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Dreaming Characteristics in Non-Rapid Eye Movement Parasomnia and Idiopathic Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behaviour Disorder: Similarities and Differences
Get PDFBackground: Speech graph analysis (SGA) of dreams has recently shown promise as an objective and language-invariant diagnostic tool that can aid neuropsychiatric diagnosis. Whilst the notion that dreaming mentations reflect distinct physiologic processes is not new, such studies in patients with sleep disorders remain exceptionally scarce. Here, using SGA and other dream content analyses, we set to investigate structural and thematic differences in morning dream recalls of patients diagnosed with Non-Rapid Eye Movement Parasomnia (NREMP) and Idiopathic REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (iRBD). Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study of morning dream recalls of iRBD and NREMP patients was undertaken. Traditional dream content analyses, such as Orlinsky and Hall and Van de Castle analyses, were initially conducted. Subsequently, SGA was performed in order to objectively quantify structural speech differences between the dream recalls of the two patient groups. Results: Comparable rate of morning recall of dreams in the sleep laboratory was recorded; 25% of iRBD and 18.35% of NREMP patients. Aggression in dreams was recorded by 28.57% iRBD versus 20.00% in NREMP group. iRBD patients were more likely to recall dreams (iRBD vs NREMP; P = 0.007), but they also had more white dreams, ie having a feeling of having dreamt, but with no memory of it. Visual and quantitative graph speech analyses of iRBD dreams suggested stable sequential structure, reflecting the linearity of the chronological narrative. Conversely, NREMP dream reports displayed more recursive, less stable systems, with significantly higher scores of graph connectivity measures. Conclusion: The findings of our exploratory study suggest that iRBD and NREMP patients may not only differ on what is recalled in their dreams but also, perhaps more strikingly, on how dreams are recalled. It is hoped that future SGA-led dream investigations of larger groups of patients will help discern distinct mechanistic underpinnings and any associated clinical implications
Enhancing Readability and Detection of Age-Related Macular Degeneration Using Optical Coherence Tomography Imaging: An AI Approach
Get PDFData Availability Statement:
The data presented in this study are openly available in: https://github.com/jodeiri/An-Ensemble-Deep-Learning-Model-for-AMD-Classification-using-OCT-images.git (accessed on 10 February 2024).Artificial intelligence has been used effectively in medical diagnosis. The objective of this project is to examine the application of a collective AI model using weighted fusion of predicted probabilities from different AI architectures to diagnose various retinal conditions based on optical coherence tomography (OCT). A publicly available Noor dataset, comprising 16,822, images from 554 retinal OCT scans of 441 patients, was used to predict a diverse spectrum of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) stages: normal, drusen, or choroidal neovascularization. These predictions were compared with predictions from ResNet, EfficientNet, and Attention models, respectively, using precision, recall, F1 score, and confusion matric and receiver operating characteristics curves. Our collective model demonstrated superior accuracy in classifying AMD compared to individual ResNet, EfficientNet, and Attention models, showcasing the effectiveness of using trainable weights in the ensemble fusion process, where these weights dynamically adapt during training rather than being fixed values. Specifically, our ensemble model achieved an accuracy of 91.88%, precision of 92.54%, recall of 92.01%, and F1 score of 92.03%, outperforming individual models. Our model also highlights the refinement process undertaken through a thorough examination of initially misclassified cases, leading to significant improvements in the model’s accuracy rate to 97%. This study also underscores the potential of AI as a valuable tool in ophthalmology. The proposed ensemble model, combining different mechanisms highlights the benefits of model fusion for complex medical image analysis.This research received no external funding
The formation of a writer: an interview with Elaine Feeney.
