Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is a distinct microvascular disorder that can lead to lacunar stroke, an important stroke subtype that accounts for a quarter of all ischaemic strokes. SVD is associated with imaging biomarkers such as white matter hyperintensities (WMH). The cause of SVD is largely unknown, although inflammation and blood-brain barrier failure via endothelial dysfunction have been implicated. Elevated plasma biomarkers of inflammation are associated with coronary heart disease and large vessel stroke but the role of inflammation in SVD is less well understood. Our hypothesis is that inflammation plays a role in SVD and we sought to examine this by reviewing the literature for evidence of this, and by conducting a brain imaging study of patients with a known inflammatory disease and reviewing the images for evidence of inflammation and SVD, and comparing findings with controls groups. Section A: This thesis begins with a systematic review and meta-analysis of 13 plasma biomarkers of four physiological processes (coagulation, fibrinolysis, endothelial dysfunction and inflammation) in lacunar stroke versus non-lacunar stroke (to control for having any stroke) and non-stroke (to compare to the general population). We sought to know if there were differences in these biomarkers between lacunar stroke and other stroke subtypes and non-stroke controls as a way of generating hypotheses for the disease mechanisms that might lead to lacunar stroke. Findings revealed differences in several biomarkers between lacunar stroke and healthy controls but only fibrinogen, D-dimer, von Willebrand factor and interleukin-6 were different (all significantly lower in lacunar stroke) between lacunar stroke and other stroke subtypes. There was heterogeneity between studies, including variations in the definition of lacunar stroke and most studies measured the biomarkers in the acute phase post stroke, which is potentially confounding. To further examine plasma biomarkers of inflammation and endothelial dysfunction in SVD, we used data from a prior study of mild stroke conducted at the Brain Research Imaging Centre, University of Edinburgh, UK. Lacunar stroke patients were compared to cortical stroke patients. The lacunar group had lower levels of tissue plasminogen activator independent of age, sex and vascular risk factors but we found no difference in the other plasma biomarkers. Section B: Non-resolving systemic inflammation is a feature of inflammatory autoimmune rheumatic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). These patients are at increased risk of stroke but much knowledge relates to stroke in general; less is known about associations with stroke subtypes including SVD, or when in life stroke risk is greatest. Consequently, we sought to better understand the influence of inflammatory rheumatic diseases on stroke and SVD. The review and meta-analysis of cerebrovascular disease in rheumatic diseases showed an excess risk of stroke in RA, SLE, ankylosing spondylitis, gout and psoriasis over the general population. Meta-analyses of stroke subtypes (ischaemic and haemorrhagic) in RA and SLE showed an excess risk of stroke over the general population. Stroke risk across rheumatic diseases was highest in those aged < 50 years and reduced with ageing. We then requested data from NHS Lothian covering 15 years so that we could assess stroke, including stroke subtypes, among patients diagnosed with various arthropathies. We linked 6,613 rheumatology patients’ records with stroke admission records, grouped the various rheumatic diseases into the two main types of arthritis, inflammatory and non-inflammatory, and also compared the strokes in these rheumatology patients to general population data. There was no difference in stroke prevalence between inflammatory and degenerative (non-inflammatory) arthropathies, although the strokes occurred up to two decades earlier than in the general population. Section C: Lastly, we conducted MRI neuroimaging in patients with SLE and reviewed and meta-analysed diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) (an imaging technique used to assess sub-visible white matter microstructure damage) in SLE to place our findings into context. The research question here was to ascertain if patients with a known inflammatory disease had brain imaging evidence of SVD, and to compare findings to controls. We compared imaging markers of SVD and DTI between SLE patients and age-matched healthy controls and sought associations between the imaging biomarkers and plasma biomarkers of inflammation and endothelial dysfunction, measures of fatigue and cognition, and scores of rheumatic disease activity. Fifty-one patients were recruited. There was higher mean diffusivity in all white matter tracts versus controls indicating a diffuse increase in brain water mobility in SLE. Meta-analysis confirmed higher mean diffusivity in SLE patients versus controls. Fatigue in SLE was significantly higher than a normal reference range and was associated with depression, anxiety, higher body mass index, lower mean diffusivity and some blood markers of inflammation and endothelial dysfunction. The most fatigued were youngest which explained the association with lower mean diffusivity. Damage to the brain’s white matter microstructure may be accelerated in SLE as the age-related declines in the general population are normally seen much later in life. The aging pattern is consistent with inflammation-related microvascular-mediated brain damage where the inflammation is systemic in origin. Summary: This thesis has demonstrated an increase in SVD burden in the inflammatory rheumatic disease SLE and increased stroke risk at younger ages in other inflammatory rheumatic diseases. Thus, systemic inflammation as seen in inflammatory rheumatic diseases could have effects on the brain directly, including influencing stroke risk which is clinically noteworthy and would benefit from further testing in appropriately designed studies such as an inception cohort that follows inflammatory rheumatic patients from diagnosis, with regular brain imaging to track brain changes and correlates with inflammatory profiles and impact on cognition.

