161 research outputs found

    Exploring the effects of contextual factors on home lighting experience

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    Background Although lighting increasingly penetrates our everyday life due to technology advancement, little is known about how people interact with lighting and how contextual factors impact on the experience. Thus, this study attempted to reveal how two contextual factors (the level of concentration required for pleasant lighting use and social interaction) could influence the manipulation of lighting parameters, particularly focusing on the major factors of lighting such as illuminance, color temperature, and hue. Methods To understand of the interaction between contextual factors and lighting variables, an experiment was conducted. 10 singles and 10 couples had to manipulate lighting variables such as intensity and colorin five everyday situations for pleasant lighting experience. Results The result of the experiment showed that illuminance, color temperature and hue are influenced by the degree of concentration, but only partially influenced by social factors. The findings could provide a better understanding of manipulating lighting variables in terms of use context with design practitioners. Conclusions The overall findings of the study indicate that illuminance, color temperature, and hue are significantly dependent upon the level of concentration required in at-home lighting use, and also have only a partial dependence on social effect. This implies that although we assumed that people have their personal lighting preferences, their preferences can be largely dependent on the degree of concentration required for at-home pleasant lighting use. Hence, there are common patterns among people in manipulating lighting parameters, which are less dependent on personal differences. © Archives of Design Researc

    Blessed Virgin Mary – a sign of hope in Roman liturgy

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    Među naslovima kojima Crkva u liturgiji časti Blaženu Djevicu Mariju nalaze se i nazivi koji Mariju oslovljavaju kao znak, zoru i majku nade. U glavnom dijelu članka autor propitkuje primjenu tih naziva u euharistijskim slavljima i u molitvi Časoslova, konkretno u Gospinim blagdanima Bezgrješnoga začeća, Marijina rođenja i uznesenja, Marije Kraljice, zajedničkim slavljima Blažene Djevice Marije i molitvi Zdravo Kraljice. Kratak tumač objašnjava liturgijsku upotrebu tih naziva i u Zbirci misa o Blaženoj Djevici Mariji i u slavljima sv. Marije u subotu. U zaključku se naglašava činjenica kako novo usmjerenje crkvenog učenja o Isusovoj majci odlučno utječe na oblikovanje liturgijskih tekstova za marijanska spomenslavlja dajući im kristološko i ekleziološko usmjerenje.Among the titles with which the Church praises the Blessed Virgin Mary in Roman liturgy are also the appellations of Mary such as a sign of hope, the dawn of hope and the mother of hope. In the main part, the author discusses the use of these names in Eucharistic celebrations and in the Divine Office, precisely in the Feasts of the Immaculate Conception, the Marian Birth and Assumption, Queen Mary and in the common celebrations of the Blessed Virgin Mary as well as in the Prayer Salve Regina. A brief display and interpretation explain the liturgical use of these names in the collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary and in the celebration of St. Mary on Saturday. The conclusion underlines the fact that a new orientation of the Church’s teachings about Jesus’ Mother decisively influences the formulation and proposal of liturgical texts for the Marian celebrations, giving them a Christological and Ecclesiological character

    A gene pattern mining algorithm using interchangeable gene sets for prokaryotes

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    <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mining gene patterns that are common to multiple genomes is an important biological problem, which can lead us to novel biological insights. When family classification of genes is available, this problem is similar to the pattern mining problem in the data mining community. However, when family classification information is not available, mining gene patterns is a challenging problem. There are several well developed algorithms for predicting gene patterns in a pair of genomes, such as FISH and DAGchainer. These algorithms use the optimization problem formulation which is solved using the dynamic programming technique. Unfortunately, extending these algorithms to multiple genome cases is not trivial due to the rapid increase in time and space complexity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for mining gene patterns in more than two prokaryote genomes using interchangeable sets. The basic idea is to extend the pattern mining technique from the data mining community to handle the situation where family classification information is not available using interchangeable sets. In an experiment with four newly sequenced genomes (where the gene annotation is unavailable), we show that the gene pattern can capture important biological information. To examine the effectiveness of gene patterns further, we propose an ortholog prediction method based on our gene pattern mining algorithm and compare our method to the bi-directional best hit (BBH) technique in terms of COG orthologous gene classification information. The experiment show that our algorithm achieves a 3% increase in recall compared to BBH without sacrificing the precision of ortholog detection.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The discovered gene patterns can be used for the detecting of ortholog and genes that collaborate for a common biological function.</p

