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Efficient design framework for developing and demonstrating auto injector reliability [White paper]
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the impact design frameworks and their associated methods have in developing products that are required to be highly reliable. Preliminary product development results are shown for two U.S.-based companies whose design teams are using the Improved Product Reliability Development Framework (IPRDF) to quickly design high levels of reliability into their emergency-use injectors. Both design teams achieved the FDA requirements for device reliability, reaching 99.9999% system-level reliability with a 95% confidence level after optimizing their designs
Addressing challenges in healthcare big data analytics
Get PDFThe exponential growth of healthcare data poses significant challenges for clinical researchers who strive to identify meaningful patterns and correlations. The complexity of this data arises from its high dimensionality, sparsity, inaccuracy, incompleteness, longitudinality, and heterogeneity. While conventional pattern recognition algorithms can partially address issues related to high dimensionality, sparsity, inaccuracy, and longitudinality, the problems of incompleteness and heterogeneity remain a persistent challenge, particularly when analyzing electronic health records (EHRs). EHRs often encompass diverse data types, such as clinical notes (text), blood pressure readings (longitudinal numerical data), MR scans (images), and DCE-MRIs (longitudinal video data), and may only include a subset of data for each patient at any given time interval. To tackle these challenges, we propose a kernel-based framework as the most suitable approach for handling heterogeneous data formats by representing them as matrices of equal terms. Our research endeavours to develop methodologies within this framework to construct a decision support system (DSS). To achieve this, we advocate for the incorporation of preprocessing mechanisms to address the challenges of incompleteness and heterogeneity prior to integration into the kernel framework
Transforming destructive ethnic violence: an exploration of the role of forgiveness in political reconciliation in Burundi
No full textViolence, ethnic violence, in particular, dehumanizes its victims and perpetrators. It shatters selves and destroys relationships without which life is impossible. To restore the dignity of the survivors of ethnic violence, what was done to them must be acknowledged as evil and its perpetrators held responsible for it. However, because what was done to the victims of violence cannot be undone, punitive or retributive justice cannot restore survivors' lives to normal. Besides, victims of violence, particularly protracted ethnic violence, are hardly just victims. Many of them are often also guilty in one way or another of the same violence they have suffered and for which they need to have justice. Applying justice abstractly without considering the context and circumstances in which violence occurred thus may lead to a nihilistic dead-end.
While the testimony of the survivors is required to know the truth without which justice cannot be done, given the traumatic experience survivors went through, the truth that emerges from their memories is subjective and therefore objectively contestable as not veridical. When members of conflicting communities are both victims and perpetrators, the situation is more complex, and their narratives are hardly reconcilable.
Using Burundi as a context where Hutus and Tutsis have experienced repetitive ethnic violence of genocidal proportions, the thesis considers how forgiveness meets the demands of justice and ends the cycle of violence by enhancing the process of political reconciliation. Literatures that address memory, narratives, storytelling, and peace making are considered to inform the understanding of narratives by people in Burundi who have experienced ethnic violence. After locating the ethnic violence between Hutus and Tutsis in its historical context, the thesis considers how survivors remember and analyses the meaning they give to their experience. The narrative stories of participants, which provide the centrepiece of the thesis, are seen in historical and current context. The thesis concludes by demonstrating why and under what conditions forgiveness is necessary to restore the dignity of both the survivors and perpetrators and to promote reconciliation. To place these findings from Burundi in wider context, the similarities and (importantly) the differences from other post-conflict societies are considered to inform what unique contributions are made by this analysis
An interpretative phenomenological analysis of young Jewish adults’ experience of having a digital detox during Shabbat
Get PDFOnline media saves time, increases leisure time and offers users flexibility and control (Wajcman, 2016). However, experiencing excessive technology use is common among young people, and concerns about its impact are shared by individuals and institutions (Syvertsen, 2020). The growing popularity of digital detox as a remedy for excessive digital use is evident. Strategies to address this issue include the use of usage-tracking apps and self-control tools (Global Mobile OS Market Share 2023 | Statista, 2023), as well as engaging in digital retreats (Stäheli & Stoltenberg, 2022). This study aimed to explore the experience of combining technology use with a weekly digital detox for 25 hours every Shabbat, using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The analysis revealed five Group Experiential Themes and eighteen sub-themes that are presented as the main findings. The analysis explores the effects of digital detox on relationships, the manifestation of anxiety during this period, and, conversely, the improvement of well-being. The themes also highlight how time is experienced during the digital detox on Shabbat and how feelings of authenticity emerge on Shabbat in contrast to weekdays where technology is present. Addictive behaviours towards technology are examined, as well as themes related to activities and routines during Shabbat. It was also found that only half the participants were able to maintain their digital detox while growing up, signifying a maturation process taking place across time and parental influence is discussed with this in mind. The implications of these findings are explored in relation to clinical practice and for society, and further areas of study in this area are identified
Development of the chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) xenograft model to study metastasis and angiogenesis in autophagy deficient osteosarcoma cells
No full textOsteosarcoma (OS) is the most common primary malignant bone cancer in children. Despite the improvement in multiagent chemotherapy, 5-year survival rate for metastatic OS is only 20% to 30%. One of the main reasons for failure in therapy is due to the activation of autophagy in metastasis and angiogenesis, leading to an unpredictable prognosis.
