12 research outputs found
Transforming Retail: Elevating Customer Experience and Efficiency with Generative AI Technique
No full textThis article examines the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the transformation of retail in the digital age. The author emphasizes that generative AI, by creating new content and providing personalized experiences, is becoming a key tool for retailers, allowing them not only to understand, but also to anticipate consumer preferences. Special attention is paid to changing the customer experience through innovative solutions such as smart chatbots that are able to adapt to user needs. The article also examines the impact of generative AI on operational efficiency, including inventory management and staff optimization, which helps reduce costs and increase profitability. The financial results of the AI implementation are supported by statistical data showing revenue growth and reduced operating costs. The conclusion emphasizes that generative AI will not only improve existing processes, but also change the very nature of interaction between retailers and consumers, opening up new horizons for business in the future
Surreal Politics: Post-political Guidelines from French Surrealism, Symbolism, and Structuralism
No full textThis thesis focuses on domestic and international political stagnation. Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” (1992) thesis argues that the world has reached a historical conclusion and that Western Liberal Democracy has succeeded. However, he is not entirely correct, an argument he realized and made many years later. The continued threat of the climate crisis and mutually assured destruction, along with a recent rise of far-right populist groups who critique the international liberal order, threaten Fukuyama’s end of history. Although the global order is perceived to be “constrained,” this thesis looks at ways for humanity to innovate. By looking at the innovative literary movements of the 19th and 20th centuries that arose after times of great struggle, this thesis argues that the only way to move forward from moments of “constraint” is to look for the “new.” This thesis uses a case-study approach to defend this argument. Each chapter focuses on a different French literature movement: 19th-century symbolism, early 20th-century surrealism, mid-20th-century structuralism, poststructuralism, and the Nouveau Roman movement, and connects them to 20th-century political theorists influenced by the movement’s works. In each case study, one to two guidelines are analyzed to help lead us to the “new,” which this thesis titles the “utopian impulse” – a term initially created by Frederic Jameson, derived from science-fiction author Olaf Stapledon’s “imaginative power.” The two authors argue that humanity constantly innovates due to an impulse to see a better future. Therefore, using the case studies, this thesis finds guidelines for humanity to continue this utopian impulse/progress to break out of the constricting threats we face today in our domestic and international political community.Bachelor of Art
The Silent Revolution of Mohammed Dib\u27s \u3ci\u3eQui se souvient de la mer\u3c/i\u3e
No full textA video recording of my presentation for the Parler la terre Colloquium.
This multimodal paper is about aesthetics, speculative philosophy, and the energy humanities. In it, I contemplate Algerian author Mohammed Dib’s visionary novel Qui se souvient de la mer (1962), emphasizing that our guide through the text is a nameless and wandering theorist who eventually goes underground. We encounter in the text an unnamed city—or, rather, cities within cities, and, indeed, cities beneath cities—besieged by fantastic forces and surrounded by a once-rejuvenating sea that recedes—an outré world that exists in its own spacetime. We find in this world minotaurs carrying flamethrowers; resuscitated mummies lying in ambush; an underground mole whose thunderous footsteps leave behind trails of blood; winged “iriace” that devour olives and spit out their pits, which rain down on the city like cinders; winged “spyrovirs” whose deafening shrieks blind and desiccate the city’s inhabitants; slithering walls that imprison and spit them out elsewhere; vomit of stones; holey skulls full of weeds; impossible songs and aromas; explosions without sources; hazy meteors and electric wind; a disintegrating star (the sun?), and so on. We encounter a world, then, where the fantastic is ubiquitous, a weird world that doesn’t belong. I therefore assert that Dib’s novel, which is ostensibly about the Algerian revolution, is a prototype for a new literary genre, le fantastique outré. I elaborate this assertion by closely reading passages from the original French text in apposition to the writings of Tzvetan Todorov, Mark Fisher, Louis Tremaine, Reza Negarestani, Frantz Fanon, David Benatar, Eugene Thacker, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Louis Althusser, and Stefano Harney and Fred Moten. Along the way, I argue that Dib’s novel at once renders obsolete capitalist-nationalist epistemologies founded on colonial-racial violence and gifts us a generously infinite energy source in the speculative thought of oil, the absolute of the sea, a nomad space, desert of water. Such is the silent revolution of Dib’s Qui se souvient de la mer
Knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions towards waterpipe tobacco smoking amongst college or university students: a systematic review
No full textBackground
Despite evidence for the harms of waterpipe tobacco smoking (WTS), its use is increasing amongst college and university students worldwide. This systematic review aims to assess the knowledge of, attitudes towards and perceptions of WTS among college or university students.
Methods
We electronically searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PSYCHINFO and ISI the Web of Science in October 2018, restricting our search to studies published since January 1990. We included studies among university or college students that used qualitative or quantitative methods, and addressed either knowledge, attitudes, or perceptions towards WTS. We excluded studies where WTS could not be distinguished from other forms of tobacco use and studies reported as abstracts where the full text could not be identified. Data were synthesised qualitatively and analysed data by region (global north/ south), and by reasons for use, knowledge of health hazards, how knowledge influences use, perceptions towards dependence, and policy knowledge.
Results
Eighty-six studies were included; 45 from the global north and 41 from the global south. Socio-cultural and peer influences were major contributing factors that encouraged students to initiate WTS. Furthermore, WTS dependence had two components: psychological and social. This was compounded by the general perception that WTS is a less harmful, less addictive and more sociable alternative to cigarette smoking. Knowledge of WTS harms failed to correlate with a reduced risk of WTS use, and some students reported symptoms of WTS addiction. A large proportion of students believed that quitting WTS was easy, yet few were able to do so successfully. Finally, students believed current public health campaigns to educate on WTS harms were inadequate and, particularly in the global north, were not required.
Conclusion
Reasons for WTS amongst university students are multi-faceted. Overall, interventions at both the individual and community level, but also policy measures to portray a message of increased harm amongst students, are required. Additional studies are necessitated to understand temporal changes in students’ beliefs, thus allowing for better targeted interventions
Additional file 1: of Knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions towards waterpipe tobacco smoking amongst college or university students: a systematic review
No full textSearch Terms. Search Terms used for the identification of relevant studies. (DOCX 16 kb
Additional file 2: of Knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions towards waterpipe tobacco smoking amongst college or university students: a systematic review
No full textData Extraction Form. Proforma used for the extraction of data from each included study. (DOCX 16 kb
Additional file 3: of Knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions towards waterpipe tobacco smoking amongst college or university students: a systematic review
No full textGlobal North Studies. Characteristics of all included Global North Studies (DOCX 133 kb
Additional file 4: of Knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions towards waterpipe tobacco smoking amongst college or university students: a systematic review
No full textGlobal South Studies. Characteristics of all included Global South Studies. (DOCX 111 kb
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Systems biology of breast cancer
No full textBreast cancer, with an alarming incidence rate throughout the globe, has attracted significant investigations to identify disease specific biomarkers. Among these, oestrogen receptor (ER) occupies a central role where overexpression is a prognostic indication for breast cancer. The cross-talk between the responsible contenders of ER-associated genes potentially play an important role in the disease aetiology. Investigation of such cross talk is the focus of this thesis. The development of high throughput technologies such as expression microarrays has paved the way for investigating thousands of genes at a time. Microarrays with their high data volume, multivariate nature and non-linearity pose challenges for analysing using conventional statistical approaches. To combat these challenges, computational researchers have developed machine learning approaches such as Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). This thesis evaluates ANNs based methodologies and their application to the analysis of microarray data generated for breast cancer cases of differing oestrogen receptor status. Furthermore they are used for network inferencing to identify interactions between ER-associated markers and for the subsequent identification of putative pathway elements. The present thesis shows that it is possible to identify some ER-associated breast cancer relevant markers using ANNs. These have been subsequently validated on clinical breast tumour samples highlighting the promise of this approach
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Tumour chemo sensitivity assays: an investigation into the susceptibility of cells to chemotherapeutics
No full textTo evaluate and identify new candidate cancer drug targets, there is an ongoing need for a reliable, sensitive and quantitative assay that enables the analysis of larger numbers of compounds in preclinical research. This thesis has developed, and optimized a sensitive enzyme-release assay for monitoring natural cytotoxicity. It measures the release of the intracellular enzyme adenylate kinase into the culture supernatant after membrane rupture and is evaluated as an indicator of cell death. This assay was proven to correlate and compete with currently used methodologies for the assessment of cytotoxicity and with its superior sensitivity; convenience and in expense, it should be applicable to the study of other cytotoxicity reactions. The resulting ToxiLight® kit is now being sold world-wide and rapidly became the top selling product for Lonza Bio Science with many references to its use in publications.
It was proven from this investigation that to truly comprehend the effect a cytotoxic drug has on cells, two assays are required in combination; one to measure cytotoxicity and a second to measure viability. The two most sensitive kits tested in this study, the ViaLight® Plus assay and the newly designed ToxiLight® assay were used in combination to monitor the effect of commonly used cytotoxicity drugs on melanoma cells. It was hoped to find both a sensitive and resistant cell line for further analysis by MALDI-MS. The study revealed how cells of the same histological and tissue type can respond differently to the same anticancer drug with one cell line revealing cell death after treatment and another remaining unaffected. This is representative of how individual patients may respond differently to the treatments given in vitro and explains the vast biochemical heterogeneity of tumour cells and the complexity involved in developing anticancer drugs that will specifically kill tumours arising from a given cell. The primary melanoma cells used for the research were representative of the clinical situation and were a kind gift from the OYSTER (Outcome and Impact of Specific Treatment in European Research in melanoma) tissue bank; with the established cell lines obtained from ESTDAB. A selection of three of these cell lines (Ma Mel 28, Ma Mel 26a and MEWO) were chosen after investigating their sensitive/resistant nature to certain chemotherapeutic drugs and were further investigated with a novel agent currently in its early stages of drug trials, the histone deacetylase inhibitor, trichostatin A.
To investigate this resistance further, MALDI-MS was performed on the chosen melanoma cell lysates. The results demonstrated that good quality proteomic data could be achieved from cell lines and that it is possible to generate discriminatory protein profiles that correlate with the cytotoxicity assays when analysed using artificial neural networks (ANNs). Through the analysis of the proteome the ANNs was able to train itself using the raw dataset from the MALDI-MS analysis and distinguish differences between those samples that were drug-treated and those that were left untreated. The differences between the two classes of treated and untreated cells revealed biomarkers that may correlate to cell death and thus the effect of the drug trichostatin A.
These findings could lead to the discovery of proteins that are up regulated when a patient is responding to therapy. This could be of prognostic and therapeutic benefit to patients enabling them to find out in the early stages of treatment if they are responding to a given treatment; the long term outcome leading to personalised treatments for individuals in which a decision can be made on the best suited treatment
