emptive PGx testing in Singapore. We collected itemized costs for 1000 random non-elective hospitalizations of adults admitted to a tertiary-care general hospital in Singapore. The presence of ADRs at admission and their clinical characteristics were reported previously. The economic burden of ADRs was assessed from two perspectives: (1) Total cost and (2) incremental costs. The breakeven cost of PGx testing was estimated by dividing avoidable hospitalization costs for ADRs due to selected drugs by the number of patients taking those drugs. The total cost of 81 admissions caused by ADRs was US$570,404. Costs were significantly higher for bleeding/elevated international normalized ratio (US$9906 vs. US$2251, p = 6.58 × 10-3) compared to other ADRs, and for drugs acting on the blood coagulation system (US$9884 vs. US$2229, p = 4.41 × 10-3) compared to other drug classes. There were higher incremental laboratory costs due to ADRs causing or being present at admission. The estimated breakeven cost of a pre-emptive PGx test for patients taking warfarin, clopidogrel, chemotherapeutic and neuropsychiatric drugs was US$114 per patient. These results suggest that future studies designed to directly measure the clinical and cost impact of a pre-emptive genotyping program will help inform clinical practice and health policy decisions

Chemistry of cyclopentadienylchromium complexes containing C-, N- and S- organic ligands

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENC

Factor structure of the Singapore English version of the KINDL(® )children quality of life questionnaire

BACKGROUND: Quality of life (QoL) outcomes are useful in the assessment of physical, mental and social well-being and for informed healthcare decision making. However, few studies have evaluated QoL issues among Asian children due largely to the lack of culturally valid and reliable QoL questionnaires. Hence, we aimed to report the psychometric properties, in particular factor structure, of KINDL (Singapore) questionnaires among school-going children. METHODS: Students aged 8–16 years from participating schools were selected by convenience sampling. Subjects self-completed KINDL-Kid (Singapore) and KINDL-Kiddo (Singapore) questionnaires, which were cross-culturally adapted from KINDL (Germany English) for use in Singapore. We evaluated floor and ceiling effects, internal consistency and performed factor analysis. RESULTS: A total of 328 respondents (mean (SD) age: 9.6 (1.31) years; 67% female; 75% Chinese, 16% Malays, 9% Indians and others) completed KINDL-Kid while 1,026 respondents (mean (SD) age: 14.0 (1.00) years; 82% female; 82% Chinese, 12% Malays; 6% Indians and others) completed KINDL-Kiddo. Mean (SD) TOTAL QoL score was 65.5 (12.76) and 56.6 (11.92) for KINDL-Kid and KINDL-Kiddo, respectively. Floor and ceiling effects were important in five of six KINDL-Kid and two of six KINDL-Kiddo subscales. Reliability coefficients ranged from 0.40 to 0.71 (KINDL-Kid) and 0.44 to 0.84 (KINDL-Kiddo). Factor analysis generated eight and seven factors in KINDL-Kid and KINDL-Kiddo, respectively. CONCLUSION: KINDL-Kiddo exhibited good psychometric properties and may be used to assess QoL in this multi-ethnic English-speaking Asian population. However, psychometric properties of KINDL-Kid may need to be improved either by developing new items or modifying existing items

Towards patient-specific cardiovascular modeling system using the immersed boundary technique

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Previous research shows that the flow dynamics in the left ventricle (LV) reveal important information about cardiac health. This information can be used in early diagnosis of patients with potential heart problems. The current study introduces a patient-specific cardiovascular-modelling system (CMS) which simulates the flow dynamics in the LV to facilitate physicians in early diagnosis of patients before heart failure.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The proposed system will identify possible disease conditions and facilitates early diagnosis through hybrid computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation and time-resolved magnetic resonance imaging (4-D MRI). The simulation is based on the 3-D heart model, which can simultaneously compute fluid and elastic boundary motions using the immersed boundary method. At this preliminary stage, the 4-D MRI is used to provide an appropriate comparison. This allows flexible investigation of the flow features in the ventricles and their responses.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The results simulate various flow rates and kinetic energy in the diastole and systole phases, demonstrating the feasibility of capturing some of the important characteristics of the heart during different phases. However, some discrepancies exist in the pulmonary vein and aorta flow rate between the numerical and experimental data. Further studies are essential to investigate and solve the remaining problems before using the data in clinical diagnostics.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results show that by using a simple reservoir pressure boundary condition (RPBC), we are able to capture some essential variations found in the clinical data. Our approach establishes a first-step framework of a practical patient-specific CMS, which comprises a 3-D CFD model (without involving actual hemodynamic data yet) to simulate the heart and the 4-D PC-MRI system. At this stage, the 4-D PC-MRI system is used for verification purpose rather than input. This brings us closer to our goal of developing a practical patient-specific CMS, which will be pursued next. We anticipate that in the future, this hybrid system can potentially identify possible disease conditions in LV through comprehensive analysis and facilitates physicians in early diagnosis of probable cardiac problems.</p

An analysis on vendor hub

Master'sMASTER OF SCIENCE (MANAGEMENT