1,607 research outputs found

    OWL-based acquisition and editing of computer-interpretable guidelines with the CompGuide editor

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    Computer-Interpretable Guidelines (CIGs) are the dominant medium for the delivery of clinical decision support, given the evidence-based nature of their source material. Therefore, these machine-readable versions have the ability to improve practitioner performance and conformance to standards, with availability at the point and time of care. The formalisation of Clinical Practice Guideline knowledge in a machine-readable format is a crucial task to make it suitable for the integration in Clinical Decision Support Systems. However, the current tools for this purpose reveal shortcomings with respect to their ease of use and the support offered during CIG acquisition and editing. In this work, we characterise the current landscape of CIG acquisition tools based on the properties of guideline visualisation, organisation, simplicity, automation, manipulation of knowledge elements, and guideline storage and dissemination. Additionally, we describe the CompGuide Editor, a tool for the acquisition of CIGs in the CompGuide model for Clinical Practice Guidelines that also allows the editing of previously encoded guidelines. The Editor guides the users throughout the process of guideline encoding and does not require proficiency in any programming language. The features of the CIG encoding process are revealed through a comparison with already established tools for CIG acquisition.COMPETE, Grant/Award Number: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043; FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia, Grant/Award Number: UID/CEC/00319/201

    Native Languages Revitalization Resource Directory

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    The goal of this project was to work with the Indigenous Language Institute in Santa Fe, NM and provide accessible, up-to-date resources that will help revitalize endangered indigenous languages. This was done by creating a digital resource directory website in MediaWiki format to host informational pages for language programs, funding sources, and coordinating organizations. The team wrote programs to automatically convert the updated information to wiki-pages, and created a mechanism f or organizations to keep their information updated and available

    The domestication of the probiotic bacterium Lactobacillus acidophilus

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    Lactobacillus acidophilus is a Gram-positive lactic acid bacterium that has had widespread historical use in the dairy industry and more recently as a probiotic. Although L. acidophilus has been designated as safe for human consumption, increasing commercial regulation and clinical demands for probiotic validation has resulted in a need to understand its genetic diversity. By drawing on large, well-characterised collections of lactic acid bacteria, we examined L. acidophilus isolates spanning 92 years and including multiple strains in current commercial use. Analysis of the whole genome sequence data set (34 isolate genomes) demonstrated L. acidophilus was a low diversity, monophyletic species with commercial isolates essentially identical at the sequence level. Our results indicate that commercial use has domesticated L. acidophilus with genetically stable, invariant strains being consumed globally by the human population

    Adaptive and Reactive Rich Internet Applications

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    In this thesis we present the client-side approach of Adaptive and Reactive Rich Internet Applications as the main result of our research into how to bring in time adaptivity to Rich Internet Applications. Our approach leverages previous work on adaptive hypermedia, event processing and other research disciplines. We present a holistic framework covering the design-time as well as the runtime aspects of Adaptive and Reactive Rich Internet Applications focusing especially on the run-time aspects

    pFAR plasmids: New Eukaryotic Expression Vectors for Gene Therapy, devoid of Antibiotic Resistance Markers

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    Efficient production of eukaryotic expression vectors requires the selection of plasmid-containing bacteria. To avoid the risk of dissemination of antibiotic resistance markers, we developed a new system to produce a family of plasmids Free of Antibiotic Resistance genes, called pFARs. The strategy is based on the suppression of a chromosomal nonsense mutation by a plasmid-borne function. The amber mutation was introduced into the Escherichia coli thyA gene that encodes a thymidylate synthase required for dTMP synthesis, resulting in thymidine auxotrophy. In parallel, a small plasmid vector that carries an amber suppressor t-RNA gene was entirely synthesised. The introduction of pFAR plasmids into an optimised thyA mutant restored normal growth to the auxotrophic strain, and led to an efficient production of monomeric supercoiled plasmids, as required for clinical trials. Luciferase activities measured after intramuscular injection and electrotransfer of LUC-encoding pFAR vector were similar to those obtained with a commercial vector containing the same expression cassette. Interestingly, whereas luciferase activities decreased within three weeks after intradermal electrotransfer of conventional expression vectors, sustained levels were observed with the pFAR derivative. Thus, pFAR plasmids represent a novel family of biosafe eukaryotic expression vectors, suitable for gene therapy

    Building case-based reasoning applications with myCBR and COLIBRI Studio

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    myCBR and COLIBRI Studio are two well-established opensource frameworks for building case-based reasoning (CBR) applications, though they follow different approaches and support different phases of the CBR application development. In a nutshell: Where myCBR supports its users in developing a knowledge model for representing cases, it more or less leaves the software developers alone when they try to develop an application that uses the generated knowledge model. COLIBRI Studio, on the other hand, is focused in the development of applications that use that knowledge model. As soon as you have a knowledge model COLIBRI Studio offers templates for a variety of application types and supports in generating its source code. This paper explains the strengths and weaknesses of both frameworks regarding the rapid development of CBR applications. It also shows how to use both of them in conjunction
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