Peace Studies in Myanmar: Interweaving Regional Geopolitics and Local Dynamics

( Andrew Ong ) 서울대학교 통일평화연구원 2023 Asian Journal of Peacebuilding Vol.11 No.1

This article surveys the trajectory of peace and conflict studies in Myanmar―from its early focus on civil war and insurgency, to state institutions and ethnic armed actors, and later broadening into relational and networked approaches covering formal peace processes, regional geopolitics, conflict economies, and everyday peacebuilding. It suggests that the widening of peace and conflict studies was brought about by the opening of the country from the early 2010s, which both granted scholars and researchers more access to the country and introduced new foreign specialists, discourses, and developmental actors into the political sphere. The peace agenda and directions of peace studies have been upended by the military coup of 2021; how reconciliation, justice, and federal democratic reform will look like in the future remains to be seen.

SAMHD1 Has Differential Impact on the Efficacies of HIV Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors

Huber, Andrew D.,Michailidis, Eleftherios,Schultz, Megan L.,Ong, Yee T.,Bloch, Nicolin,Puray-Chavez, Maritza N.,Leslie, Maxwell D.,Ji, Juan,Lucas, Anthony D.,Kirby, Karen A.,Landau, Nathaniel R.,Saraf American Society for Microbiology 2014 Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy Vol.58 No.8

<P>Sterile alpha motif- and histidine/aspartic acid domain-containing protein 1 (SAMHD1) limits HIV-1 replication by hydrolyzing deoxynucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs) necessary for reverse transcription. Nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) are components of anti-HIV therapies. We report here that SAMHD1 cleaves NRTI triphosphates (TPs) at significantly lower rates than dNTPs and that SAMHD1 depletion from monocytic cells affects the susceptibility of HIV-1 infections to NRTIs in complex ways that depend not only on the relative changes in dNTP and NRTI-TP concentrations but also on the NRTI activation pathways.</P>

A Revocable Fingerprint Template for Security and Privacy Preserving

( Zhe Jin ),( Andrew Beng Jin Teoh ),( Thian Song Ong ),( Connie Tee ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2010 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.4 No.6

With the wide deployment of biometric authentication systems, several issues pertaining security and privacy of the biometric template have gained great attention from the research community. To resolve these issues, a number of biometric template protection methods have been proposed. However, the design of a template protection method to satisfy four criteria, namely diversity, revocability and non-invertibility is still a challenging task, especially performance degradation when template protection method is employed. In this paper, we propose a novel method to generate a revocable minutiae-based fingerprint template. The proposed method consists of feature extraction from fingerprint minutiae pairs, quantization, histogram binning, binarization and eventually binary bit-string generation. The contributions of our method are two fold: alignment-free and good performance. Various experiments on FVC2004 DB1 demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Stepwise Training for Reconstructive Microsurgery: The Journey to Becoming a Confident Microsurgeon in Singapore

Ramachandran, Savitha,Ong, Yee-Siang,Chin, Andrew Y.H.,Song, In-Chin,Ogden, Bryan,Tan, Bien-Keem Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surge 2014 Archives of Plastic Surgery Vol.41 No.3

Microsurgery training in Singapore began in 1980 with the opening of the Experimental Surgical Unit. Since then, the unit has continued to grow and have held microsurgical training courses biannually. The road to becoming a full-fledged reconstructive surgeon requires the mastering of both microvascular as well as flap raising techniques and requires time, patience and good training facilities. In Singapore, over the past 2 decades, we have had the opportunity to develop good training facilities and to refine our surgical education programmes in reconstructive microsurgery. In this article, we share our experience with training in reconstructive microsurgery.

Stepwise Training for Reconstructive Microsurgery: The Journey to Becoming a Confident Microsurgeon in Singapore

Savitha Ramachandran,Yee-Siang Ong,Andrew YH Chin,In-Chin Song,Bien-Keem Tan 대한성형외과학회 2014 Archives of Plastic Surgery Vol.41 No.3

Microsurgery training in Singapore began in 1980 with the opening of the Experimental Surgical Unit. Since then, the unit has continued to grow and have held microsurgical training courses biannually. The road to becoming a full-fledged reconstructive surgeon requires the mastering of both microvascular as well as flap raising techniques and requires time, patience and good training facilities. In Singapore, over the past 2 decades, we have had the opportunity to develop good training facilities and to refine our surgical education programmes in reconstructive microsurgery. In this article, we share our experience with training in reconstructive microsurgery.

