Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Identification And Profiling Of Socioeconomic And Health Characteristics Associated With Consumer Food Purchasing Behaviours Using Machine Learning, Daniel Burke, Martin Boudou, Jennifer Mccarthy, Majid Bahramian, Courage Krah, Christina Kenny, Paul Hynds, Anushree Priyadarshini

Articles

Food systems and food-related policies influence food consumption, dietary patterns, and human and environmental health. Consumers play a vital role in enhancing health and sustainability through their purchasing choices. To identify and cluster food purchasing behaviours and map relationships, a cross-sectional survey was conducted across Ireland with a sample size of 957 adults. Two-step cluster analysis, generalised linear models, and recursive partitioning and regression trees were used to elucidate adherence to identified food purchasing behavioural clusters. Three clusters (‘food quality’, ‘taste’, and ‘price’) were identified based on food purchasing priorities and statistically categorised. ‘Food quality’ members were significantly less likely …

Confocal Raman Spectroscopy Coupled With In Vitro Permeation Testing To Study The Effects Of Formalin Fixation On The Skin Barrier Function Of Reconstructed Human Epidermis, Hichem Kichou, Franck Bonnier, Amanda C. Caritá, Hugh Byrne, Igor Choupra, Emilie Munnier

Articles

Confocal Raman Spectroscopy is recognised as a potent tool for molecular characterisation of biological specimens. There is a growing demand for In Vitro Permeation Tests (IVPT) in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic areas, increasingly conducted using Reconstructed Human Epidermis (RHE) skin models. In this study, chemical fixation of RHE in 10% Neutral Buffered Formalin for 24 hours has been examined for storing RHE samples at 4°C for up to 21 days. Confocal Raman Spectroscopy, combined with Principal Components Analysis, revealed the molecular-level effects of fixation, notably in protein and lipid conformation within the stratum corneum and viable epidermis. IVPT by means …

Three-Dimensional Printing Limitations Of Polymers Reinforced With Continuous Stainless Steel Fibres And Curvature Stiffness, Alison J. Clarke, Andrew N. Dickson, Vladimir Milosavljevic, Denis P. Dowling

Articles

This study investigates the printability limitations of 3D-printed continuous 316L stainless steel fibre-reinforced polymer composites obtained using the Materials Extrusion (MEX) technique. The objective was to better understand the geometric printing limitations of composites fabricated using continuous steel fibres, based on a combination of bending stiffness testing and piezoresistive property studies. The 0.5 mm composite filaments used in this study were obtained by co-extruding polylactic acid (PLA), with a 316 L stainless steel fibre (SSF) bundle. The composite printability limitations were evaluated by the printing of a series of ’teardrop’ shaped geometries with angles in the range from 5◦ to …

Antitrust After The Coming Wave, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

A coming wave of general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence ("AI"), robotics, quantum computing, synthetic biology, energy expansion, and nanotechnology, is likely to fundamentally reshape the economy and erode the assumptions on which the antitrust order is predicated. First, AI-driven systems will vastly improve firms' ability to detect (and even program) consumer preferences without the benefit of price signals, which will undermine the traditional information-producing benefit of competitive markets. Similarly, these systems will be able to determine comparative producer efficiency without relying on competitive signals. Second, AI systems will invert the salient characteristics of human managers, whose intentions are opaque but …

Analysis Of R X C Tables Containing Outliers, David L. Farnsworth

Articles

We examine the problem of accommodating outliers in 𝑟 × 𝑐 tables of measurement data when there are no replications. The suggested strategy for the determination of the cells that contain outliers and for handling them analytically is easily understood and implemented in practice and presented in even the most elementary statistics course along with the course’s ANOVA material.

Analysis Of Data Containing Outliers, David L. Farnsworth

Articles

A strategy for accommodating outlying observations, as well as non-representative, suspect, missing, or otherwise troubling observations, is described. Each unusual observation is decomposed into the sum of two components. One component is the value implied by the trusted observations in the data set. The other component is the unusual part. In this way, the fitting of the data set can then proceed, and, additionally, a numerical value can be ascribed to the unusual part. The method offers not only an antidote for observations with irregular numerical values, which often have the power to contaminate and alter analyses, but also a …

Comparing Thin And Volume Regimes Of Analog Holograms For Wavefront Sensing, Emma Branigan, Andreas Zepp, Suzanne Martin, Matthew Sheehan, Szymon Gladysz, Kevin Murphy

Articles

Two analog holographic wavefront sensors, for measurement of defocus, have been fabricated as both thin and volume phase transmission holograms in a self-developing photopolymer. This represents the first reported direct comparison of hologram regimes when designed for wavefront sensing. An analysis of the effect of crosstalk in the presence of one other aberration mode (astigmatism X (0/90°), coma X (horizontal), and primary spherical aberration) was carried out with each version of the sensor. The performance of thin and volume analog holographic wavefront sensors was characterized under emulated conditions associated with moderate atmospheric turbulence.

