An investigation of planar array system artefacts generated within an electrical impedance mammography system developed for breast cancer detection

An Electrical Impedance Mammography (EIM) planar array imaging system is being developed at the University of Sussex for the detection of breast cancers. Investigations have shown that during data collection, systematic errors and patient artefacts are frequently introduced during signal acquisition from different electrodes pairs. This is caused, in particular, by the large variations in the electrode-skin contact interface conditions occurring between separate electrode positions both with the same and different patients. As a result, the EIM image quality is seriously affected by these errors. Hence, this research aims to experimentally identify, analyse and propose effective methods to reduce the systematic errors at the electrode-skin interface. Experimental studies and subsequent analysis is presented to determine what ratio of electrode blockage seriously affects the acquired raw data which may in turn compromise the reconstruction. This leads to techniques for the fast and accurate detection of any such occurrences. These methodologies can be applied to any planar array based EIM system

Investigation of undesired errors relating to the planar array system of electrical impedance mammography for breast cancer detection

Breast cancer in women continues to be one of the leading causes of death in the world. Since the exact causes are not completely known, the most important approach is to reduce this mortality by early detection and treatment. Although the current detection techniques for breast cancer such as X-ray mammography provide useful informationfor diagnosis; development of a new imaging technique using non-ionising radiation is highly desirable in order to detect breast cancer at an early stage and overcome current limitations, such as age-dependent sensitivity. Electrical Impedance Mammography (EIM) provides a new solution to break through the current limitation for early cancer detection. The focus of this thesis is to investigate the current fourth generation Sussex EIM system. This system implements the EIM technique by examination of the tissueresponse to a multi-frequency injected current. The Sussex Mk4 system is discussed indetail followed by system hardware modelling. The hardware modelling includes both analogue and digital components. The analogue part includes modelling of the voltage to current converter (V-I) and analogue multiplexer while the digital section consists of modelling the signal generation, measurement and demodulating components. In the analogue section, bandwidth limitation due to the current source and the analogue multiplexer’s configuration is also the prime focus of investigation along with the proposal to overcome it. Possible factors affecting the system performance and signal quality are also part of the research. In this section, possible factors are characterized and discussed in detail on the basis of external and internal sources of possible errors along with predictable and unpredictable noise sources. External sources of error artefacts introduced by the patients and their movements while scanning are most likely to affect the image reconstruction. Predictable and unpredictable causes may introduce frequency dependent noise whereas internal sources, which can be also be classified as systematic errors, degrade system performance due to electronic circuit design, configuration, stray capacitance and cable connections. Further, comprehensive investigation is performed on the in-vivoun desired voltage threshold levels which come hand-in-hand with the methods to mitigate the possible factors responsible for them. A comprehensive study and analysis is also carried out to determine what ratio of electrode blockage can affect the acquired raw data and how this may compromise reconstruction. Techniques for fast detection of any such occurrences are also discussed

Cognitive Radio and Dynamic Spectrum Access Using Fuzzy Logic

Cognitive Radio is artificially intelligent radio and dynamic spectrum. This research paper presents an application of Cognitive Radio and Dynamic Spectrum Access with the help of fuzzy logic considering the inputs: radio and satellite frequency and outputs: adjust power and modulation. This research paper shows the real approach of comparing the simulation and design algorithm result and its successful use

Aplicación del modelo de gravedad aumentada de las TIC: análisis por sectores en la región de Asia Pacífico

