Exploration of the Genetic Epidemiology of Asthma: A Review, With a Focus on Prevalence in Children and Adolescents in the Caribbean

Asthma is a chronic disease caused by the inflammation of the main air passages of the lungs. This paper outlines a review of the published literature on asthma. While a few studies show a trend of rising asthma cases in the Caribbean region, even fewer have explored the genetic epidemiological factors of asthma. This is a literature review that seeks to sum the body of knowledge on the epidemiology of asthma. Specifically, the major objective of the literature review is to provide a unified information base on the current state of factors involved in the genetic epidemiology of asthma. The review is a simple, yet detailed summary of the literature sources and their methodology and findings on the genetic epidemiology of asthma. Further, it seeks to direct this effort to the Caribbean region. The paper then reviews a summarized and synthesized collection of the body of previous research. Of specific interest are peer-reviewed sources that have been published in recent times. The paper provides more recent insight and recapitulates on the previous research, while tracing the intellectual progress on the debate. Where possible, reviewing and discussing the results of the previous literature, this review singles out the gaps and potential future research directions for studying the genetic epidemiology of asthma. Overall, we hope to contribute to a more synthesized knowledge and improved understanding of the previous literature and future potential direction of genetic and epidemiological asthma research

Globally Optimal Crowdsourcing Quality Management

We study crowdsourcing quality management, that is, given worker responses to a set of tasks, our goal is to jointly estimate the true answers for the tasks, as well as the quality of the workers. Prior work on this problem relies primarily on applying Expectation-Maximization (EM) on the underlying maximum likelihood problem to estimate true answers as well as worker quality. Unfortunately, EM only provides a locally optimal solution rather than a globally optimal one. Other solutions to the problem (that do not leverage EM) fail to provide global optimality guarantees as well. In this paper, we focus on filtering, where tasks require the evaluation of a yes/no predicate, and rating, where tasks elicit integer scores from a finite domain. We design algorithms for finding the global optimal estimates of correct task answers and worker quality for the underlying maximum likelihood problem, and characterize the complexity of these algorithms. Our algorithms conceptually consider all mappings from tasks to true answers (typically a very large number), leveraging two key ideas to reduce, by several orders of magnitude, the number of mappings under consideration, while preserving optimality. We also demonstrate that these algorithms often find more accurate estimates than EM-based algorithms. This paper makes an important contribution towards understanding the inherent complexity of globally optimal crowdsourcing quality management

Mapping the beach beneath the street:digital cartography for the playable city

Maps are an important component within many of the playful and gameful experiences designed to turn cities into a playable infrastructures. They take advantage of the fact that the technology used for obtaining accurate spatial information, such as GPS receivers and magnetometers (digital compasses), are now so wide-spread that they are considered as ‘standard’ sensors on mobile phones, which are themselves ubiquitous. Interactive digital maps, therefore, are are widely used by the general public for a variety of purposes. However, despite the rich design history of cartography digital maps typically exhibit a dominant aesthetic that has been de-signed to serve the usability and utility requirements of turn-by-turn urban navigation, which is itself driven by the proliferation of in-car and personal navigation services. The navigation aesthetic is now widespread across almost all spatial applications, even where a be-spoke cartographic product would be better suited. In this chapter we seek to challenge this by exploring novel neo-cartographic ap-proaches to making maps for use within playful and gameful experi-ences designed for the cities. We will examine the potential of de-sign approaches that can producte not only more aesthetically pleasing maps, but also offer the potential for influencing user be-haviour, which can be used to promote emotional engagement and exploration in playable city experiences

Affective Man-Machine Interface: Unveiling human emotions through biosignals

As is known for centuries, humans exhibit an electrical profile. This profile is altered through various psychological and physiological processes, which can be measured through biosignals; e.g., electromyography (EMG) and electrodermal activity (EDA). These biosignals can reveal our emotions and, as such, can serve as an advanced man-machine interface (MMI) for empathic consumer products. However, such a MMI requires the correct classification of biosignals to emotion classes. This chapter starts with an introduction on biosignals for emotion detection. Next, a state-of-the-art review is presented on automatic emotion classification. Moreover, guidelines are presented for affective MMI. Subsequently, a research is presented that explores the use of EDA and three facial EMG signals to determine neutral, positive, negative, and mixed emotions, using recordings of 21 people. A range of techniques is tested, which resulted in a generic framework for automated emotion classification with up to 61.31% correct classification of the four emotion classes, without the need of personal profiles. Among various other directives for future research, the results emphasize the need for parallel processing of multiple biosignals

Effect of intonation on Cantonese lexical tones

In tonal languages, there are potential conflicts between the F0-based changes due to the coexistence of intonation and lexical tones. In the present study, the interaction of tone and intonation in Cantonese was examined using acoustic and perceptual analyses. The acoustic patterns of tones at the initial, medial, and final positions of questions and statements were measured. Results showed that intonation affects both the F0 level and contour, while the duration of the six tones varied as a function of positions within intonation contexts. All six tones at the final position of questions showed rising F0 contour, regardless of their canonical form. Listeners were overall more accurate in the identification of tones presented within the original carrier than of the same tones in isolation. However, a large proportion of tones 33, 21, 23, and 22 at the final position of questions were misperceived as tone 25 both within the original carrier and as isolated words. These results suggest that although the intonation context provided cues for correct tone identification, the intonation-induced changes in F0 contour cannot always be perceptually compensated for, resulting in some erroneous perception of the identity of Cantonese tone. © 2006 Acoustical Society of America.published_or_final_versio

