Remote information management of an automated manufacturing system

Thesis (M. Tech.) -- Central University of Technology, Free State, 2007With technology advancing, more and more people turn to the World Wide Web to conduct business. This may include buying and selling on the Web, advertising and monitoring of business activities. There is a big need for software and systems that enable remote monitoring and controlling of business activities. The Mechatronics Research Group of the Faculty of Engineering, Information and Communication Technology at the Central University of Technology, Free State, has identified a similar need. This research group has created an Automated Manufacturing System around which research topics revolve. They want to monitor this Automated Manufacturing System from remote locations like their offices or, if possible, from home. The Remote Information Management (RIM) System was developed, using the Rapid Application Development (RAD) Methodology. The reasons why this methodology was used, is because it is the best to use in a changing environment, when the system needs to be developed very quickly and when most of the data is already available. This is a good description of the Automated Manufacturing System’s environment. The RAD methodology consists of four stages: Requirements Planning, User Design, Rapid Construction and Transition. Project Management is used throughout these stages to ensure that the project goes according to plan. Development of the RIM system went through all four stages and project management was applied. The final system consisted of a Web Page with Web Camera views of the Automated Manufacturing System. The application that was developed using National Instruments LabVIEW, Microsoft Visual C++, and Microsoft Excel, is embedded in this Web Page. This application is called a Virtual Instrument (VI). The VI shows real-time data from the Automated Manufacturing System. Control over the VI can be granted and will allow the remote user to create reports on how many different products was produced and system downtimes. A system like the RIM System has advantages in the business world. It can enable telecommuting and will allow employees and managers to monitor (and even control) manufacturing systems, or any system connected to a PLC, from remote locations

Barbiturate ingestion in three adult captive tigers (Panthera tigris) and concomitant fatal botulism of one

Zoo animals, including tigers, have been reported to suffer from barbiturate intoxication, with pentabarbitone being most commonly recorded. Clinical signs range from mild ataxia to general anaesthesia with recovery over hours to days with several factors affecting hepatic barbiturate metabolism and tissue partitioning. Botulism is an often fatal intoxication in man, animals, birds and certain fish. The occurrence in carnivores is uncommon to rare, with only 2 reports found of botulism in felids. This report relates to 3 adult captive cohabiting tigers that simultaneously developed signs of abdominal discomfort, progressive ataxia, recumbency and comatose sleep resembling stage 2 anaesthesia, alternating with periods of distracted wakefulness and ataxic movements. These signs occurred 4 days after being fed the carcass of a horse that had ostensibly died of colic and not been euthanased. The male tiger that was the dominant animal in the feeding hierarchy was worst affected and had to be given intravenous fluids. The female that was lowest in hierarchy was unaffected. After 48-72 hours of treatment at the Onderstepoort Veterinary Academic Hospital the females could eat and made an uneventful recovery. The male tiger showed partial recovery but died during the night a few hours after drinking water on his return to the owner. Necropsy revealed severe oesophageal dilation and impaction with decaying grass; some of this material and water were present in the pharynx and trachea, and had been aspirated causing acute widespread bronchopneumonia. Colon content tested negative for common pesticides but, together with liver, tested positive for barbiturate. Serum taken on the day of admission had tested negative for barbiturate and the residual serum from the 3 animals later tested negative for botulinum toxin. Colon and oesophageal content from the male at necropsy were positive for Clostridium botulinum toxin type C by the mouse bioassay neutralisation test, confirming that this male had had concomitant barbiturate toxicity and botulism, and had succumbed to aspiration bronchopneumonia secondary to pharyngeal, laryngeal and oesophageal paralysis and oesophageal impaction.http://www.journals.co.za/ej/ejour_savet.htmlmn201

Adaptation and validation of a computerized neurocognitive battery in the Xhosa of South Africa

