9 research outputs found
Adapting authoritarianism: institutions and co-optation in Egypt and Syria
No full textThis PhD thesis compares Egypt and Syria’s authoritarian political systems. While the tendency in social science political research treats Egypt and Syria as similarly authoritarian, this research emphasizes differences between the two systems with special reference to institutions and co-optation. Rather than reducibly understanding Egypt and Syria as sharing similar histories, institutional arrangements, or ascribing to the oft-repeated convention that “Syria is Egypt but 10 years behind,” this thesis focuses on how events and individual histories shaped each states current institutional strengthens and weaknesses. Specifically, it explains the how varying institutional politicization or de-politicization affects each state’s capabilities for co-opting elite and non-elite individuals.
Beginning with a theoretical framework that considers the limited utility of democratization and transition theoretical approaches, the work underscores the persistence and durability of authoritarianism. Chapter two details the politicized institutional divergence between Egypt and Syria that began in the 1970s. Chapter three and four examines how institutional politicization or de-politicization affects elite and non-elite individual co-optation in Egypt and Syria. Chapter five discusses the study’s general conclusions and theoretical implications.
This thesis’s argument is that Egypt and Syria co-opt elites and non-elites differently because of the varying degrees of institutional politicization in each governance system. Rather than view one country as more politically developed than the other, this work argues that Syria’s political institutions are more politicized than their Egyptian counterparts. Syria’s political arena is, thus, described as politicized-patrimonialism. Syria’s politicized-patrimonial arena produces uneven co-optation of elites and non-elites as they are diffused through competing institutions. Conversely, the Egyptian political arena remains highly personalized as weak institutions and individuals are manipulated and molded according to the president’s ruling clique. This is referred to as personalized-patrimonialism. As a consequence, Egypt’s political establishment demonstrates more flexibility in ad hoc altering and adapting its arena depending on the emergence of crises.
This study’s theoretical implications suggest that, contrary to modernization and democratization theory’s adage that institutions lead to a political development, politicized institutions within a patrimonial order actually hinder regime adaptation because consensus is harder to achieve and maintain. It is within this context that Egypt’s de-politicized institutional framework advantages its top political elite. In this reading of Egyptian and Syrian politics, Egypt’s personalized political arena is more adaptable than Syria’s. These conclusions do not indicate that political reform is a process underway in either state
Error-Bounded Approximation of Pareto Fronts in Robot Planning Problems
No full textMany problems in robotics seek to simultaneously optimize several competing objectives under constraints. A conventional approach to solving such multi-objective optimization problems is to create a single cost function comprised of the weighted sum of the individual objectives. Solutions to this scalarized optimization problem are Pareto optimal solutions to the original multi-objective problem. However, finding an accurate representation of a Pareto front remains an important challenge. Using uniformly spaced weight vectors is often inefficient and does not provide error bounds. Thus, we address the problem of computing a finite set of weight vectors such that for any other weight vector, there exists an element in the set whose error compared to optimal is minimized. To this end, we prove fundamental properties of the optimal cost as a function of the weight vector, including its continuity and concavity. Using these, we propose an algorithm that greedily adds the weight vector least-represented by the current set, and provide bounds on the error. Finally, we illustrate that the proposed approach significantly outperforms uniformly distributed weights for different robot planning problems with varying numbers of objective functions.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Learning & Autonomous Contro
An analysis of productivity app strengths: An environmental scan
No full textBACKGROUND
In recent years, productivity apps have become the most commonly used apps. While some may feel productivity apps work solely as a result of the placebo effect , productivity apps have been shown to have three major benefits: accountability, assessment, and improvement. Stress levels were especially reduced in the two meditation groups as opposed to the muscle relaxation group . Furthermore, there has been reported evidence on the effectiveness of app-based meditation and mindfulness in reducing stress and increasing productivity for users.
METHODS
In order to answer the research question, published articles from ProQuest, Business Source Premier and Web of Science were used. Additionally, Harvard Business Review was also used as a source of grey literature. Information was collected in order to determine the strengths of competing productivity apps and how they could limit or be applied to the Felicity App. The research was reviewed based on screening tools that assessed validity and relevance. Included studies were published within Asia, North America, Australia, or Europe, and were either quantitative, qualitative, randomized controlled trial (RCT), surveys, experiments with participants, or academic studies. Study screening and extraction were completed independently among two authors. Disagreements following reconciliation between the two authors were settled by a third author.
RESULTS
The selected articles discuss information including methods of improving productivity, mobile-based interventions that are effective at improving either overall health or productivity, and techniques that may be applicable to the Felicity App as a mobile-based intervention.
CONCLUSION
The results show that the Felicity App can improve user outcomes by integrating features from other applications
Optimizing Task Waiting Times in Dynamic Vehicle Routing
No full textWe study the problem of deploying a fleet of mobile robots to service tasks
that arrive stochastically over time and at random locations in an environment.
