Design and implementation of a platform for smart connected school buildings

We have designed and implemented a platform that enables monitoring and actuation in multiple buildings, that has been utilised in the context of a research project in Greece, focusing on public school buildings. The Green Mindset project has installed IoT devices in 12 Greek public schools to monitor energy consumption, along with indoor and outdoor environmental parameters. We present the architecture and actual deployment of our system, along with a first set of findings

An IoT-based solution for monitoring a fleet of educational buildings focusing on energy efficiency

Raising awareness among young people and changing their behaviour and habits concerning energy usage iskey to achieving sustained energy saving. Additionally, young people are very sensitive to environmental protection so raising awareness among children is much easier than with any other group of citizens. This work examinesways to create an innovative Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) ecosystem (including web-based, mobile, social and sensing elements) tailored specifically for school environments, taking into account both theusers (faculty, staff, students, parents) and school buildings, thus motivating and supporting young citizenś behavioural change to achieve greater energy efficiency. A mixture of open-source IoT hardware and proprietary platforms on the infrastructure level, are currently being utilized for monitoring a fleet of 18 educational buildings across 3 countries, comprising over 700 IoT monitoring points. Hereon presented is the system's high-level architecture, as well as several aspects of its implementation, related to the application domain of educational building monitoring and energy efficiency. The system is developed based on open-source technologies andservices in order to make it capable of providing open IT-infrastructure and support from different commercial hardware/sensor vendors as well as open-source solutions. The system presented can be used to develop and offer newapp-based solutions that can be used either for educational purposes or for managing the energy efficiency ofthebuilding. The system is replicable and adaptable to settings that may be different than the scenarios envisionedhere (e.g., targeting different climate zones), different IT infrastructures and can be easily extended to accommodate integration with other systems. The overall performance of the system is evaluated in real-world environment in terms of scalability, responsiveness and simplicity

Scenarios for Educational and Game Activities using Internet of Things Data

Raising awareness among young people and changing their behavior and habits concerning energy usage and the environment is key to achieving a sustainable planet. The goal to address the global climate problem requires informing the population on their roles in mitigation actions and adaptation of sustainable behaviors. Addressing climate change and achieve ambitious energy and climate targets requires a change in citizen behavior and consumption practices. IoT sensing and related scenario and practices, which address school children via discovery, gamification, and educational activities, are examined in this paper. Use of seawater sensors in STEM education, that has not previously been addressed, is included in these educational scenaria

Improving Attention-Based Interpretability of Text Classification Transformers

Transformers are widely used in NLP, where they consistently achieve state-of-the-art performance. This is due to their attention-based architecture, which allows them to model rich linguistic relations between words. However, transformers are difficult to interpret. Being able to provide reasoning for its decisions is an important property for a model in domains where human lives are affected, such as hate speech detection and biomedicine. With transformers finding wide use in these fields, the need for interpretability techniques tailored to them arises. The effectiveness of attention-based interpretability techniques for transformers in text classification is studied in this work. Despite concerns about attention-based interpretations in the literature, we show that, with proper setup, attention may be used in such tasks with results comparable to state-of-the-art techniques, while also being faster and friendlier to the environment. We validate our claims with a series of experiments that employ a new feature importance metric.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 6 tables, to be submitted to conferenc

Evaluation of a Novel Anti-Mucin 1 (MUC1) Antibody (PankoMab) as a Potential Diagnostic Tool in Human Ductal Breast Cancer; Comparison with Two Established Antibodies

