A semantic context management framework on mobile device

We present a semantic context management framework named ContextTorrent, which can make various types of context information be semantically searchable and sharable among local and remote context-aware applications. We implement this framework on the Google Android platform with its elegant application support. An open source RDF parser has been extended to effectively get RDF triples from files or over the network. Three embedded database systems were evaluated for storing ontology represented contexts in the resource-constrained mobile devices. We use the FOAF ontology schema and a synthetic data set of up to 2500 records to evaluate the context query and storage performance. Ordinary context queries can be replied instantaneously.published_or_final_versionThe 6th IEEE International Conference on Embedded Software and Systems (ICESS 2009), Zhejiang, China, 25-27 May 2009. In Proceedings of the 6th ICESS, 2009, p. 331-33

Inhibitory mechanism of 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde accumulation in 1,3-propanediol synthesis with Klebsiella pneumoniae

3-Hydroxypropionaldehyde accumulation may cause the cessation of 1,3-propanediol sustained production with glycerol by Klebsiella pneumoniae. The impeller tip speed shift from higher to lower speed at glycerol excess or the pulsed glycerol feeding could lead to an abrupt increase of the 3- hydroxypropionaldehyde concentration (up to 10 mmol/l) in 10 min. The intracellular consequence of the 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde accumulation has not yet been elucidated. The rapid accumulation of 3- hydroxypropionaldehyde relying on the impeller tip speed shift was employed to investigate the influences of 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde to the activities of nine key enzymes related to glycerol metabolism, CO2 and O2 levels in off-gas, cell growth and 1,3-propanediol synthesis. Compared with that at 1.19 mmol/l 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde in broth, the residual enzymatic activities of the nine key enzymes ranged from 9.44 to 74.68% in the cultures at 7.5 mmol/l 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde in broth. The inhibitions of cell growth and the 1,3-propanediol synthesis were unnoticeable at the low level of 3- hydroxypropionaldehyde. By contrast, the CO2 and O2 levels changes in off-gas response to the 3- hydroxypropionaldehyde accumulation were less than 15 min. These results suggest that 3- hydroxypropionaldehyde inhibited the growth and metabolism of K. pneumoniae in a more complicated manner.Keywords: Fermentation, glycerol, 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde, Klebsiella pneumoniae, 1,3-propanediol

Comparison and design analysis of pulse transformer for HID ballasts

Author name used in this publication: K. W. E. ChengAuthor name used in this publication: S. L. HoAuthor name used in this publication: X. D. XueRefereed conference paper2005-2006 > Academic research: refereed > Refereed conference paperVersion of RecordPublishe

Abscisic Acid Uridine Diphosphate Glucosyltransferases Play a Crucial Role in Abscisic Acid Homeostasis in Arabidopsis

The phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) is crucial for plant growth and adaptive responses to various stress conditions. Plants continuously adjust the ABA level to meet physiological needs, but how ABA homeostasis occurs is not fully understood. This study provides evidence that UGT71B6, an ABA uridine diphosphate glucosyltransferase (UGT), and its two closely related homologs, UGT71B7 and UGT71B8, play crucial roles in ABA homeostasis and in adaptation to dehydration, osmotic stress, and high-salinity stresses in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). UGT RNA interference plants that had low levels of these three UGT transcripts displayed hypersensitivity to exogenous ABA and high-salt conditions during germination and exhibited a defect in plant growth. However, the ectopic expression of UGT71B6 in the atbg1 (for beta-glucosidase) mutant background aggravated the ABA-deficient phenotype of atbg1 mutant plants. In addition, modulation of the expression of the three UGTs affects the expression of CYP707A1 to CYP707A4, which encode ABA 8 '-hydroxylases; four CYP707As were expressed at higher levels in the UGT RNA interference plants but at lower levels in the UGT71B6:GFP-overexpressing plants. Based on these data, this study proposes that UGT71B6 and its two homologs play a critical role in ABA homeostasis by converting active ABA to an inactive form (abscisic acid-glucose ester) depending on intrinsic cellular and environmental conditions in plants.X113026Ysciescopu

