Cognitive Informatics

Cognitive Informatics (CI) is a contemporary field of basic studies on the brain, computational intelligence theories and underpinning denotational mathematics. Its applications include cognitive systems, cognitive computing, cognitive machine learning and cognitive robotics. IEEE ICCI*CC'17 on Cognitive Informatics and Cognitive Computing was focused on the theme of neurocomputation, cognitive machine learning and brain-inspired systems. This paper reports the plenary panel (Part I) at IEEE ICCI*CC'17 held at Oxford University. The summary is contributed by invited keynote speakers and distinguished panelists who are part of the world's renowned scholars in the transdisciplinary field of CI and cognitive computing

The assessment of physicians' and senior medical students’ knowledge in the field of communityacquired pneumonia: preliminary results of the KNOCAP-II project (2017-2019)

Внебольничная пневмония (ВП) относится к одной из самых актуальных проблем современной медицины. На сегодняшний день ВП занимает 4 место в структуре смертности (после сердечно-сосудистых, цереброваскулярных заболеваний и злокачественных новообразований) и 1 место среди всех смертей от инфекционных заболеваний. Цель – оценка уровня знаний врачей терапевтического профиля и студентов старших курсов медицинских вузов в вопросах ведения пациентов с ВП. В рамках многоцентрового исследования KNOCAP (полное название проекта – «The assessment of physician and students’ knowledge of community-acquired pneumonia basics») представлены результаты анонимного проспективного опроса по оценке знаний и предпочтений врачей терапевтического профиля и студентов старших медицинских курсов в вопросах ведения пациентов с ВП. По итогам первого периода проекта (2017-2019 гг.) получены и проанализированы результаты анкетирования 588 врачей терапевтического профиля и 394 студентов-медиков из 17 центров России, Украины и Кыргызстана. За основу взят метод анонимного анкетирования, для чего была разработана оригинальная анкета на основании актуальных клинических рекомендаций. Наибольшие сложности вызвали следующие вопросы: сроки проведения повторного рентгенологического исследования при положительной динамике лечения, выбор основного диагностического признака при ведении пациента с ВП, указать типовые ошибки фармакотерапии ВП и выбор стартовой антимикробной терапии у пациентов с факторами риска и без них. В целом исследование показало значимое несоответствие знаний в вопросах ведения пациентов с ВП актуальным клиническим рекомендациям 2010 г. и проектом новых клинических рекомендаций 2018-2019 гг. В настоящее время существует необходимость в повышении уровня знаний и совершенствовании профессиональной деятельности врачей терапевтического профиля и студентов старших медицинских курсов, так как проведенный многоцентровой срез знаний и предпочтений специалистов во многих вопросах выявил их недостаточный уровень для корректного ведения пациентов с ВП. Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is one of the most relevant problems of modern medicine. Today, CAP takes 4th place in the structure of mortality (after cardiovascular, cerebrovascular diseases and malignant neoplasms) and 1st place among all deaths from infectious diseases. The aim of the study is to assess the level of general physician’ and senior medical students’ basic knowledge in CAP treatment. The article represents the results of anonymous prospective surveys within the framework of the second stage of KNOCAP multi-centered research project (full name of the project «The assessment of physician’ and students’ knowledge of community-acquired pneumonia basics») aimed at accessing the knowledge and preferences of doctors and students on the fundamental issues in diagnosis and treatment of community-acquired pneumonia. The survey conducted in 2017-2019 involved 588 physicians and 394 students from seventeen Russian, Kyrgyzstan and Ukrainian centers. The method of anonymous questioning was used in this study, for which an original questionnaire was developed on the basis of current clinical recommendations. The following fundamental questions caused the greatest difficulties in the respondents: terms for a repeated X-ray examination in positive dynamics of CAP treatment, the choice of main diagnostic criteria of CAP, the choice of the typical mistakes of CAP treatment, the choice of the initial antimicrobial therapy. In general, the respondents’ knowledge in CAP patients’ management deviates significantly from the current clinical guidelines, as of 2010, and from the new clinical guidelines draft, 2018-2019. Currently, there is a need to increase the level of knowledge and improve the professional activities of therapists and senior medical students, as a multicenter section of the knowledge and preferences of specialists in many issues revealed their insufficient level for the correct management of patients with CAP