The Chicken Chorioallantoic Membrane (CAM) assay has emerged as a valuable tool, offering an easy, inexpensive and rapid alternative for direct visualisation of tumour development. This study aimed to design and optimise the CAM assay as a physiologically relevant model to understand OS metastasis and angiogenesis, and how the expression of cancer markers may vary in a 3D environment when autophagy is suppressed.
In this study, the CAM assay was completed in 13 embryonic development days (EDD). After several optimising the protocol for viability and tumour implantation, the experimental survival rate improved significantly to ~69% (p<0.01), and successfully formed tumours from metastatic HOS-143B cells wild type (WT), scrambled control (NC), and CRISPR/Cas9 knockout (KO) ATG7 (ATG7 is an essential regulator of the autophagy process).
The role of autophagy in the in ovo and in vitro environment was shown to be context-dependent, with metastasis and angiogenesis linked genes. In an in ovo microenvironment, metastatic gene expression (CXCR4, CCL5, EZRIN, FGF2, EGFR) was decreased by ~13.08-fold (p<0.05) on average in ATG7 CRISPR/Cas9 knocked-out HOS-143B tumours compared to WT HOS-143B tumours, and by ~9.21-fold on average compared to NC HOS-143B tumours. Interestingly, in vitro, ATG7 KO cells had a 94.1-fold (p<0.05) and a 2.56-fold (p<0.05) fold increase on MMP2 and MMP9 genes compared to WT and NC HOS-143B cells respectively. However, in the in ovo environment, a reduction of 20.17-fold (p<0.001) and 14.31-fold (p<0.05) on MMP2 and MMP9 genes was seen compared to WT and NC HOS-143B tumours, suggesting that autophagy may trigger different signalling pathways relevant to the microenvironment. When stained with haematoxylin and eosin (H&E), the highest levels of cancer cell proliferation, vascularisation, and implant attachment were seen in WT and NC HOS-143B tumours compared to ATG7 KO HOS-143B tumours. According to immunohistochemistry, levels of the angiogenesis marker-VEGFR2 in WT and NC HOS-143B cells was significantly greater by 29.16% (p<0.05) compared to ATG7 KO HOS-143B cells, which demonstrated limited vascularisation ability. Therefore, this work contributes to our understanding of osteosarcoma metastasis, but also identifies autophagy as a therapeutic target to suppress metastasis and angiogenesis, offering hope to patients and healthcare professionals
Where is the love? A psychoanalytic history of the Cotswold community
Get PDFThis thesis presents a historic account of the Cotswold Community (1967-2011), a therapeutic community for adolescent boys who had experienced trauma and disrupted attachments. The research is a case study of a single institution, using archival research and some elements of autoethnography. The thesis examines themes of deprivation and delinquency, therapeutic love and hate, and the roles that men and women working with the boys took. The central question this thesis addresses is about the nature of therapeutic love, argued to be present at the Cotswold Community. The social utility of the psychoanalytic idea’s of Winnicott, such as containment, regression and the ‘care-cure’ to address children's difficulties are explored from a perspective informed by attachment theory.
The thesis begins by exploring the historic context of residential therapeutic childcare, the wider therapeutic community movement and approved school system. This thesis describes, and analyses the model of psychoanalytic treatment at the Cotswold Community developed by Balbernie, and Dockar-Drysdale for children who had been considered difficult to treat therapeutically and required a form of total cover. Delinquency is conceptualized as behaviour stemming from the multiple deprivations the boys had experienced. This relates to wider psychoanalytic discourse about delinquency being the result of privation or deprivation. The treatment model was based on Dockar-Drysdale’s understanding of the provision of primary experience, by the men and women working with the boys. Understanding of therapeutic love draws on the work of Fromm. Hate and rage are conceptualized as a state of panic leading to violence stemming from traumatic early life experience. The cure for this is the emotional involvement of the men and women working closest to the boys. This quality of emotional involvement, although complex, has the possibility of being transformative. Understanding this emotional involvement may be of use to the current generation of therapeutic community practitioners working with difficult to reach children
Modelling grey-level intensities for smart phones to view medical images
Get PDFThis research concerns with the modelling of grey level intensities for mobile phones in order to view medical images in greyscale using different mobile phones.
While medical image format of DICOM employs a Greyscale Standard Display Function (GSDF) that describes the relationship between luminance level and display intensity values, medical images that have high contrast depicted in a computer monitor may not present as clearly in a smart phone. This is because a smart phone has a limitation of resolution with a small screen and cannot be calibrated to a specified grey level setting. This research is to investigate the difference between a computer monitor and a mobile phone with regard to depicting medical images.