The stabilization of electron beam in the Storage Ring (SR) is an important task in the 3rd generation synchrotron facility worldwide. Deviations in the position and angle of electron beam with respect to a desired orbit must be below 10% of the beam size. This requirement corresponds to about 3 μm deviations at the Canadian Light Source (CLS). Further, the higher the correction bandwidth, the better in the stabilization process. The correction bandwidth at CLS was expected to increase to be 45 Hz or higher from the current operating rate at 18 Hz. In addition, there is requirement to control the beam deviation at specific positions on the orbit. To meet these requirements, a comparative study of the existing methods for the stabilization of electron beam in the SR is thus necessary, which is the main motivation of this thesis study. The overall objective of this thesis study was to find the most suitable method for CLS so that the correction bandwidth can be 45 Hz or higher. The study was primarily conducted by simulation due to the restriction in performing experiments on the whole beamline. The transfer functions of three important devices at the storage ring, which are Beam Position Monitor (BPM), Orbit Correction Magnets (OCM) and Vacuum Chamber (VC), were identified. Noises on the storage ring were also identified to improve the reliability of the simulation study. The existing methods for beam orbit correction, such as (1) Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), (2) Eigen Vector method with Constraints (EVC) and (3) SVD plus Proportional integral derivative (PID), were compared based on the simulation technique. Several conclusions can be drawn from this study: (1) there is no significant difference between the EVC method and SVD method in terms of overall orbit correction performance, and they both can meet the correction bandwidth of 45 Hz. The EVC method is however much better than the SVD method in terms of the beam orbit correction performance at specific positions; (2) the SVD plus PID method is much better than the SVD method as well as EVC method in terms of the overall orbit correction performance, and its performance for specific position orbit correction is comparable with the performance of EVC. Therefore, the SVD plus PID method is recommended for CLS. This study has made the following contributions on the problem of beam stabilization the storage ring in the synchrotron technology: (1) provision of the models of BPM and OCM and the PID controller tailored to specific BPM and OCM devices, which is useful to other synchrotron facilities in the world; (2) generation of the knowledge regarding the performances of SVD, EVC and SVD plus PID methods on one synchrotron facility is valuable, and this knowledge is useful to other synchrotron facilities in selection of the best methods for electron orbit correction.

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Rapid evolution of digital technology has improved the ease of access to digital information enabling reliable, faster and efficient storage, transfer and processing of digital data. It also leads to the consequence of making the illegal production and redistribution of digital media easy and undetectable. Hence, the risk of copyright violation of multimedia data has increased due to the enormous growth of computer networks that provides fast and error free transmission of any unauthorized duplicate and possibly manipulated copy of multimedia information. One possible solution may be to embed a secondary signal or pattern into the image that is not perceivable and is mixed so well with the original digital data that it is inseparable and remains unaffected against any kind of multimedia signal processing. This embedded secondary information is digital watermark which is, in general, a visible or invisible identification code that may contain some information about the intended recipient, the lawful owner or author of the original data, its copyright etc. in the form of textual data or image. In order to be effective for copyright protection, digital watermark must be robust which are difficult to remove from the object in which they are embedded despite a variety of possible attacks. Several types of watermarking algorithms have been developed so far each of which has its own advantages and limitations. Among these, recently Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) based watermarking algorithms have attracted researchers due to its simplicity and some attractive mathematical properties of SVD. Here a number of pure and hybrid SVD based watermarking schemes have been investigated and finally a RST invariant modified SVD and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) based algorithm has been developed. A preprocessing step before the watermark extraction has been proposed which makes the algorithm resilient to geometric attack i.e. RST attack. Performance of this watermarking scheme has been analyzed by evaluating the robustness of the algorithm against geometric attack including rotation, scaling, translation (RST) and some other attacks. Experimental results have been compared with existing algorithm which seems to be promising. / Phone number: +88041730212