    An interactive retrieval system for clinical trial studies with context-dependent protocol elements.

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    A well-defined protocol for a clinical trial guarantees a successful outcome report. When designing the protocol, most researchers refer to electronic databases and extract protocol elements using a keyword search. However, state-of-the-art database systems only offer text-based searches for user-entered keywords. In this study, we present a database system with a context-dependent and protocol-element-selection function for successfully designing a clinical trial protocol. To do this, we first introduce a database for a protocol retrieval system constructed from individual protocol data extracted from 184,634 clinical trials and 13,210 frame structures of clinical trial protocols. The database contains a variety of semantic information that allows the filtering of protocols during the search operation. Based on the database, we developed a web application called the clinical trial protocol database system (CLIPS; available at https://corus.kaist.edu/clips). This system enables an interactive search by utilizing protocol elements. To enable an interactive search for combinations of protocol elements, CLIPS provides optional next element selection according to the previous element in the form of a connected tree. The validation results show that our method achieves better performance than that of existing databases in predicting phenotypic features

    Redox Regulation Facilitates Optimal Peptide Selection by MHC Class I during Antigen Processing

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    SummaryActivated CD8+ T cells discriminate infected and tumor cells from normal self by recognizing MHC class I-bound peptides on the surface of antigen-presenting cells. The mechanism by which MHC class I molecules select optimal peptides against a background of prevailing suboptimal peptides and in a considerably proteolytic ER environment remained unknown. Here, we identify protein disulfide isomerase (PDI), an enzyme critical to the formation of correct disulfide bonds in proteins, as a component of the peptide-loading complex. We show that PDI stabilizes a peptide-receptive site by regulating the oxidation state of the disulfide bond in the MHC peptide-binding groove, a function that is essential for selecting optimal peptides. Furthermore, we demonstrate that human cytomegalovirus US3 protein inhibits CD8+ T cell recognition by mediating PDI degradation, verifying the functional relevance of PDI-catalyzed peptide editing in controlling intracellular pathogens. These results establish a link between thiol-based redox regulation and antigen processing

    Determination of risk factors associated with surgical site infection in patients undergoing preperitoneal pelvic packing for unstable pelvic fracture

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    Background Several recent studies have shown that preperitoneal pelvic packing (PPP) effectively produces hemostasis in patients with unstable pelvic fractures. However, few studies have examined the rate of surgical site infections (SSIs) in patients undergoing PPP following an unstable pelvic fracture. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate factors associated with SSI in such patients. Methods We retrospectively reviewed the medical charts of 188 patients who developed hemorrhagic shock due to pelvic fracture between April 2012 and May 2021. Forty-four patients were enrolled in this study. Results SSI occurred in 15 of 44 patients (34.1%). The SSIs occurred more frequently in cases of repacking during the second-look surgery (0 vs. 4 [26.7%], P=0.010) and combined bladder-urethra injury (1 [3.4%] vs. 4 [26.7%], P=0.039). The incidence of SSIs was not significantly different between patients undergoing depacking within or after 48 hours (12 [41.4%] vs. 5 [33.3%], P=0.603). The mean time to diagnosis of SSI was 8.1±3.9 days from PPP. The most isolated organism was Staphylococcus epidermidis. Conclusions Repacking and combined bladder-urethra injury are potential risk factors for SSI in patients with unstable pelvic fracture. Close observation is recommended for up to 8 days in patients with these risk factors. Further, 48 hours after PPP, removing the packed gauze on cessation of bleeding and not performing repacking can help prevent SSI. Additional analyses are necessary with a larger number of patients with the potential risk factors identified in this study

