201 research outputs found
International Women’s Day: protecting the rights of Muslim women must not be used as a basis for denying their agency
No full textInternational Women’s Day, which is held on 8 March every year, aims to celebrate the achievements of women while calling for greater gender equality across the world. To mark the event, Nourhan Elsayed writes on debates over the rights of Muslim women. She argues that campaigners in the West should seek to develop a more accommodative approach, where their non-Western counterparts are understood on their own terms as equal partners, rather than simply helpless victims
Associations of Socioeconomic Disadvantage with White Matter, Language Development, and Early Indicators of Affective Symptomatology from Infancy to Early Childhood
No full textABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Associations of Socioeconomic Disadvantage with White Matter, Language Development, and Early Indicators of Affective Symptomatology from Infancy to Early Childhood by Nourhan M Elsayed, M.A. Doctor of Philosophy in Psychological and Brain Sciences Washington University in St. Louis, 2024 Professor Deanna Barch, Chair Socioeconomic disadvantage (SESD) is associated with reduced neurocognitive abilities, particularly in language, and reduced integrity in white matter bundles known to subserve language. These findings are important beyond language development, given evidence that cognition and emotion are dynamic processes, whereby the maturation of one process serves as a foundation for higher-level skills. The current study used data collected from 353 youth and their mothers from the longitudinal Early Life Adversity and Biological Embedding (eLABE) study across four time points, beginning at birth through age three, to examine the associations of SESD with expressive and receptive language, white matter development, and indicators of affective symptomatology from birth to age three. The study found that children with more SESD had lower receptive language at age one and slower receptive and expressive language increases between ages one and three. Children experiencing more SESD had lower radial (RD) and axial diffusivity (AD) in the uncinate fasciculus (UNC) at birth but no differences at birth in fractional anisotropy (FA), RD, or AD, in other examined white matter bundles subserving language (e.g., corpus callosum, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, superior longitudinal fasciculus). Across white matter bundles, change in microstructure between birth and age three was not associated with SESD. Contrary to hypotheses, there was no evidence that a relationship between SESD and language was via indirect effects of white matter microstructure or that associations between SESD and white matter microstructure were via indirect effects of language. There was no evidence of serial indirect effects by white matter microstructure and language or language and white matter microstructure from SESD to indicators of affective symptomology. These results highlight the early associations of SESD with language. The associations of SESD with language, with concurrent null associations between SESD and white matter microstructure, underscore the need for additional research examining the longitudinal associations between SESD and structural brain maturation across the lifespan
Assessing Process Suitability for Robotic Process Automation: A Process Mining Approach
No full textRobotic Process Automation (RPA) is a technology for conducting time-consuming business activities. The implementation of RPA requires assessing processes\u27 suitability for automation. Traditionally, this assessment is done manually despite the fact that an accurate depiction of the process could be obtained using Process Mining. However, there is a lack of guidance on how to utilize Process Mining as a data-driven approach for conducting RPA process suitability assessment. For this reason, this research is aiming to propose a framework for process suitability assessment (FPSA). This Framework will provide organizations with a guide on performing a standard, data-driven RPA process suitability assessment using Process Mining. The development of the framework necessitated the identification of a standard set of criteria for assessment as well as a scoring model to measure such criteria. The evaluation of the framework showed evidence of the potential benefits that will ease the process assessment in RPA projects
Evidence for Dissociable Cognitive and Neural Pathways from Poverty versus Maltreatment to Deficits in Emotion Regulation
No full textPoverty and maltreatment predict deficits in emotion regulation (ER). Effective cognitive ER is supported by (1) cognitive processes implicated in generating and implementing cognitive reappraisal, supported by activation in brain regions involved in cognitive control (e.g., frontal, insular and parietal cortices) and, (2) emotional recognition and response, involving identification, encoding, and maintenance of emotional states and related variation in brain activity of regions involved in emotional reactivity (i.e., amygdala). Poverty is associated with deficits in cognitive control, and maltreatment with deficits in emotion identification and reactivity. Our goal was to identify dissociable emotional and cognitive pathways to ER deficits from poverty and maltreatment. Measures of cognitive ability, emotional identification, sensitivity, and responsivity, ER, and fMRI data during a sadness ER task were examined from a prospective longitudinal study of youth at risk for depression (n=149). Both cognitive ability and left anterior insula activity during a sadness reappraisal task additively mediated the relationship between poverty and ER. Emotional identification, sensitivity, and responsivity did not mediate the relationship of maltreatment to ER. Findings support a cognitive pathway to ER deficits from poverty and underscore the importance of dissociating mechanisms contributing to ER impairments associated with early childhood exposures
Intrathecal Drug Delivery Systems Survey: Trends in Utilization in Pain Practice [Corrigendum]
No full textAbd-Sayed A, Fiala K, Weisbein J, et al. J Pain Res. 2022;15:1305–1314.