Get PDFInterviewElaine Feeney is an Irish writer of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. She has published three poetry collections including The Radio was Gospel (2013) and Rise (2017). Her debut novel As You Were (2020) won Dalkey Book Festival’s Emerging Writer Prize, The Kate O’Brien Prize, Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize, and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the Rathbones-Folio Prize. Feeney’s short fiction has also been published widely including in The Art of The Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories (2020), The Paris Review, The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Poetry Review and The Guardian. Her second novel How to Build a Boat was published in 2023 and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. A new poetry collection, All the Good Things You Deserve was published in April 2024. She lectures in Creative Writing at University of Galway. Feeney is interviewed by fellow Irish writer, Helen Cullen, who has published two novels to date: The Lost Letters of William Woolf (2018) and The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually (2020). Cullen is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel University London and a literary critic for the Irish Times
Direct Puffing Simulation Of Miscible And Emulsified Multicomponent Single Droplets
Get PDFA CC BY or equivalent licence is applied to the Author Accepted Manuscript arising from this submission, in accordance with the grant’s open access conditions.The aim of the present study is to achieve direct simulation of the puffing of a multicomponent droplet using interface capturing approaches. A non-ideal multicomponent phase equilibrium model is used to determine the composition of boiled vapour. Firstly, the puffing of a two-miscible-component (ethanol:water=1:1 in wt.%) droplet in two-dimensional configuration is directly simulated. The distribution of ejected vapour is impacted by a rotating and shape oscillating satellite droplet. The ejected vapour contains much more ethanol than water, facilitating the transport of the volatile fuel component inside the droplet to the ambient air. The morphological changes to the droplet induced by puffing promote considerably the contact of the boiling surface with air, significantly increasing the scalar dissipation rate of vapour/air. The effects of the nucleation bubble location and droplet temperature on puffing were investigated. Secondly, the puffing of an emulsified three-component (ethanol/water in dodecane) droplet in two-dimensional configuration is simulated. Grid independency has been checked for both the two-miscible-component and three-component emulsified droplet cases. Depending on the water volume fraction in the sub-droplet, which varies from 10% to 70% and is the key parameter herein, both one and two breakups of the parent dodecane droplet are observed. The characteristics of the sub-droplet “invasion” towards the inside of the parent dodecane droplet are investigated, together with the puffing statistics on the puffing delay time, satellite droplet size, surface areas of both the sub- and parent droplets, and oscillation dynamics of the sub-droplet.National Natural Science Foundation of China (52125605); Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2022ZFJH004). In addition, this research was funded in part by Research England. A CC BY or equivalent licence is applied to the Author Accepted Manuscript arising from this submission, in accordance with the grant’s open access conditions
Discontinuous Galerkin finite element method for dynamic viscoelasticity models of power-law type
Get PDFData Availability Statement: All codes and scripts to reproduce can be found at Jang's GitHub https://github.com/Yongseok7717/visco_frac_dg and Zenodo ( https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10973154 ).ENDNOTE:
* https://www.aqua-calc.com/page/density-table/substance/rubber-coma-and-blank-butyl.Linear viscoelasticity can be characterized by a stress relaxation function. We consider a power-law type stress relaxation to yield a fractional order viscoelasticity model. The governing equation is a Volterra integral problem of the second kind with a weakly singular kernel. We employ spatially discontinuous Galerkin methods, symmetric interior penalty Galerkin method (SIPG) for spatial discretization, and the implicit finite difference schemes in time, Crank–Nicolson method. Further, in order to manage the weak singularity in the Volterra kernel, we use a linear interpolation technique. We present a priori stability and error analyses without relying on Grönwall's inequality, and so provide high quality bounds that do not increase exponentially in time. This indicates that our numerical scheme is well-suited for long-time simulations. Despite the limited regularity in time, we establish suboptimal fractional order accuracy in time as well as optimal convergence of SIPG. We carry out numerical experiments with varying regularity of exact solutions to validate our error estimates. Finally, we present numerical simulations based on real material data.This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors
Is the Rwanda plan acting as a deterrent? Here’s what the evidence says about this approach
Get PDFTensions are rising between the UK and Ireland, as asylum seekers cross into Ireland from Northern Ireland, reportedly fearing that if they remain in the UK, they will be sent to Rwanda.Brunel University London provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK
Persistence in tax revenues: evidence from some OECD countries
Get PDFJEL classification codes: C13; C22Data availability: Data are available from the authors upon request.An earlier version of this paper is available as Brunel University London. Department of Economics and Finance. Working Paper No. 2317 available online at : https://www.brunel.ac.uk/economics-and-finance/research/pdf/2317-TAX-REVENUES-SEPT.pdf . It has not been certified by peer review..This paper examines persistence in tax revenues in a set of 21 OECD countries over the period 1965-2021 using long-range dependence techniques based on fractional integration. The results imply that there are only a few cases of mean reversion: one for total revenue (Switzerland); three for VAT (Belgium, Italy, and Spain), and six for tax on income (Austria, Belgium, Finland, Spain, Sweden and USA). The analysis is also carried out for inflation in the same set of countries. Again the I(1) hypothesis cannot be rejected in most cases, mean reversion only occurring in Korea, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. However, stronger evidence of mean reversion is found for the differences between the three original tax series and inflation compared to the tax series themselves, which points to the existence of a linkage between taxation and inflation, especially in the case of VAT and tax on incomeOpen Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, MINEIC-AEI-FEDER PID2020-113691RB-I00, Luis Alberiko GIL-ALANA
Search for baryon number violation in top quark production and decay using proton-proton collisions at = 13 TeV
No full textA preprint vresion of the article is available at arXiv:2402.18461v1 [hep-ex], https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.18461v1 . It has not been certified by peer review. Comments: Submitted to Physical Review Letters. All figures and tables can be found at https://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/TOP-22-003 (CMS Public Pages). Report number: CMS-TOP-22-003, CERN-EP-2024-027.A search is presented for baryon number violating interactions in top quark production and decay. The analysis uses data from proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected with the CMS detector at the LHC with an integrated luminosity of Formula Presented. Candidate events are selected by requiring two oppositely charged leptons (electrons or muons) and exactly one jet identified as originating from a bottom quark. Multivariate discriminants are used to separate the signal from the background. No significant deviation from the standard model prediction is observed. Upper limits are placed on the strength of baryon number violating couplings. For the first time the production of single top quarks via baryon number violating interactions is studied. This allows the search to set the most stringent constraints to date on the branching fraction of the top quark decay to a lepton, an up-type quark (Formula Presented or Formula Presented), and a down-type quark (Formula Presented, Formula Presented, or Formula Presented). The results improve the previous bounds by 3 to 6 orders of magnitude based on the fermion flavor combination of the baryon number violating interactions.SCOAP3
Inspirational Stimuli to Support Creative Ideation for the Design of AI-powered Products
Get PDFArtificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize product design, and designers need to know how to best leverage its capabilities. Based on the concept knowledge (C-K) theory, a set of inspirational stimuli (IS) for the design of AI-powered products (ISfAI) has been developed to contribute to the conceptual design stage. We extracted 40 ISs from 1,755 granted AI patents using a five-step process and validated their feasibility through a controlled experiment using three design aids: brainstorming, ISfAI Sheet, and ISfAI Cards. Results suggest that the ISfAI Cards can serve as a creative tool to enabling practitioners to generate a greater range of high-quality AI-powered ideas, particularly in terms of Novelty, Creativity, Elaboration and Flexibility. This study has practical implications for developing AI-powered products and services.Humanities and Social Sciences Research Youth Fund Project of the Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 23YJCZH094) and the General Scientific Research Project of the Department of Education of Zhejiang Province (Grant No. Y202351558)
The prediction of future cash flow for UK private companies
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Data is available upon request.UK private companies follow less stringent reporting standards than public ones. Despite extensive research on public companies’ financial reporting, little has been done for private firms, especially in the UK. We conducted prediction error tests on about 1.5 million observations on UK private companies from 2006–2022, distinguishing between the different classes of private companies: micro, small, medium-sized, and large. We found that errors in predicting future cash flow one period ahead for micro and small companies were only slightly larger than those of public companies. For medium-sized and large private companies, the errors were more than double, suggesting less informative disclosures. These results are robust for predicting beyond the next period and for times when financial distress is high. The impact of regulatory revisions for private companies in 2016, based on International Financial Reporting Standards for Small and Medium-sized Companies, is minor
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