The practice of ranking objects, events, and people to determine relevance, importance, or competitive edge is ancient. Recently, the use of rankings has permeated into daily usage, especially in the fields of business and education. When determining the association among those creating the ranks (herein called sources), the traditional assumption is that all sources compare a list of the same items (herein called elements). In the twenty-first century, it is rare that any two sources choose identical elements to rank. Adding to this difficulty, the number of credible sources creating and releasing rankings is increasing. In statistical literature, there is no current methodology that adequately assesses the association among multiple sources. We introduce rank-adapted singular value decomposition (R-A SVD), a new method that uses Kendall's tau as the underlying correlation method. We begin with (P), a matrix of data ranks. The first step is to factor the covariance matrix (K) as follows: K = cov(P) = V D^2 V Here, (V) is an orthonormal basis for the rows that is useful in identifying when sources agree as to the rank order and specifically which sources. D is a diagonal of eigenvalues. By analogy with singular value decomposition (SVD), we define U^* as U^* = PVD^(-1) The diagonal matrix, D, provides the factored eigenvalues in decreasing order. The largest eigenvalue is used to assess the overall association among the sources and is a conservative unbiased method comparable to Kendall's W. Anderson's test determines whether this association is significant and also identifies other significant eigenvalues produced by the covariance matrix.. Using Anderson's test (1963) we identify the a significantly large eigenvalues from D. When one or more eigenvalues is significant, there is evidence that the association among the sources is significant. Focusing on the a corresponding vectors of V specifically identifies which sources agree. In cases where more than one eigenvalue is significant, the $a$ significant vectors of V provide insight into factions. When more than one set of sources is in agreement, each group of agreeing sources is considered a faction. In many cases, more than one set of sources will be in agreement with one another but not necessarily with another set of sources; each group that is in agreement would be considered a faction. Using the a significant vectors of U^* provides different but equally important results. In many cases, the elements that are being ranked can be subdivided into equivalence classes. An equivalence class is defined as subpopulations of ranked elements that are similar to one another but dissimilar from other classes. When these classes exist, U^* provides insight as to how many classes and which elements belong in each class. In summary, the R-A SVD method gives the user the ability to assess whether there is any underlying association among multiple rank sources. It then identifies when sources agree and allows for more useful and careful interpretation when analyzing rank data. / Statistics

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is fast gaining ground as a preferred modulation technique for short range wireless data application such as 802.11a/g, 802.15.3a and 802.16. Recently, use of multiple transmit and receive antenna for improving spectral efficiency in a wireless system has received much interest. IEEE 802.11 has set up the Work Group 802.11n to develop a standard for enhanced rate 802.11 based on OFDM using Multi Input/Multiple Output (MIMO) techniques. The most dominant proposal is the use of singular value decomposition based MIMO methods to achieve the high data rate. The selection of modulation and coding rates plays a significant role in the overall throughput of the system, more so in cases where the traffic between the transmitter and the receiver consists of short bursts and the user location is not fixed. The performance of a given modulation and coding technique depends on the channel condition. Closed form or bounding solutions exists for various modulation and coding techniques. But these techniques are not suitable for real time application where the channel is dynamic. The approach taken in this thesis is to decouple frequency selective MIMO OFDM channel into orthogonal spatial and frequency domains channels using Fast Fourier Transforms and Singular Value Decomposition. The channels can be viewed as parallel flat fading channels for which the expected BER rate can be computed. A SNR-BER table is used to efficiently compute the performance efficiently. An effective SNR is computed using the table and compared with rate threshold to select a suitable rate. Improvements of 15 dB and above are shown the link budget while using a four transmit four receive MIMO system. Proposed 802.11n TGn Sync physical layer standard is used to evaluate the performance. The performance in case of one of the systems being a legacy 802.11a/g nodes is also looked into. Gains up to 7 dB are shown in the link budget. / Master of Science