Inclusion4eu: Towards A Framework Of Inclusive Software Design Processes And Practices, Damian Gordon, Andrea Curley, Emma Murphy, John Gilligan, Anna Becevel, Dympna O'Sullivan

Articles

This research is based on a trans-European research project aimed at enhancing software design and engineering practices to promote inclusivity, involving stakeholders from academia, industry, and disability advocacy services. To explore the nature and meaning of inclusion, a number of different approaches to inclusion are outlined, including models of equitable design (Accessible Design, Inclusive Design, Universal Design, and Design for All), User Design processes (Co-Production, Co-Creation, User-Centred Design, Co-Design, and Participatory Design), and Software Engineering Methodologies (Linear, Spiral, and Agile). These three categories of models are combined to form a three-dimensional environment in which software development projects can be mapped …

Designing Self-Management For And With Persons Living With Dementia Osullivan, Dympna, Dympna O'Sullivan, Michael Wilson, Damon Berry, Orla Moran, Siobhan O,Neill, Ciaran Nugent, Jonathan Turner, Julie Doyle

Articles

Promoting high quality of life for persons living with dementia has emerged as a central goal in global public health agendas. The emphasis has shifted from extending life to actively enhancing overall well-being by postponing or preventing additional disability. This represents a departure from traditional medical perspectives on dementia to a more socially-oriented approach, placing a strong focus on wellbeing.

In parallel, the concept of self-management for people with living dementia has emerged, where this is a person-centred approach in which the individual is empowered and has ownership over the management of their life and condition. Practice recommendations for person-centered …

Investigation Of The Uv-Resistance Of Photopolymerisable Glass For Space Applications, Luca Sorridente, Tatsiana Mikulchyk, Izabela Naydenova, Kevin Murphy

Articles

The progress of space based scientific research leads to an increasing demand for more efficient and less bulky instruments. Conventional refractive elements make up a critical part of many optical instruments launched into space; however, they can be bulky and heavy. Holographic optical elements are an efficient alternative to replace the conventional optical elements as they are lightweight and can be miniaturized. Current materials typically used for volume holographic optical elements are not robust enough for use in space environment. Recently a promising photopolymerisable glass has been developed using a sol-gel technique, which can provide dry layers suitable for holographic …

Photopolymer Material Durability And Safety In Holographic Diffusers For Visual Applications, Matthew Hellis, Alan Casey, Edoardo Splendi, Suzanne Martin, Matthew Sheehan, Kevin Murphy

Articles

This study introduces novel holographic diffuser applications employing acrylamide- or diacetone acrylamide-based photopolymers, patterned within the volume on a micron scale by a single-beam holographic recording process. These diffusers have previously been presented as potential treatments for amblyopia and diplopia. This work has now been extended to spectrometric analysis to determine their properties under broadband light. Diffusive elements with higher diffusion efficiencies exhibited a marginal reduction (< 5%) in diffusion efficiency across most of the visible spectrum. Given the intended application of these holographic diffusers, cytotoxicity assessments were also performed. This is significant as there is a difference in toxicity between the crystalline acrylamide (classified as a category 3 material) and diacetone acrylamide (classified as a category 4 material). The findings indicated substantially lower toxicity in holograms produced with diacetone acrylamide-based photopolymer. The accelerated ageing of both formulations of holographic diffusers indicated that the acrylamide-based holographic diffusers did not reduce efficacy in the 292 days of ageing. The diacetone acrylamide-based holographic diffusers exhibited reduced efficacy by day 182. Despite this, both formulations have been shown to perform for prolonged periods as the treatment modality would require. These results emphasise that holographic diffusers exhibit minimal spectral impact, and longevity on the scale of treatment regimes which are crucial considerations for their prospective use case as treatments for amblyopia and diplopia.

