Flexible Billing for a Personalised Mobile Services Environment

The evolution of network technologies, service types and consumer demands have profound implications for accounting and billing. The application of traditional voice and data accounting methods to the contemporary IP based services of next generation networks have proven too cumbersome and hinder rather than help the process. 3G type services are exhibiting new characteristics that are far removed from their predecessors, leading to new and challenging ways to account for their usage. An alternative mindset is needed when considering the application of accounting principles (mediation, rating and billing) to this new evolution of services. WIT has prototyped a generic ASP based accounting solution that meets some of these emerging requirements. The solution has been trialled in the IST funded AlbatrOSS project. This paper presents a report on the approach used and lessons learned

User profiling for content personalisation in information retrieval

One of the key issues with the overabundance of online information sources is that of finding what is relevant. The key to success for any type of information provider must be the personalisation of content in information retrieval, and this can be achieved through the maintenance of user profiles and the matching of these profiles to content metadata. This paper is concerned with user profiling and its role in content personalisation of information retrieval, and in particular presents a profile model which incorporates user preference information and action history information (representing the user’s previous searches). The benefits and costs of such a model are examined and it is argued that the benefits (including personalisation accuracy, computational costs extensibility and flexibility) far outweigh the costs. The matching of profiles to metadata is also discussed as it fulfils an important role in the personalisation process. Although, the user profile model presented is focused on E-Learning, the general platform could be applied to other areas

UV continuum emission and diagnostics of hydrogen-containing non-equilibrium plasmas

For the first time the emission of the radiative dissociation continuum of the hydrogen molecule ($a^{3}\Sigma_{g}^{+} \to b^{3}\Sigma_{u}^{+}$ electronic transition) is proposed to be used as a source of information for the spectroscopic diagnostics of non-equilibrium plasmas. The detailed analysis of excitation-deactivation kinetics, rate constants of various collisional and radiative transitions and fitting procedures made it possible to develop two new methods of diagnostics of: (1) the ground $X^{1}\Sigma_{g}^{+}$ state vibrational temperature $T_{\text{vib}}$ from the relative intensity distribution, and (2) the rate of electron impact dissociation (d[\mbox{H_{2}}]/dt)_{\text{diss}} from the absolute intensity of the continuum. A known method of determination of $T_{\text{vib}}$ from relative intensities of Fulcher-$\alpha$ bands was seriously corrected and simplified due to the revision of $d \to a$ transition probabilities and cross sections of $d \gets X$ electron impact excitation. General considerations are illustrated with examples of experiments in pure hydrogen capillary-arc and H$_{2}$+Ar microwave discharges.Comment: REVTeX, 25 pages + 12 figures + 9 tables. Phys. Rev. E, eprint replaced because of resubmission to journal after referee's 2nd repor

Pet Rodents and Fatal Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis in Transplant Patients

A unique strain of this virus was traced back to hamsters from an Ohio rodent distribution facility

Evaluation of DNA Methylation Episignatures for Diagnosis and Phenotype Correlations in 42 Mendelian Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

Genetic syndromes frequently present with overlapping clinical features and inconclusive or ambiguous genetic findings which can confound accurate diagnosis and clinical management. An expanding number of genetic syndromes have been shown to have unique genomic DNA methylation patterns (called episignatures ). Peripheral blood episignatures can be used for diagnostic testing as well as for the interpretation of ambiguous genetic test results. We present here an approach to episignature mapping in 42 genetic syndromes, which has allowed the identification of 34 robust disease-specific episignatures. We examine emerging patterns of overlap, as well as similarities and hierarchical relationships across these episignatures, to highlight their key features as they are related to genetic heterogeneity, dosage effect, unaffected carrier status, and incomplete penetrance. We demonstrate the necessity of multiclass modeling for accurate genetic variant classification and show how disease classification using a single episignature at a time can sometimes lead to classification errors in closely related episignatures. We demonstrate the utility of this tool in resolving ambiguous clinical cases and identification of previously undiagnosed cases through mass screening of a large cohort of subjects with developmental delays and congenital anomalies. This study more than doubles the number of published syndromes with DNA methylation episignatures and, most significantly, opens new avenues for accurate diagnosis and clinical assessment in individuals affected by these disorders

Global data on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity and corresponding environmental properties

Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s).Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provided directly by authors, were collated with information on site locations, including coordinates, habitat cover, and soil properties. Datasets were required, at a minimum, to include abundance or biomass of earthworms at a site. Where possible, site-level species lists were included, as well as the abundance and biomass of individual species and ecological groups. This global dataset contains 10,840 sites, with 184 species, from 60 countries and all continents except Antarctica. The data were obtained from 182 published articles, published between 1973 and 2017, and 17 unpublished datasets. Amalgamating data into a single global database will assist researchers in investigating and answering a wide variety of pressing questions, for example, jointly assessing aboveground and belowground biodiversity distributions and drivers of biodiversity change.Peer reviewe

Global data on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity and corresponding environmental properties

Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provided directly by authors, were collated with information on site locations, including coordinates, habitat cover, and soil properties. Datasets were required, at a minimum, to include abundance or biomass of earthworms at a site. Where possible, site-level species lists were included, as well as the abundance and biomass of individual species and ecological groups. This global dataset contains 10,840 sites, with 184 species, from 60 countries and all continents except Antarctica. The data were obtained from 182 published articles, published between 1973 and 2017, and 17 unpublished datasets. Amalgamating data into a single global database will assist researchers in investigating and answering a wide variety of pressing questions, for example, jointly assessing aboveground and belowground biodiversity distributions and drivers of biodiversity change

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio