A Characteristic Mode Analysis of Conductive Nanowires and Microwires Above a Lossy Dielectric Half-Space

Title from PDF of title page viewed October 30, 2017Thesis advisor: Ahmed M. HassanVitaIncludes bibliographical references (pages 55-60)Thesis (M.S.)--School of Computing and Engineering. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2017Nanowires possess extraordinary mechanical, thermoelectric and electromagnetic properties which led to their incorporation in a wide variety of applications. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of material on the electromagnetic response of these nanowires. We used the Method of Moments (MOM) for Arbitrarily Thin Wire (ATW) formulation as an efficient computational technique for calculating the electromagnetic response of nanowires. To explain the calculated electromagnetic response, we evoked the Characteristic Mode Analysis (CMA) which decomposes the current on the wire into a superposition of fundamental current modes. These modes are weighted by two coefficients: (i) the relative importance of each mode at a certain frequency, termed Modal Significance, and (ii) the level of coupling between the incident field and the mode termed the Modal Excitation Coefficient. In this, work we study how the wire’s material affect the Modal Significance and the Modal Excitation Coefficient of nanowires. Our results show that the material of the nanowire has a strong effect on the resonance frequency, the bandwidth, and the overlap of the modes showing that the material of the nanowire can be used as a tuning factor to develop sensors with desired radiation characteristics. Nanowires are commonly grown vertically on a substrate and, therefore, we also study the effect of the presence of a lossy dielectric half-space on their electromagnetic response. To efficiently account for this interface, we utilize a modified Green’s function using the rigorous Sommerfeld integrals. Our results show that the relative permittivity of the substrate decreases the resonance frequencies of the nanowires and significantly alters their radiation patterns. Most importantly, we find that, if the nanowire is near the interface, its evanescent field’s couple to the dielectric half space leading to the majority of the scattered power radiated into the substrate with high directivity. The results of this thesis has the potential to quantify the electromagnetic response of vertical nanowires in their realistic environment as well as facilitate the incorporation of nanowires in novel sensing applications.Introduction -- Theoretical model -- Dielectric and magnetic properties of nanowires and microwires -- Graphical user interface -- Results and discussion -- Conclusion and future wor

Plasma based markers of [11C] PiB-PET brain amyloid burden.

PublishedJournal ArticleResearch Support, N.I.H., ExtramuralResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tChanges in brain amyloid burden have been shown to relate to Alzheimer's disease pathology, and are believed to precede the development of cognitive decline. There is thus a need for inexpensive and non-invasive screening methods that are able to accurately estimate brain amyloid burden as a marker of Alzheimer's disease. One potential method would involve using demographic information and measurements on plasma samples to establish biomarkers of brain amyloid burden; in this study data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative was used to explore this possibility. Sixteen of the analytes on the Rules Based Medicine Human Discovery Multi-Analyte Profile 1.0 panel were found to associate with [(11)C]-PiB PET measurements. Some of these markers of brain amyloid burden were also found to associate with other AD related phenotypes. Thirteen of these markers of brain amyloid burden--c-peptide, fibrinogen, alpha-1-antitrypsin, pancreatic polypeptide, complement C3, vitronectin, cortisol, AXL receptor kinase, interleukin-3, interleukin-13, matrix metalloproteinase-9 total, apolipoprotein E and immunoglobulin E--were used along with co-variates in multiple linear regression, and were shown by cross-validation to explain >30% of the variance of brain amyloid burden. When a threshold was used to classify subjects as PiB positive, the regression model was found to predict actual PiB positive individuals with a sensitivity of 0.918 and a specificity of 0.545. The number of APOE [Symbol: see text] 4 alleles and plasma apolipoprotein E level were found to contribute most to this model, and the relationship between these variables and brain amyloid burden was explored.Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI)Canadian Institutes of Health ResearchFoundation for the National Institutes of HealthNational Institutes of HealthInnoMed, European Union of the Sixth Framework programNational Institutes for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health at the South London and Maudsley National Health Service Foundation TrustInstitute of Psychiatry, King's College Londo

'You likes your way, we got our own way': Gypsy and Travellers' views on infant feeding and health professional support

Background: Gypsies and Travellers are known to have poor health status and access to health services, even in comparison to other ethnic minority groups. People from this stigmatised ethnic group are rarely consulted about their health needs or health service provision. Optimal infant feeding in the first year of life has the potential to improve life long health. Objective: The aim of this study is to explore mothers and grandmothers' views on feeding in the first year of life, including the support provided by health professionals. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposively selected sample of 22 mothers and grandmothers of English Gypsy, Irish Traveller and Romanian Roma ethnicity between November 2011 and February 2012 in a city in South-West England. Results Few women perceived themselves as requiring help from health professionals in infant feeding, as acceptable and accessible support was available from within their own communities. Roma mothers described a tradition of breastfeeding and appropriately timed weaning, while English Gypsies and Irish Travellers customarily practised less healthy infant feeding. When mothers requested support, health service provision was often found inadequate. Conclusion: Exploring the views of Gypsies and Travellers is important to gain insight into the provision of health services for this marginalised ethnic group. This study has implications for policy and the practice of health professionals, in indicating the customary feeding behaviours of some Gypsy and Travellers, and highlighting areas meriting culturally sensitive health promotion

A simple, high-throughput, colourimetric, field applicable loop-mediated isothermal amplification (HtLAMP) assay for malaria elimination.

BACKGROUND: To detect all malaria infections in elimination settings sensitive, high throughput and field deployable diagnostic tools are required. Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) represents a possible field-applicable molecular diagnostic tool. However, current LAMP platforms are limited by their capacity for high throughput. METHODS: A high-throughput LAMP (HtLAMP) platform amplifying mitochondrial targets using a 96-well microtitre plate platform, processing 85 samples and 11 controls, using hydroxynaphtholblue as a colourimetric indicator was optimized for the detection of malaria parasites. Objective confirmation of visually detectable colour change results was made using a spectrophotometer. A dilution series of laboratory-cultured 3D7 Plasmodium falciparum parasites was used to determine the limit of detection of the HtLAMP assay, using P. falciparum (HtLAMP-Pf) and Plasmodium genus (HtLAMP-Pg) primers, on whole blood and filter paper, and using different DNA extraction protocols. The diagnostic accuracy of HtLAMP was validated using clinical samples from Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Ghana and The Gambia and its field applicability was evaluated in Kota Marudu district hospital, Sabah, Malaysia. RESULTS: The HtLAMP assay proved to be a simple method generating a visually-detectable blue and purple colour change that could be objectively confirmed in a spectrophotometer at a wavelength of 600 nm. When compared with PCR, overall HtLAMP-Pg had a sensitivity of 98 % (n = 260/266, 95 % CI 95-99) and specificity 83 % (n = 15/18, 95 % CI 59-96). HtLAMP-Pf had a sensitivity of 97 % (n = 124/128, 95 % CI 92-99) and specificity of 96 % (n = 151/157, 95 % CI 92-99). A validation study in a regional hospital laboratory demonstrated ease of performance and interpretation of the HtLAMP assay. HtLAMP-Pf performed in this field setting had a sensitivity of 100 % (n = 17/17, 95 % CI 80-100) and specificity of 95 % (n = 123/128, 95 % CI 90-98) compared with multiplex PCR. HtLAMP-Pf also performed well on filter paper samples from asymptomatic Ghanaian children with a sensitivity of 88 % (n = 23/25, 95 % CI 69-97). CONCLUSION: This colourimetric HtLAMP assay holds much promise as a field applicable molecular diagnostic tool for the purpose of malaria elimination

Representative Landscapes in the Forested Area of Canada

Canada is a large nation with forested ecosystems that occupy over 60% of the national land base, and knowledge of the patterns of Canada’s land cover is important to proper environmental management of this vast resource. To this end, a circa 2000 Landsat-derived land cover map of the forested ecosystems of Canada has created a new window into understanding the composition and configuration of land cover patterns in forested Canada. Strategies for summarizing such large expanses of land cover are increasingly important, as land managers work to study and preserve distinctive areas, as well as to identify representative examples of current land-cover and land-use assemblages. Meanwhile, the development of extremely efficient clustering algorithms has become increasingly important in the world of computer science, in which billions of pieces of information on the internet are continually sifted for meaning for a vast variety of applications. One recently developed clustering algorithm quickly groups large numbers of items of any type in a given data set while simultaneously selecting a representative—or “exemplar”—from each cluster. In this context, the availability of both advanced data processing methods and a nationally available set of landscape metrics presents an opportunity to identify sets of representative landscapes to better understand landscape pattern, variation, and distribution across the forested area of Canada. In this research, we first identify and provide context for a small, interpretable set of exemplar landscapes that objectively represent land cover in each of Canada’s ten forested ecozones. Then, we demonstrate how this approach can be used to identify flagship and satellite long-term study areas inside and outside protected areas in the province of Ontario. These applications aid our understanding of Canada’s forest while augmenting its management toolbox, and may signal a broad range of applications for this versatile approach

Blood metabolite markers of neocortical amyloid-β burden: discovery and enrichment using candidate proteins.

We believe this is the first study to investigate associations between blood metabolites and neocortical amyloid burden (NAB) in the search for a blood-based biomarker for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Further, we present the first multi-modal analysis of blood markers in this field. We used blood plasma samples from 91 subjects enrolled in the University of California, San Francisco Alzheimer's Disease Research Centre. Non-targeted metabolomic analysis was used to look for associations with NAB using both single and multiple metabolic feature models. Five metabolic features identified subjects with high NAB, with 72% accuracy. We were able to putatively identify four metabolites from this panel and improve the model further by adding fibrinogen gamma chain protein measures (accuracy=79%). One of the five metabolic features was studied in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative cohort, but results were inconclusive. If replicated in larger, independent studies, these metabolic features and proteins could form the basis of a blood test with potential for enrichment of amyloid pathology in anti-amyloid trials

Exome sequencing identifies NBEAL2 as the causative gene for gray platelet syndrome.