The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in commerce improves the commercial structure and economic capacity of a country. This study empirically assesses the impact of ICTs on international trade in 36 countries in Asia and the Pacific, at the sectoral level, between 2007 and 2018. The study evaluates whether ICTs improve international trade by hiring the gravity model of international trade and increasing it with the ICT variable. An ICT development indicator (IDI) is formed by joining seven different ICT variables that show ICT infrastructure, use, and skills. Using the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) estimation technique, this study shows that ICTs improve trade by reducing transaction costs. The findings reveal that information and communication technology positively and significantly influence international trade in all sectors of the Asia-Pacific region, and that trade intensifies when both trading partners have a high endowment of information and communications technology. The study recommends that governments in developing countries upgrade their ICT infrastructure levels.El uso de las tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones (TIC) en el comercio mejora la estructura comercial y la capacidad económica de un país. Este estudio evalúa empíricamente el impacto de las TIC en el comercio internacional en 36 países de Asia y el Pacífico a nivel sectorial entre 2007 y 2018. El estudio prueba si las TIC mejoran el comercio internacional mediante la contratación del modelo de gravedad del comercio internacional al aumentarlo con la variable TIC. Un indicador de desarrollo de las TIC (IDI) se forma uniendo siete variables TIC diferentes que muestran la infraestructura, el uso y las habilidades de las TIC. Al emplear la técnica de estimación de Poisson pseudo-máxima verosimilitud (PPML), este estudio muestra que las TIC mejoran el comercio al reducir los costos de transacción. Las conclusiones revelan que la tecnología de la información y las comunicaciones influye positiva y significativamente en el comercio internacional en todos los sectores de la región de Asia y el Pacífico y que el comercio se intensifica cuando ambos interlocutores comerciales tienen una alta dotación de tecnología de la información y las comunicaciones. El estudio recomienda que los gobiernos de los países en desarrollo actualicen sus niveles de infraestructura TIC

Nutritional Composition of Meat

Meat ranks among one of the most significant, nutritious and favored food item available to masses, which aids in fulfilling most of their body requirements. It has played a vital role in human evolution and is an imperative constituent of a well-balanced diet. It is a good source of proteins, zinc, iron, selenium, and phosphorus followed by vitamin A and B-complex vitamins. Average value of meat protein is about 23% that varies from higher to lower value according to the type of meat source. Meat fat and its fatty acid profile is point to worry, with respect to its consumption, but its moderate usage is always advised by doctors and nutritionists, in order to lead a healthy life. Fat content of animal carcasses ranges between 8 and 20%. Quality traits of meat along with its nutritional composition become dependent upon animal breed type, feeding source (grains, pasture and grass), genetics of animal and post mortem techniques. This chapter will mainly focus on the variant aspects of nutritional constituents of meat including proteins and essential amino acids, fats and fatty acid profile, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals along with their health benefits to human health

A comparative prospective study of maternofetal outcome in advanced and younger maternal age group in higher socioeconomic strata

Background: Maternal age in pregnancy is increasing over the world and has been widely documented. Nowadays many women delay their pregnancy even up to the 40th year of life because of different reasons like changing social and economic trend. Simultaneously higher advanced technique and better supported maternal and neonatal care also exist.Methods: To have an idea of balance between advanced age and advanced support this comparative prospective study was done on 40 advanced and 40 younger maternal age groups to compare the pregnancy outcomes. To find out the association Chi-Square and unpaired ‘t’ test was used.Results: It was observed in this study that Assisted reproductive techniques (mode of conception) and cesarean section rates were significantly higher in advanced maternal age. Although there were no significant differences in antenatal and postpartum complications between the two groups.Conclusions: It can be concluded that if a women with advanced maternal age is cared at a hospital with advanced techniques, the adverse pregnancy outcomes will not be different from the non-elderly women

A Diverse Domain Generative Adversarial Network for Style Transfer on Face Photographs

The applications of style transfer on real time photographs are very trending now. This is used in various applications especially in social networking sites such as SnapChat and beauty cameras. A number of style transfer algorithms have been proposed but they are computationally expensive and generate artifacts in output image. Besides, most of research work only focuses on some traditional painting style transfer on real photographs. However, our work is unique as it considers diverse style domains to be transferred on real photographs by using one model. In this paper, we propose a Diverse Domain Generative Adversarial Network (DD-GAN) which performs fast diverse domain style translation on human face images. Our work is highly efficient and focused on applying different attractive and unique painting styles to human photographs while keeping the content preserved after translation. Moreover, we adopt a new loss function in our model and use PReLU activation function which improves and fastens the training procedure and helps in achieving high accuracy rates. Our loss function helps the proposed model in achieving better reconstructed images. The proposed model also occupies less memory space during training. We use various evaluation parameters to inspect the accuracy of our model. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method as compared to state-of-the-art results