Objective: Large-scale studies have revolutionized biomedical research, and neurocognitive tests can help elucidate the biological basis of neuropsychiatric diseases. However, studies have predominantly been conducted in Western settings. We describe the development and validation of a computerized battery (PennCNB) with the Xhosa population of South Africa. Method: Individuals with schizophrenia (n = 525) and a normative comparison group (n = 744) were balanced on age, sex, education, and region. Participants provided blood samples, were assessed psychiatrically, and were administered a PennCNB translation to isiXhosa, including measures of executive functions, episodic memory, complex cognition, social cognition, and sensorimotor speed. Feasibility was examined with test completion rates and input from administrators, and psychometric structural validity and associations with clinical and demographic characteristics were examined. Results: Tests were well tolerated by participants, as >87% had one (or fewer) test missing. Results suggested a similar factor structure to prior PennCNB studies in Western contexts, and expected age and sex effects were apparent. Furthermore, a similar profile of schizophrenia was observed, with neurocognitive deficits most pronounced for executive functions, especially attention, as well as memory, social cognition, and motor speed relative to complex cognition and sensorimotor speed. Conclusions: Results support the feasibility of implementing a culturally adapted computerized neurocognitive battery in sub-Saharan African settings and provide evidence supporting the concurrent validity of the translated instrument. Thus, the PennCNB is implementable on a large scale in non-Western contexts, shows expected factor structure, and can detect cognitive deficits associated with neuropsychiatric disorders. Obtaining valid measures of cognition by nonspecialized proctors is especially suitable in resource-limited settings, where traditional testing is prohibitive. Future work should establish normative standards, test–retest reliability, and sensitivity to treatment

Systematic investigation of factors contributing to music perception by cochlear implant users

Cochlear implant (CI) devices afford many profoundly deaf individuals worldwide partially restored hearing ability. Although CI users achieve remarkable speech perception with contemporary multichannel CI devices, their music perception ability is generally unsatisfactory. Improved CI-mediated music perception ability requires that the underlying constraints hindering processing of music-relevant information need to be identified and understood. This study puts forward a systematic approach, informed by the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying music perception in normal hearing (NH), for investigating implant-mediated music perception. Psychoacoustical experiments were used to explore the extent to which music-relevant information delivered to the central auditory system following peripheral electrical stimulation supports music perception. Task-specific stimuli and test procedures were developed to assess perception of pitch, rhythm and loudness information, both as separate and in combined form, in sound-field listening conditions. CI users’ unsuccessful judgement of the musical character of short, novel single-voice melodies suggests that insufficient information reaches the central auditory processing system to effect a unified musical percept. This is despite sound field frequency discrimination behaviour being better than had been expected and rhythm perception ability with regard to short tone sequences of varying pitch and rhythmic complexity being comparable to that of NH listeners. CI listeners also performed similarly to NH listeners during pitch-dependent loudness perception tasks. Within the framework of a hierarchical, modular processing system underlying music perception, it appears that early pitch processing deficits propagate throughout the music processing system to exert an overriding inhibitory perceptual effect. The outcomes of this study not only underline the importance of delivering sufficient pitch information to the electrically stimulated auditory system but also show that music perception in CI-mediated hearing should be investigated and understood as the outcome of an integrated perceptual system.Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011.Electrical, Electronic and Computer EngineeringUnrestricte

'A pillar of strength’ : empowering women and the resilience of township-dwelling adolescents

Only a limited number of resilience studies report what challenges and enables adolescents living in townships. Even fewer report the aforementioned from the perspective of adolescents themselves. Given that resilience is a contextually and developmentally sensitive process, it is an oversight to marginalize the risk- and resilience-related insights of township-dwelling adolescents. We correct this oversight in this article. To this end, we report a grounded theory study with 17 South African adolescents (aged 17–19) who generated visual and narrative data. Two core insights emerged. First, parental expectations underpin adolescent disillusionment. Second, empowering women (i.e., mothers, woman relatives and/or woman teachers) are key to how adolescents adjust well to the aforementioned challenge. These insights, which extend what was previously understood about the risk and resilience of township-dwelling adolescents, fit with social ecological understandings of resilience and offer useful leverage points to champion adolescent resilience.The National Research Foundation of South Africahttp://journals.sagepub.com/home/youhj2020Educational Psycholog

Fluorescent labelling of histone H3: effect on histone-histone interaction and core particle assembly

AbstractSubstitution of Cys 110 of chicken histone H3 with N-iodoacetyl-N1-(5-sulpho-1-naphthyl)ethylenediamine or iodoacetamide prevents octamer formation in 2 M NaCl but does not prevent polyglutamic acid-mediated core particle assembly

An analytical method to determine phoneme recognition abilities of South African cochlear implant

