Movement abnormalities and the progression of prodromal symptomatology in adolescents at risk for psychotic disorders.

The link between movement abnormalities and psychotic disorders is presumed to reflect common neural mechanisms that influence both motor functions and vulnerability to psychosis. The prodromal period leading to psychotic disorders represents both a viable point for intervention and a developmental period that, if studied, could shed light on etiology; however, no published studies have examined the temporal progression of this link. A group with high levels of prodromal symptomatology (i.e., adolescents with schizotypal personality disorder [SPD]; n = 42) and both psychiatric controls (with other personality disorders or conduct disorder [OD]; n = 30) and nonpsychiatric controls ([NC]; n = 49) were recruited. Videotapes of structured psychiatric interviews were coded for movement abnormalities by raters blind to participants' diagnostic status, and follow-up assessments were conducted 1 year later. Controlling for psychotropic medications, the authors found that adolescents with SPD exhibited significantly more motor abnormalities in the face and upper body than did OD and NC controls. At baseline, movement abnormalities were positively correlated with the severity of positive, negative, and total prodromal symptoms. Within the SPD group, baseline movement abnormalities predicted symptom severity 1 year later. Movement abnormalities represent an early risk indicator that may be predictive of later symptom severity and potentially of psychosis onset. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Feature selection for medical diagnosis : Evaluation for cardiovascular diseases

Machine learning has emerged as an effective medical diagnostic support system. In a medical diagnosis problem, a set of features that are representative of all the variations of the disease are necessary. The objective of our work is to predict more accurately the presence of cardiovascular disease with reduced number of attributes. We investigate intelligent system to generate feature subset with improvement in diagnostic performance. Features ranked with distance measure are searched through forward inclusion, forward selection and backward elimination search techniques to find subset that gives improved classification result. We propose hybrid forward selection technique for cardiovascular disease diagnosis. Our experiment demonstrates that this approach finds smaller subsets and increases the accuracy of diagnosis compared to forward inclusion and back-elimination techniques.     

Hybrid of multi-signal processing methods for detection of small objects in containers filled with beverages using ultrasound

Ultrasound backscattered signals for object detection could be too weak to be perceived when superposed to strong reflection signals, and could also be complicated either in time or frequency domain. These peculiarities raise a challenge for signal processing methods. In this paper four signal processing methods were studied to detect objects in containers. Root mean squares (RMS) method was better in object detection but needed to combine other methods to increase detection success rate. Variance, center frequency pressure ratio (CFPR) and backscattered amplitude integral (BAI) methods have similar overall detection ratings. The optimal signal size, to increase the detection ability, corresponded approximately to the length of reverberation signals before it was dissipated.     

Conjugate gradient on Grassmann manifolds for robust subspace estimation

Most geometric computer vision problems involve orthogonality constraints. An important subclass of these problems is subspace estimation, which can be equivalently formulated into an optimization problem on Grassmann manifolds. In this paper, we propose to use the conjugate gradient algorithm on Grassmann manifolds for robust subspace estimation in conjunction with the recently introduced generalized projection based M-Estimator (gpbM). The gpbM method is an elemental subset-based robust estimation algorithm that can process heteroscedastic data without any user intervention. We show that by optimizing the orthogonal parameter matrix on Grassmann manifolds, the performance of the gpbM algorithm improves significantly. Results on synthetic and real data are presented.     

Fatal respiratory obstruction due to round worm

Respiratory obstruction caused by a round worm is rate. A fatal case of the complication in a three-year-old child was encountered at the Nehru Hospital attached to the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India.     

Extrusion studies of mixtures containing certain meat offals: Part 2-textural properties

Thermoplastically extruded products prepared from soy grits alone, and from those containing 20% or 35% of bovine or porcine offal, at various temperatures of extrusion, were subjected to instrumental texture profile analysis (hardness, elasticity, cohesiveness, gumminess, chewiness) and shear force measurements. The offal sources were untreated, or alkali-extracted, protein from bovine and porcine lung and bovine tripe (rumen and reticulum) and protein in extracted by sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) from bovine tripe. For products prepared from soy grits alone, hardness, gumminess, chewiness and shear force showed maxima at 170°C, whereas elasticity and cohesiveness increased progressively in the temperature range studied (140-190°C). Products containing SDS-extracted tripe protein required more force to shear, and were more hard, gummy and chewy, than products containing untreated offal, and values for all parameters were greater in the latter than in products containing alkali-extracted offal protein. The effect of extrusion temperature on the textural parameters of the products was less than that due to the mode of offal preparation used (untreated, alkali- or SDS-extracted) or the level of incorporation. Offal source was relatively unimportant. Products containing alkali-extracted offal protein had poor internal structure and were brittle; those containing SDS-extracted protein were tough. The different textural properties of the extracted products might determine their relative suitability for use either alone, as analogues or as extenders.     

Some investigations on fuzzy P + fuzzy I + fuzzy D controller for non-stationary process

The paper addresses the adaptive behaviour of parallel fuzzy proportional plus fuzzy integral plus fuzzy derivative (FP+FI+FD) controller. The parallel FP+FI+FD controller is actually a non-linear adaptive controller whose gain changes continuously with output of the process under control. Two non-stationary processes, whose characteristics change with time, are considered for simulation study. Simulation is performed using software LabVIEW TM . The set-point tracking response of parallel FP+FI+FD is compared with conventional parallel proportional plus integral plus derivative (PID) controller, tuned with the Ziegler-Nichols (Z-N) tuning technique. Simulation results show that conventional PID controller fails to track the set-point and becomes unstable as the process changes its characteristic with time. But the parallel FP+FI+FD controller shows considerably much better set-point tracking response and does not deviate from steady state. Also, a huge spike is observed in the output of PID controller as the reference set-point and process parameters are changed, while the FP+FI+FD controller gives spike free control signal.     

Automated TB classification using ensemble of deep architectures

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that mainly affects the lung region. Its initial screening is mostly performed using chest radiograph, which is also...