Examining Network Structures and Dynamics of World Energy Companies in Stock Markets: A Complex Network Approach

The energy sector occupies a mainstay role in overall growth in the modern worldwide economy. Therefore, it is essential to examine network structures and dynamics of leading energy companies of the world through complex network methods. Because, complex network methods are significant tools of studying the static and dynamics properties of the stock market, which allows us to better comprehend the stock market. We use daily prices of 147 energy stocks belonging to 34 countries of the world from 2006-2019. In addition to the overall sample, we explore networks for two sub-periods to examine the topological evolution during global recession of 2008, and energy and European debt crisis of 2011. Our results show substantial clustering of energy companies based on their geographic position during overall sample period. However, the crisis periods lead to a break in Asian and European clusters and only one prominent cluster appears in all the periods belonging to North American energy companies. We also observe few top US and European based companies occupying important and great global influence positions in the networks. In addition, time-varying topological measures indicate contraction of networks during crisis time, and an expansion in the recovery periods. More implications are also discussed.Keywords: energy companies; complex network; threshold network; minimum spanning tree; stock market; crisisJEL Classifications: C18; E32; E44; G01; G14; G15; G19DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.11287</p

How do green financing and green logistics affect the circular economy in the pandemic situation: key mediating role of sustainable production

Emerging economies are striving to realize their potential for sustainable production in achieving zero-carbon agenda. Due to natural resource constraints, businesses must focus on green production resources to develop the circular economy. Therefore, this study aims to identify the key role of green financing and logistics in adopting sustainable production and circular economy. We have collected the data from 240 respondents from the Chinese manufacturing sector following the COVID-19 peak in late 2020 and analyzed using structural equation modeling. As per research findings, green financing and green logistics have a significant and positive effect on sustainable production and the circular economy. Second, sustainable production has a significant positive influence on the circular economy. Manifestly, sustainable production was discovered to play an important mediating role among these variables. Besides, the novel Importance-performance map analysis shows each constructs performance and importance value towards the circular economy. This paper contributed to the literature and highlighted the importance of each construct. Moreover, the study findings implied that green financing and green logistics should be integrated into organizational procuring and financing strategies for manufacturing green and sustainable goods, and advancing the circular economy goals

Radiographic evaluation of the margins of clinically acceptable metal-ceramic crowns

Objective: To radiographically evaluate the proximal marginal fit of the clinically acceptable metal-ceramic crowns. Methods: The prospective study was conducted at the dental clinics of Aga Khan University, Karachi, from July to December 2018, and comprised metal-ceramic crowns that were evaluated prior to the cementation. Clinical examinations were conducted by seating the crown on the tooth preparation and visual assessment was done using sharp explorer along the margins. Clinically acceptable crowns were then evaluated on the bite-wing radiograph. Any horizontal or vertical inaccuracy of \u3e0.5mm at the proximal margins was recorded as \u27discrepancy\u27. Data was analysed using SPSS 22. Results: Of the 230 interproximal margins of 115 crowns evaluated, 113(49.1%) sites had marginal discrepancies; 44(19.1%) horizontal discrepancies, 58(25.2%) vertical discrepancies, and 11(4.8%) having both horizontal and vertical discrepancies. Horizontal crown margin discrepancies were most associated with the mesial site of the maxillary crowns, while vertical discrepancies were commonly associated with the distal aspect of all crowns (p\u3c0.050). Conclusions: Almost half of the crowns that were considered clinically acceptable had some vertical or horizontal marginal discrepancy on radiographic evaluation