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Dois dos principais aspectos da Química de Produtos Naturais são a identificação e a determinação estrutural dos compostos orgânicos presentes em materiais de origem vegetal ou animal. Para realizar esta tarefa são empregados diversos métodos de separação e espectroscópicos. Dentre os métodos espectroscópicos, destaca-se a espectroscopia de ressonância magnética nuclear pela riqueza dos dados fornecidos. Entretanto, o desenvolvimento da área exige métodos cada vez mais eficientes e sensíveis, para permitir o estudo de amostras em quantidades cada vez menores. Neste trabalho, empregamos três estratégias distintas para aumentar a eficiência da análise de amostras de produtos naturais por RMN. A primeira estratégia busca acelerar o processo de identificação dos componentes de frações de extratos vegetais através da separação virtual dos componentes da mistura, baseada nas diferenças de seus coeficientes de difusão. Esta estratégia permitiu identificar os quatro componentes majoritários da fração em acetato de etila do extrato etanólico das partes aéreas de Bidens sulphurea (Asteraceae) através de um estudo de RMN DOSY-2D. A segunda estratégia é dedicada ao problema da baixa sensibilidade da RMN 13C, o que torna difícil, e em alguns casos, proibitiva em termos do tempo necessário, a análise de amostras muito pequenas. Dada a dificuldade de se obter diretamente um espectro com uma relação sinal/ruído adequada, uma abordagem possível se baseia em estratégias de pós-processamento de um espectro de RMN em que predomina o ruído. A estratégia utilizada neste trabalho fornece um espectro reconstruído de secções que foram previamente processadas para a eliminação do ruído pela decomposição do valor singular (SVD). Os espectros assim processados nos auxiliaram na identificação e/ou elucidação estrutural de dois alcalóides obtidos de Duguetia furfuraceae (Annonaceae) e um poliacetileno e dois flavonóides de B. sulphurea (Asteraceae). A terceira estratégia utilizada neste trabalho se baseia na ampliação dos parâmetros rotineiramente obtidos numa análise por RMN, com a finalidade de fornecer novos subsídios para a determinação da estrutura de produtos naturais. Neste sentido, a determinação das constantes de acoplamento heteronuclear forneceu dados valiosos para a identificação de dois poliacetilenos obtidos de B. gardneri. / Two major aspects of Natural Products Chemistry are the identification and structure determination of organic compounds in materials of vegetable or animal. To accomplish this task are used various methods of separation and spectroscopic. Among spectroscopic methods, we highlight the spectroscopy of nuclear magnetic resonance by the wealth of data provided. However, the development of the area requires methods increasingly efficient and sensitive to allow the study of small or diluted samples. In this work, we employ three different strategies to increase the efficiency of analysis of samples of natural products by NMR. The first strategy seeks to accelerate the process of identifying the components of fractions of plant extracts through the virtual separation of the components of the mixture based on differences in their diffusion coefficients. With this strategy we have identified four major components of the in ethyl acetate fraction of ethanol extract of aerial parts of Bidens sulphurea (Asteraceae) by 2D DOSY NMR. The second strategy is devoted to the problem of low sensitivity of 13C NMR, which makes it difficult, and in some cases prohibitive in terms of time, the analysis of very small samples. Due to the difficulty of obtaining directly a spectrum with a signal-to-noise ratio adequate, a possible approach is based on strategies for post-processing of an NMR spectrum in which noise predominates. This strategy used here provides a spectrum of reconstructed sections were first processed to remove noise by singular value decomposition (SVD). Spectra processed of this way helped us in identifying and / or structural elucidation of two alkaloids derived from Duguetia furfuraceae (Annonaceae) and a polyacetylene and two flavonoids from Bidens gardneri (Asteraceae). The third strategy used in this work is based on expansion of the parameters routinely obtained in an analysis by NMR in order to provide new subsidies for the structure determination of natural products. In this sense, the determination of heteronuclear coupling constants provided valuable data for the identification of two polyacetylenes obtained from B. gardneri.

Dois dos principais aspectos da Química de Produtos Naturais são a identificação e a determinação estrutural dos compostos orgânicos presentes em materiais de origem vegetal ou animal. Para realizar esta tarefa são empregados diversos métodos de separação e espectroscópicos. Dentre os métodos espectroscópicos, destaca-se a espectroscopia de ressonância magnética nuclear pela riqueza dos dados fornecidos. Entretanto, o desenvolvimento da área exige métodos cada vez mais eficientes e sensíveis, para permitir o estudo de amostras em quantidades cada vez menores. Neste trabalho, empregamos três estratégias distintas para aumentar a eficiência da análise de amostras de produtos naturais por RMN. A primeira estratégia busca acelerar o processo de identificação dos componentes de frações de extratos vegetais através da separação virtual dos componentes da mistura, baseada nas diferenças de seus coeficientes de difusão. Esta estratégia permitiu identificar os quatro componentes majoritários da fração em acetato de etila do extrato etanólico das partes aéreas de Bidens sulphurea (Asteraceae) através de um estudo de RMN DOSY-2D. A segunda estratégia é dedicada ao problema da baixa sensibilidade da RMN 13C, o que torna difícil, e em alguns casos, proibitiva em termos do tempo necessário, a análise de amostras muito pequenas. Dada a dificuldade de se obter diretamente um espectro com uma relação sinal/ruído adequada, uma abordagem possível se baseia em estratégias de pós-processamento de um espectro de RMN em que predomina