Lumen: A software for the interactive visualization of probabilistic models together with data

Research in machine learning and applied statistics has led to the development of a plethora of different types of models. Lumen aims to make a particular yet broad class of models, namely, probabilistic models, more easily accessible to humans. Lumen does so by providing an interactive web application for the visual exploration, comparison, and validation of probabilistic models together with underlying data. As the main feature of Lumen a user can rapidly and incrementally build flexible and potentially complex interactive visualizations of both the probabilistic model and the data that the model was trained on. Many classic machine learning methods learn models that predict the value of some target variable(s) given the value of some input variable(s). Probabilistic models go beyond this point estimation by predicting instead of a particular value a probability distribution over the target variable(s). This allows, for instance, to estimate the prediction’s uncertainty, a highly relevant quantity. For a demonstrative example consider a model predicts that an image of a suspicious skin area does not show a malignant tumor. Here it would be extremely valuable to additionally know whether the model is sure to 99.99% or just 51%, that is, to know the uncertainty in the model’s prediction. Lumen is build on top of the modelbase back-end, which provides a SQL-like interface for querying models and its data (Lucas, 2020)

A readers' guide to the interpretation of diagnostic test properties: clinical example of sepsis

Background: One of the most challenging practical and daily problems in intensive care medicine is the interpretation of the results from diagnostic tests. In neonatology and pediatric intensive care the early diagnosis of potentially life-threatening infections is a particularly important issue. Focus: A plethora of tests have been suggested to improve diagnostic decision making in the clinical setting of infection which is a clinical example used in this article. Several criteria that are critical to evidence-based appraisal of published data are often not adhered to during the study or in reporting. To enhance the critical appraisal on articles on diagnostic tests we discuss various measures of test accuracy: sensitivity, specificity, receiver operating characteristic curves, positive and negative predictive values, likelihood ratios, pretest probability, posttest probability, and diagnostic odds ratio. Conclusions: We suggest the following minimal requirements for reporting on the diagnostic accuracy of tests: a plot of the raw data, multilevel likelihood ratios, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, and the cutoff yielding the highest discriminative ability. For critical appraisal it is mandatory to report confidence intervals for each of these measures. Moreover, to allow comparison to the readers' patient population authors should provide data on study population characteristics, in particular on the spectrum of diseases and illness severit

Frontiers in the expansion of bioproducts

[no abstract available

JUMPSAT: Qualifying three equipments in the CubeSat mission

JUMPSAT is a 3-Unit CubeSat mission expected for launch in 2017. It is a collaborative project involving the French research institutes CNES and ONERA as well as two universities, the Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace and TELECOM Bretagne. The main mission objectives are the technological verification of both the three-axis attitude control system as well as the verification of two embedded payloads: A low cost Star Tracker developed by ISAE-Supaero for future small satellite missions and a directional radiation sensor for precise mapping of the Earth radiation belt. This article focuses on the mission concept and the status of the mission design in fall 2013. Main mission parameters are introduced, with emphases on the characteristic properties of the Jumpsat mission, as for example the choice of a sun-synchronous elliptical low-Earth Orbit, which is necessary to be in compliance with the payload requirements and at the same time to ensure space debris prevention. Furthermore, due to the limited observation time of a polar satellite, it was decided to utilize a distributed ground station network on S-band frequency for ensuring the necessary communication bandwidth for up- and downlink. The space segment will be equipped with deployable solar panels for improving the thermal and power budget of the overall system. Finally, a brief overview of the specifications and design of the attitude control system and both payloads are also given in the article

Total synthesis of decarboxyaltenusin

The total synthesis of decarboxyaltenusin (5’-methoxy-6-methyl-[1,1’-biphenyl]-3,3’,4-triol), a toxin produced by various mold fungi, has been achieved in seven steps in a yield of 31% starting from 4-methylcatechol and 1-bromo-3,5-dimethoxybenzene, where the longest linear sequence consists of five steps. The key reaction was a palladium-catalyzed Suzuki coupling of an aromatic boronate with a brominated resorcin derivative

Microstructured blood vessel surrogates reveal structural tropism of motile malaria parasites

Plasmodium sporozoites, the highly motile forms of the malaria parasite, are transmitted naturally by mosquitoes and traverse the skin to find, associate with, and enter blood capillaries. Research aimed at understanding how sporozoites select blood vessels is hampered by the lack of a suitable experimental system. Arrays of uniform cylindrical pillars can be used to study small cells moving in controlled environments. Here, an array system displaying a variety of pillars with different diameters and shapes is developed in order to investigate how Plasmodium sporozoites associate to the pillars as blood vessel surrogates. Investigating the association of sporozoites to pillars in arrays displaying pillars of different diameters reveals that the crescent-shaped parasites prefer to associate with and migrate around pillars with a similar curvature. This suggests that after transmission by a mosquito, malaria parasites may use a structural tropism to recognize blood capillaries in the dermis in order to gain access to the blood stream

Intensification of Kinetic Studies for a Multi-step Reaction in a Milli-structured Plate Reactor by using Model-based Design of Experiments

In the context of process intensification, milli-structured plate reactors provide significant advantages over conventional reactors in terms of heat and mass transfer as well as process safety. The ART® plate reactor PR37 of Ehrfeld Mikrotechnik GmbH offers excellent heat transfer, narrow residence time distributions and high mixing efficiency, while simultaneously allowing an effective scale-up to industrial applications due to its modular set up. This does not only enable the realization of novel process windows exceeding the limits of conventional reactors, but also provides optimal prerequisites for kinetic modelling due to the well-defined process conditions, providing key information regarding process design and optimization. The integration of the ART PR37 with Model-based Design of Experiments (MBDoE) allows for an intensification of kinetic studies, combining the well-defined operating conditions with a rapid and targeted identification of kinetic models. In the current study this combination is applied to successfully identify the kinetics of a multi-step aromatic nucleophilic substitution reaction with low experimental effort, saving time and resources compared to conventional factorial Design of Experiments

Field effect enhancement in buffered quantum nanowire networks

III-V semiconductor nanowires have shown great potential in various quantum transport experiments. However, realizing a scalable high-quality nanowire-based platform that could lead to quantum information applications has been challenging. Here, we study the potential of selective area growth by molecular beam epitaxy of InAs nanowire networks grown on GaAs-based buffer layers. The buffered geometry allows for substantial elastic strain relaxation and a strong enhancement of field effect mobility. We show that the networks possess strong spin-orbit interaction and long phase coherence lengths with a temperature dependence indicating ballistic transport. With these findings, and the compatibility of the growth method with hybrid epitaxy, we conclude that the material platform fulfills the requirements for a wide range of quantum experiments and applications