Investigation on the competing effects of clay dispersion and matrix plasticisation for polypropylene/clay nanocomposites. Part I: morphology and mechanical properties

The key compatibiliser role of maleated polypropylene (MAPP) to improve the clay dispersability has been explicitly addressed in the fabrication process and material characterisation of polypropylene (PP)/clay nanocomposites. However, its matrix plasticiser role, which has been rarely mentioned, could adversely influence the excellent mechanical properties of such nanocomposites, resulting from the homogeneous clay dispersion. PP/clay nanocomposites in the presence of MAPP were prepared by twin screw extrusion and subsequently injection moulded with three typical material formulations in fixed parametric settings: (1) weight ratio (WR) of clay and MAPP, WR = 1:2; (2) MAPP content of 6 wt% and (3) clay content of 5 wt%. The morphological structures and mechanical properties of PP/clay nanocomposites were examined by using X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and universal mechanical testing. The further improvement of mechanical properties was evidently hindered with very inconsiderable alteration of morphological structures in terms of the clay dispersion level. This observation could be ascribed to the change of MAPP role from a compatibiliser to a plasticiser because of its excessive amount used above a certain saturation level, which was found in the range of 3–6 wt% in MAPP contents for the enhancements of tensile and flexural properties of PP/clay nanocomposites

Axion monodromy in a model of holographic gluodynamics

The low energy field theory for N type IIA D4-branes at strong 't Hooft coupling, wrapped on a circle with antiperiodic boundary conditions for fermions, is known to have a vacuum energy which depends on the $\theta$ angle for the gauge fields, and which is a multivalued function of this angle. This gives a field-theoretic realization of "axion monodromy" for a nondynamical axion. We construct the supergravity solution dual to the field theory in the metastable state which is the adiabatic continuation of the vacuum to large values of $\theta$. We compute the energy of this state and show that it initially rises quadratically and then flattens out. We show that the glueball mass decreases with $\theta$, becoming much lower than the 5d KK scale governing the UV completion of this model. We construct two different classes of domain walls interpolating between adjacent vacua. We identify a number of instability modes -- nucleation of domain walls, bulk Casimir forces, and condensation of tachyonic winding modes in the bulk -- which indicate that the metastable branch eventually becomes unstable. Finally, we discuss two phenomena which can arise when the axion is dynamical; axion-driven inflation, and axion strings.Comment: 43 pages, 10 figures. v2: references update

Multiple Imputation Ensembles (MIE) for dealing with missing data

Missing data is a significant issue in many real-world datasets, yet there are no robust methods for dealing with it appropriately. In this paper, we propose a robust approach to dealing with missing data in classification problems: Multiple Imputation Ensembles (MIE). Our method integrates two approaches: multiple imputation and ensemble methods and compares two types of ensembles: bagging and stacking. We also propose a robust experimental set-up using 20 benchmark datasets from the UCI machine learning repository. For each dataset, we introduce increasing amounts of data Missing Completely at Random. Firstly, we use a number of single/multiple imputation methods to recover the missing values and then ensemble a number of different classifiers built on the imputed data. We assess the quality of the imputation by using dissimilarity measures. We also evaluate the MIE performance by comparing classification accuracy on the complete and imputed data. Furthermore, we use the accuracy of simple imputation as a benchmark for comparison. We find that our proposed approach combining multiple imputation with ensemble techniques outperform others, particularly as missing data increases

