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TDAFDNet : A trustworthy data-augmented network for few shot fault diagnosis and noise interference
No full textThe practical deployment of deep neural networks for intelligent fault diagnosis in industrial systems is often hindered by the scarcity of labeled fault data and distributional discrepancies between training and operational environments, especially under noisy conditions. To address these issues, this study proposes a trustworthy data-augmented fault diagnosis network (TDAFDNet) specifically designed for few-shot and noise-robust fault diagnosis. The framework integrates a multi-attention conditional variational autoencoder (MACVAE) to augment limited fault data, thereby enriching feature diversity and enhancing model generalization. A lightweight multi-channel depthwise separable residual network (MDS-ResNet) is introduced to achieve efficient and robust feature extraction. Furthermore, an adaptive attention-based risk-aware evidential loss function enables uncertainty-aware and risk-sensitive classification. To further improve interpretability and support risk-informed decision-making, a control chart-inspired uncertainty-based early warning mechanism is incorporated. Extensive experiments on benchmark rolling bearing datasets demonstrate that TDAFDNet outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods in diagnostic accuracy, noise robustness, and uncertainty estimation under data-scarce and noisy scenarios. These findings underscore the potential of the proposed approach for reliable and interpretable fault diagnosis in safety-critical engineering applications with limited and noisy labeled data
The Impact of Video-based Intervention for Improving Attitudes towards Autism in Chinese Higher Education : A Pre-Post Study
Get PDFThis study assessed whether a brief video-based intervention could improve attitudes toward autism among Chinese university students and staff. A total of 1,158 participants—including undergraduates, graduate students, and staff—completed the 17-item Autism and Neurodiversity Attitudes Scale (ANAS) before and after watching a 6-minute autism-awareness video. Paired-sample t-tests assessed pre-post differences. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) examined whether the intervention altered the underlying attitudinal structure. To predict individual responsiveness, four machine learning models were trained using pre-intervention responses and demographics; TabPFN achieved the highest accuracy (73.4%). The study revealed significant positive changes in attitudes towards autism following the educational video intervention (t = -13.30, p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.86). We identified three stable dimensions of autism perception: support for normalization, acceptance as natural variation, and empathy. SHapley Additive exPlanations analysis identified that pre-intervention responses to deficit-based items and pity-based attitudes are the strongest predictors of attitudinal change, while demographic variables had negligible influence. Higher baseline endorsement of normalization and pathologizing attitudes were associated with reduced responsiveness to the intervention, highlighting the role of entrenched beliefs in moderating intervention effectiveness. While a brief video intervention can enhance attitudes toward autism, its ability to transform deep-seated beliefs remains limited
Characterising the heat shock response in African trypanosomes
Get PDFAfrican trypanosomes, the causative agents of sleeping sickness (Trypanosoma brucei) and nagana (Trypanosoma congolense), experience host-derived increases intemperature, due to the prominent mammalian symptom of fever during infection. In response, these parasites activate a heat shock (HS) response that promotes survival under elevated temperatures. This work aimed to characterise the HS response in T.brucei, with preliminary comparative analysis in T. congolense. The results show that T. brucei immediately responds to a 1 hour 41 °C HS with a lag in cell growth lasEng around 24 hours, influenced by a HS-induced reversible cell cycle arrest observed as an enrichment of G2M cells, which was resolved following around 8 hours of recovery. Immediately aLer HS in T. brucei an increase in DHH1 foci occurred, interpreted as the formaEon of P-bodies, alongside the collapse in polysomes. The collapse in polysomes reflects the state of global translaEonal arrest, through the decrease in acEve translaEonal machinery via a decrease in polysomes and an increase in ribosomal subunits. Polysome collapse in T. brucei post-HS was viewed as being more severe in procyclic form cells than bloodstream form cells, potenEally indicaEng differences in thermotolerance across the cell cycle. Polysome analysis in T. congolense also found a decrease in polysomes post-HS, also presenEng an increase in ribosomal instability as observed in T. brucei, indicaEng a level of conservaEon in the two species’ HS response. Understanding the HS response in trypanosomes is crucial for uncovering parasite survival strategies under host-induced stress and may highlight unique regulatory pathways absent in mammalian hosts. These insights offer potential avenues for future targeted therapeutic development; potential common targets in T. brucei and T. congolense are of interest due to their ability to co-infect the same hosts and their exposure to similar selective pressure
Legacy Management in Theory and in Practice