The authors have advised there is an error in the author list on page 1305. The author name “Alaa Abd-Sayed” should read “Alaa Abd-Elsayed”.
The authors apologize for this error
Représentations littéraires du sacré dans le roman maghrébin de langue française
No full textThis interdisciplinary study explores how Driss Chraïbi’s L’Homme du Livre (1995), Assia Djebar’s Loin de Médine (1991), and Anissa Boumediène’s La fin d’un monde (1991) present accounts of particular historical moments in early Islam. This study explores the role of the imagination as well as freedom of invention when reconstructing historical events. It engages the novels through a study of the interplay between the literary text and the sources and traditions that impact and shape the text narrative. Gaining direct access to the original sources in Arabic serves to analyze how religious and early historical materials are considered in and reflected by the fictional texts. Because the sources tend to differ in both content and approach, this study examines their preoccupations in order to determine the criteria of selection applied by each novelist.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Hanan Elsaye
Degradation modeling of ink fading and diffusion of printed images
No full textColor printing plays an important role in the modern society. It is known that the color of printed images degrades gradually due to the fading and diffusion of the inks. Color degradation leads to a distortion or loss of the original information in printed images. Therefore, it is desirable to understand how the color of printed images changes over time. In this dissertation, we present degradation models to predict the characteristics of the ink fading and diffusion of printed images.
We begin by modeling the ink degradation from a physics-based perspective. Color images are printed by projecting small ink dots on medium, usually paper. This technique is called halftone printing. Halftone printing of color images results in a variety of ink mixtures and subsequently their potential catalytic fading. For the most commonly used Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black (CMYK) ink set, sixteen possible ink mixtures are generated during printing. A state transition diagram is then proposed for the ink fading in this multi-ink printing scenario. The ink area coverage is used as the performance indicator. Assuming constant fading and diffusion rates, we develop an ink fading model based on the differential equations according to the state transition diagram and an autoregressive ink diffusion model by discretizing the two-dimensional diffusion equation. The two models are then integrated into a single degradation model.
Further examination of the developed degradation models reveals that the fading or diffusion rate is equivalent to the hazard rate in reliability engineering. It is known that the hazard rate of the exponential failure time distribution is constant. Hence, the developed degradation model with constant fading and diffusion rates is equivalent to the multistate Markov process model with exponential transition time distribution. By using non-exponential transition time distributions, the fading and diffusion rates become time-varying and a more general semi-Markov process degradation model is developed accordingly.
Moreover, stochastic process models are investigated to provide stochastic area coverage prediction for the ink degradation. We first model the ink fading using the Hull-White/Vasicek (HWV) stochastic process. The HWV ink fading model considers that the variance of the ink area coverage shrinks as it approaches zero. Besides, spatial convolution is used to model ink diffusion. The two models are integrated into a spatio-temporal stochastic degradation model for the ink fading and diffusion of printed images. The cases of recurrent and non-recurrent time-varying fading and diffusion rates are investigated.
Inks on the paper degrade, so does the paper. The degradation of paper condition may in turn affect the degradation of the inks. Therefore, the investigation of the degradation modeling of ink fading and ink diffusion with ink-paper interactions is needed. Two aspects of the ink-paper interactions are considered, i.e., the effect of paper aging such as depolymerization and yellowing, and the fiber orientation of the paper.
The degradation process of printed images usually takes a very long time. An accelerated degradation model and the optimal design of accelerated degradation test planning is developed for accurate degradation prediction of printed images. The effects of three constant environmental stresses: temperature, humidity, and illumination (intensity), are investigated, and experimental data are used to validate the proposed model. The results show strong agreements between the proposed ink fading and ink diffusion prediction model and the actual experimental data.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
A 28 GHz Phased-Array Transceiver for 5G Applications in 22 nm FD-SOI CMOS
No full textThis paper presents the design and implementation of a 28 GHz phased array transceiver for 5G applications using 22 nm FD-SOI CMOS technology. The transceiver consists of a four-channel phased array receiver and transmitter, which employs phase shifting based on coarse and fine controls. The transceiver employs a zero-IF architecture, which is suitable for small footprints and low power requirements. The receiver achieves a 3.5 dB NF with a 1 dB compression point of −21 dBm and a gain of 13 dB
Reliability estimation of balanced systems with multi-dimensional distributed units
No full textBalanced systems with multi-dimensional distributed units are emerging in a diverse range of industries. This includes Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) with multi-level of rotary wings, Spherical Unmanned Vehicles (SUV), Spherical Phased Array Antenna (SPAA), etc. In this dissertation, we present the reliability estimation for such systems. In particular, we consider two configurations: 1) balanced systems with units distributed circularly on multi-level and 2) balanced systems with units distributed spherically.
