An ontological framework for the formal representation and management of human stress knowledge

There is a great deal of information on the topic of human stress which is embedded within numerous papers across various databases. However, this information is stored, retrieved, and used often discretely and dispersedly. As a result, discovery and identification of the links and interrelatedness between different aspects of knowledge on stress is difficult. This restricts the effective search and retrieval of desired information. There is a need to organize this knowledge under a unifying framework, linking and analysing it in mutual combinations so that we can obtain an inclusive view of the related phenomena and new knowledge can emerge. Furthermore, there is a need to establish evidence-based and evolving relationships between the ontology concepts.Previous efforts to classify and organize stress-related phenomena have not been sufficiently inclusive and none of them has considered the use of ontology as an effective facilitating tool for the abovementioned issues.There have also been some research works on the evolution and refinement of ontology concepts and relationships. However, these fail to provide any proposals for an automatic and systematic methodology with the capacity to establish evidence-based/evolving ontology relationships.In response to these needs, we have developed the Human Stress Ontology (HSO), a formal framework which specifies, organizes, and represents the domain knowledge of human stress. This machine-readable knowledge model is likely to help researchers and clinicians find theoretical relationships between different concepts, resulting in a better understanding of the human stress domain and its related areas. The HSO is formalized using OWL language and Protégé tool.With respect to the evolution and evidentiality of ontology relationships in the HSO and other scientific ontologies, we have proposed the Evidence-Based Evolving Ontology (EBEO), a methodology for the refinement and evolution of ontology relationships based on the evidence gleaned from scientific literature. The EBEO is based on the implementation of a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS).Our evaluation results showed that almost all stress-related concepts of the sample articles can be placed under one or more category of the HSO. Nevertheless, there were a number of limitations in this work which need to be addressed in future undertakings.The developed ontology has the potential to be used for different data integration and interoperation purposes in the domain of human stress. It can also be regarded as a foundation for the future development of semantic search engines in the stress domain

Low serum vitamin D is associated with failure of Helicobacter pylori treatment

Background and aims: Helicobacter pylori are the most common gastrointestinal infection worldwide. Determination of contributing factors for successful eradication of Helicobacter pylori is important for better infection control. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the association between serum vitamin D deficiency and Helicobacter pylori eradication rate. Results: The results of this study demonstrated that before-treatment vitamin D level was between 10 and 20 ng/dL in majority of unsuccessful cases (40.4%) and it was more than 30 ng/dL in majority of successful cases (83.7%) showing statistically significant difference (P < 0.001). Conclusion: This study showed a significant association between vitamin D deficiency and Helicobacter pylori eradication and low vitamin D level resulted in failure of treatment; Hence in unsuccessful cases, assessment of vitamin D level and possible supplementation in those with hypovitaminosis D is recommended

Characterization of the role of ICP34.5 and ORF P in the HSV-1 lifecycle

The work carried out in this thesis comprises two main sections: i) characterisation of the role of ICP34.5 and ORF P in HSV-1 replication; and ii) identification of cellular and viral proteins which interact with ORF P. A complication in the analysis of the role of ICP34.5 in the HSV-1 lifecycle is the presence of overlapping antisense genes, ORF O/P, which are also deleted in ICP34.5 negative mutants. In 1991, MacLean, A. et al, isolated 1716, a HSV-1 17+ ICP34.5/ORF O/P deletion mutant. This mutant has been demonstrated to have specific characteristics both in vitro and in vivo. To attribute characteristics which were originally attributed solely to ICP34.5 to each of the genes, a number of HSV-1 recombinant viruses that express ICP34.5 and ORF O/P independently were constructed, purified and characterised. In all recombinant viruses an expression cassette was inserted into the 1716 UL43/UL43.5 locus containing the gene of interest under the control of the HSV-1 gD promoter and b galactosidase in the opposite orientation. Recombinants 1622 and 1625 express ICP34.5 and in both 1624 and 1624.5 ORF P is inserted in UL43 and UL43.5, respectively. Additionally, in 1625 ORF P is inserted in the non essential US5 gene. Western blotting analysis of 1622 and 1625 infected BHK cells demonstrated at least an eight-fold increase in ICP34.5 levels compared to wild type 17+. In the recombinants 1624, 1624.5 and 1625 no ORF P was detected, suggesting that these recombinants express low levels of ORF P, as the rabbit polyclonal sera used exhibited problems of detection with low amounts of ORF P from 17+ but not from the overproducing ts mutant in ICP4, tsK. Also, it is possible that the recombinants do not express ORF P. As we were not able to detect ORF P from our recombinant viruses, we proceeded to look for its RNA. A band with the size expected for ORF P RNA of about 700 bp was detected in 1624, 1624.5 and 1625. The 700 bp ICP34.5 transcript was also detected in 1622