Get PDFThough often invoked as a source of continuity, identity, and strategy, legacy remains conceptually underdeveloped and practically elusive. Leaders frequently grapple with how to preserve what matters from the past while enabling renewal, especially during succession, pivots, market disruption, or institutional change. Without understanding what legacy is, and how it functions and can be managed, organizations risk clinging to outmoded practices—or, conversely, discarding their most valuable identity anchors. We address this gap by advancing our understanding of legacy as a co-constructed process embedded in relationships, artifacts, and intergenerational meaning-making. Across nine contemporary research examples, we explore how legacy operates at individual, organizational, and societal levels, and how it can serve as an asset, a liability, or a paradox, simultaneously enabling continuity, triggering conflict, and motivating prosocial change. Drawing on diverse theoretical lenses and settings—from family firms in Honduras to multinational corporations in Sweden; from faith-based entrepreneurship to state-owned enterprises in post-Soviet Russia—we show that legacy is a symbolic and material force that influences strategy, innovation, ethics, and governance. Our integrative framework reveals how legacy can be cultivated, reinterpreted, or retired—and how organizations can deliberately manage legacy to foster stewardship, prevent inertia, and build trust among stakeholders
Enhancing Energy Efficiency in a Jojoba Oil Biorefinery : A Case Study in Performance Optimisation
No full textThe biorefinery concept, which focuses on converting waste feedstocks into value-added chemicals and biofuels, plays a vital role in the transition to sustainable industrial systems. A critical determinant of the economic viability of such processes is their energy efficiency. This study presents a systematic and hierarchical methodology for the performance analysis and energy-driven optimisation of biorefinery designs. The proposed approach integrates advanced energy integration techniques to enhance process-wide energy utilisation. These techniques combine Pinch Analysis principles, rigorous process simulation using Aspen® packages, steam generation, and carbon credits consideration. A novel Jojoba oil biorefinery is employed as a case study, targeting the production of high-value Jojobyl alcohols (JAs) and fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) as a co-product. Initial utility demands were calculated as 9794.3 kW (cold) and 1978.0 kW (hot) for an annual output of 2[300 metric tons of JAs. Pinch Analysis revealed the process as a threshold problem, requiring only cold utility. The process exhibits a surplus of heat content in the process hot streams capable of satisfying the heat requirement of the cold streams. Therefore, no hot utility is further necessary. Two energy-saving scenarios were developed to optimise the heat exchanger network (HEN): one minimising energy consumption (Design 1) and another incorporating steam generation (Design 2). Exchangers in the network are of the shell-and-tube type. Aspen Energy |Analyzer® (v12) has been used for the simulation of the heat exchanger networks. Aspen HYSYS® (v12) was used to simulate the properties of process stream components rigorously. Results achieved a 20.2% reduction in cooling utility demand for Design 1, while Design 2 achieved 39.6% reduction, with both designs eliminating the hot utility requirements. The steam generation-based solution delivered an estimated annual profit increase of 774,487.5 were gained annually as additional revenue through participation in the EU Emission Trading System. These results demonstrate that strategic energy integration significantly enhances both the economic and environmental performance of biorefineries. The study directly contributes to the advancement of a sustainable bioeconomy and supports the objectives of UN Sustainable Development Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy
Constructing an Imagined Community of Manchu-Futurism in Fiction and Art
Get PDFMy project, Manchu Futurism, proposes an art movement to reappraise what the Manchu ethnic identity might mean in future China. Through my work, viewers experience Manchu’s past, current, and future visions and are encouraged to appreciate different opportunities for the cohesion and re-vitalisation of our cultural community. The project includes a thesis, a fiction and a series of visual artworks. The fiction and artwork are displayed in offline exhibitions and online digital archives. I argue that the essence of the future Manchu community is not just about staying in a mutual space or close kinship but is about having a similar sense of ethnic identification. In Benedict Anderson’s view, a community is identified by how it is imagined(Anderson 1991, p.6), and media, like printed media, is necessary for creating a community out of imagined ideas (Anderson 2016, p.247-264). In my use of this concept, the approach of imagining a community is connected to different ‘monads’ from Manchu history. Walter Benjamin describes monads as compressions of time and experience into singular fragments that contain the energetic potential to connect past and future possibilities (Leslie 2024, p.1). Building on Anderson’s notion that communities are imagined among producers and consumers of culture and Benjamin’s monads that can project the future from active engagement in the past, Manchu Futurism aims to transcend Manchu culture’s historical decline and geographical dispersion through art practice. The first part of my thesis shows my research on Manchu history and how Manchu culture evolved through different periods at the apex and periphery of Chinese power. The second part analyses various types of communities. It interprets how artwork becomes the appropriate medium to create the imagined Manchu community, like the role of print media in Anderson’s model. In Anderson’s theory of imagined community, print media offers a distinctive understanding of time, which challenges the Western linear time philosophy (Anderson 1991, p.23). Print, he suggests, can create a simultaneous time experience among the members of an imagined community – in my work, print and digital reproduction and networks are both deployed in this sense. I compare the simultaneity of networked media with Benjamin’s notion of monads and Messianic time—an idea suggesting creative methods that compress experience into meaningful encounters with the past (Agamben 2005, p.25). The chapter explains why the history of the Manchu is crucial to revealing its future. The third part of my thesis focuses on the idea of Messianic time and monads in the art field (Adorno 1998, p.310). In conjunction with my descriptions of Italian Futurism and Afrofuturism in the fourth part, I demonstrate that Manchu Futurism draws from a similar methodology to Afrofuturism (Eshun 2003, p.288-289), challenging Western-centric time philosophies and reactivating local and historical customs, identities and narrative forms to develop a distinctive vision of the future in which this ethnicity has self-recognition. The fifth part of the thesis mainly discusses and interprets the core concept of Manchu futurism and my practical component of the project (fiction and artwork)
