Automatic rebooking of hotels using virtual assistants

Hotel prices fluctuate based on demand and supply. Hotel bookings are often refundable if cancelled. A user with a refundable hotel reservation can therefore cancel and rebook the hotel if the price drops. Currently, such cancellation and rebooking requires a user to keep track of hotel prices and rebook upon detecting a drop in the price, e.g., from that paid by the user. This disclosure describes an automated method to monitor hotel prices after a refundable booking is made and automatically take action upon detection of a price drop

Using Unlock Codes Associated with a User Profile to Access Applications

This publication describes systems and techniques directed to using unlock codes associated with a user profile to access applications that are available to a user device. As part of the systems and techniques, a profile manager application manages a user profile that governs access to the applications and associates an unlock code to the user profile. The user profile may be associated with a group of users or an individual user and may be configured through an interface of the user device, pre-determined based on a class of user, or retrieved from an existing account with a service provider that provides applications to the user device

Location specific assistance based on geofencing

Digital assistant and bots serve users by providing suitable information and services. However, users may sometimes require specific information or services, e.g., that are offered exclusively by a third party, that current digital personal assistants cannot provide. For example, specific providers can offer services at or near geographic locations. Techniques described herein permit a digital assistant to provide users such specialized services by integration with third party providers. Third party providers for a particular location are selected, e.g., via an auction to provide assistance within a geofence, or other mechanisms. Such auctions can also be conducted in real-time in response to user queries. The digital personal assistant platform then offloads suitable user queries within the geofence to the selected third-party provider. The third-party provider responds to the user query within the digital assistant platform

Personalized and contextual product related assistance

Installation and troubleshooting of products such as appliances, IoT devices, computing devices, etc. can be difficult and cumbersome. This disclosure describes techniques to provide product installation, troubleshooting and support guidance to users. The techniques can be implemented as part of a virtual assistant. With user permission and express consent, the virtual assistant obtains information regarding products that a user owns or is interested in, e.g., based on online purchases, email, user search queries, etc. The virtual assistant extract information from available sources, e.g., product manuals, and transforms such information into a user-friendly format, e.g., step-by-step guidance. Upon receiving a user query about a product, the virtual assistant provides responses suited to the user context, e.g., set up of a new device, troubleshooting a device, providing maintenance reminders, etc

Combined timeline and event detection for Internet of Things (IoT) data feeds

Different Internet of Things (IoT) devices capture data relevant to respective functions and transmit such data over the Internet such that it can be stored and accessed by the user. Typically, such data access is limited to the respective single IoT device. Examining data from multiple IoT devices requires the user to check the data feed from each device separately. This disclosure describes techniques to combine data feeds from multiple IoT devices and sensors to generate a single combined data timeline with the user’s permission. The timeline is processed and filtered via smart algorithms to derive and mark events of likely interest to the user. Interactive user interfaces are provided for the user to query and obtain relevant information of interest from the combined event timeline. Such user interfaces can be provided via, e.g., a virtual assistant, a web browsers, a mobile app, etc

Analyzing Regrettable Communications on Twitter: Characterizing Deleted Tweets and Their Authors

Over 500 million tweets are posted in Twitter each day, out of which about 11% tweets are deleted by the users posting them. This phenomenon of widespread deletion of tweets leads to a number of questions: what kind of content posted by users makes them want to delete them later? %Are all users equally active in deleting their tweets or Are users of certain predispositions more likely to post regrettable tweets, deleting them later? In this paper we provide a detailed characterization of tweets posted and then later deleted by their authors. We collected tweets from over 200 thousand Twitter users during a period of four weeks. Our characterization shows significant personality differences between users who delete their tweets and those who do not. We find that users who delete their tweets are more likely to be extroverted and neurotic while being less conscientious. Also, we find that deleted tweets while containing less information and being less conversational, contain significant indications of regrettable content. Since users of online communication do not have instant social cues (like listener's body language) to gauge the impact of their words, they are often delayed in employing repair strategies. Finally, we build a classifier which takes textual, contextual, as well as user features to predict if a tweet will be deleted or not. The classifier achieves a F1-score of 0.78 and the precision increases when we consider response features of the tweets

Imeglimin: Finding a Place in Modern Diabetes Pharmacotherapeutics

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a multifactorial disease. Newer facets of its causation, clinical course, complications and therapy are being unraveled regularly. This editorial describes imeglimin, a first-of-class oxidative phosphorylation inhibitor, that has been approved for T2DM in Japan and India

Prediabetes: A Platform for Prevention of Diabetes

Editoria

Glycemic Guardianship: World Health Organization Leads the Way

The prevalence of diabetes is rapidly increasing globally in epidemic proportions, but many people with diabetes remain undiagnosed or untreated. In view of this escalating prevalence, the World Health Organization (WHO) has launched the Global Diabetes Compact (GDC) campaign to improve the diagnosis and management of people with diabetes. To this end, a set of diabetes coverage targets, focusing on 80% of people living with diabetes, to be achieved by the year 2030, were defined at the 75th World Health Assembly for the first time in May this year. These targets aim to achieve not just glycemic control, but also blood pressure and lipid management at all levels of the health care system. India has the second largest number of people with diabetes in the globe. In this article, we have proposed the concept of “glycemic guardianship”, which means activities carried out by the health care team and the health care system in partnership with the patient to ensure optimal care of diabetes. Recognizing and acknowledging our role as “glycemic guardians” of the nation will automatically pave the way to realize the targets set by the GDC