This article describes analytical tests developed to investigate the extent to which Afrikaans- and Englishspeaking South African cochlear implant users recognize phonemes. Vowel stimuli (in a /?VOWEL t/ context) and consonant stimuli (in an /aCONSONANT a/ context), uttered by male and female speakers, were recorded and acoustically analysed. Vowel and consonant recognition abilities of respectively nine and eleven local cochlear implant users were subsequently investigated. Typical confusions experienced by cochlear implant users were determined and explained in terms of the acoustic properties of the stimuli. General observations are that implant users find vowels that are identified by spectral characteristics difficult to recognise, while the recognition of temporal properties is better. During consonant recognition, place of articulation is particularly difficult to identify. Results support observations from similar studies conducted for other language groups. These analytical tests may be valuable for creating individualised speech processor settings and monitoring new implant users' progress in speech recognition ability. AFRIKAANS: Hierdie artikel beskryf analitiese toetse wat ontwikkel is om die foneemherkenningsvermoë van Afrikaans en Engelssprekende Suid-Afrikaanse kogleêre inplantinggebruikers te ondersoek. Vokaalstimuli (in 'n /?VOKAAL t/-konteks) en konsonantstimuli (in 'n /aKONSONANT a/-konteks), uitgespreek deur manlike en vroulike sprekers van beide taalgroepe, is opgeneem en akoesties geanaliseer. Die vokaal- en konsonantherkenningsvermoë van onderskeidelik nege en elf plaaslike kogleêre inplantinggebruikers is voorts ondersoek. Tipiese verwarrings wat inplantinggebruikers ondervind, is bepaal en in terme van die akoestiese eienskappe van die stimuli verklaar. Algemene waarnemings is dat vokale wat deur spektrale eienskappe uitgeken word, moeilik herkenbaar is vir inplantinggebruikers, terwyl temporale eienskappe beter herken word. Veral plek van artikulasie is 'n moeilik-uitkenbare eienskap tydens konsonantherkenning. Die resultate ondersteun waarnemings van soortgelyke studies in ander taalgroepe. Hierdie analitiese toetse kan nuttig wees om gebruiker-spesifieke spraakverwerkerinstellings te maak en om vordering van nuwe gebruikers se spraakherkenningsvermoë te monitor

The accumulation of metals, PAHs and alkyl PAHs in the roots of Echinacea purpurea.

We examined the accumulation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), alkyl PAHs, and toxic metals in soils by the roots of Echinacea purpurea (L.) Moench, in a 20-week greenhouse study and a 2-year field study. In the greenhouse study, inoculation by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF), Rhizoglomus intraradices (N.C. Schenck & G.S. Sm.). increased the first order accumulation rates (k1) for PAHs by 10-fold, though had no effect on the bioaccumulation rates of toxic metals. In the greenhouse study, PAHs concentrations in soil increased over time with AMF inoculation, suggesting AMF promote 'solvent depletion' in soils by enhancing absorption of minerals and carbon by roots, concentrating the more hydrophobic PAHs in the residual soil. Under field conditions, contaminant concentrations in soils remained unchanged over the 2-year duration of the study. Despite this, all contaminants in E. purpurea roots increased significantly, as a result of a long term extraction of contaminants by plants from soil and a reduction in soil volume as a result of plant growth. First order accumulation rates by roots were inversely correlated to log Kow for the PAHs and alkyl PAHs, indicating that accumulation is inversely related to the compound's hydrophobicity. This study is the first to our knowledge to assess the accumulation of alkyl PAHs by roots, with implications for soil bioremediation by plants because alkyl PAHs are a major source of petrogenic contamination in soils

K₃ killer yeast is a mutant K₂ killer yeast

The K₂ and K₃ killer yeast classes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae were compared. Sensitive strain 381 and the killer strains NCYC 232, NCYC 190, NCYC 738, NCYC 761 and KT28 were sensitive to the killer toxins produced by the K₂ and K₃ strains. However, these two strains were resistant to both toxins. Hybridization analysis showed that the M dsRNAs from the K₂ and K₃ strains had significant homology, but shared no homology with the dsRNAs from the K₁ and KT28 strains. The K₂ dsRNA is larger than the K₃ M dsRNA, and electron micrographs showed an unmatched loop when these molecules were hybridized. This suggests that the K₃ M dsRNA is a mutant K₂ M genome. These results show that K₂ and K₃ strains belong in the same class, but separate from the K₁ and KT28 killer types.6 page(s