Image-based Early Detection System for Wildfires

Wildfires are a disastrous phenomenon which cause damage to land, loss of property, air pollution, and even loss of human life. Due to the warmer and drier conditions created by climate change, more severe and uncontrollable wildfires are expected to occur in the coming years. This could lead to a global wildfire crisis and have dire consequences on our planet. Hence, it has become imperative to use technology to help prevent the spread of wildfires. One way to prevent the spread of wildfires before they become too large is to perform early detection i.e, detecting the smoke before the actual fire starts. In this paper, we present our Wildfire Detection and Alert System which use machine learning to detect wildfire smoke with a high degree of accuracy and can send immediate alerts to users. Our technology is currently being used in the USA to monitor data coming in from hundreds of cameras daily. We show that our system has a high true detection rate and a low false detection rate. Our performance evaluation study also shows that on an average our system detects wildfire smoke faster than an actual person.Comment: Published in Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning workshop, Thirty-sixth Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2022

Can Chaotic Analysis of Electroencephalogram Aid the Diagnosis of Encephalopathy?

Chaotic analysis is a relatively novel area in the study of physiological signals. Chaotic features of electroencephalogram have been analyzed in various disease states like epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, sleep disorders, and depression. All these diseases have primary involvement of the brain. Our study examines the chaotic parameters in metabolic encephalopathy, where the brain functions are involved secondary to a metabolic disturbance. Our analysis clearly showed significant lower values for chaotic parameters, correlation dimension, and largest Lyapunov exponent for EEG in patients with metabolic encephalopathy compared to normal EEG. The chaotic features of EEG have been shown in previous studies to be an indicator of the complexity of brain dynamics. The smaller values of chaotic features for encephalopathy suggest that normal complexity of brain function is reduced in encephalopathy. To the best knowledge of the authors, no similar work has been reported on metabolic encephalopathy. This finding may be useful to understand the neurobiological phenomena in encephalopathy. These chaotic features are then utilized as feature sets for Support Vector Machine classifier to identify cases of encephalopathy from normal healthy subjects yielding high values of accuracy. Thus, we infer that chaotic measures are EEG parameters sensitive to functional alterations of the brain, caused by encephalopathy

Lowering <i>n</i>-6/<i>n</i>-3 Ratio as an Important Dietary Intervention to Prevent LPS-Inducible Dyslipidemia and Hepatic Abnormalities in <i>ob/ob</i> Mice

Obesity is closely associated with low-grade chronic and systemic inflammation and dyslipidemia, and the consumption of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs) may modulate obesity-related disorders, such as inflammation and dyslipidemia. An emerging research question is to understand the dietary intervention strategy that is more important regarding n-3 PUFA consumption: (1) a lower ratio of n-6/n-3 PUFAs or (2) a higher amount of n-3 PUFAs consumption. To understand the desirable dietary intervention method of n-3 PUFAs consumption, we replaced lard from the experimental diets with either perilla oil (PO) or corn oil (CO) to have identical n-3 amounts in the experimental diets. PO had a lower n-6/n-3 ratio, whereas CO contained higher amounts of PUFAs; it inherently contained relatively lower n-3 but higher n-6 PUFAs than PO. After the 12-week dietary intervention in ob/ob mice, dyslipidemia was observed in the normal chow and CO-fed ob/ob mice; however, PO feeding increased the high density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) level; further, not only did the HDL-C level increase, the low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) and triglyceride (TG) levels also decreased significantly after lipopolysaccharide (LPS) injection. Consequently, extra TG accumulated in the liver and white adipose tissue (WAT) of normal chow- or CO-fed ob/ob mice after LPS injection; however, PO consumption decreased serum TG accumulation in the liver and WAT. PUFAs replacement attenuated systemic inflammation induced by LPS injection by increasing anti-inflammatory cytokines but inhibiting pro-inflammatory cytokine production in the serum and WAT. PO further decreased hepatic inflammation and fibrosis in comparison with the ND and CO. Hepatic functional biomarkers (aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine transaminase (ALT) levels) were also remarkably decreased in the PO group. In LPS-challenged ob/ob mice, PO and CO decreased adipocyte size and adipokine secretion, with a reduction in phosphorylation of MAPKs compared to the ND group. In addition, LPS-inducible endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and oxidative stress decreased with consumption of PUFAs. Taken together, PUFAs from PO and CO play a role in regulating obesity-related disorders. Moreover, PO, which possesses a lower ratio of n-6/n-3 PUFAs, remarkably alleviated metabolic dysfunction in LPS-induced ob/ob mice. Therefore, an interventional trial considering the ratio of n-6/n-3 PUFAs may be desirable for modulating metabolic complications, such as inflammatory responses and ER stress in the circulation, liver, and/or WAT