Characteristics and functional properties of green banana flour: An opportunity for functional bread production

The demand for functional food products has led to an increased interest in nutrients such as minerals, vitamins, bioactive compounds, fibre and prebiotics to be present in food formulations. Amongst the prebiotics, Resistant starch (RS) has gained more attention in recent years, due to its acknowledged health benefits such as prevention and control of colon cancer, diabetes, and obesity. Banana, the world’s most favourite fruit, is one of the richest sources of RS at early stages of ripeness, when it is green (unripe). According to some estimates, more than 100 billion bananas are consumed globally each year, with an annual per capita consumption of 20 kg. Green banana pulp is a rich source of essential phytonutrients, phenolic compounds, vitamin B group, ascorbic acid and tocopherols, while the green banana peel is a rich source of minerals, bioactive compounds and dietary fibre (DF) such as pectin, cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin. Considering the nutritional value of both pulp and peel of green bananas, the production of green banana flour (GBF), which can be obtained by proper drying techniques, provides a way to preserve the nutritional benefits and increase the shelf-life of banana nutrients. White bread is the most popular bread type in the world, however, there is a growing research on fortifying bread with an array of different DF and functional compounds to take advantage of bread as a carrier of health benefiting compounds. Very few studies available that considered the effect of the GBF on technological properties, nutritional aspects and volatile fingerprint. The physicochemical and thermal properties of GBF obtained from air oven drying (ODF) at three temperatures (50, 80 and 110 °C) and freeze-drying (FDF) were compared to white wheat flour (WF). Lightness and yellowness were negatively affected by the oven temperature increment. The FDF samples exhibited higher a* and L* values and had the closest browning index to WF (P-value 0.05). While the ODF110 presented the highest pasting temperature (81.23 °C) and breakdown viscosity (7118.67 cp) amongst the GBF samples, ODF50 were the only heat-treated samples that showed similar hold, final and setback viscosity values to those found in the FDF. In terms of mineral contents, all GBF samples had higher concentrations of K, Mg, Ca and Zn compared to the WF which makes GBF as a better source of these nutrients (P-value 20% fortification level was observed. The ODF-fortified samples had higher browning index compared to control and FDF ones. The addition of both GBF types improved macro minerals (Mg, Ca, Na, K and P) without a significant change in micro minerals (Fe, Zn, and Mn). The use of FDF in bread resulted in a marked increase in both resistant and slow digestible starch content in F30 compared to ODF fortified samples at their comparable fortification levels. GC-MS-based chemical fingerprinting successfully detected more than 100 volatile compounds in the GBF fortified bread samples. Chemometrics methods used to compare the effect of GBF type in bread (FDF and ODF-fortified-bread), fortification level (10%, 20% and 30%) and bread part (crumb and crust) on the formation of volatile compounds. Furan (furfural, 2-furanmethanol), Strecker aldehydes (2- methyl butanal and 3-methylbutanal) and ketone (2-undecanone) were the most abundant volatiles in crust while alcohol (1-hexanol and 1-heptanol) and ester (ester butanoic acid ethyl) abundant in the breadcrumb. The level of fortification had a significant impact on the formation of 3-methyl-butanal (P-value < 0.05). Furthermore, bread made with freeze-dried GBF had more distinguished ‘banana-like’ flavour due to the presence of ethyl ester butanoic acid and 2-undecanone, while bread made with ODF represented more Maillard-related compounds which could signify a wood malty aroma impression. It can be concluded that fortification of bread with the GBF achieved from freeze drying had a more desirable results from technological and nutritional points of view. Although between 10% and 20% fortification level there was no clear difference, the 30% bread samples showed a high value nutritious bread with distinctive volatile flavour. Overall, the type of the drying method of GBF preparation had an impact on developing discriminant volatiles compared to bread part and fortification level

Capacity, Error Exponent, and Structural Results for Communication Networks

In various multi-terminal communication scenarios, contrary to point-to-point communication, characterization of fundamental limits such as capacity and error exponent is still an open problem. We study such fundamental limits and the structure of optimality achieving codes. This thesis consists of two parts: in the first part, we investigate the role of algebraic structures in multi-terminal communications. We show the necessity of various types of algebraic structure in capacity achieving codes and argue that the lack of such structures in the conventional random codes leads to their sub-optimality. We develop a new class of partially structured codes called quasi-structured code (QSC). Such codes span the spectrum from completely structured to completely unstructured codes. It is shown that the application of QSCs leads to improvements over the current coding strategies for many problems including distributed source coding and multiple-access channel (MAC) with feedback. In the second part of the thesis, we study the optimal error exponent in various multi-terminal communication scenarios. We derive a lower and upper bound on the error exponent of discrete memoryless MAC with noiseless feedback and variable-length codes (VLCs). The bounds increase linearly with respect to a specific Euclidean distance measure defined between the transmission rate pair and the capacity boundary. The bounds are shown to be tight for specific classes of MACs.PHDElectrical Engineering: SystemsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149959/1/mohsenhd_1.pd

Evidence/Discovery-Based Evolving Ontology (EDBEO)

This paper presents a proposal for the development of an ontology evolution strategy which refines ontological relations in scientific ontologies. In addition to experts’ consensus, it is desirable to define ontological relations between any two concepts in a scientific ontology based on scientific evidence. To address this issue, we can relate ontological relations to different research results obtained from various studies. To implement this solution, our envisaged evidence/discovery-based methodology integrates a higher-level ontology (systematic review ontology) into a systematic review agent which employs a Fuzzy Inference System in order to automatically modifyontological relations of a domain ontology based on the evidence received from information resources. The evidence/discovery-based methodology will further use the domain ontology to discover novel connections between distinct literatures, thereby, enrich its conceptualization

Is Topical Zinc Effective in the Treatment of Melasma? A Double-Blind Randomized Comparative Study

Background and ObjectivesZinc plays a role in skin health, and preliminary data have shown its beneficial effects for melasma. We compared the effect of topical zinc with that of hydroquinone as the standard treatment on severity of melasma. Patients and MethodsNinety-three women with melasma were randomized to receive zinc sulfate 10% or hydroquinone 4% solutions once daily for 2months. They were followed for an additional 3months while using sunscreen. The severity of melasma was assessed at baseline and at 2 and 5months using the Melasma Area and Severity Index (MASI). ResultsEighty-two patients completed the study. The MASI score fell significantly in both groups, but a greater decrease was seen in those who received hydroquinone (43.515.5% vs 18.6 +/- 20.8%, p<.001). Postinflammatory pigmentation occurred in 5.2% of the zinc group and irritation in 30.9% of the hydroquinone group. ConclusionTopical zinc therapy is not highly effective in reducing the severity of melasma, but further trials are needed to determine whether adding zinc to current topical treatments could improve treatment response