o ruído. A estratégia utilizada neste trabalho fornece um espectro reconstruído de secções que foram previamente processadas para a eliminação do ruído pela decomposição do valor singular (SVD). Os espectros assim processados nos auxiliaram na identificação e/ou elucidação estrutural de dois alcalóides obtidos de Duguetia furfuraceae (Annonaceae) e um poliacetileno e dois flavonóides de B. sulphurea (Asteraceae). A terceira estratégia utilizada neste trabalho se baseia na ampliação dos parâmetros rotineiramente obtidos numa análise por RMN, com a finalidade de fornecer novos subsídios para a determinação da estrutura de produtos naturais. Neste sentido, a determinação das constantes de acoplamento heteronuclear forneceu dados valiosos para a identificação de dois poliacetilenos obtidos de B. gardneri. / Two major aspects of Natural Products Chemistry are the identification and structure determination of organic compounds in materials of vegetable or animal. To accomplish this task are used various methods of separation and spectroscopic. Among spectroscopic methods, we highlight the spectroscopy of nuclear magnetic resonance by the wealth of data provided. However, the development of the area requires methods increasingly efficient and sensitive to allow the study of small or diluted samples. In this work, we employ three different strategies to increase the efficiency of analysis of samples of natural products by NMR. The first strategy seeks to accelerate the process of identifying the components of fractions of plant extracts through the virtual separation of the components of the mixture based on differences in their diffusion coefficients. With this strategy we have identified four major components of the in ethyl acetate fraction of ethanol extract of aerial parts of Bidens sulphurea (Asteraceae) by 2D DOSY NMR. The second strategy is devoted to the problem of low sensitivity of 13C NMR, which makes it difficult, and in some cases prohibitive in terms of time, the analysis of very small samples. Due to the difficulty of obtaining directly a spectrum with a signal-to-noise ratio adequate, a possible approach is based on strategies for post-processing of an NMR spectrum in which noise predominates. This strategy used here provides a spectrum of reconstructed sections were first processed to remove noise by singular value decomposition (SVD). Spectra processed of this way helped us in identifying and / or structural elucidation of two alkaloids derived from Duguetia furfuraceae (Annonaceae) and a polyacetylene and two flavonoids from Bidens gardneri (Asteraceae). The third strategy used in this work is based on expansion of the parameters routinely obtained in an analysis by NMR in order to provide new subsidies for the structure determination of natural products. In this sense, the determination of heteronuclear coupling constants provided valuable data for the identification of two polyacetylenes obtained from B. gardneri.

[pt] A técnica de análise de sinais corrompidos por ruído baseada no comportamento de subespaços vetoriais foi tema de alguns trabalhos publicados desde o início da década de 80. Esta nova técnica passou a ter grande importância no processamento de sinais digitais devido a fatores como robustez e precisão.Porém, o maior problema associado a este novo método é o seu elevado custo computacional. Esta característica limitou o emprego da técnica em sistemas - offline - . A preocupação então passou a ser rastrear a variação do comportamento dos subespaços vetoriais de modo eficiente. O objetivo deste rastreamento seria o emprego da técnica em alguns sistemas que operam em tempo real. Este trabalho de tese propõe um novo algoritmo de rastreamento de subespaços vetoriais. O objetivo é apresentar um algoritmo que demonstre um bom desempenho, com relação aos demais já existentes, permitindo eventual aplicação em sistemas que atuem em tempo real. Como contribuição adicional, são apresentadas uma nova análise e caracterização de sistemas que se assemelham aos circulantes, sendo para isto reinterpretada a decomposição de matrizes circulantes. O conjunto de contribuições é aplicado a um novo sistema automático de classificação de sinais comunicação, quanto ao tipo de modulação. / [en] The signal subspace analysis technique, usually applied to signals corrupted by noise, is theme of some papers since the beginning of the 80s decade. This new technique has presented important features, as robustness and precision, and became widely employed in digital signal processing. However, the main problem associated to this new method is the high computational cost. This characteristic has restricted the use of signal subspace analysis to some off-line systems. A possible way to overcome this burden was to track the signal and noise subspace behavior in the time-domain. The main objective of these methods is to allow the signal subspace analysis technique application to real time systems, sometimes at the expense of limiting analysis precision or scope. This work proposes a new subspace tracking procedure. The goal is to describe a new algorithm with good performance (precision-speed), allowing some real time systems applications. A new analysis and characterization of almost circulant systems is introduced by reinterpreting the circulating matrix decomposition scheme. The set of contributions is applied to a new analogue modulation communication signals automatic recognition structure.