The psychology of religious prophecy

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Use of hyaluronidase in the comparison between manual and automated hematology analysis with the ADVIA 120 to improve analysis of feline body cavity effusions

Classification of body cavity effusions is an important step in the investigation and diagnosis of disease in cats. Feline inflammatory effusions are often highly proteinaceous and viscous, which can cause clumping of white cells and subsequently inaccurate nucleated cell counts (NCCs) using automated and manual methods. Microscopic assessment of cellularity can also be difficult given the variable thickness of smears and cell clumping, which skews white cell distribution. The ADVIA 120 uses 2 white cell–counting channels, the basophil/lobularity (WBC/baso) and differential/peroxidase channels, which can provide quite different results in highly viscous feline samples and often disagree with smear assessment of cellularity. We investigated the effects of pre-incubation of feline effusion samples with hyaluronidase and its effects on NCCs and cellularity assessment. NCCs were obtained by automated analysis using the ADVIA 120 and by manual counting methods. Agreement was assessed using a Bland–Altman chart. Pretreatment of samples with hyaluronidase resulted in good agreement between the ADVIA basophil channel and manual counting methods in all samples in the study. However, improvements in NCCs after hyaluronidase treatment were significantly greater in clumped samples, and cell distribution of these samples on direct smears was also improved. Therefore, when nucleated cell clumping is observed on a direct smear, pretreatment of the sample with hyaluronidase prior to analysis on an automated analyzer is advised, with the WBC/baso channel displaying the most accurate NCC

Optimal diagnostic tests for sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease based on support vector machine classification of RT-QuIC data

In this work we study numerical construction of optimal clinical diagnostic tests for detecting sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD). A cerebrospinal fluid sample (CSF) from a suspected sCJD patient is subjected to a process which initiates the aggregation of a protein present only in cases of sCJD. This aggregation is indirectly observed in real-time at regular intervals, so that a longitudinal set of data is constructed that is then analysed for evidence of this aggregation. The best existing test is based solely on the final value of this set of data, which is compared against a threshold to conclude whether or not aggregation, and thus sCJD, is present. This test criterion was decided upon by analysing data from a total of 108 sCJD and non-sCJD samples, but this was done subjectively and there is no supporting mathematical analysis declaring this criterion to be exploiting the available data optimally. This paper addresses this deficiency, seeking to validate or improve the test primarily via support vector machine (SVM) classification. Besides this, we address a number of additional issues such as i) early stopping of the measurement process, ii) the possibility of detecting the particular type of sCJD and iii) the incorporation of additional patient data such as age, sex, disease duration and timing of CSF sampling into the construction of the test.Comment: 32 pages, 12 figures, 1 tabl

A comparison of architectural alternatives for recurrent networks

This paper describes a class of recurrent neural networks related to Elman networks. The networks used herein differ from standard Elman networks in that they may have more than one state vector. Such networks have an explicit representation of the hidden unit activations from several steps back. In principle, a single-state-vector network is capable of learning any sequential task that a multi-state-vector network can learn. This paper describes experiments which show that, in practice, and for the learning task used, a multi-state-vector network can learn a task faster and better than a single-state-vector network. The task used involved learning the graphotactic structure of a sample of about 400 English words

Induced representations of lie algebras.

All the results proved in this thesis after chapter 3 are original except where I have indicated otherwise in the text. It should be noted that several of the results were inspired by papers of Nolan R. Wallach [16], [17]. In particular, section (8.2) presents relevant parts of Wallach‘s work, and interprets his work in terms of chapters 4 — 7, while section (8.3) is a more precise and categorical description of another part of Wallach's work. Section (8.4) is original, but section (8.5) uses techniques developed by Hochschild and Mostow in their paper [7] to obtain similar results to theirs. My construction in section (8.5) is, unlike theirs, functorial and natural

Imaging Drug Uptake by Bioorthogonal Stimulated Raman Scattering Microscopy

Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy in tandem with bioorthogonal Raman labelling strategies is set to revolutionise the direct visualisation of intracellular drug uptake. Rational evaluation of a series of Raman-active labels has allowed the identification of highly active labels which have minimal perturbation on the biological efficacy of the parent drug. Drug uptake has been correlated with markers of cellular composition and cell cycle status, and mapped across intracellular structures using dual-colour and multi-modal imaging. The minimal phototoxicity and low photobleaching associated with SRS microscopy has enabled real-time imaging in live cells. These studies demonstrate the potential for SRS microscopy in the drug development process

Kinetic analysis of bioorthogonal reaction mechanisms using Raman microscopy

Raman spectroscopy is well-suited to the study of bioorthogonal reaction processes because it is a non-destructive technique, which employs relatively low energy laser irradiation, and water is only very weakly scattered in the Raman spectrum enabling live cell imaging. In addition, Raman spectroscopy allows species-specific label-free visualisation; chemical contrast may be achieved when imaging a cell in its native environment without fixatives or stains. Combined with the rapid advances in the field of Raman imaging over the last decade, particularly in stimulated Raman spectroscopy (SRS), this technique has the potential to revolutionise our mechanistic understanding of the biochemical and medicinal chemistry applications of bioorthogonal reactions. Current approaches to the kinetic analysis of bioorthogonal reactions (including heat flow calorimetry, UV-vis spectroscopy, fluorescence, IR, NMR and MS) have a number of practical shortcomings for intracellular applications. We highlight the advantages offered by Raman microscopy for reaction analysis in the context of both established and emerging bioorthogonal reactions, including the copper(i) catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC) click reaction and Glaser-Hay coupling

Global assessment of three Rumex species reveals inconsistent climatic niche shifts across multiple introduced ranges

Climatic niche shifts occur when species occupy different climates in the introduced range than in their native range. Climatic niche shifts are known to occur across a range of taxa, however we do not currently understand whether climatic niche shifts can consistently be predicted across multiple introduced ranges. Using three congeneric weed species, we investigate whether climatic niche shifts in one introduced range are consistent in other ranges where the species has been introduced. We compared the climatic conditions occupied by Rumex conglomeratus, R. crispus, and R. obtusifolius between their native range (Eurasia) and three different introduced ranges (North America, Australia, New Zealand). We considered metrics of niche overlap, expansion, unfilling, pioneering, and similarity to determine whether climatic niche shifts were consistent across ranges and congeners. We found that the presence and direction of climatic niche shifts was inconsistent between introduced ranges for each species. Within an introduced range, however, niche shifts were qualitatively similar among species. North America and New Zealand experienced diverging niche expansion into drier and wetter climates respectively, whilst the niche was conserved in Australia. This work highlights how unique characteristics of an introduced range and local introduction history can drive different niche shifts, and that comparisons between only the native and one introduced range may misrepresent a species’ capacity for niche shifts. However, predictions of climatic niche shifts could be improved by comparing related species in the introduced range rather than relying on the occupied environments of the native range