Cost effectiveness and sustainability of sanitation options: A case study of South Can Tho - Technical Report

The Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF), from the University of Technology Sydney, in collaboration with Can Tho University (CTU) and Can Tho Water Supply and Sewerage Company (WSSC) completed a 2-year collaborative research project assessing the wastewater infrastructure options for Can Tho City. The comparison of alternatives was made on the basis of cost-effectiveness and on the relative sustainability of the options, as determined through a participatory stakeholder sustainability assessment process with several government agencies in Can Tho

INVESTIGATION OF CEMENT BASED ADHESIVES TO REPLACE EPOXY BOND IN CFRP/CONCRETE COMPOSITE

The completion of this thesis was made possible by the help of many individuals. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude and indebtedness to my supervisor Dr. Mrs. J C P H Gamage, for her scholarly guidance, enthusiasm, proactive attitude and advice at every stage of the research study to complete it successfully. Without her direction, this thesis could not possibly have been completed in such an organized and timely manner. Much appreciation is conveyed to Ms. Dedunu Wimalasiri who is a graduate diploma student at IESL for the support, dedication and untiring efforts to ensure that this study progressed smoothly without any hindrance. Also, I would like to thank Ms Erandi, postgraduate student of department of civil engineering, university of Moratuwa for the support extended to conduct the testing. I would like to thank for all technical staff of building materials and structural testing laboratories, university of Moratuwa for their assistance. Mr Namal Liyanage of Liyanage Construction is greatly acknowledged for supporting to sand blast the test specimens. I would like to thank my husband and daughter for bearing with me and supporting me to do this research study during weekends and nights and sacrificing limited time available for family get-together. Finally, I offer my appreciation to all officers in National Water Supply & Drainage Board who helped me to complete this research successfully

Control of CydB and GltA1 Expression by the SenX3 RegX3 Two Component Regulatory System of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Two component regulatory systems are used widely by bacteria to coordinate changes in global gene expression profiles in response to environmental signals. The SenX3-RegX3 two component system of Mycobacterium tuberculosis has previously been shown to play a role in virulence and phosphate-responsive control of gene expression. We demonstrate that expression of SenX3-RegX3 is controlled in response to growth conditions, although the absolute changes are small. Global gene expression profiling of a RegX3 deletion strain and wild-type strain in different culture conditions (static, microaerobic, anaerobic), as well as in an over-expressing strain identified a number of genes with changed expression patterns. Among those were genes previously identified as differentially regulated in aerobic culture, including ald (encoding alanine dehydrogenase) cyd,encoding a subunit of the cytochrome D ubiquinol oxidase, and gltA1, encoding a citrate synthase. Promoter activity in the upstream regions of both cydB and gltA1 was altered in the RegX3 deletion strain. DNA-binding assays confirmed that RegX3 binds to the promoter regions of ald, cydB and gltA1 in a phosphorylation-dependent manner. Taken together these data suggest a direct role for the SenX-RegX3 system in modulating expression of aerobic respiration, in addition to its role during phosphate limitation

Is there an ideal way to initiate antiplatelet therapy with aspirin? A crossover study on healthy volunteers evaluating different dosing schemes with whole blood aggregometry

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Guidelines recommend an early initiation of aspirin treatment in patients with acute cerebral ischemia. Comparative studies on the best starting dose for initiating aspirin therapy to achieve a rapid antiplatelet effect do not exist. This study evaluated the platelet inhibitory effect in healthy volunteers by using three different aspirin loading doses to gain a model for initiating antiplatelet treatment in acute strokes patients.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Using whole blood aggregometry, this study with a prospective, uncontrolled, open, crossover design examined 12 healthy volunteers treated with three different aspirin loading doses: intravenous 500 mg aspirin, oral 500 mg aspirin, and a course of 200 mg aspirin on two subsequent days followed by a five-day course of 100 mg aspirin. Aspirin low response was defined as change of impedance exceeding 0 Ω after stimulation with arachidonic acid.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Sufficient antiplatelet effectiveness was gained within 30 seconds when intravenous 500 mg aspirin was used. The mean time until antiplatelet effect was 74 minutes for 500 mg aspirin taken orally and 662 minutes (11.2 hours) for the dose scheme with 200 mg aspirin with a high inter- and intraindividual variability in those two regimes. Platelet aggregation returned to the baseline range during the wash-out phase within 4 days.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our study reveals that the antiplatelet effect differs significantly between the three different aspirin starting dosages with a high inter- and intraindividual variability of antiplatelet response in our healthy volunteers. To ensure an early platelet inhibitory effect in acute stroke patients, it could be advantageous to initiate the therapy with an intravenous loading dose of 500 mg aspirin. However, clinical outcome studies must still define the best way to initiate antiplatelet treatment with aspirin.</p