Modeling Redistribution Of Nanozeolites In Holographic Recording, Dana Mackey, Jack Lyons Dr, Izabela Naydenova

Articles

Zeolite doped photopolymers have been studied experimentally due to their potential application in the develop- ment of optical sensors. It has been shown that dopant redistribution can be achieved by holographic recording and has a direct influence on the sensitivity of the recorded grating. To achieve better theoretical understanding of these processes, this paper proposes an extended photopolymerization-diffusion mathematical model for describing the dynamics of nanozeolite redistribution during recording in an acrylamide-based photopolymer. Using numerical simulations of this model, we investigate how recording conditions, dopant transport parameters, and initial load affect the refractive index modulation of the resulting photonic structure.

Water Management And Conservation In India Fostering Water Justice: Arguing For Adopting Just Sustainability In Water Governance, Gayathri D Naik Dr, Sanjay Shenoi P

Articles

The water sector is characterised by everyday water injustices where factors like social discrimination, economic disparities, and political preferences influence the determination of water resource access, allocation, and management. The increasing anthropogenic impacts on water resources and consequent threats to sustainability add to the water injustices, often impacting the poorer, socially downtrodden communities that bear the brunt of water scarcity and cannot afford alternatives. The current water governance patterns, prioritising equality over equity, fail to address the issues of water injustices created by social, political, and economic factors in water management and sideline the ecological impacts on water resources. Moving …

Holographic Multiplexing In A Photopolymerisable Hybrid Sol-Gel, Pamela Stoeva, Tatsiana Mikulchyk, Izabela Naydenova, Kevin Murphy

Articles

Holographic multiplexing techniques enhance functionality and information storage by leveraging the inherent selectivity of holograms. This is crucial for advancing holographic sensors, which excel in simultaneously detecting multiple parameters from a single input signal. This study explores the potential of the recent photopolymerisable hybrid sol-gel (PHSG) material for application in Space sensing systems through the investigation of its holographic angular multiplexing capabilities. For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, we report the successful recording of up to five angularly multiplexed gratings with diffraction efficiencies (DE) ≥ 15% in 187 ± 18 µm PHSG layers. A 3 mW/cm2 …

A Central Limit Theorem For The Number Of Excursion Set Components Of Gaussian Fields, Dmitry Beliaev, Michael Mcauley, Stephen Muirhead

Articles

For a smooth stationary Gaussian field f on R^d and level ℓ ∈ R, we consider the number of connected components of the excursion set {f ≥ ℓ} (or level set {f = ℓ}) contained in large domains. The mean of this quantity is known to scale like the volume of the domain under general assumptions on the field. We prove that, assuming sufficient decay of correlations (e.g. the Bargmann-Fock field), a central limit theorem holds with volume-order scaling. Previously such a result had only been established for ‘additive’ geometric functionals of the excursion/level sets (e.g. the volume or …

Arsenic Contamination Needs Serious Attention: An Opinion And Global Scenario, Abhijnan Bhat School Of Food Science And Environmental Health, Kamna Ravi Health, Engineering & Materials Sciences (Hems) Hub, Furong Tian Nanolab Research Centre, Baljit Singh Micra Biodiagnostics Technology Gateway

Articles

Arsenic (As) contamination is a serious global concern, polluting our natural resources, including water and soil, and posing a danger to the environment and public health. Arsenic is present in the groundwater of several countries and this contaminated water is used for irrigation, drinking, and food preparation, which poses the greatest threat to public health. Nearly 106 countries are affected by groundwater arsenic contamination and an estimated 230 million individuals worldwide are exposed to its adverse health effects, including increased cancer risks, associated cardiovascular disease and diabetes, skin lesions, neurological effects, kidney damage, and foetal or cognitive development-related complications. Arsenic …

Spectralomics – Towards A Holistic Adaptation Of Label Free Spectroscopy, Hugh Byrne

Articles

Vibrational spectroscopy, largely based on infrared absorption and Raman scattering techniques, is much vaunted as a label free approach, delivering a high content, holistic characterisation of a sample, with demonstrable applications in a broad range of fields, from process analytical technologies and preclinical drug screening, to disease diagnostics, therapeutics, prognostics and personalised medicine. However, in the analysis of such complex systems, a trend has emerged in which spectral analysis is reduced to the identification of individual peaks, based on reference tables of assignments derived from literature, which are then interpreted as biomarkers. More sophisticated analysis attempts to unmix the spectrum …