Phylodynamics of foot-and-mouth disease virus O/PanAsia in Vietnam 2010-2014

© 2017 The Author(s). Foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) is endemic in Vietnam, a country that plays an important role in livestock trade within Southeast Asia. The large populations of FMDV-susceptible species in Vietnam are important components of food production and of the national livelihood. In this study, we investigated the phylogeny of FMDV O/PanAsia in Vietnam, reconstructing the virus' ancestral host species (pig, cattle or buffalo), clinical stage (subclinical carrier or clinically affected) and geographical location. Phylogenetic divergence time estimation and character state reconstruction analyses suggest that movement of viruses between species differ. While inferred transmissions from cattle to buffalo and pigs and from pigs to cattle are well supported, transmission from buffalo to other species, and from pigs to buffalo may be less frequent. Geographical movements of FMDV O/PanAsia virus appears to occur in all directions within the country, with the South Central Coast and the Northeast regions playing a more important role in FMDV O/PanAsia spread. Genetic selection of variants with changes at specific sites within FMDV VP1 coding region was different depending on host groups analyzed. The overall ratio of non-synonymous to synonymous nucleotide changes was greater in pigs compared to cattle and buffalo, whereas a higher number of individual amino acid sites under positive selection were detected in persistently infected, subclinical animals compared to viruses collected from clinically diseased animals. These results provide novel insights to understand FMDV evolution and its association with viral spread within endemic countries. These findings may support animal health organizations in their endeavor to design animal disease control strategies in response to outbreaks

Transkingdom Networks: A Systems Biology Approach to Identify Causal Members of Host-Microbiota Interactions

Improvements in sequencing technologies and reduced experimental costs have resulted in a vast number of studies generating high-throughput data. Although the number of methods to analyze these "omics" data has also increased, computational complexity and lack of documentation hinder researchers from analyzing their high-throughput data to its true potential. In this chapter we detail our data-driven, transkingdom network (TransNet) analysis protocol to integrate and interrogate multi-omics data. This systems biology approach has allowed us to successfully identify important causal relationships between different taxonomic kingdoms (e.g. mammals and microbes) using diverse types of data

Identification of the initial molecular changes in response to circulating angiogenic cells-mediated therapy in critical limb ischemia

BackgroundCritical limb ischemia (CLI) constitutes the most aggressive form of peripheral arterial occlusive disease, characterized by the blockade of arteries supplying blood to the lower extremities, significantly diminishing oxygen and nutrient supply. CLI patients usually undergo amputation of fingers, feet, or extremities, with a high risk of mortality due to associated comorbidities.Circulating angiogenic cells (CACs), also known as early endothelial progenitor cells, constitute promising candidates for cell therapy in CLI due to their assigned vascular regenerative properties. Preclinical and clinical assays with CACs have shown promising results. A better understanding of how these cells participate in vascular regeneration would significantly help to potentiate their role in revascularization.Herein, we analyzed the initial molecular mechanisms triggered by human CACs after being administered to a murine model of CLI, in order to understand how these cells promote angiogenesis within the ischemic tissues.MethodsBalb-c nude mice (n:24) were distributed in four different groups: healthy controls (C, n:4), shams (SH, n:4), and ischemic mice (after femoral ligation) that received either 50 mu l physiological serum (SC, n:8) or 5x10(5) human CACs (SE, n:8). Ischemic mice were sacrificed on days 2 and 4 (n:4/group/day), and immunohistochemistry assays and qPCR amplification of Alu-human-specific sequences were carried out for cell detection and vascular density measurements. Additionally, a label-free MS-based quantitative approach was performed to identify protein changes related.ResultsAdministration of CACs induced in the ischemic tissues an increase in the number of blood vessels as well as the diameter size compared to ischemic, non-treated mice, although the number of CACs decreased within time. The initial protein changes taking place in response to ischemia and more importantly, right after administration of CACs to CLI mice, are shown.ConclusionsOur results indicate that CACs migrate to the injured area; moreover, they trigger protein changes correlated with cell migration, cell death, angiogenesis, and arteriogenesis in the host. These changes indicate that CACs promote from the beginning an increase in the number of vessels as well as the development of an appropriate vascular network.Institute of Health Carlos III, ISCIII; Junta de Andaluci