Methodological quality of guidelines for management of Lyme neuroborreliosis

BACKGROUND: Many aspects of clinical management of Lyme neuroborreliosis are subject to intense debates. Guidelines show considerable variability in their recommendations, leading to divergent treatment regimes. The most pronounced differences in recommendations exist between guidelines from scientific societies and from patient advocacy groups. Assessment of the methodological quality of these contradictory guideline recommendations can be helpful for healthcare professionals. METHODS: Systematic searches were conducted in MEDLINE and databases of four international and national guideline organizations for guidelines on Lyme neuroborreliosis published from 1999–2014. Characteristics (e.g., year of publication, sponsoring organization) and key recommendations were extracted from each guideline. Two independent reviewers assessed the methodological quality of each guideline according to the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II (AGREE II) tool. AGREE II scores from guidelines developed by scientific societies and from patient advocacy groups were compared across domains. RESULTS: We identified eight eligible guidelines of which n = 6 were developed by scientific societies and n = 2 by patient advocacy groups. Agreement on AGREE II scores was good (Cohen’s weighted kappa = 0.87, 95 % CI 0.83–0.92). Three guidelines, all from scientific societies, had an overall quality score of ≥ 50 %. Two of them were recommended for use according to the AGREE II criteria. Across all guidelines, the AGREE II domain with the highest scores was “Clarity of Presentation” (65, SD 19 %); all other domains had scores < 50 % with the domain “Applicability” having the lowest scores (4, SD 4 %). Guidelines developed by scientific societies had statistically significantly higher scores regarding clarity of presentation than guidelines from patient advocacy groups (p = 0.0151). No statistically significant differences were found in other domains. CONCLUSIONS: Current guidelines on Lyme neuroborreliosis vary in methodological quality and content. Health care providers and patients need to be aware of this variability in quality when choosing recommendations for their treatment decisions regarding Lyme neuroborreliosis. No statement can be given on quality of content and validity of recommendations, as these issues are not subject to assessment with the AGREE II tool and are prone to individual interpretation of the available evidence by the corresponding guideline panels. To enhance guideline quality, guideline panels should put more emphasis on linking recommendations to the available evidence, transparency in reporting how evidence was searched for and evaluated, and the implementation of recommendations into clinical practice. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12883-015-0501-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Genetic algorithm optimized K nearest neighbor classification framework (gaKnn)

A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Computer Science and Engineering for the MSc in Computer ScienceData classification attempts to assign a category or a class label to an unknown data object based on an available similar data set with class labels already assigned. K nearest neighbor (KNN) is a widely used classification technique in data mining. KNN assigns the majority class label of its closest neighbours to an unknown object, when classifying an unknown object. The computational efficiency and accuracy of KNN depends largely on the techniques used to identify its K nearest neighbours. The selection of a similarity metric to identify the neighbours and the selection of the optimum K as the number of neighbours can be considered as an optimization problem. The optimizing parameters for KNN are value for K. weight vector, voting power of neighbours, attribute selection and instance selection. Finding these values is a search problem with a large search space .Genetic Algorithms (OA) are considered to provide optimum solutions for search problems with a large search space. The search space is defined by the application do main. There are multiple real world classification applications that can utilize a parameter optimized KNN. Due to this, there is various research work carried out on using Genetic Algorithms for optimizing KNN classification. Even though multiple instances of research had been carried out on using GA to optimize KNN there is no software framework available, which could be easily adapted to various application domains. This research is aimed towards building a framework to carry out the optimization of KNN classification with the help of a Genetic Algorithm. The work includes identifying issues and best practices on designing a suitable framework. The developed framework provides a basic backbone for GA optimization of KNN while providing sufficient flexibility for the user, to extend it to specific application domains. This work discusses the design and implementation of a minimalist gaKnn framework. It is expected that this would serve as a basis for future enhancements