The International Commission on Illumination (CIE) has recommended a colour appearance model CIECAM16 that can predict a colour appearance under many viewing conditions, e.g. an LCD display, as accurate as an average observer from human colour vision point of view. In this research, this colour appearance model is applied and enhanced in an attempt to predict grey-level intensity for mobile phones so that an image will appear near the same as it appears on an LCD monitor. Towards this end, more than ten psychophysical experiments are conducted by 14 observers with normal colour vision to study human perception on both an LCD monitor and mobile phones. It has found that for iPhone6S, middle range grey samples appear much brighter than on the LCD display that is calibrated to D65. The enhancement hence takes by modifying \u1d450 value of CIECAM16, representing ambient colour compensation. It appears that when \u1d450 = 0.59, the model of CIECAM16 correlates the best with observers’ estimations. Then experiments on visual estimation are carried out to match the original x-ray chest images with COVID19 displayed on the LCD with those displayed on a phone before and after enhancement. The results show that the enhanced images by CIECAM16 with \u1d450 = 0.59 appear to be much closer to the original in terms of COVID19 specific features, implying the importance of this work. Future work includes containing colour images (e.g. oesophagus videos, retinal images, etc.), more mobile phones in additional of iPhones and more test samples (currently with 20 grey samples). It is concluded that iPhones can be applied to view medical images without compromising key features
Entwicklung eines Anreizsystems für die Marktintegration und Wettbewerbsfähigkeit von ökologisch nachhaltigen Energien im österreichischen Strommarkt
No full textThis dissertation explores a new incentive system for the market integration and competitiveness of environmentally sustainable energies in the Austrian electricity market. The focus technologies are: run-of-river power-, photovoltaic-, wind power-, biomass- and biogas plants to be newly built by power generation companies as full feed plants with a corresponding capacity classification. The analysis and critical examination of the research showed that the located incentive instruments trigger distortions in the electricity markets, complicate the required system integration and cause lock-in effects. Another insight gained from the document analysis is the lack of consideration of interdependencies between incentive and internalization instruments, which are mandatory for an efficient allocation policy.
To achieve the research objective, a qualitative-inductive and a quantitative-deductive sub-study were undertaken for a theory-based hypothesis testing. In the first part of the mixed-methods research approach, the grounded theory methodology was used to explore an object-based theory based on data from guideline-based expert interviews. Within the framework of open, axial and selective coding based on the coding paradigm, two theory parts were explored with the market- and system-oriented incentive theory and the internalization theory. Together with the intervening conditions, the two theory parts form the incentive system MIS2CPG, meaning: market-integrated incentive system for sustainable competitive power generation. The incentive theory is based on the innovative approach of achieving the economic viability of the focus technologies via a technology-specific, hourly-based and dynamic compensation tariff, which is calculated from the day-ahead prices, the electricity production costs and an operator-specific compensation indicator. In the second part of the mixed-methods research approach, the quantitative investigation, the theory was empirically examined by means of an econometric model using the hypothetical-deductive method, which is a proven approach in business administration. The result confirms the accurate effect of the compensation mechanism in terms of ensuring the competitiveness or economic viability of the focus technologies so that the dissertation with the researched incentive system MIS2CPG makes a significant contribution to business management research in the field of energy economics in conjunction with environmental economics
Die Rechtsform der Europäischen Aktiengesellschaft (SE), ein deutsches Erfolgsmodell? Eine empirische Analyse zu den rechtlichen und ökonomischen Einflussgrößen
No full textThis dissertation examines which legal and economic factors are decisive for the success of the legal form of the European Company (SE) in Germany. A review of the literature and a critical analysis of its results leads to the conclusion that the introduction of the SE by the European legislator in 2001 has led to a rapid wave of company formations and conversions in the European Economic Area. It is striking that of the approximately 790 SE companies currently operating in Europe, more than half have their headquarters in Germany.
The author investigates the legal and economic factors influencing the growth of SEs in Germany in detail within the framework of the empirical analysis. For this purpose, the existing research gap is explored regarding the legal influencing factors, particularly the applicable European and national law in Germany. Furthermore, the author examines the economic factors of influence resulting from the individually applicable taxation of corporations in Germany. In addition, the determination of local factors shows specifically from the location factor of Germany and favours the establishment of an SE.
The investigation of the phenomenon is based on selecting several actors to achieve the research goal. For this purpose, the author conducted qualitative interviews with experts with different pro-fessional but subject-related backgrounds to the SE. Using Kuckartz's method and the support of the software MAXQDA, qualitative content analysis and evaluation of the collected data are carried out. Considering the quality criteria of qualitative research along the research process, particularly the intercoder agreement with two other scientists, is calculated using kappa coefficients.
The research not only collects expert opinions on the legal form of the SE in Germany but also critically places the empirical results in the context of the literature review, which often contradicts the intentions of the European legislator. Thus, the thesis answers why the legal form SE has such a success in Germany. Furthermore, the author presents recommendations for action, which can transform the flight of German companies into the legal form of the SE, e.g. the identified way out of employee co-determination, to a socially accepted level in Germany