Abstract Pain is mostly associated with unpleasant feelings and is largely despised and feared due to the emotional distress of sensations. However, without pain, humans wouldn’t be able to separate harmful actions from non-harmful ones and wouldn’t let their bodies heal. The sensation of pain is very crucial to the human body as it acts as a defense mechanism by alerting the body of on-going damage to the tissue or potential damage. The importance of pain is even more obvious when diagnosing patients with congenital insensitivity to pain, as their life is filled with terror of being hurt but being unable to detect it, which could ultimately lead to their death. This article dives into this disorder and how it can affect the normal daily lives of human beings, further revealing the vital importance of pain.
Background
According to the International Association for the Study of Pain, “Pain is an unpleasant sensory
and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of
such damage." It is very vital that scientists started considering it as ‘the sixth sense’
Mechanism
Pain occurs when special fibers called nociceptors respond to stimuli that can potentially cause
tissue damage. Nociceptors are different from the usual neurons as they have a cell-like body with a
peripheral axon and an ending that responds to diverse stimuli and is additionally the transmitter
of the pain-related information to the central nervous system as shown in figure 1
Life with No Pain?
Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP), is a hereditary disorder where a person is not able to
perceive any physical pain from birth. However, they can still feel touch and differentiate between
sharp and dull objects, and hot and cold. On the other hand, they can’t sense if a hot object is
burning their body. As described before, one of the most essential functions of pain is teaching the
human brain that doing this action again might injure the body. Hence, patients with CIP cannot
comprehend if certain actions are dangerous or not, it leads to the accumulation of
wounds and broken bones due to a lack of awareness of the danger and not expressing any discomfort.
This ultimately decreases these patients’ life expectancy. Most people born with this condition die
during their childhood as they often do not realize their fatal injuries, such as broken bones until
it is too late
References
Abstract Intelligence and how it is perceived was always a matter of debate throughout history. Several hypotheses gave the genes the lion’s share of one’s intelligence while others accounted for the high intelligence of someone to its education, environment, and even his mother’s womb. On the other hand, other opinions see that someone’s intelligence isn’t even measurable and that IQ tests are absurd and mostly biased, with the presence of threshold that is uncrossable to them regarding testing one’s ability and skill. However, research has shown all the previous points of view can be right and wrong at the same time.
Case #1
In 1995-1997, Robert Plomin, an American psychologist, and geneticist gathered a group of
children to perform an experiment. He gathered a group of gifted students chosen from all over
America, ages 12 to 14, who excel in their grades, in the top 1 percentile in their respective
classes, and have an IQ of about 160. The children were brought together every summer in Iowa to
perform the experiments. Plomin and his team believed that those children are the closest they have
to a genius and that they must have the best version of each gene that may have an effect and
influence one’s intelligence. They took a blood sample from each of the children to begin their hunt
using little of DNA from human chromosome 6; the reason for choosing human chromosome 6 is based on
previous research of Plomin’s. Later on, in the experiment, Plomin and his team found on the long
arm of chromosome 6, a sequence that was different from other people. This led them to conclude
that, if there is a gene for intelligence, it is present in the human chromosome 6
The First IQ Test
Alfred Binet, a French psychologist, was asked by the French government in the early twentieth
century, to help them decide which students will encounter difficulties in their education; as the
French government back then, began making tuition mandatory. Binet, and a colleague of his, Théodore
Simon, began the development of a set of problems that may serve the purpose of determining
someone’s limits regarding academic prowess as instructed by the French government. Later on, they
developed what is known as the Binet-Simon Scale, which is the base of every IQ test now,
the first IQ test
Case #2: Beth and Amy
Twin sisters, Beth, and Amy were put for adoption, they were separated by a Freudian
psychologist to do an experiment. The experiment's goal was to measure the effect of the family and
inside the house environment on one’s intelligence and personality.
Amy was adopted by an overweight, insecure, poor family that struggled in society, and on top of
that, with an uncaring mother. Amy turned out to be neurotic and introverted. Beth, on the other
hand, was put in a rich, relaxed, loving, and cheerful family, like the ones on TV. It was expected
that Beth will turn out as an extroverted, easy-going, cheerful girl. However, the results were
nowhere near that; she turned up just like her sister
Case #2: intensified
In 1997, Thomas Bouchard, an American psychologist, and geneticist researched pairs of separated twins from all over the world; to compare their intelligence and personality, just like with Beth and Amy. The highest correlation in his studies was between twins reared together, twins that weren’t separated. They shared the same genes, womb, and family. However, the most surprising correlation was between adopted children from different families who were reared together. They only shared the family, and there was no correlation, this led to the conclusion that family did not affect at all on one’s intelligence and personality.
