123,544 research outputs found
INSTAP: Experiences in building a multimedia application
No full textINSTAP is a multimedia program to teach Afrikaans at first year university level. The intended audience consists of students who come from non-Afrikaans speaking communities, and hence sound is a very important aspect of the program. The program is in the form of a number of lessons, each with exercises and test linked to the lesson. At any stage, the student has a number of tools available, such as a dictionary, grarnrnar, etc.
INSTAP was compiled using a shell program developed at the KU Leuven, Belgium, as part of a European 1anguages project. The data is filled in with the aid of an authoring tool, and the database is then converted to a form in which the student program can read it.
In this talk, I shall give a brief demonstration of the program. I also describe my experiences as technical consultant to the language instructors who filled in the data. In this part of the talk, typical problems which might be encountered in the building of similar large multimedia projects will be discussed
Time trends in the prevalence of peanut allergy: three cohorts of children from the same geographical location in the UK.
No full textBackground: This article investigated the prevalence of peanut allergy in three cohorts of children born in the same geographical location, Isle of Wight, UK and seeks to determine whether the prevalence of peanut allergy has changed between 1994 and 2004. Methods: Three cohorts of children (age 3-4 years) born on the Isle of Wight, were assessed for peanut allergy and the outcomes compared: Cohort A: Born in 1989; reviewed at 4 years of age (n = 2181). Cohort B: Born between 1994 and 1996; reviewed between 3 and 4 years of age (n = 1273). Cohort C: Born between 2001 and 2002; reviewed at 3 years of age (n = 891). Results: Peanut sensitization increased significantly from 1.3% in Cohort A to 3.3% (P = 0.003) in Cohort B before falling back to 2.0% in Cohort C (P = 0.145). Similarly, clinical peanut allergy increased significantly from 0.5% in Cohort A to 1.4% (P = 0.023) in Cohort B, with a subsequent fall to 1.2% in Cohort C (P = 0.850). Conclusions: Our data from three cohorts of 3- to 4-year-old children born in the same geographical area shows that peanut allergy prevalence has changed over time. Peanut sensitization and reported allergy in children born in 1994-1996 increased from 1989 but seems to have stabilized or slightly decreased since the late 1990s, although not significant
Skoenlapper (Irma Venter)
No full textSkoenlapper.Irma Venter. Kaapstad: Human & Rousseau, 2012. 352 pp. ISBN: 978-0-7981-5673-8
Do advanced glycation end products contribute to food allergy?
No full textSugars can bind non-enzymatically to proteins, nucleic acids or lipids and form compounds called Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs). Although AGEs can form in vivo, factors in the Western diet such as high amounts of added sugars, processing methods such as dehydration of proteins, high temperature sterilisation to extend shelf life, and cooking methods such as frying and microwaving (and reheating), can lead to inordinate levels of dietary AGEs. Dietary AGEs (dAGEs) have the capacity to bind to the Receptor for Advanced Glycation End Products (RAGE) which is part of the endogenous threat detection network. There are persuasive epidemiological and biochemical arguments that correlate the rise in food allergy in several Western countries with increases in dAGEs. The increased consumption of dAGEs is enmeshed in current theories of the aetiology of food allergy which will be discussed
Reducing fractal encoding complexities
No full textIn this paper we address the time complexity problem associated with fractal image coding. In particular, we
describe a new hybrid technique called Fractal Vector Quantization coding (FVQ), which takes advantage of the best qualities in fractal coding and vector quantization (VQ) .
In our proposed approach, VQ is used to construct a set of real world building blocks which can be used to approximate an arbitrary image. Fractal coding is then employed to fractalize the building blocks by finding an affine transformation for each block which best represents that block. The real world building blocks with their fractal codes are compiled in a fractal dictionary. To encode an image, FVQ approximates the image with a set of fractal code vectors from the dictionary, which is stored.
The decoder uses a standard fractal decoding algorithm since the fractal dictionary is no t required by the decoder
A new species of Lycium (Solanaceae) from Namibia
No full textLycium grandicalyx Joubert & Venter, a new species from Namibia is described. This species differs from other Lycium species by the enlarged and broadly urceolate calyx, which encloses the berry completely in the fruiting stage and by the presence of bicornate, stellate hairs. Florally L. grandicalyx most resembles L. campanulatum E. Mey., L. ferocissimum Miers, L. pilifolium C.H. Wr., L. prunus-spinosa Dun. and L. schizocalyx C.H. Wr
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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