MULTI-PURPOSE EMBEDDED VOICE ASSISTANCE GADGET

One of the important problems that our society faces is that people with disabilities are finding it hard to cope up with the fast growing technology. In the recent years, there has been a rapid increase in the number of hearing impaired and speech disabled victims due to birth defects, oral diseases and accidents. When a deaf-dumb person speaks to a normal person, the normal person seldom understands and asks the deaf-dumb person to show gestures for his/her needs. Dumb persons have their own language to communicate to us; the only thing is that we need to understand their language. So, we need a translator to understand what they speak and communicate to us. In order to achieve this, we have proposed a system that can provide basic communication needs for a deaf-dumb person and also aid him in many ways. In the proposed system, we have used a speech recognition unit along with audio pre recorder and embedded controllers which will be helpful for deaf and dumb persons to express their needs to normal person. The frequently spoken words are stored in audio pre recorder which can be easily retrieved and also displayed using Liquid Crystal Display. The proposed device is also helpful for born deaf children to learn the basics of any language. In addition, voice based home automation system is also proposed for elderly and disabled people. Home automation system is achieved by wireless RF transmission and reception techniques integrated with our Embedded Voice Translator Kit. The proposed system along with text to speech converter and language translators as future enhancements will provide great assistance to deaf and dumb persons to portray their needs to society. Our system can also be incorporated for various applications like personal security, wireless TV remote control etc

Docosanoic acid conjugation to siRNA enables functional and safe delivery to skeletal and cardiac muscles

Oligonucleotide therapeutics hold promise for the treatment of muscle- and heart-related diseases. However, oligonucleotide delivery across the continuous endothelium of muscle tissue is challenging. Here, we demonstrate that docosanoic acid (DCA) conjugation of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) enables efficient (~5% of injected dose), sustainable ( \u3e 1 month), and non-toxic (no cytokine induction at 100 mg/kg) gene silencing in both skeletal and cardiac muscles after systemic injection. When designed to target myostatin (muscle growth regulation gene), siRNAs induced ~55% silencing in various muscle tissues and 80% silencing in heart, translating into a ~50% increase in muscle volume within 1 week. Our study identifies compounds for RNAi-based modulation of gene expression in skeletal and cardiac muscles, paving the way for both functional genomics studies and therapeutic gene modulation in muscle and heart

Enhancing Slot Tagging with Intent Features for Task Oriented Natural Language Understanding using BERT

Recent joint intent detection and slot tagging models have seen improved performance when compared to individual models. In many real-world datasets, the slot labels and values have a strong correlation with their intent labels. In such cases, the intent label information may act as a useful feature to the slot tagging model. In this paper, we examine the effect of leveraging intent label features through 3 techniques in the slot tagging task of joint intent and slot detection models. We evaluate our techniques on benchmark spoken language datasets SNIPS and ATIS, as well as over a large private Bixby dataset and observe an improved slot-tagging performance over state-of-the-art models.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figur

Antiplatelet Treatment Patterns and Outcomes for Secondary Stroke Prevention in the United Kingdom

Abstract Introduction Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Antiplatelet therapies are recommended to reduce the risk of recurrent stroke in patients with ischemic stroke/transient ischemic attack (IS/TIA). This study evaluated outpatient antiplatelet treatment patterns and outcomes for secondary stroke prevention (SSP) among UK adults without atrial fibrillation who were hospitalized for IS/TIA. Methods This retrospective observational study utilized data from the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink linked with Hospital Episode Statistics data (01/01/2011–30/06/2019). Treatment patterns included type and duration of treatments. Treatment outcomes included IS, myocardial infarction, major bleeding, and cardiovascular-related and all-cause mortality. Descriptive statistics were reported. Results Of 9270 patients, 13.9% (1292) might not receive antithrombotic therapy within 90 days of hospital discharge. Of 7978 patients who received antiplatelet therapies, most used clopidogrel (74.8%) or aspirin (16.7%) single antiplatelet therapy and clopidogrel + aspirin dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT, 5.9%). At 1-year post-hospitalization, 36.9, 43.3, and 35.1% of those receiving these treatments discontinued them, respectively, and of the patients initiating DAPT, 62.3% switched to single antiplatelet therapy. At 1-year post-discharge, the incidence rate (per 100 person-years) of IS, myocardial infarction, major bleeding, cardiovascular-related mortality, and all-cause mortality among the treated were 6.5, 0.7, 4.1, 5.0, and 7.3, respectively, and among the untreated were 14.9, 0.7, 8.6, 28.1, and 39.8, respectively. Conclusions In the United Kingdom, 13.9% of patients hospitalized for stroke might not have any antiplatelet treatment to prevent secondary stroke; among the treated, clopidogrel, aspirin, and DAPT were commonly used. These study findings suggest that improved anti-thrombotic therapies for long-term SSP treatment are needed, which may lead to higher treatment and persistence rates and, therefore, improved outcomes in this population

Cyclic di-GMP sensing histidine kinase PdtaS controls mycobacterial adaptation to carbon sources

Cell signaling relies on second messengers to transduce signals from the sensory apparatus to downstream signaling pathway components. In bacteria, one of the most important and ubiquitous second messenger is the small molecule cyclic diguanosine monophosphate (c-di-GMP). While the biosynthesis, degradation, and regulatory pathways controlled by c-di-GMP are well characterized, the mechanisms through which c-di-GMP controls these processes are not entirely understood. Herein we present the report of a c-di-GMP sensing sensor histidine kinase PdtaS (Rv3220c), which binds to c-di-GMP at submicromolar concentrations, subsequently perturbing signaling of the PdtaS-PdtaR (Rv1626) two-component system. Aided by biochemical analysis, genetics, molecular docking, FRET microscopy, and structural modelling, we have characterized the binding of c-di-GMP in the GAF domain of PdtaS. We show that a pdtaS knockout in Mycobacterium smegmatis is severely compromised in growth on amino acid deficient media and exhibits global transcriptional dysregulation. The perturbation of the c-di-GMP-PdtaS-PdtaR axis results in a cascade of cellular changes recorded by a multiparametric systems' approach of transcriptomics, unbiased metabolomics, and lipid analyses.</p

Rational design of a JAK1-selective siRNA inhibitor for the modulation of autoimmunity in the skin

Abstract Inhibition of Janus kinase (JAK) family enzymes is a popular strategy for treating inflammatory and autoimmune skin diseases. In the clinic, small molecule JAK inhibitors show distinct efficacy and safety profiles, likely reflecting variable selectivity for JAK subtypes. Absolute JAK subtype selectivity has not yet been achieved. Here, we rationally design small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) that offer sequence-specific gene silencing of JAK1, narrowing the spectrum of action on JAK-dependent cytokine signaling to maintain efficacy and improve safety. Our fully chemically modified siRNA supports efficient silencing of JAK1 expression in human skin explant and modulation of JAK1-dependent inflammatory signaling. A single injection into mouse skin enables five weeks of duration of effect. In a mouse model of vitiligo, local administration of the JAK1 siRNA significantly reduces skin infiltration of autoreactive CD8+ T cells and prevents epidermal depigmentation. This work establishes a path toward siRNA treatments as a new class of therapeutic modality for inflammatory and autoimmune skin diseases