Simon Michael

CCS often wish to have biological children yet harbour concerns about fertility impairment, pregnancy risks and the general health risks of prospective offspring. To clarify these concerns, health outcomes in survivor offspring born following ART (n = 74, 4.5%) or after spontaneous conception (n = 1585) were assessed in our European offspring study by descriptive and bivariate analysis. Outcomes were compared to a sibling offspring cohort (n = 387) in a 4:1 matched-pair analysis (n = 1681). (i) Survivors were more likely to employ ART than their siblings (4.5% vs. 3.7%, p = 0.501). Successful pregnancies were achieved after a median of one cycle with, most commonly, intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) using non-cryopreserved oocytes/sperm. (ii) Multiple-sibling births (p < 0.001, 29.7% vs. 2.5%), low birth weight (p < 0.001; OR = 3.035, 95%-CI = 1.615−5.706), and preterm birth (p < 0.001; OR = 2.499, 95%-CI = 1.401−4.459) occurred significantly more often in survivor offspring following ART utilisation than in spontaneously conceived children. ART did not increase the prevalence of childhood cancer, congenital malformations or heart defects. (iii) These outcomes had similar prevalences in the sibling population. In our explorative study, we could not detect an influence on health outcomes when known confounders, such as multiple births, were taken into account.

Interview with Simon Michael, an artist, who shares his experiences as an artist and art teacher in the Coastal Bend area of South Texas from 1948 to 1972. He also discusses his early art training, Fulton School of Fine Arts, his move from Fulton to Rockport, Texas, the Simon Michael School of Fine Arts, art exhibitions, art and local architectural styles, art students, techniques for teaching art, the philosophy of art, and the contribution of art to the community of Rockport.

The study of signal processing has wide applications, such as in hi-fi audio, television, voice recognition and many other areas. Signals are rarely observed without noise, which obstruct our analysis of signals. Hence, it is of great interest to study the detection, approximation and removal of noise. In this thesis we compare two methods for image denoising. The methods are each based on a data transformation. Specifically, Fourier Transform and Singular Value Decomposition are utilized in respective methods and compared on grayscale images. The comparison is based on the visual quality of the resulting image, the maximum peak signal-to-noise ratios attainable for the respective methods and their computational time. We find that the methods are fairly equal in visual quality. However, the method based on the Fourier transform scores higher in peak signal-to-noise ratio and demands considerably less computational time.