On amenability constants of Fourier algebras : new bounds and new examples
No full textLet be a locally compact group. If is finite then the amenability constant of its Fourier algebra, denoted by , admits an explicit formula [Johnson, JLMS 1994]; if is infinite then no such formula for is known, although lower and upper bounds were established by Runde [PAMS 2006]. Using non-abelian Fourier analysis, we obtain a sharper upper bound for when is discrete. Combining this with previous work of the first author [Choi, IMRN 2023], we exhibit new examples of discrete groups and compact groups where can be calculated explicitly; previously this was only known for groups that are products of finite groups with "degenerate"' cases. Our new examples also provide additional evidence to support the conjecture that Runde's lower bound for the amenability constant is in fact an equality
Impact of antiseizure medication taper on electroencephalographic dynamics in focal epilepsy : A stereoelectroencephalographic study
No full textObjective Tapering of the antiseizure medication dosage in the epilepsy monitoring unit can provoke seizures, but its effects on seizure dynamics remain poorly characterized. This study addresses three questions: (1) Does antiseizure medication tapering influence spatiotemporal dynamics of seizures? (2) Does the tapering rate affect these dynamics? (3) Does tapering have a similar effect on interictal epileptic discharges as it does on seizures? Methods Patients with drug-resistant epilepsy undergoing stereoelectroencephalographic (stereo-EEG) presurgical evaluations at Duke University Medical Center (n = 104) and the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (n = 80) were screened. We included patients in whom the antiseizure medication dosage was tapered from the highest daily dosage (high dosage) to ≤ 50% (low dosage) during stereo-EEG monitoring, and at least one seizure from the same focus was recorded in both conditions. Using an intrapatient design, we compared seizure onset-zone, onset pattern, and propagation dynamics between the two conditions. Given the intrinsic seizure variability, comparisons were made between same-dosage and cross-dosage seizure pairs. We further assessed effects of tapering rates and examined the characteristics of interictal epileptiform discharges. Results Among 30 patients, the proportion of channels in the seizure onset zone did not differ between high-dosage and low-dosage conditions (7.25% vs. 8.95%, p = .50, d = −.04). Similarly, no differences were observed in the overlap ratio of seizure-onset regions (62% vs. 64%, p = .72, d = −.01), or the cross-correlation of seizure-onset patterns (.36 vs. .35, p = .54, d = .04) when comparing same-dosage versus cross-dosage seizure pairs. Conversely, seizures at low dosage involved more channels (40.71% vs. 81.49%, p = .001, d = −.39) and lasted longer (33.36 s vs. 74.30 s, p < .01, d = −.47). Tapering rate did not affect seizure dynamics. The mean interictal epileptiform discharge rate and number of propagation channels also remained unchanged. Significance Despite seizure exacerbation during antiseizure medication tapering, seizure-onset location remained stable. This supports the robustness of seizure-based localization even under reduced medication levels and rapid tapering regimens
The conceptual evolution of exclusion rules in the DSM : Problems with determining when one diagnosis should rule out another
No full textFor each mental disorder listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the classification provides diagnostic criteria which list the symptoms required for diagnosis. Most sets of diagnostic criteria incorporate exclusion criteria, which state that a diagnosis can only be made in the absence of certain other diagnoses (for example, a specific learning disorder can usually only be diagnosed in the absence of intellectual disability). Exclusion criteria make it clear whether diagnoses can be made together or are exclusive. In the absence of such guidelines, diagnoses will not be reliable and the prevalence of conditions cannot be measured. Through tracing the conceptualisation of exclusion criteria across the DSM series, I show that exclusion criteria are necessary, but that determining what they should be has been intractably difficult. The exclusion rules employed by a classification reflect basic ontological and theoretical judgements about the causal structure of psychopathology. Pragmatic judgements also often play a role. As such, exclusion criteria introduce multiple tensions into the DSM system. On the one hand, exclusion criteria are required. On the other hand, the fact that exclusion criteria often rely on theoretical suppositions undermines any claims that the DSM can avoid controversial commitments. At the same time, the role played by pragmatic concerns, which are by nature often context dependent, threatens the employment of the DSM as a multi-purpose classification used world-wide. More fundamentally, difficulties around determining exclusion rules can arise because it is often unclear how mental disorders might be individuated, and such difficulties undermine hopes that the DSM might describe 'natural kinds' of disorder
