Determining Thermal Capabilities for External Transfer Operations on the International Space Station

External transfers on the International Space Station (ISS) have a degree of difficulty caused by the severity of the radiative thermal environment and the complexity of the operational choreography to perform the installation and activation of the hardware. These transfers can be performed robotically, by astronauts during an Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA - spacewalk), or combination of robotic/crew operations. Robotic transfers may include capability to intermittently power the hardware; while the hardware remains unpowered for EVA operations. Robotic transfers can be staged to occur in a favorable thermal environment, though typically take longer than a transfer by crew during an EVA where the hardware may not be robotically compatible. The hardware is under passive thermal control, use of optics/multi-layer insulation/heaters, while being transferred from/to a visiting vehicle, airlock, stowage platform, or external ISS structure and may include additional design components, such as removable protective blankets, to meet the transfer requirements. Thermal analysis must be performed to determine the capability of the hardware being transferred to provide the Mission Control team the products necessary to plan and execute the operation while establishing an awareness for any contingency response. An overview of the thermal aspects in planning these types of transfer operations, the analytical approaches and assumptions, and examples of results are provided in this paper

A general aspect-term-extraction model for multi-criteria recommendations

In recent years, increasingly large quantities of user reviews have been made available by several e-commerce platforms. This content is very useful for recommender systems (RSs), since it reflects the users' opinion of the items regarding several aspects. In fact, they are especially valuable for RSs that are able to exploit multi-faceted user ratings. However, extracting aspect-based ratings from unstructured text is not a trivial task. Deep Learning models for aspect extraction have proven to be effective, but they need to be trained on large quantities of domain-specific data, which are not always available. In this paper, we explore the possibility of transferring knowledge across domains for automatically extracting aspects from user reviews, and its implications in terms of recommendation accuracy. We performed different experiments with several Deep Learning-based Aspect Term Extraction (ATE) techniques and Multi-Criteria recommendation algorithms. Results show that our framework is able to improve recommendation accuracy compared to several baselines based on single-criteria recommendation, despite the fact that no labeled data in the target domain was used when training the ATE model

An investigation on the impact of natural language on conversational recommendations

In this paper, we investigate the combination of Virtual Assistants and Conversational Recommender Systems (CoRSs) by designing and implementing a framework named ConveRSE, for building chatbots that can recommend items from different domains and interact with the user through natural language. An user experiment was carried out to understand how natural language influences both the cost of interaction and recommendation accuracy of a CoRS. Experimental results show that natural language can indeed improve user experience, but some critical aspects of the interaction should be mitigated appropriately

A domain-independent framework for building conversational recommender systems

Conversational Recommender Systems (CoRSs) implement a paradigm where users can interact with the system for defining their preferences and discovering items that best fit their needs. A CoRS can be straightforwardly implemented as a chatbot. Chatbots are becoming more and more popular for several applications like customer care, health care, medical diagnoses. In the most complex form, the implementation of a chatbot is a challenging task since it requires knowledge about natural language processing, human-computer interaction, and so on. In this paper, we propose a general framework for making easy the generation of conversational recommender systems. The framework, based on a content-based recommendation algorithm, is independent from the domain. Indeed, it allows to build a conversational recommender system with different interaction modes (natural language, buttons, hybrid) for any domain. The framework has been evaluated on two state-of-the-art datasets with the aim of identifying the components that mainly influence the final recommendation accuracy

A comparison of services for intent and entity recognition for conversational recommender systems

Conversational Recommender Systems (CoRSs) are becoming increasingly popular. However, designing and developing a CoRS is a challenging task since it requires multi-disciplinary skills. Even though several third-party services are available for supporting the creation of a CoRS, a comparative study of these platforms for the specific recommendation task is not available yet. In this work, we focus our attention on two crucial steps of the Conversational Recommendation (CoR) process, namely Intent and Entity Recognition. We compared four of the most popular services, both commercial and open source. Furthermore, we proposed two custom-made solutions for Entity Recognition, whose aim is to overcome the limitations of the other services. Results are very interesting and give a clear picture of the strengths and weaknesses of each solution

A virtual customer assistant for the wealth management domain in the UWMP project

The Universal Wealth Management Platform (UWMP) project has the objective of creating a new service model in the financial domain. An integral part of this service model is the creation of a new Virtual Customer Assistant, that is able to assist customers via natural language dialogues. This paper is a report of the activities performed to develop this assistant. It illustrates a general architecture of the system, and describes the most important decisions made for its implementation. It also describes the main financial operations that it is able to assist customers with. Finally, it delineates some avenues for future work

Tracking research trends and hotspots in sperm DNA fragmentation testing for the evaluation of male infertility: a scientometric analysis.