Multi-view gait recognition using a doubly-kernel approach on the Grassmann manifold

Connie, Tee,Goh, Kah Ong Michael,Teoh, Andrew Beng Jin Elsevier 2016 Neurocomputing Vol.216 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>View variation is one of the greatest challenges faced by the gait recognition research community. Recently, there are studies that model sets of gait features from multiple views as linear subspaces, which are known to form a special manifold called the Grassmann manifold. Conjecturing that modeling via linear subspace representation is not completely sufficient for gait recognition across view change, we take a step forward to consider non-linear subspace representation. A collection of multi-view gait features encapsulated in the form of a linear subspace is projected to the non-linear subspace through the expansion coefficients induced by kernel principal component analysis. Since subspace representation is inherently non-Euclidean, naïve vectorization as input to the vector-based pattern analysis machines is expected to yield suboptimal accuracy performance. We deal with this difficulty by embedding the manifold in a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space (RKHS) through a positive definite kernel function defined on the Grassmann manifold. A closer examination reveals that the proposed approach can actually be interpreted as a doubly-kernel method. To be specific, the first kernel maps the linear subspace representation non-linearly to a feature space; while the second kernel permits the application of kernelization-enabled machines established for vector-based data on the manifold-valued multi-view gait features. Experiments on the CASIA gait database shows that the proposed doubly-kernel method is effective against view change in gait recognition.</P> <P><B>Highlights</B></P> <P> <UL> <LI> A Grassmann doubly-kernel approach is presented for multi-view gait recognition. </LI> <LI> A collection of multi-view gait samples are represented as linear subspaces. </LI> <LI> Non-linear variant of original subspaces are constructed via basis induced by KPCA. </LI> <LI> Kernelized Grassmann kernels are introduced for application of vector-based method. </LI> <LI> Experiments show promising results for gait recognition with vast view difference. </LI> </UL> </P>

Feature fusions for 2.5D face recognition in Random Maxout Extreme Learning Machine

Chong, Lee Ying,Ong, Thian Song,Teoh, Andrew Beng Jin Elsevier 2019 Applied soft computing Vol.75 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>Contemporary face recognition system is often based on either 2D (texture) or 3D (texture + shape) face modality. An alternative modality that utilizes range (depth) facial images, namely 2.5D face recognition emerges. In this paper, we propose a 2.5D face descriptor that based on the Regional Covariance Matrix (RCM), a powerful means of feature fusion technique and a novel classifier dubbed Random Maxout Extreme Learning Machine (RMELM). The RCM of interest is constructed based on the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) filters responses of facial texture and/or range image, wherein the PCA filters are learned from a two-layer PCA network. The RMELM is an ELM variant where the activation function is based on the locally linear maxout function, in place of typical global non-linear functions in ELM. Since the RCM is a special case of symmetric positive definite matrix that resides on the Tensor manifold; a gap exists in between RCM and RMELM, which is a vector-based classifier. To bridge the gap, we flatten the manifold by transforming the RCM to a feature vector via a matrix logarithm operator. Experimental results from two public 3D face databases, FRGC v2.0 database and Gavab database, validated our proposed method is promising in 2.5D face recognition.</P> <P><B>Highlights</B></P> <P> <UL> <LI> A learning-based Regional Covariance Matrix (RCM) based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is proposed as a feature descriptor for 2.5D face recognition problem. </LI> <LI> PCARCM is demonstrated as an intra-feature (range features) and inter-feature (range and texture features) fusion container. </LI> <LI> Random Maxout Extreme Learning Machine as classifier is proposed to couple with PCARCM on the Tensor Manifold. </LI> </UL> </P> <P><B>Graphical abstract</B></P> <P>[DISPLAY OMISSION]</P>

A Grassmann graph embedding framework for gait analysis

Connie, Tee,Goh, Michael Kah Ong,Teoh, Andrew Beng Jin Springer (Biomed Central Ltd.) 2014 EURASIP journal on advances in signal processing Vol.2014 No.1

The Practice of Gastrointestinal Motility Laboratory During COVID-19 Pandemic: Position Statements of the Asian Neurogastroenterology and Motility Association (ANMA-GML-COVID-19 Position Statements)