Gray platelet syndrome (GPS) is a predominantly recessive platelet disorder that is characterized by mild thrombocytopenia with large platelets and a paucity of α-granules; these abnormalities cause mostly moderate but in rare cases severe bleeding. We sequenced the exomes of four unrelated individuals and identified NBEAL2 as the causative gene; it has no previously known function but is a member of a gene family that is involved in granule development. Silencing of nbeal2 in zebrafish abrogated thrombocyte formation

Sensitive Detection of Plasmodium vivax Using a High-Throughput, Colourimetric Loop Mediated Isothermal Amplification (HtLAMP) Platform: A Potential Novel Tool for Malaria Elimination.

INTRODUCTION: Plasmodium vivax malaria has a wide geographic distribution and poses challenges to malaria elimination that are likely to be greater than those of P. falciparum. Diagnostic tools for P. vivax infection in non-reference laboratory settings are limited to microscopy and rapid diagnostic tests but these are unreliable at low parasitemia. The development and validation of a high-throughput and sensitive assay for P. vivax is a priority. METHODS: A high-throughput LAMP assay targeting a P. vivax mitochondrial gene and deploying colorimetric detection in a 96-well plate format was developed and evaluated in the laboratory. Diagnostic accuracy was compared against microscopy, antigen detection tests and PCR and validated in samples from malaria patients and community controls in a district hospital setting in Sabah, Malaysia. RESULTS: The high throughput LAMP-P. vivax assay (HtLAMP-Pv) performed with an estimated limit of detection of 1.4 parasites/ μL. Assay primers demonstrated cross-reactivity with P. knowlesi but not with other Plasmodium spp. Field testing of HtLAMP-Pv was conducted using 149 samples from symptomatic malaria patients (64 P. vivax, 17 P. falciparum, 56 P. knowlesi, 7 P. malariae, 1 mixed P. knowlesi/P. vivax, with 4 excluded). When compared against multiplex PCR, HtLAMP-Pv demonstrated a sensitivity for P. vivax of 95% (95% CI 87-99%); 61/64), and specificity of 100% (95% CI 86-100%); 25/25) when P. knowlesi samples were excluded. HtLAMP-Pv testing of 112 samples from asymptomatic community controls, 7 of which had submicroscopic P. vivax infections by PCR, showed a sensitivity of 71% (95% CI 29-96%; 5/7) and specificity of 93% (95% CI87-97%; 98/105). CONCLUSION: This novel HtLAMP-P. vivax assay has the potential to be a useful field applicable molecular diagnostic test for P. vivax infection in elimination settings

The Implementation of a Fast-folding Pipeline for Long-period Pulsar Searching in the PALFA Survey

The Pulsar Arecibo L-Band Feed Array (PALFA) survey, the most sensitive blind search for radio pulsars yet conducted, is ongoing at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The vast majority of the 180 pulsars discovered by PALFA have spin periods shorter than 2 s. Pulsar surveys may miss long-period radio pulsars owing to the summing of a finite number of harmonic components in conventional Fourier analyses (typically ~16), or as a result of the strong effect of red noise at low modulation frequencies. We address this reduction in sensitivity by using a time-domain search technique: the fast-folding algorithm (FFA). We designed a program that implements an FFA-based search in the PALFA processing pipeline and tested the efficiency of the algorithm by performing tests under both ideal, white-noise conditions, as well as with real PALFA observational data. In the two scenarios, we show that the time-domain algorithm has the ability to outperform the FFT-based periodicity search implemented in the survey. We perform simulations to compare the previously reported PALFA sensitivity with that obtained using our new FFA implementation. These simulations show that for a pulsar having a pulse duty cycle of roughly 3%, the performance of our FFA pipeline exceeds that of our FFT pipeline for pulses with dispersion measure lesssim 40 pc cm−3 and for periods as short as ~500 ms, and that the survey sensitivity is improved by at least a factor of two for periods gsim 6 s. Early results from the implementation of the algorithm in PALFA, including discoveries, are also presented in this paper

Blood-based biomarkers for Alzheimer disease: mapping the road to the clinic.

Biomarker discovery and development for clinical research, diagnostics and therapy monitoring in clinical trials have advanced rapidly in key areas of medicine - most notably, oncology and cardiovascular diseases - allowing rapid early detection and supporting the evolution of biomarker-guided, precision-medicine-based targeted therapies. In Alzheimer disease (AD), breakthroughs in biomarker identification and validation include cerebrospinal fluid and PET markers of amyloid-β and tau proteins, which are highly accurate in detecting the presence of AD-associated pathophysiological and neuropathological changes. However, the high cost, insufficient accessibility and/or invasiveness of these assays limit their use as viable first-line tools for detecting patterns of pathophysiology. Therefore, a multistage, tiered approach is needed, prioritizing development of an initial screen to exclude from these tests the high numbers of people with cognitive deficits who do not demonstrate evidence of underlying AD pathophysiology. This Review summarizes the efforts of an international working group that aimed to survey the current landscape of blood-based AD biomarkers and outlines operational steps for an effective academic-industry co-development pathway from identification and assay development to validation for clinical use.I recieved an honorarium from Roche Diagnostics for my participation in the advisory panel meeting leading to this pape