An odd oxygen framework for wintertime ammonium nitrate aerosol pollution in urban areas: NOx and VOC control as mitigation strategies

Wintertime ammonium nitrate aerosol pollution is a severe air quality issue affecting both developed and rapidly urbanizing regions from Europe to East Asia. In the US, it is acute in western basins subject to inversions that confine pollutants near the surface. Measurements and modeling of a wintertime pollution episode in Salt Lake City, Utah demonstrates that ammonium nitrate is closely related to photochemical ozone through a common parameter, total odd oxygen, Ox,total. We show that the traditional NOx‐VOC framework for evaluating ozone mitigation strategies also applies to ammonium nitrate. Despite being nitrate‐limited, ammonium nitrate aerosol pollution in Salt Lake City is responsive to VOC control and, counterintuitively, not initially responsive to NOx control. We demonstrate simultaneous nitrate limitation and NOx saturation and suggest this phenomenon may be general. This finding may identify an unrecognized control strategy to address a global public health issue in regions with severe winter aerosol pollution

Associating Facial Expressions and Upper-Body Gestures with Learning Tasks for Enhancing Intelligent Tutoring Systems

Learning involves a substantial amount of cognitive, social and emotional states. Therefore, recognizing and understanding these states in the context of learning is key in designing informed interventions and addressing the needs of the individual student to provide personalized education. In this paper, we explore the automatic detection of learner’s nonverbal behaviors involving hand-over-face gestures, head and eye movements and emotions via facial expressions during learning. The proposed computer vision-based behavior monitoring method uses a low-cost webcam and can easily be integrated with modern tutoring technologies. We investigate these behaviors in-depth over time in a classroom session of 40 minutes involving reading and problem-solving exercises. The exercises in the sessions are divided into three categories: an easy, medium and difficult topic within the context of undergraduate computer science. We found that there is a significant increase in head and eye movements as time progresses, as well as with the increase of difficulty level. We demonstrated that there is a considerable occurrence of hand-over-face gestures (on average 21.35%) during the 40 minutes session and is unexplored in the education domain. We propose a novel deep learning approach for automatic detection of hand-over-face gestures in images with a classification accuracy of 86.87%. There is a prominent increase in hand-over-face gestures when the difficulty level of the given exercise increases. The hand-over-face gestures occur more frequently during problem-solving (easy 23.79%, medium 19.84% and difficult 30.46%) exercises in comparison to reading (easy 16.20%, medium 20.06% and difficult 20.18%)

Sit still and pay attention: Using the Wii Balance-Board to detect lapses in concentration in children during psychophysical testing.

During psychophysical testing, a loss of concentration can cause observers to answer incorrectly, even when the stimulus is clearly perceptible. Such lapses limit the accuracy and speed of many psychophysical measurements. This study evaluates an automated technique for detecting lapses based on body movement (postural instability). Thirty-five children (8-11 years of age) and 34 adults performed a typical psychophysical task (orientation discrimination) while seated on a Wii Fit Balance Board: a gaming device that measures center of pressure (CoP). Incorrect responses on suprathreshold catch trials provided the "reference standard" measure of when lapses in concentration occurred. Children exhibited significantly greater variability in CoP on lapse trials, indicating that postural instability provides a feasible, real-time index of concentration. Limitations and potential applications of this method are discussed

Interspecific Proteomic Comparisons Reveal Ash Phloem Genes Potentially Involved in Constitutive Resistance to the Emerald Ash Borer

The emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) is an invasive wood-boring beetle that has killed millions of ash trees since its accidental introduction to North America. All North American ash species (Fraxinus spp.) that emerald ash borer has encountered so far are susceptible, while an Asian species, Manchurian ash (F. mandshurica), which shares an evolutionary history with emerald ash borer, is resistant. Phylogenetic evidence places North American black ash (F. nigra) and Manchurian ash in the same clade and section, yet black ash is highly susceptible to the emerald ash borer. This contrast provides an opportunity to compare the genetic traits of the two species and identify those with a potential role in defense/resistance. We used Difference Gel Electrophoresis (DIGE) to compare the phloem proteomes of resistant Manchurian to susceptible black, green, and white ash. Differentially expressed proteins associated with the resistant Manchurian ash when compared to the susceptible ash species were identified using nano-LC-MS/MS and putative identities assigned. Proteomic differences were strongly associated with the phylogenetic relationships among the four species. Proteins identified in Manchurian ash potentially associated with its resistance to emerald ash borer include a PR-10 protein, an aspartic protease, a phenylcoumaran benzylic ether reductase (PCBER), and a thylakoid-bound ascorbate peroxidase. Discovery of resistance-related proteins in Asian species will inform approaches in which resistance genes can be introgressed into North American ash species. The generation of resistant North American ash genotypes can be used in forest ecosystem restoration and urban plantings following the wake of the emerald ash borer invasion