Modelling Hoe Performance With An Extended Source; Experimental Investigation Using Misaligned Point Sources, Jorge Lasarte, Kevin Murphy, Izabela Naydenova, Maria Victoria Collados, Jesús Atencia, Suzanne Martin

Articles

Holographic optical elements (HOEs) have the potential to enable more compact, versatile, and lightweight optical designs, but many challenges remain. Volume HOEs have the advantage of high diffraction efficiency, but they present both chromatic selectivity and chromatic dispersion, which impact their use with wide spectrum light sources. Single-color light emitting diode (LED) sources have a narrow spectrum that reduces these issues and this makes them better suited for use with volume HOEs. However, the LED source size must be taken into consideration for compact volume HOE-LED systems. To investigate the design limits for compact HOE-LED systems, a theoretical and experimental …

Generalised Zero-Shot Learning For Action Recognition Fusing Text And Image Gans, Kaiqiang Huang, Susan Mckeever, Luis Miralles-Pechuán

Articles

Generalized Zero-Shot Action Recognition (GZSAR) is geared towards recognizing classes that the model has not been trained on, while still maintaining robust performance on the familiar, trained classes. This approach mitigates the need for an extensive amount of labeled training data and enhances the efficient utilization of available datasets. The main contribution of this paper is a novel approach for GZSAR that combines the power of two Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). One GAN is responsible for generating embeddings from visual representations, while the other GAN focuses on generating embeddings from textual representations. These generated embeddings are fused, with the selection …

Signatures Of Time Interval Reproduction In The Human Electroencephalogram (Eeg), Harvey Mccone, John. S. Butler, Redmond. G. O'Connell

Articles

No abstract provided.

Neural Correlates Of Audiovisual Narrative Speech Perception In Children And Adults On The Autism Spectrum: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study, Lars A. Ross, Sophie Molholm, John S. Butler, Victor A. Del Bene, Tufikameni Brima, John J. Foxe

Articles

Autistic individuals show substantially reduced benefit from observing visual articulations during audiovisual speech perception, a multisensory integration deficit that is particularly relevant to social communication. This has mostly been studied using simple syllabic or word-level stimuli and it remains unclear how altered lower-level multisensory integration translates to the processing of more complex natural multisensory stimulus environments in autism. Here, functional neuroimaging was used to examine neural correlates of audiovisual gain (AV-gain) in 41 autistic individuals to those of 41 age-matched non-autistic controls when presented with a complex audiovisual narrative. Participants were presented with continuous narration of a story in auditory-alone, …

Probing A Neural Unreliability Account Of Auditory Sensory Processing Atypicalities In Rett Syndrome, Tufikameni Brima, Shlomit Beker, Kevin D. Prinsloo, John Butler, Aleksandra Djukic, Edward G. Freedman, Sophie Molholm, John J. Foxe

Articles

Background: In the search for objective tools to quantify neural function in Rett Syndrome (RTT), which are crucial in the evaluation of therapeutic efficacy in clinical trials, recordings of sensory-perceptual functioning using event-related potential (ERP) approaches have emerged as potentially powerful tools. Considerable work points to highly anomalous auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) in RTT. However, an assumption of the typical signal-averaging method used to derive these measures is “stationarity” of the underlying responses – i.e. neural responses to each input are highly stereotyped. An alternate possibility is that responses to repeated stimuli are highly variable in RTT. If so, this …

An Image Processing Approach For Real-Time Safety Assessment Of Autonomous Drone Delivery, Assem A. Abdelhak, Dan Moss, Alan Hicks, Susan Mckeever

Articles

The aim of producing self-driving drones has driven many researchers to automate various drone driving functions, such as take-off, navigation, and landing. However, despite the emergence of delivery as one of the most important uses of autonomous drones, there is still no automatic way to verify the safety of the delivery stage. One of the primary steps in the delivery operation is to ensure that the dropping zone is a safe area on arrival and during the dropping process. This paper proposes an image-processing-based classification approach for the delivery drone dropping process at a predefined destination. It employs live streaming …

Disaggregating Longer-Term Trends From Seasonal Variations In Measured Pv System Performance, Chibuisi Chinasaokwu Okorieimoh, Brian Norton, Michael Conlon