BACKGROUND: This article describes the research trends in sperm DNA fragmentation (SDF) over the past 20 years (1999-2018) using a scientometric approach. METHODS: A stepwise approach was adopted to retrieve scientometric data (articles per year, authors, affiliations, journals, countries) from Scopus and analyze the publication pattern of SDF with reference to key areas of research in the field of Andrology. RESULTS: A total of 2121 articles were retrieved related to SDF. Our data revealed an increasing research trend in SDF (n = 33 to n = 173) over the past 20 years (R2 = 0.894). Most productive country in publications was the USA (n = 450), while Agarwal A. (n = 129) being the most productive author. Most of the articles in SDF were primarily focused on lifestyle (n = 157), asthenozoospermia (n = 135) and varicocele (130). Mechanistic studies on SDF were published twice as much as prognostic/diagnostic studies, with significant emphasis on oxidative stress. Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) was the most widely used technique to evaluate SDF. Publications on SDF related to assisted reproductive techniques also showed a linear increasing trend (R2 = 0.933). CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis revealed an increasing trend in SDF publications predominantly investigating lifestyle, asthenozoospermia and varicocele conditions with TUNEL being the most widely used technique. A substantial increase in research is warranted to establish SDF as prognostic/diagnostic parameter to evaluate clinical scenarios and ART outcomes

Niedokrwistość w niewydolności serca: częste współwystępowanie z niewydolnością nerek, czyli zespół niedokrwistości sercowo-nerkowej

Wstęp: Chociaż na podstawie licznych badań wykazano znaczną częstość niedokrwistości u pacjentów z zastoinową niewydolnością serca (CHF), w niewielu dokonano dokładnej analizy zależności między CHF a występowaniem niedokrwistości i przewlekłej niewydolności nerek (CRF). Pacjentów z zaawansowaną niewydolnością nerek, nasiloną niedokrwistością, uogólnioną miażdżycą, chorobą układu oddechowego i w podeszłym wieku systematycznie wyłączano z większości randomizowanych badań klinicznych. Metody: Zarówno niedokrwistość, jak i niewydolność nerek, często rozpoznawane jednocześnie, wiążą się ze zwiększoną śmiertelnością, chorobowością oraz częstością hospitalizacji wśród pacjentów z CHF. Upośledzenie funkcji nerek łączy się z niepomyślnym rokowaniem, ponieważ jest wykładnikiem współistniejącej choroby i bardziej nasilonej miażdżycy naczyń. U chorych z CHF postępująca dysfunkcja nerek prowadzi do spadku stężenia erytropoetyny (EPO) i upośledzenia erytropoezy szpikowej. Można tym tłumaczyć obserwowane często w praktyce klinicznej skojarzenie CHF, CRF i niedokrwistości. Normalizacja stężenia hemoglobiny (Hb) po zastosowaniu EPO u chorych z CHF i CRF prowadzi do zwiększenia wydolności wysiłkowej poprzez wzrost podaży tlenu oraz poprawę czynności serca. Wniosek: Autorzy opisują mechanizmy odpowiadające za związek niedokrwistości, CRF i CHF, prognostyczne znaczenie każdej z tych chorób, skutki terapeutyczne oraz potencjalne korzyści wynikające z zastosowania EPO

Molecular and clinical characterization of albinism in a large cohort of Italian patients.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to identify the molecular basis of albinism in a large cohort of Italian patients showing typical ocular landmarks of the disease and to provide a full characterization of the clinical ophthalmic manifestations. METHODS: DNA samples from 45 patients with ocular manifestations of albinism were analyzed by direct sequencing analysis of five genes responsible for albinism: TYR, P, TYRP1, SLC45A2 (MATP), and OA1. All patients studied showed a variable degree of skin and hair hypopigmentation. Eighteen patients with distinct mutations in each gene associated with OCA were evaluated by detailed ophthalmic analysis, optical coherence tomography (OCT), and fundus autofluorescence. RESULTS: Disease-causing mutations were identified in more than 95% of analyzed patients with OCA (28/45 [62.2%] cases with two or more mutations; 15/45 [33.3%] cases with one mutation). Thirty-five different mutant alleles were identified of which 15 were novel. Mutations in TYR were the most frequent (73.3%), whereas mutations in P occurred more rarely (13.3%) than previously reported. Novel mutations were also identified in rare loci such as TYRP1 and MATP. Mutations in the OA1 gene were not detected. Clinical assessment revealed that patients with iris and macular pigmentation had significantly higher visual acuity than did severe hypopigmented phenotypes. CONCLUSIONS: TYR gene mutations represent a relevant cause of oculocutaneous albinism in Italy, whereas mutations in P present a lower frequency than that found in other populations. Clinical analysis revealed that the severity of the ocular manifestations depends on the degree of retinal pigmentation