A Hybrid Failure Diagnosis and Prediction using Natural Language-based Process Map and Rule-based Expert System

Preventive maintenance is required in large scale industries to facilitate highly efficient performance. The efficiency of production can be maximized by preventing the failure of facilities in advance. Typically, regular maintenance is conducted manually in which case, it is hard to prevent repeated failures. Also, since measures to prevent failure depend on proactive problem-solving by the facility expert, they have limitations when the expert is absent, or any error in diagnosis is made by an unskilled expert. In many cases, an alarm system is used to aid manual facility diagnosis and early detection. However, it is not efficient in practice, since it is designed to simply collect information and is activated even with small problems. In this paper, we designed and developed an automated preventive maintenance system using experts’ experience in detecting failure, determining the cause, and predicting future system failure. There are two main functions in order to acquire and analyze domain expertise. First, we proposed the network-based process map that can extract the expert’s knowledge of the written failure report. Secondly, we designed and implemented an incremental learning rule-based expert system with alarm data and failure case. The evaluation results shows that the combination of two main functions works better than another failure diagnosis and prediction frameworks

Correlating health and wellness analytics for personalized decision making

© 2015 IEEE. Personalized healthcare envisions providing customized treatment and management plans to individuals at their doorstep. Key factors to ensure personalized healthcare is to involve with the individual in their daily life activities and process the gathered information to provide recommendations. We identified the mostly exposed domains for gathering chronic disease patients information that includes: clinical, social media, and daily life activities. Clinical data is related to the health-care of the patients while social media, sensory, and wearables data is related to the wellness data of the patients. A framework is required to monitor the health and wellness information of the patients for health and wellness analytics provisioning to the physicians for better decision making. We propose Personalized, Ubiquitous Life-care Decision Support System (PULSE); a state of the art decision support system that helps physicians and patients in life-style management of chronic disease patients such as Diabetes. The proposed approach not only utilizes clinical information but also personalized information by correlation to find hidden information using big data health analytic for improvement of life-care. PULSE provides health analytics by utilizing and processing clinical information of the patient. In the same way, it provides wellness analytics to the patients by using their social, activities, emotions and daily life information. The co-relation between clinical and personalized analytics is performed for better recommendations to the patients. This eventually results in improved life-care and healthy living of the individuals

Assessment of nematicidal and plant growth-promoting effects of Burkholderia sp. JB-2 in root-knot nematode-infested soil

Root-knot nematodes (RKN), Meloidogyne spp., are plant-parasitic nematodes that are responsible for considerable economic losses worldwide, because of the damage they cause to numerous plant species and the inadequate biological agents available to combat them. Therefore, developing novel and eco-friendly nematicides is necessary. In the present study, Burkholderia sp. JB-2, isolated from RKN-infested rhizosphere soil in South Korea, was evaluated to determine its nematicidal and plant growth-promoting effects under in vitro and in vivo conditions. Cell-free filtrates of the JB-2 strain showed high levels of nematicidal activity against second-stage juveniles (J2) of M. incognita, with 87.5% mortality following two days of treatment. In addition, the assessment of the activity against other six plant parasitic nematodes (M. javanica, M. hapla, M. arenaria, Ditylenchus destructor, Aphelenchoides subtenuis, and Heterodera trifolii) showed that the cell-free filtrates have a broad nematicidal spectrum. The three defense-responsive (MiMIF-2, MiDaf16-like1, and MiSkn1-like1) genes were activated, while Mi-cm-3 was downregulated when treated with cell-free filtrates of JB-2 cultures on J2. The greenhouse experiments suggested that the cell-free filtrates of the JB-2 strain efficiently controlled the nematode population in soil and egg mass formations of M. incognita in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L., cv. Rutgers). An improvement in the host plant growth was observed, in which the shoot length and fresh weights of shoots and roots increased. The treatment with 10% of JB-2 cell-free filtrates significantly upregulated the expression levels of plant defenses (SlPR1, SlPR5, and SlPAL) and growth-promoting (ACO1, Exp18, and SlIAA1) genes compared with the corresponding parameters of the control group. Therefore, JB-2 could be a promising candidate for the sustainable management of RKN

Caspase-4 is essential for saikosaponin a-induced apoptosis acting upstream of caspase-2 and γ-H2AX in colon cancer cells

Saikosaponin a (SSa), a bioactive phytochemical from Bupleurum, triggers sequential caspase-2 and caspase-8 activation, and thereby induces caspase-mediated apoptosis in human colon carcinoma (HCC) cells. However, the upstream mechanism of caspase-2 activation remains unknown. Therefore, we investigated the signaling mechanisms underlying SSa-induced caspase activation and apoptosis in HCC cells. SSa treatment triggered marked antitumor effects, especially in HCC cells, in a cell culture model and a mouse xenograft model. SSa also induced the activation of several endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress signals. Specifically, caspase-4, a critical regulator of ER stress-induced apoptosis, was activated significantly after SSa treatment. Mechanistically, selective inhibition of caspase-4 suppressed SSa-induced apoptosis, colony inhibition, and the activation of caspase-3, -8, and -2, but not vice versa. Consistent with the important role of caspase-2 in the DNA damage response, SSa induced DNA damage, as evidenced by a cytokinesis-block micronucleus assay, single-cell gel electrophoresis, and an increase in the levels of γ-H2AX, a DNA damage marker. Moreover, inhibition of caspase-4 activation inhibited SSa-induced histone H2AX phosphorylation. Taken together, these results suggest that caspase-4 is an upstream regulator of SSa-induced DNA damage and caspase activation in HCC cells. Given that SSa-induced apoptosis appeared to be specific to certain cell types including HCC cells, SSa may be a promising cancer therapy agent in certain types of cancer

Production of Mutated Porcine Embryos Using Zinc Finger Nucleases and a Reporter-based Cell Enrichment System

To facilitate the construction of genetically-modified pigs, we produced cloned embryos derived from porcine fibroblasts transfected with a pair of engineered zinc finger nuclease (ZFN) plasmids to create targeted mutations and enriched using a reporter plasmid system. The reporter expresses RFP and eGFP simultaneously when ZFN-mediated site-specific mutations occur. Thus, double positive cells (RFP+/eGFP(+)) were selected and used for somatic cell nuclear transfer. Two types of reporter based enrichment systems were used in this study; the cloned embryos derived from cells enriched using a magnetic sorting-based system showed better developmental competence than did those derived from cells enriched by flow cytometry. Mutated sequences, such as insertions, deletions, or substitutions, together with the wild-type sequence, were found in the cloned porcine blastocysts. Therefore, genetic mutations can be achieved in cloned porcine embryos reconstructed with ZFN-treated cells that were enriched by a reporter-based system.