Mutation update for the SATB2 gene

SATB2-associated syndrome (SAS) is an autosomal dominant neurodevelopmental disorder caused by alterations in the SATB2 gene. Here we present a review of published pathogenic variants in the SATB2 gene to date and report 38 novel alterations found in 57 additional previously unreported individuals. Overall, we present a compilation of 120 unique variants identified in 155 unrelated families ranging from single nucleotide coding variants to genomic rearrangements distributed throughout the entire coding region of SATB2. Single nucleotide variants predicted to result in the occurrence of a premature stop codon were the most commonly seen (51/120=42.5%) followed by missense variants (31/120=25.8%). We review the rather limited functional characterization of pathogenic variants and discuss current understanding of the consequences of the different molecular alterations. We present an expansive phenotypic review along with novel genotype-phenotype correlations. Lastly, we discuss current knowledge on animal models and present future prospects. This review should help provide better guidance for the care of individuals diagnosed with SAS

Geographical and temporal distribution of SARS-CoV-2 clades in the WHO European Region, January to June 2020

We show the distribution of SARS-CoV-2 genetic clades over time and between countries and outline potential genomic surveillance objectives. We applied three available genomic nomenclature systems for SARS-CoV-2 to all sequence data from the WHO European Region available during the COVID-19 pandemic until 10 July 2020. We highlight the importance of real-time sequencing and data dissemination in a pandemic situation. We provide a comparison of the nomenclatures and lay a foundation for future European genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2.Peer reviewe

Применение триангуляции Делоне для формирования шаблона дактилоскопического изображения

V.Yu. Gudkov1, [email protected], D.N. Lepikhova2, [email protected], M.L. Gavrilova3, [email protected], M.L. Zymbler1, [email protected] 1 South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk, Russian Federation, 2 Sonda PRO Ltd, Miass, Russian Federation, 3 University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada. Гудков Владимир Юльевич, д-р физ.-мат. наук, профессор кафедры электронных вычислительных машин, Южно-Уральский государственный университет, г. Челябинск; [email protected]. Лепихова Дарья Николаевна, инженер-программист, ООО «Сонда ПРО», г. Миасс; [email protected]. Гаврилова Марина Львовна, Ph.D., профессор кафедры компьютерных наук, Университет Калгари, г. Калгари, Канада; [email protected]. Цымблер Михаил Леонидович, канд. физ.-мат. наук, доцент, начальник отдела интеллектуального анализа данных и виртуализации Лаборатории суперкомпьютерного моделирования, Южно-Уральский государственный университет, г. Челябинск; [email protected], fingerprint identification is the most common method of biometric identification. Existing fingerprint identification models have some defects that reduce the speed and quality of identification. So most of the models do not take into account the topological characteristics of images, for example, the classical method of measuring the ridge count value may produce incorrect results in areas of significant curvature of the ridge lines. This paper presents a new mathematical model for fingerprint identification, taking into account their topological characteristics. Identification is performed on the basis of templates. The templates contain a list of minutiae detected on the image and a list of ridge lines. For the ridge lines and minutiae, sets of topological vectors are constructed. The result of building topological vectors does not depend on the location of minutiae and takes into account their possible mutations, which increases the stability of the proposed mathematical model. Additionally, the stability of the model is ensured by combining the base topological vectors constructed for all minutiae and ridge lines into an expanded topological vector. This view allows you to significantly reduce the size of the template and optimize the use of memory. To compare the fingerprints the Delaunay triangulation is used based on the list of constructed topological vectors. 112 possible classes for topological vectors are defined. This approach allows you to increase the speed of identification up to 10 times while maintaining its accuracy. The proposed classification is resistant to rotation and displacement of images. На сегодняшний день идентификация по отпечаткам пальцев - наиболее распространенный метод биометрической идентификации. Существующие модели идентификации отпечатков пальцев имеют ряд недостатков, влияющих на скорость и качество идентификации. Так большинство моделей не учитывают топологические характеристики изображений, в частности, классический метод измерения гребневого счета может выдавать неправильные значения в областях значительной кривизны гребневых линий. В статье представлена новая математическая модель для идентификации изображений отпечатков пальцев с учетом их топологических характеристик. Идентификация в рамках предложенной модели выполняется на базе шаблонов. Шаблоны содержат список всех контрольных точек, детектированных на изображении либо на его скелете, и список гребневых линий. Для гребневых линий и контрольных точек строятся наборы топологических векторов. Результат построения топологических векторов не зависит от расположения контрольных точек и учитывает их возможные мутации, что увеличивает стабильность предлагаемой математической модели. Дополнительно стабильность модели обеспечивается путем объединения базовых топологических векторов, построенных для всех контрольных точек и гребневых линий, в расширенный топологический вектор. Такое представление позволяет значительно уменьшить размер шаблона и оптимизировать использование памяти. Для сопоставления отпечатков в предлагаемой модели применяется триангуляция Делоне, которая строится на базе списка построенных топологических векторов. С помощью триангуляции определяются 112 возможных классов для топологических векторов. Такой подход позволяет увеличить скорость идентификации до 10 раз при сохранении ее точности. Предложенная классификация на основе триангуляции Делоне устойчива к поворотам и смещению изображений