( Siah Kewin T H ),( Rahman M Masudur ),( Ong Andrew M L ),( Soh Alex Y S ),( Lee Yeong Yeh ),( Xiao Yinglian ),( Sachdeva Sanjeev ),( Jung Kee Wook ),( Wang Yen-Po ),( Oshima Tadayuki ),( Patcharatra 대한소화기기능성질환·운동학회 2020 Journal of Neurogastroenterology and Motility (JNM Vol.26 No.3

During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, practices of gastrointestinal procedures within the digestive tract require special precautions due to the risk of contraction of severe acute respiratoy syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Many procedures in the gastrointestinal motility laboratory may be considered moderate to high-risk for viral transmission. Healthcare staff working in gastrointestinal motility laboratories are frequently exposed to splashes, air droplets, mucus, or saliva during the procedures. Moreover, some are aerosol-generating and thus have a high risk of viral transmission. There are multiple guidelines on the practices of gastrointestinal endoscopy during this pandemic. However, such guidelines are still lacking and urgently needed for the practice of gastrointestinal motility laboratories. Hence, the Asian Neurogastroenterology and Motility Association had organized a group of gastrointestinal motility experts and infectious disease specialists to produce a position statement paper based-on current available evidence and consensus opinion with aims to provide a clear guidance on the practices of gastrointestinal motility laboratories during the COVID-19 pandemic. This guideline covers a wide range of topics on gastrointestinal motility activities from scheduling a motility test, the precautions at different steps of the procedure to disinfection for the safety and well-being of the patients and the healthcare workers. These practices may vary in different countries depending on the stages of the pandemic, local or institutional policy, and the availability of healthcare resources. This guideline is useful when the transmission rate of SARS-CoV-2 is high. It may change rapidly depending on the situation of the epidemic and when new evidence becomes available. (J Neurogastroenterol Motil 2020;26:299-310)

Influence of Ionic Strength on the Deposition of Metal–Phenolic Networks

Guo, Junling,Richardson, Joseph J.,Besford, Quinn A.,Christofferson, Andrew J.,Dai, Yunlu,Ong, Chien W.,Tardy, Blaise L.,Liang, Kang,Choi, Gwan H.,Cui, Jiwei,Yoo, Pil J.,Yarovsky, Irene,Caruso, Frank American Chemical Society 2017 Langmuir Vol.33 No.40

<P>Metal–phenolic networks (MPNs) are a versatile class of self-assembled materials that are able to form functional thin films on various substrates with potential applications in areas including drug delivery and catalysis. Different metal ions (e.g., Fe<SUP>III</SUP>, Cu<SUP>II</SUP>) and phenols (e.g., tannic acid, gallic acid) have been investigated for MPN film assembly; however, a mechanistic understanding of the thermodynamics governing MPN formation remains largely unexplored. To date, MPNs have been deposited at low ionic strengths (<5 mM), resulting in films with typical thicknesses of ∼10 nm, and it is still unclear how a bulk complexation reaction results in homogeneous thin films when a substrate is present. Herein we explore the influence of ionic strength (0–2 M NaCl) on the conformation of MPN precursors in solution and how this determines the final thickness and morphology of MPN films. Specifically, the film thickness increases from 10 nm in 0 M NaCl to 12 nm in 0.5 M NaCl and 15 nm in 1 M NaCl, after which the films grow rougher rather than thicker. For example, the root-mean-square roughness values of the films are constant below 1 M NaCl at 1.5 nm; in contrast, the roughness is 3 nm at 1 M NaCl and increases to 5 nm at 2 M NaCl. Small-angle X-ray scattering and molecular dynamics simulations allow for comparisons to be made with chelated metals and polyelectrolyte thin films. For example, at a higher ionic strength (2 M NaCl), sodium ions shield the galloyl groups of tannic acid, allowing them to extend away from the Fe<SUP>III</SUP> center and interact with other MPN complexes in solution to form thicker and rougher films. As the properties of films determine their final performance and application, the ability to tune both thickness and roughness using salts may allow for new applications of MPNs.</P><P><B>Graphic Abstract</B> <IMG SRC='http://pubs.acs.org/appl/literatum/publisher/achs/journals/content/langd5/2017/langd5.2017.33.issue-40/acs.langmuir.7b02692/production/images/medium/la-2017-026926_0007.gif'></P><P><A href='http://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/la7b02692'>ACS Electronic Supporting Info</A></P>