First, balanced systems with units distributed circularly on multi-level are generalized as (k₁, k₂)-out-of-(n, m) pairs: G balanced systems. We consider two scenarios: 1) all units perform the same function and 2) adjacent pairs perform complementary functions. For both scenarios, unbalanced system is considered as failed. When units fail and cause the system imbalance, we explore two approaches to rebalance the system: 1) forcing down units on other locations and 2) resuming units that are previously forced down (if any). When units in a system perform the same function, operational states are defined as balanced states with at least k₁ operating pairs and each operating pair has at least k₂ units on each side. The system reliability is obtained by enumerating all of the operational states and summing the probabilities of those states. For (k₁, k₂)-out-of-(n, m) pairs: G balanced systems with adjacent pairs performing complementary functions, in addition to maintaining system balance, the adjacent operating pairs are required to perform complementary functions. Thus, if a pair fails, one of the adjacent pairs is forced down. Similarly, the system reliability is obtained by enumerating all of the operational states. It becomes computational expensive when the number of units in each pair and/or the number of pairs are large. In that case, efficient algorithms are developed to obtain the reliability for such systems.
The balanced system with units distributed spherically is generalized as a spherical k-n-i: G balanced system. We consider two balancing requirements: 1) rotational balance is maintained so that the system is not rotating w.r.t. roll, yaw and pitch axes and 2) symmetrical balance is essential in improving the systems’ stability. We present mathematical approaches to determine the balance status of a system. Similarly, the unbalanced system is rebalanced by 1) forcing down units on other locations and 2) resuming previously forced-down units. The system reliability is obtained by the enumeration of operational states and calculation of operational states’ probabilities. We develop an efficient algorithm for reliability estimation when the number of units in the system is large.
Degradation models are developed for the (k₁, k₂)-out-of-(n, m) pairs: G balanced systems to further investigate the system reliability when degradation data are available. The degradation processes of units in the system are either stationary (inverse Gaussian process) or non-stationary (improved inverse Gaussian process). We propose a degradation balance mechanism in which the ‘most’ degraded units are forced down temporarily during the degradation process so that the system is less possible to fail due to imbalance. A closed-form lower bound reliability is presented when the balance mechanism is not applied. When it is applied, reliability is obtained by Monte Carlo simulation.
From the reliability study of the both configurations, it is observed that the reliability of a balanced system with multi-dimensional distributed units depends not only on the system’s total number of units and the least number of operating units, but also on the system configurations and balance requirements. Systems with more units do not necessarily provide a higher reliability since they are more likely to fail due to imbalance. Thus, optimal system design is key to maximize the system reliability which is investigated through numerical examples in this dissertation.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
The Impact of Low-Power Design Methodology on Digital Libraries
No full textIn recent years, exciting new low-power design methods have been introduced, such as: multiple supply voltages, body bias techniques and power shut-off. In order to use these low power design methods, strict requirements for both libraries and tools are needed. An additional challenge is the introduction of more accurate characterization models for newer technologies (current source models like ECSM and CCS). This has made the task of library checking a serious issue that needs to be automated. The main part of this thesis presents a checker tool that is used to verify the consistency of the different library formats (views) in standard cell libraries. The layout consistency checker in our tool checks the consistency of the layout of pins between GDSII and LEF library views; we devised a new algorithm,Grid Formation and Centre Inclusion, for this checker. The tool also verifies the pin consistency and availability of cells across other library formats, such as: Verilog and Liberty. The tool was tested using different technology libraries (such as 90nm and 40nm), provided by different vendors (such as GLOBALFOUNDRIES); multiple interfacing errors were caught using our library checker tool. A second part at the end of the thesis shows experiments with some of the low-power design techniques used during the design of a digital block, using -for implementation- standard cells from one of the libraries that have been checked with the library checker tool. Benefits of using these techniques are evaluated and trade-offs are discussed. Power-Shut Off (PSO) design technique proved to be the most effective in reducing power consumption, with power savings that reached 20%.Circuits and SystemsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
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