Aim: PankoMab is a novel antibody that recognizes a tumor-specific epitope of Mucin 1 (MUC1). The aim of this study was the evaluation of PankoMab as a potential diagnostic tool and its comparison with two established antibodies against MUC1 in human ductal breast cancer. Materials and Methods: Breast carcinomas were obtained from 82 patients. MUC1 expression and hormone receptor status were determined by immunohistochemistry of paraffin-embedded material. Results: PankoMab revealed strong correlation to hormone receptor expression. DF3 showed no correlation with grading, lymph node involvement and/or estrogen receptor (ER) expression. In the subgroup of lymph node-positive and ER-negative tumors, we saw a significantly reduced DF3 staining in G3 tumors compared to G2 tumors. VU-4-H5 showed increased staining intensity in correlation with increased grading. In addition, we also identified a significantly higher expression of the VU-4-H5 epitope in lymph node-positive carcinomas compared to carcinomas without lymph node involvement. Conclusion: PankoMab revealed strong correlation to hormone receptor expression in ductal carcinoma of the breast. VU-4-H5 showed increased staining intensity in correlation with increased grading and lymph node involvement. PankoMab and VU-4-H5 staining could be a useful combination in ductal breast cancer prognosis by immunohistochemistry

Zn(II) and Cu(II)-based coordination polymers and metal organic frameworks by the use of 2-pyridyloximes and 1,3,5-benzenetricarboxylic acid.

The simultaneous use of 2-pyridyl oximes (pyridine-2 amidoxime, H2pyaox; 2-methyl pyridyl ketoxime, Hmpko) and 1,3,5-benzenetricarboxylic acid (H3btc) provided access to five new compounds, namely [Zn(H2btc)2(H2pyaox)2]¿2H2O (1¿2H2O), [Zn(Hbtc)(H2pyaox)2]n (2), [Cu(Hbtc)(H2pyaox)]n (3), [Cu(Hbtc)(HmpKo)]n (4) and [Cu2(Hbtc)2(Hmpko)2(H2O)2]¿4H2O (5¿4H2O). Among them, 3 is the first example of a metal-organic framework (MOF) containing H2pyaox. Its framework can be described as a 3-c uninodal net of hcb topology with the layers being parallel to the (1,0,1) plane. Furthermore, 3 is the third reported MOF based on a 2-pyridyl oxime in general. 2 and 4 are new members of a small family of coordination polymers containing an oximic ligand. 1-5 form 3D networks through strong intermolecular interactions. Dc magnetic susceptibility studies were carried out in a crystalline sample of 3 and revealed the presence of weak exchange interactions between the metal centres; the experimental data were fitted to a theoretical model with the fitting parameters being J = −0.16(1) cm−1 and g = 2.085(1). The isotropic g value was also confirmed by electronic paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. Reactivity studies were performed for 3 in the presence of metal ions; the reaction progress was studied and discussed for Fe(NO3)3 by the use of several characterization techniques, including single crystal X-ray crystallography and IR spectroscopy

Evidence of inhibin/activin subunit betaC and betaE synthesis in normal human endometrial tissue

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Inhibins are important regulators of the female reproductive system. Recently, two new inhibin subunits betaC and betaE have been described, although it is unclear if they are synthesized in normal human endometrium.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Samples of human endometrium were obtained from 82 premenopausal, non-pregnant patients undergoing gynecological surgery for benign diseases. Endometrium samples were classified according to anamnestic and histological dating into proliferative (day 1-14, n = 46), early secretory (day 15-22, n = 18) and late secretory phase (day 23-28, n = 18). Immunohistochemical analyses were performed with specific antibodies against inhibin alpha (n = 81) as well as inhibin betaA (n = 82), betaB (n = 82), betaC (n = 74) and betaE (n = 76) subunits. RT-PCR was performed for all inhibin subunits. Correlation was assessed with the Spearman factor to assess the relationship of inhibin-subunits expression within the different endometrial samples.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The novel inhibin betaC and betaE subunits were found in normal human endometrium by immunohistochemical and molecular techniques. Inhibin alpha, betaA, betaB and betaE subunits showed a circadian expression pattern, being more abundant during the late secretory phase than during the proliferative phase. Additionally, a significant correlation between inhibin alpha and all inhibin beta subunits was observed.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The differential expression pattern of the betaC- and betaE-subunits in normal human endometrial tissue suggests that they function in endometrial maturation and blastocyst implantation. However, the precise role of these novel inhibin/activin subunits in human endometrium is unclear and warrants further investigation.</p