Conclusion
Francis Galton, an English Victorian era statistician, wrote an analogy once that said “Many people have amused themselves with throwing bits of sticks into a tiny brook and watching their progress; how they are arrested, first by one chance obstacle, then by another; and again, how their onward course is facilitated by a combination of circumstances. He might ascribe much importance to each of these events, and think how largely the destiny of the stick had been governed by a series of trifling accidents. Nevertheless, all the sticks succeed in passing down the current, and in the long run, they travel at nearly the same rate” He was implying that if children were exposed to better education in a great amount it affects their IQ dramatically but only for a temporary period which was somewhat true. You could excel in fifth grade and your friend would fail, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be the way around in ninth grade. And as in the experiment of Beth and Amy, and in Bouchard’s experiment, the family was somehow proved to have no effect at all. A lot of other studies had the cause of uncovering which affects our intelligence the most. It’s believed that half of your IQ was inherited, one fifth formed upon your surrounding environment, and the rest was formed in the womb and others.
References
Abstract
In
Background
Many people still regard AI merely as an element of science-fiction, exclusively existing in the writers’ imagination. Unbeknownst to those people, AI has already slipped under our noses into much of our daily lives. From life-saving machines to more subtle gadgets, AI continues to transform numerous industries, and healthcare definitely won’t be an exception. The medical industry has seen some amazing innovations recently fueled by the pandemic. These developments have shed some light on AI’s great potential to aid with detecting, preventing, responding to, and recovering from future disease outbreaks.
The Problem
In epidemiologists’ talk, sensitivity refers to the portion of positive cases who were
correctly identified as such, or the TPR (True-Positive-Rate). On the other hand, specificity
refers to the portion of negative cases that were correctly identified as such or the TNR.
(True-Negative-Ratio). Both terms are shown in figure #1.
During a study conducted in
The Solution
Deep learning is a form of machine learning inspired by the human brain, where artificial neural
networks use gigantic amounts of data to learn how to do a specific task by repeating it countless
times, slightly optimizing itself every time until it masters that task
Challenges & Conclusion
Although both of the frameworks discussed above are very promising, they are currently
undermined by many challenges, the biggest of which is lack of data; Thus, AI systems need billions
upon billions of bytes for training, and in this context, data must be acquired through expanded
testing and CT scans, most of which as of yet have come from Chinese hospitals which implies the
possibility of selection bias
References
Abstract The Earth receives an incredible supply of solar energy. The sun, an average star, is a fusion reactor that has been burning over 4 billion years. It provides enough energy in one minute to supply the world's energy needs for one year. In a single day, it provides more energy than our current population would consume in 27 years. In fact, "The amount of solar radiation striking the earth over three days is equivalent to the energy stored in all fossil energy sources." Solar energy is a free, inexhaustible resource, yet harnessing it is a relatively new idea. Considering that the first practical solar cells were made less than 30 years ago, we have come a long way. A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon. It is a form of photoelectric cell, defined as a device whose electrical characteristics, such as current, voltage, or resistance, vary when exposed to light. In this article, types of solar cells will be studied and their various applications.
Amorphous silicon (a-Si) solar cells
Amorphous silicon (a-Si) is the non-crystalline form of silicon. It is the most improved type of
thin-film technology that has been released in the last 15 years. The manufacture of amorphous
silicon photovoltaic cells is based on plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD), which can
be used to produce silicon thin film. The substrate can be made of flexible and inexpensive
material. It can also be at low temperature that allows the deposition on plastic as well.
“In its simplest form, the cell structure has a single sequence of p-i-n layers.” Single layers
could suffer from significant degradation in their power output. The mechanism of the degradation is
called Staeble Wroski Effect that refers to the light-induced metastable changes in the properties
of the hydrogenated amorphous silicon. As the defect in the density of hydrogenated amorphous
silicon increases with high exposure causing an increase in recombination current and reducing the
efficiency of the conversion of sunlight into electricity. In addition, to solve this
problem, it is better to use multiple thin layers instead of one in order to increase the electric
field strength across the material.
One of the pioneers of developing solar cells using amorphous silicon is Uni-Solar
Concentrated PV Cell (CVP and HCVP) following the sun
A Concentrating electrical phenomenon (CPV) system converts light-weight energy into current
within the same approach that typical electrical phenomenon technology well but uses a sophisticated
optical system to focus an outsized space of sunlight onto every cell for optimum potency as shown
in figure #1. Different CPV styles exist, generally differentiated by the concentration issue, like
low-concentration (LCPV) and high concentration (HCPV). Concentrator photovoltaics’ (CPV) could be
an electrical phenomenon technology that generates electricity from daylight
Contrary to standard electrical phenomenon systems, it uses lenses and mirrors to focus
daylight, but extremely economical, multi-junction (MJ) star cells as shown in figure 1.
Furthermore, CPV systems typically use star trackers and sometimes a cooling system to any
increase their efficiency
Current analysis and development are rapidly rising their fight within the utility-scale segment
and in areas of high solar insulation. CPV technology has been around since the 70s. Recent
technological advancements have enabled CPV to succeed in viability with ancient fuel plants, such
as coal, gas, and oil, once put in regions of the world with sunny and dry climates. Concentrating
photovoltaic systems work by changing sunlight into electricity past upside solar modules think
about constant basic conception to come up with electricity
References