A novel small molecule based on dithienophosphole oxide for bulk heterojunction solar cells without pre- or post-treatments

A novel small molecule (PDTP-WR) with a dithieno[3,2- b:2��,3��- d ]phosphole oxide (DTP) core unit was designed and synthesized for use in BHJ solar cells. This small molecule had an optical band gap of 1.65?eV, appropriate for a donor material, and HOMO and LUMO energy levels of??5.10, and??3.45?eV, respectively, which provided a broad absorption and superior charge transfer properties. The solar cell devices prepared using PDTP-WR and PC71BM gave a promising power conversion efficiency of 5.04%, a Jsc of 12.98?mA?cm?2, a Voc of 0.79?V, and a fill factor of 49%, without pre- or post-treatments. Morphological and structural studies revealed that PDTP-WR formed a favorable BHJ morphology. An appropriate domain size of less than 20?nm and bi-continuous interpenetrating paths with an ordered structure obtained as a result of strong intermolecular interactions can support the device performances. This is the first reported use of DTP in small molecule donor, and the results of these studies indicated that DTP-based small molecule can be a promising candidate for the photovoltaic applications. ? 2017 Elsevier Ltd113sciescopu

Deletion of Macrophage Vitamin D Receptor Promotes Insulin Resistance and Monocyte Cholesterol Transport to Accelerate Atherosclerosis in Mice

Intense effort has been devoted to understanding predisposition to chronic systemic inflammation because it contributes to cardiometabolic disease. We demonstrate that deletion of the macrophage vitamin D receptor (VDR) in mice (KODMAC) is sufficient to induce insulin resistance by promoting M2 macrophage accumulation in the liver as well as increasing cytokine secretion and hepatic glucose production. Moreover, VDR deletion increases atherosclerosis by enabling lipid-laden M2 monocytes to adhere, migrate, and carry cholesterol into the atherosclerotic plaque and by increasing macrophage cholesterol uptake and esterification. Increased foam cell formation results from lack of VDR-SERCA2b interaction, causing SERCA dysfunction, activation of ER stress-CaMKII-JNKp-PPARγ signaling, and induction of the scavenger receptors CD36 and SR-A1. Bone marrow transplant of VDR-expressing cells into KODMAC mice improved insulin sensitivity, suppressed atherosclerosis, and decreased foam cell formation. The immunomodulatory effects of vitamin D in macrophages are thus critical in diet-induced insulin resistance and atherosclerosis in mice

Partial Replacement of Dietary Fat with Krill Oil or Coconut Oil Alleviates Dyslipidemia by Partly Modulating Lipid Metabolism in Lipopolysaccharide-Injected Rats on a High-Fat Diet

This study investigated the effects of partial replacement of dietary fat with krill oil (KO) or coconut oil (CO) on dyslipidemia and lipid metabolism in rats fed with a high-fat diet (HFD). Sprague Dawley rats were divided into three groups as follows: HFD, HFD + KO, and HFD + CO. The rats were fed each diet for 10 weeks and then intraperitoneally injected with phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) or lipopolysaccharide (LPS) (1 mg/kg). The KO- and CO-fed rats exhibited lower levels of serum lipids and aspartate aminotransferases than those of the HFD-fed rats. Rats fed with HFD + KO displayed significantly lower hepatic histological scores and hepatic triglyceride (TG) content than rats fed with HFD. The KO supplementation also downregulated the adipogenic gene expression in the liver. When treated with LPS, the HFD + KO and HFD + CO groups reduced the adipocyte size in the epididymal white adipose tissues (EAT) relative to the HFD group. These results suggest that KO and CO could improve lipid metabolism dysfunction