Articles

Photovoltaic (PV) systems are widely adopted for renewable energy generation, but their performance is influenced by complex interactions between longer-term trends and seasonal variations. This study aims to remove these factors and provide valuable insights for optimising PV system operation. We employ comprehensive datasets of measured PV system performance over five years, focusing on identifying the distinct contributions of longer-term trends and seasonal effects. To achieve this, we develop a novel analytical framework that combines time series and statistical analytical techniques. By applying this framework to the extensive performance data, we successfully break down the overall PV system output into …

Use Of Artificial Intelligence In Drug Development, Louise C. Druedahl, Nicholson Price, Timo Minssen, Dipl Jur, Ameet Sarpatwari

Articles

Considerable focus has been placed on the health care applications of artificial intelligence (AI). Already, machine learning, a subset of AI that involves “the use of data and algorithms to imitate the way that humans learn” has been used to predict diseases, while AI-powered smartphone apps have been developed to promote mental health and weight loss. Owing in part to such successes, the market for AI in health care has been forecasted to increase more than 1000% between 2022 and 2029, from $13.8 billion to $164.1 billion. One area of substantial promise is drug development, which is poised to benefit …

Feedback Loops: Feedback Machines, Patrick Barry

Articles

Yes, AI raises serious concerns about bias, privacy, copyright infringement, environmental sustainability, and a whole bunch of other important topics. But if you are looking for a positive use case - and a new way to approach professional development - try asking chatgpt or some other AI chatbot for feedback, especially on something you've written.

Locating Liability For Medical Ai, W. Nicholson Price Ii, I. Glenn Cohen

Articles

When medical AI systems fail, who should be responsible, and how? We argue that various features of medical AI complicate the application of existing tort doctrines and render them ineffective at creating incentives for the safe and effective use of medical AI. In addition to complexity and opacity, the problem of contextual bias, where medical AI systems vary substantially in performance from place to place, hampers traditional doctrines. We suggest instead the application of enterprise liability to hospitals—making them broadly liable for negligent injuries occurring within the hospital system—with an important caveat: hospitals must have access to the information needed …

Relative Effectiveness Of A Radionuclide (210pb), Surface Elevation Table (Set), And Lidar At Monitoring Mangrove Forest Surface Elevation Change, Richard Mackenzie, Ken Krauss, Nicole Cormier, Eugene Eperiam, Jan Van Aardt, Ali Rouzbeh-Kargar, Jessica Grow, Val Klump

Articles

Sea-level rise (SLR) is one of the greatest future threats to mangrove forests. Mangroves have kept up with or paced past SLR by maintaining their forest floor elevation relative to sea level through root growth, sedimentation, and peat development. Monitoring surface elevation change (SEC) or accretion rates allows us to understand mangrove response to SLR and prioritizes resilient ecosystems for conservation or vulnerable ecosystems for restoration. We compared three methods to measure SEC and accretion in mangrove forests: 210Pb, surface elevation tables (SETs), and a terrestrial light detection and ranging system (compact biomass LiDAR—CBL). Lead-210 accretion rates were not significantly …

Exploring The Impact Of Signal Quality Enhancement On Heart Sound Classification Models, Davoud Shariat Panah, Andrew Hines, Susan Mckeever

Articles

Limited cardiology resources increase the urgency for automated heart disease screening for the general public. Heart sound diagnostic models have been recently employed as a cost-effective solution for the initial screening of heart disease. Noise in heart sound recordings, however, can reduce the performance of such data-driven models. Various quality enhancement approaches have been adopted to alleviate the destructive impact of noise on model performance. One approach is universal noise reduction which applies denoising techniques to recordings, irrespective of their noise level. The second approach is targeted noise reduction, which applies denoising solely to recordings deemed to need it, based …

Renormalized Stress-Energy Tensor For Scalar Fields In Hartle-Hawking, Boulware, And Unruh States In The Reissner-Nordström Spacetime, Julio Arrechea, Cormac Breen, Adrian Ottewill, Peter Taylor

Articles

In this paper, we consider a quantum scalar field propagating on the Reissner-Nordström black hole spacetime. We compute the renormalized stress-energy tensor for the field in the Hartle-Hawking, Boulware and Unruh states. When the field is in the Hartle-Hawking state, we renormalize using the recently developed “extended coordinate” prescription. This method, which relies on Euclidean techniques, is very fast and accurate. Once, we have renormalized in the Hartle-Hawking state, we compute the stress-energy tensor in the Boulware and Unruh states by leveraging the fact that the difference between stress-energy tensors in different quantum states is already finite. We consider a …