A Natural Language Query Interface for Searching Personal Information on Smartwatches

Currently, personal assistant systems, run on smartphones and use natural language interfaces. However, these systems rely mostly on the web for finding information. Mobile and wearable devices can collect an enormous amount of contextual personal data such as sleep and physical activities. These information objects and their applications are known as quantified-self, mobile health or personal informatics, and they can be used to provide a deeper insight into our behavior. To our knowledge, existing personal assistant systems do not support all types of quantified-self queries. In response to this, we have undertaken a user study to analyze a set of “textual questions/queries” that users have used to search their quantified-self or mobile health data. Through analyzing these questions, we have constructed a light-weight natural language based query interface - including a text parser algorithm and a user interface - to process the users’ queries that have been used for searching quantified-self information. This query interface has been designed to operate on small devices, i.e. smartwatches, as well as augmenting the personal assistant systems by allowing them to process end users’ natural language queries about their quantified-self data

Impaired IL-23-dependent induction of IFN-gamma underlies mycobacterial disease in patients with inherited TYK2 deficiency

Human cells homozygous for rare loss-of-expression (LOE) TYK2 alleles have impaired, but not abolished, cellular responses to IFN-alpha/beta (underlying viral diseases in the patients) and to IL-12 and IL-23 (underlying mycobacterial diseases). Cells homozygous for the common P1104A TYK2 allele have selectively impaired responses to IL-23 (underlying isolated mycobacterial disease). We report three new forms of TYK2 deficiency in six patients from five families homozygous for rare TYK2 alleles (R864C, G996R, G634E, or G1010D) or compound heterozygous for P1104A and a rare allele (A928V). All these missense alleles encode detectable proteins. The R864C and G1010D alleles are hypomorphic and loss-of-function (LOF), respectively, across signaling pathways. By contrast, hypomorphic G996R, G634E, and A928V mutations selectively impair responses to IL-23, like P1104A. Impairment of the IL-23-dependent induction of IFN-gamma is the only mechanism of mycobacterial disease common to patients with complete TYK2 deficiency with or without TYK2 expression, partial TYK2 deficiency across signaling pathways, or rare or common partial TYK2 deficiency specific for IL-23 signaling.ANRS Nord-Sud ; CIBSS ; CODI ; Comité para el Desarrollo de la Investigación ; Fulbright Future Scholarshi

A stabilising control strategy for Cyber-Physical Power Systems

The cyber-physical nature of electric power systems has increased immensely over the last decades, with advanced communication infrastructure paving the way. It is now possible to design wide-area controllers, relying on remote monitor and control of devices, that can tackle power system stability problems more effectively than local controllers. However, their performance and security relies extensively on the communication infrastructure and can make power systems vulnerable to disturbances emerging on the cyber side of the system. In this paper, we investigate the effect of communication delays on the performance of wide-area damping controllers (WADC) designed to stabilise oscillatory modes in a Cyber-Physical Power System (CPPS). We propose a rule-based control strategy that combines wide-area and traditional local stabilising controllers to increase the performance and maintain the stable operation of CPPS. The proposed strategy is validated on a reduced CPPS equivalent model of Great-Britain (GB)

Atropine premedication and the cardiovascular response following electroconvulsive therapy

Background: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a useful non-pharmacologic tool for treating major depression and other neurologic disorders. However, it may lead to bradycardia and consequently to tachycardia and hypertension. Atropine is considered as premedication of choice. We have studied the cardiovascular response following the ECT procedure. Materials and Methods: 80 patients had entered this double-blinded clinical trial. Patients were randomly assigned in either case or control. The case group was intravenously given 0.5mg atropine before the anesthesia induction, however, the control group received 1ml normal saline. Blood pressure and heart rate were monitored 1 minute after the induction and at minutes 1, 3 and 5 after ECT. Results: The case and control groups were composed of 31 males and 9 females. The mean age of case and control group was 35.3±7.8 and 33±7.6 years, respectively (NS). At minute 3, the mean blood pressure was higher in the case group (P=-0.43). At minutes 1 after induction and 5 after ETC the mean heart rate was faster in the case group (P<0.05). Conclusion: Administration of atropine as a premedication agent may lead to transient hypertension, meanwhile those who haven’t received atropine (Control), had no bradycardia. We don’t suggest atropine as the routine premedication agent before ECT, especially in whom hypodynamic heart, usage of sympathetic inhibitor and previous history of bradycardia following the ECT procedure exist

Detection of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis in Cow Milk Using Culture and PCR methods

Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) is the cause of John’s disease also calledparatuberculosis. This is economically one of the important infectious diseases in cattle and ruminanthusbandry. This disease is manifested as granulomatosis entrocolitis, lymphadenitis and inflammation locallymphatic vessels. The typical sign of this disease is progressive loss of weight. Considering the importanceof detection of this disease in this study, two methods, culture and PCR, were used for the identification ofthis microorganism. In this study 100 milk samples from apparently healthy cows and 100 milk samplesfrom cows that have been suspicious of John’s disease were taken from in Sarab, East Azarbaijan, Iran.Direct microscope observation after ziehl-neelsen staining was done. Then, bacterial culture on specificmedium was carried out, and finally, identification of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis wasexamined using PCR and specific primers. Using direct observation, culture and PCR analyses showed thatfrom 100 healthy cow milk samples, 8, 9 and 12 samples were positive MAP for each method respectively.The results of direct observation, culture and PCR analysis on affected cows were 15, 40 and 44, respectively. The results of this study showed that culture and PCR analyses methods are important in the identification of the causes of this disease. Therefore, considering the frequency of the disease in the studied region, either of those methods can be used in the microorganism identification