This is known as the Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem (DVRP) and requires robots
to allocate incoming tasks among themselves and find an optimal sequence for
each robot. State-of-the-art approaches only consider average wait times and
focus on high-load scenarios where the arrival rate of tasks approaches the
limit of what can be handled by the robots while keeping the queue of
unserviced tasks bounded, i.e., stable. To ensure stability, these approaches
repeatedly compute minimum distance tours over a set of newly arrived tasks.
This paper is aimed at addressing the missing policies for moderate-load
scenarios, where quality of service can be improved by prioritizing
long-waiting tasks. We introduce a novel DVRP policy based on a cost function
that takes the -norm over accumulated wait times and show it guarantees
stability even in high-load scenarios. We demonstrate that the proposed policy
outperforms the state-of-the-art in both mean and percentile wait
times in moderate-load scenarios through simulation experiments in the
Euclidean plane as well as using real-world data for city scale service
requests.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
(RA-L
Current trends in retraction of plastic surgery and reconstruction research
No full textBackground: Various studies regarding retractions of publications have determined the rate of retraction has increased in recent years. Although this trend may apply to any field, there is a paucity of literature exploring the publication of erroneous studies within plastic and reconstructive surgery. The present study aims to identify trends in frequency and reasons for retraction of plastic and reconstructive surgery studies, with analysis of subspecialty and journals. Methods: A database search was conducted for retracted papers within plastic and reconstructive surgery. The initial search yielded 2347 results, which were analyzed by two independent reviewers. 77 studies were jointly identified for data collection. Results: The most common reasons for retractions were duplication (n = 20, 25.9 %), request of author (n = 15, 19.5 %), plagiarism (n = 9, 11.6 %), error (n = 9, 11.6 %), fraud (n = 2, 2.6 %), and conflict of interest (n = 1, 1.3 %). 15 were basic science studies (19.4 %), 58 were clinical science studies (75.3 %), and 4 were not categorized (5.2 %). Subspecialties of retracted papers were maxillofacial (n = 29, 37.7 %), reconstructive (n = 17, 22.0 %), wound healing (n = 8, 10.4 %), burn (n = 6, 7.8 %), esthetics (n = 5, 6.5 %), breast (n = 3, 3.9 %), and trauma (n = 1, 1.3 %). Mean impact factor was 2.9 and average time from publication to retraction was 32 months. Conclusion: Analysis of retracted plastic surgery studies revealed a recent rise in frequency of retractions, spanning a wide spectrum of journals and subspecialties
Wafer classification using support vector machines
No full textIncreasing yield is a primary concern to integrated circuit manufacturing companies as it dictates the readiness of a new process for high volume manufacturing. In order to expedite the process of discovering yield issues, companies have started looking for ways to perform early prediction for such issues. This paper suggests the use of the support vector machines (SVMs) for early wafer classification. The choice of SVM is motivated by the model's ability to effectively classify multivariate, multimodal, and inseparable data points. This model uses multidimensional hyperplanes to separate and classify wafers into low-yield and high-yield classes. This paper includes a proposal for how the classification model can be applied for yield classification and how it can be adaptively updated in a manufacturing environment. We show how the values for the SVM parameters can be selected for best yield classification. Furthermore, performance evaluation is conducted on real manufacturing data, comparing the proposed SVM classifier to state of the art. Results show that in all cases, SVM consistently outperforms other methods with and without adaptive model updates. The experiments also show that all classifiers' performances depend on yield thresholds. It is also shown that the classification model can be built and executed using a reduced set without compromising its accuracy. © 1988-2012 IEEE.Abe S., 2005, SUPPORT VECTOR MACHI; Boser B, 1992, P 5 ANN WORKSH COMP, V5, P144, DOI DOI 10.1145-130385.130401; Botros Y, 2003, P SOC PHOTO-OPT INS, V5044, P121, DOI 10.1117-12.485311; Botros Y., 2003, P AEC APC S 4; Chapelle O, 2002, MACH LEARN, V46, P131, DOI 10.1023-A:1012450327387; Chin W. W., 2010, HDB PARTIAL LEAST SQ; Dasarathy B. V., 1991, NEAREST NEIGHBOR NN; Dupret Y., 2005, P IEEE SEM ADV SEM M, P118; Fayed A., 2003, P AEC APC S 25 SEP; Fenner J., 2000, P AEC APC S 12 SEP, VXII; Hajj H., 1998, P FLEX AUT INT MAN C; Hajj H., 2006, P AEC APC S 18, VXVIII; Hajj H, 2007, P SOC PHOTO-OPT INS, V6730, pQ7300, DOI 10.1117-12.746844; Hall M., 2000, P 17 INT C MACH LEAR, P359; Han J., 2001, DATA MINING CONCEPTS; He QP, 2008, P AMER CONTR CONF, P1606, DOI 10.1109-ACC.2008.4586721; He QP, 2007, IEEE T SEMICONDUCT M, V20, P345, DOI 10.1109-TSM.2007.907607; Khan AA, 2008, J PROCESS CONTR, V18, P961, DOI 10.1016-j.jprocont.2008.04.014; Kittler R., 2000, P INT C MOD AN SEM M, P270; Li TS, 2006, J INTELL MANUF, V17, P355, DOI 10.1007-s10845-005-0008-7; Lin TH, 2009, IEEE T SEMICONDUCT M, V22, P204, DOI 10.1109-TSM.2008.2011185; MACGREGOR JF, 1995, CONTROL ENG PRACT, V3, P403, DOI 10.1016-0967-0661(95)00014-L; May G. S., 2006, FUNDAMENTALS SEMICON; Moore G. E., 1975, P IEEE INT EL DEV M, P11; Moyne J, 2001, RUN TO RUN CONTROL S; Moyne JR, 2007, IEEE T SEMICONDUCT M, V20, P408, DOI 10.1109-TSM.2007.907617; Quinlan J. R., 1993, C4 5 PROGRAMS MACHIN; SPECHT DF, 1991, IEEE T NEURAL NETWOR, V2, P568, DOI 10.1109-72.97934; Wong A. Y., 1996, Proceedings. 1996 IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems (Cat. No.96TB100081), DOI 10.1109-DFTVS.1996.57201274
Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonist Use and Renal Impairment: A Retrospective Analysis of Electronic Health Records Database in the US Population
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A Hybrid intelligent system for diagnosing and solving financial problems
No full textTese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnologico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de Produçã
Development of tools for surveillance of Coxiella burnetii in domestic ruminants and Australian marsupials and their waste
No full textThe aim of this study was to develop improved methods to detect viable Coxiella burnetii in wastes from livestock production. The impetus for this work arose because there is a significant risk of infection for humans attributed to contact with waste products from the livestock production industry. This situation is further compounded by the lack of suitable tools to detect viable C. burnetii in these wastes. In addition, effective disinfection strategies for livestock wastes are also required to reduce the risk of infection with C. burnetii for individuals that come into contact with these waste products.
A quantitative real-time PCR system (qPCR) with high sensitivity and specificity was developed to detect the C. burnetii in environmental samples associated with domestic ruminants and native Australian marsupials. Different detection chemistries and procedures were evaluated based on their sensitivity, specificity and reproducibility. Overall it was found that the TaqMan PCR targeting the IS1111a locus provided the most sensitive and reproducible test. The Geneworks PowerSoil(tm) DNA isolation kit provided the best compromise between reproducibility and recovery of DNA from livestock wastes. When combined, the IS1111a TaqMan qPCR and Geneworks PowerSoil DNA Extraction Kit provided a test which was capable of detecting as few as two C. burnetii genome equivalents in 0.2g of soil or faeces.
Coxiella burnetii has been shown to display extreme resistance to environmental exposure. Therefore, assessment of the viability of the organism in environmental matrices is more useful for risk assessment programs than detection of DNA alone. A quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR was developed that was able to detect viable C. burnetii cells in soil. The sensitivity of the assay was enhanced by heat-treating the soil samples prior to extraction of RNA.
The factor most often associated with transfer of C. burnetii to humans is exposure to livestock or their waste. Therefore, decontamination of waste from livestock production industries is a key factor in preventing outbreaks of Q fever. A system was developed to determine the efficacy of various disinfectant treatments against the environmental pathogen C. burnetii. Treatments evaluated included sodium hypochlorite, ozone, ultraviolet light, peracetic acid (PAA), and Virkon S®. Sodium hypochlorite at a concentration of 0.1 mM reduced the infectivity of C. burnetii by over 92% while treatment with the same sodium hypochlorite concentration in wastewater showed significantly reduced efficacy. Despite this reduced potency, sodium hypochlorite is still useful for control of C. burnetii in the liquid waste of animal production.
Commercially available ELISA and CFT assays exist for ruminants but there are no immunological tests available for detecting C. burnetii in marsupials even though Australian marsupials are known to be susceptible to C. burnetii. An indirect ELISA for detecting anti-Coxiella antibodies in kangaroos was developed. Paired serum and faecal samples were taken from 379 ruminants from Western Australia and the serum was tested with a commercially available ELISA and the complement fixation test while the faeces was tested using the qPCR developed during this study. Paired serum and faecal samples were taken from 343 kangaroos from WA and were tested with the antibody-ELISA developed during this study and by qPCR. A very low prevalence of anti-Coxiella antibodies was observed in the ruminants sampled and results from immunological tests correlated poorly with qPCR data. The development of an ELISA for use with kangaroo serum was problematic because of the lack of reference sera from animals known to be infected with C. burnetii. Despite this results from the ELISA developed suggested that the apparent seroprevalence in the WA animals surveyed was approximately 34%. Results from testing kangaroo faeces with the qPCR correlated poorly with the results from the antibody-ELISA. These data suggest that kangaroos may be a significant reservoir of C. burnetii in Western Australia and due to cohabitation of kangaroos and domestic ruminants, may provide a link between the wildlife and domestic cycles of C. burnetii
