The pathogenesis of Acanthamoeba infections: current status and future implications

Acanthamoeba are opportunistic protozoan parasites that can cause painful, visionthreatening keratitis. However the pathogenesis and pathophysiology of Acanthamoeba keratitis remain incompletely understood. Most cases of Acanthamoeba keratitis develop as a result of poor hygiene in contact lens care but it is unclear how amoebae transmigrate from the environment into the cornea leading to inflammation, photophobia and blindness. Acanthamoeba keratitis has become increasingly important in the past few decades due to increasing populations of contact lens users. The mechanisms associated with the pathogenesis of Acanthamoeba are highly complex, depending on the virulence properties of the parasite, host susceptibility and the environmental conditions. Complete understanding of Acanthamoeba pathogenesis and its associated risks factors should allow us to design strategies for disease prevention and for the rational development of therapeutic interventions against these devastating infections. Acanthamoeba keratitis has become a significant problem in recent years, especially in contact lens wearers exposed to contaminated water

Far field imaging of a dielectric inclusion

A non-iterative topological sensitivity framework for guaranteed far field detection of a dielectric inclusion is presented. The cases of single and multiple measurements of the electric far field scattering amplitude at a fixed frequency are taken into account. The performance of the algorithm is analyzed theoretically in terms of resolution, stability, and signal-to-noise ratio.Comment: 6 pages, 5th International Workshop on New Computational Methods for Inverse Problems, ENS Cachan, Franc

Design Options For Low Cost, Low Power Microsatellite Based SAR.

This research aims at providing a system design that reduces the mass and cost of spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) missions by a factor of two compared to current (TecSAR - 300 kg, ~ £ 127 M) or planned (NovaSAR-S — 400 kg, ~ £ 50 M) mission. This would enable the cost of a SAR constellation to approach that of the current optical constellation such as Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC). This research has identified that the mission cost can be reduced significantly by: focusing on a narrow range of applications (forestry and disasters monitoring); ensuring the final design has a compact stowage volume, which facilitates a shared launch; and building the payload around available platforms, rather than the platform around the payload. The central idea of the research has been to operate the SAR at a low instantaneous power level—a practical proposition for a micro-satellite based SAR. The use of a simple parabolic reflector with a single horn at L-band means that a single, reliable and efficient Solid State Power Amplifier (SSPA) can be used to lower the overall system cost, and to minimise the impact on the spacecraft power system. A detailed analysis of basic pulsed (~ 5 - 10 % duty cycle) and Continuous Wave (CW) SAR (100 % duty cycle) payloads has shown their inability to fit directly into existing microsatellite buses without involving major changes, or employing more than one platform. To circumvent the problems of pulsed and CW techniques, two approaches have been formulated. The first shows that a CW SAR can be implemented in a mono-static way with a single antenna on a single platform. In this technique, the SAR works in an Interrupted CW (ICW) mode, but these interruptions introduce periodic gaps in the raw data. On processing, these gapped data result in artefacts in the reconstructed images. By applying data based statistical estimation techniques to “fill in the gaps” in the simulated raw SAR data, this research has shown the possibility of minimising the effects of these artefacts. However, once the same techniques are applied to the real SAR data (in this case derived from RADARSAT-1), the artefacts are shown to be problematic. Because of this the ICW SAR design technique it is—set aside. The second shows that an extended chirp mode pulsed (ECMP) SAR (~ 20 - 54 % duty cycle) can be designed with a lowered peak power level which enables a single SSPA to feed a parabolic Cassegrain antenna. The detailed analysis shows the feasibility of developing a microsatellite based SAR design at a comparable price to those of optical missions

On the grad-div stabilization for the steady Oseen and Navier--Stokes equations

This paper studies the parameter choice in the grad-div stabilization applied to the generalized problems of Oseen type. Stabilization parameters based on minimizing the H¹ (Ω) error of the velocity are derived which do not depend on the viscosity parameter. For the proposed parameter choices, the H¹ (Ω) error of the velocity is derived that shows a direct dependence on the viscosity parameter. Differences and common features to the situation for the Stokes equations are discussed. Numerical studies are presented which confirm the theoretical results. Moreover, for the Navier- Stokes equations, numerical simulations were performed on a two-dimensional ow past a circular cylinder. It turns out, for the MINI element, that the best results can be obtained without grad-div stabilization

The Relationship among Vanity Trait, Shopping Values & Compulsive Buying: An Evidence from University Shoppers

The present paper is the first attempt to check the impact of vanity and shopping values on compulsive buying in university shoppers with the comparative study of business students and teachers. Our objectives are to check the impact of vanity on utilitarian, vanity on hedonic values, vanity on compulsive buying, mediation of hedonic and utilitarian values among vanity and compulsive buying. Our sample was the Business students and teachers of Mohammed Ali Jinnah University Islamabad. 200 questionnaires were distributed and 140 were selected. A conceptual model was developed and hypotheses were tested with structural equation modeling. The main findings suggest that the vanity affect the compulsive buying directly. The vanity affects hedonic values positively but no effect on utilitarian shopping values. The utilitarian and hedonic values do not mediate the relationship of vanity and compulsive buying. The vanity has no indirect relation with compulsive buying. Keywords: Consumer vanity, Shopping values, Compulsive buying, University buyer