    Determination of Risk Factors for Predicting Bladder-Urethra Injury in Cases of Pelvic Bone Fracture: A Retrospective Single Center Study

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    Purpose Pelvis fractures are associated with bladder and urethral injury (BUI). The purpose of this study was to identify risk factors associated with BUI in patients with pelvic fracture. Methods Patients (> 18 years) with pelvic injury (N = 314) at our hospital between January 2015 and June 2020 were retrospectively analyzed for age, sex, cause of injury, initial vital signs, urine red blood cell (RBC) count, Glasgow Coma Scale and Abbreviated Injury Scale score, Injury Severity Score, preperitoneal pelvic packing, and femur, lumbar spine, and pelvic fractures. Results Compared with the BUI-absent group, the BUI-present group had a greater percentage of patients who were male (79.2% vs. 55.9%; p = 0.026), had a urine RBC count/high power field (HPF) ≥ 30 (94.4% vs. 38.8%; p < 0.001), underwent preperitoneal pelvic packing (37.5% vs. 18.6%; p = 0.035), had symphysis pubis diastasis (33.3% vs. 11.7%; p = 0.008), and had sacroiliac joint dislocation (54.2% vs. 23.4%; p = 0.001). Independent risk factors associated with BUI were symphysis pubis diastasis [odds ratio (OR) was 3.958 (95% confidence interval: 1.191–13.154); p = 0.025] and a urine RBC count/HPF ≥ 30 [OR = 25.415 (95% confidence interval: 3.252–198.637); p = 0.006]. Of those with BUI, 15 patients were diagnosed at the trauma bay, and 9 had a delayed diagnosis. Conclusion Patients with pelvic injury who display symphysis pubis diastasis or have a urine RBC count/HPF ≥ 30 are at higher risk of BUI, therefore, further BUI investigations should be considered

    ComPath: comparative enzyme analysis and annotation in pathway/subsystem contexts

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    <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Once a new genome is sequenced, one of the important questions is to determine the presence and absence of biological pathways. Analysis of biological pathways in a genome is a complicated task since a number of biological entities are involved in pathways and biological pathways in different organisms are not identical. Computational pathway identification and analysis thus involves a number of computational tools and databases and typically done in comparison with pathways in other organisms. This computational requirement is much beyond the capability of biologists, so information systems for reconstructing, annotating, and analyzing biological pathways are much needed. We introduce a new comparative pathway analysis workbench, ComPath, which integrates various resources and computational tools using an interactive spreadsheet-style web interface for reliable pathway analyses.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>ComPath allows users to compare biological pathways in multiple genomes using a spreadsheet style web interface where various sequence-based analysis can be performed either to compare enzymes (e.g. sequence clustering) and pathways (e.g. pathway hole identification), to search a genome for <it>de novo </it>prediction of enzymes, or to annotate a genome in comparison with reference genomes of choice. To fill in pathway holes or make <it>de novo </it>enzyme predictions, multiple computational methods such as FASTA, Whole-HMM, CSR-HMM (a method of our own introduced in this paper), and PDB-domain search are integrated in ComPath. Our experiments show that FASTA and CSR-HMM search methods generally outperform Whole-HMM and PDB-domain search methods in terms of sensitivity, but FASTA search performs poorly in terms of specificity, detecting more false positive as E-value cutoff increases. Overall, CSR-HMM search method performs best in terms of both sensitivity and specificity. Gene neighborhood and pathway neighborhood (global network) visualization tools can be used to get context information that is complementary to conventional KEGG map representation.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>ComPath is an interactive workbench for pathway reconstruction, annotation, and analysis where experts can perform various sequence, domain, context analysis, using an intuitive and interactive spreadsheet-style interface. </p
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