Let the Game do the Talking: The influence of explicitness and game behavior on comprehension in an educational computer game

An endogenous educational game is a game where the educational content is integrated in the game play mechanics themselves. These games rely on a constructivist approach to learning, where the learner constructs knowledge through concrete experiences. Endogenous educational games which are specifically developed for educational purposes mostly make this purpose explicit: they make it clear in advance what is about to be learned. This research tried to find out how such an explicit purpose influences the game behavior and comprehension by developing two versions of an endogenous educational game about overfishing, one with and one without an explicit purpose. It showed that children who played the explicit version got more shallow knowledge and showed more active game behavior. The players who showed more explorative game behavior acquired more deep knowledge about the game

Voronoi diagram of polygonal chains under the discrete Fréchet distance

Polygonal chains are fundamental objects in many applications like pattern recognition and protein structure alignment. A well-known measure to characterize the similarity of two polygonal chains is the (continuous/discrete) Fréchet distance. In this paper, for the first time, we consider the Voronoi diagram of polygonal chains in d-dimension under the discrete Fréchet distance. Given a set C of n polygonal chains in d-dimension, each with at most k vertices, we prove fundamental properties of such a Voronoi diagram VD F (C). Our main results are summarized as follows.The combinatorial complexity of VD F(C) is at most O(n dk + ε).The combinatorial complexity of VD F(C) is at least Ω(n dk ) for dimension d = 1,2; and Ω(n d(k − 1) + 2) for dimension d > 2

Security weaknesses in two proxy signature schemes

Allowing a proxy signer to generate a signature on behalf of an original signer, a proxy signature should satisfy the property of strong unforgeability: anyone except the designated proxy signer cannot create a valid proxy signature on behalf of the original signer. Since proxy signatures, as well as their derivatives, can be used in many applications in reality, such as secure mobile agent, e-commerce systems and etc., they have been receiving extensive research recently. In this paper, we show that the proxy signature scheme [14] from ISPA’04 will suffer from the original signer’s forgery attack if the original signer once gets a valid proxy signature on a message, and a similar attack arises in the proxy signature scheme [1] from AWCC’04 if the verifier does not check the originality of the proxy signer’s proxy public key before verifying a proxy signature. Therefore, in some degree, neither of these two schemes meets the property of strong unforgeability

Advancing spatio-temporal analysis of ecological data: Examples in R

The article reviews main principles of running geo-computations in ecology, as illustrated with case studies from the EcoGRID and FlySafe projects, and emphasizes the advantages of using R computing environment as the most attractive programming/scripting environment. Three case studies (including R code) of interest to ecological applications are described: (a) analysis of GPS trajectory data for two gull-birds species; (b) species distribution mapping in space and time for a bird species (sedge warbler; EcoGRID project); and (c) change detection using time-series of maps. The case studies demonstrate that R, together with its numerous packages for spatial and geostatistical analysis, is a well-suited tool to produce quality outputs (maps, statistical models) of interest in Geo-Ecology. Moreover, due to the recent implementation of the maptools and sp packages, such outputs can be easily exported to popular geographical browsers such as Google Earth and similar. The key computational challenges for Computational Geo-Ecology recognized were: (1) solving the problem of input data quality (filtering techniques), (2) solving the problem of computing with large data sets, (3) improving the over-simplistic statistical models, and (4) producing outputs of increasingly higher level of detail