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Energy Information Systems: From the Basement to the Boardroom
A significant buildings energy reduction opportunity exists in the office sector, given that this market segment typically is an early adopter of new technology. There is a rising trend towards smart and connected offices through the internet of things (IoT) that provides new opportunities for operational efficiency and environmental sustainability practices. Leading commercial real estate companies have begun to shift from individual building automation systems (BAS) to partially integrated and automated systems such as energy information systems (EIS). In both the United States and India, organizations are seeking operational excellence, enhanced tenant relationships, and topline growth. Hence it is imperative to engage the executives with decision-making power, by tapping into their interest in sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and innovation. This expansion of interest can enable data-driven decisions, strong energy investments, and deeper energy benefits, and would drive innovation in this field. However, none of this would be possible without robust, consistent building energy information to provide visibility across all the levels of decision making, i.e. from the basement where the facilities staff take operational action to the boardroom where the executives make investment decisions.
Price, security, and ease of use remain barriers to the adoption and pervasive use of promising EIS technologies in commercial office buildings. We believe that these barriers can be addressed through the development of ready, simplified, consistent, commercially available, low-cost EIS-in-a-box packages, that have a pre-defined set of hardware components and software features and functionality that are pertinent to a particular building sector. These simplified, sector-specific EIS packages can help to obviate the need for customization, and enhance ease of use, thereby enabling scale-up, in order to facilitate building energy savings. The EIS-in-a-box are adaptable in both U.S. and Indian office buildings, and potentially beyond these two countries
Through a saffron-tinted looking glass: reminiscing, remembering and melancholia. The story of a small Indian South African town: 22 years after apartheid
Apartheid helped create enclaves of safety and familiarity for some communities in South
Africa, making those communities impermeable to outside influences, preserving class,
culture, caste, religion and race into neat little packages. The demise of apartheid broke those
enclaves, changing the landscape of those comfort zones and forcing them to reimagine a
new sense of community. Clutching onto the remnants of this past, yet wanting liberation and
economic change, these communities are fast learning that some things have got to give.
Tongaat, a town constituted like most other South African Indian townships, is one that I grew
up in. This research project is my personal journey in which I recount my own memories of
the town’s culture, caste system and racial divides using the safety net of being an outsider
yet having the privilege of being an insider. Through interviews I investigate if the residents
of the town have taken possession of their new political freedoms since the end of apartheid
from a class, culture, caste, race and economic perspective. I examine the policy interventions
that were introduced in relation to land reform, housing, education and socio-economic
empowerment to enable change on the social front. Have these interventions impacted on
the lives of the towns inhabitants and what is the future of Tongaat?XL201
A Joint Graph and Image Convolution Network for Automatic Brain Tumor Segmentation
We present a joint graph convolution-image convolution neural network as our
submission to the Brain Tumor Segmentation (BraTS) 2021 challenge. We model
each brain as a graph composed of distinct image regions, which is initially
segmented by a graph neural network (GNN). Subsequently, the tumorous volume
identified by the GNN is further refined by a simple (voxel) convolutional
neural network (CNN), which produces the final segmentation. This approach
captures both global brain feature interactions via the graphical
representation and local image details through the use of convolutional
filters. We find that the GNN component by itself can effectively identify and
segment the brain tumors. The addition of the CNN further improves the median
performance of the model by 2 percent across all metrics evaluated. On the
validation set, our joint GNN-CNN model achieves mean Dice scores of 0.89,
0.81, 0.73 and mean Hausdorff distances (95th percentile) of 6.8, 12.6, 28.2mm
on the whole tumor, core tumor, and enhancing tumor, respectively.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, submitted to BrainLes Workshop (MICCAI 2021) as
part of BraTS2021 challeng
Perioperative health care provider safety and resource availability during the COVID-19 pandemic in India and other low middle-income countries
Acknowledgments We would like to acknowledge John E. Varallo, Adesoji O. Ademuyiwa, Nina Capo-Chichi, JC Allen Ingabire, Harrell Shreckengost. Katie Fernandez Dr. Faye Evans Dr. T. Weiser and Sophallyda Krouch for their contributions to language translations, survey distribution and data collection.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Lm-LLO-Based Immunotherapies and HPV-Associated Disease
HPV infection is a direct cause of neoplasia and malignancy. Cellular immunologic activity against cells expressing HPV E6 and E7 is sufficient to eliminate the presence of dysplastic or neoplastic tissue driven by HPV infection. Live attenuated Listeria monocytogenes- (Lm-) based immunotherapy (ADXS11-001) has been developed for the treatment of HPV-associated diseases. ADXS11-001 secretes an antigen-adjuvant fusion (Lm-LLO) protein consisting of a truncated fragment of the Lm protein listeriolysin O (LLO) fused to HPV-16 E7. In preclinical models, this construct has been found to stimulate immune responses and affect therapeutic outcome. ADXS11-001 is currently being evaluated in Phase 2 clinical trials for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, cervical cancer, and HPV-positive head and neck cancer. The use of a live attenuated bacterium is a more complex and complete method of cancer immunotherapy, as over millennia Lm has evolved to infect humans and humans have evolved to prevent and reject this infection over millennia. This evolution has resulted in profound pathogen-associated immune mechanisms which are genetically conserved, highly efficacious, resistant to tolerance, and can be uniquely invoked using this novel platform technology
C-Reactive protein and risk of ESRD: results from the Trial to Reduce Cardiovascular Events With Aranesp Therapy (TREAT)
Background:
To better understand a potential association of elevated C-reactive protein (CRP) level with progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD), we examined the relationship of CRP level with the development of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in the Trial to Reduce Cardiovascular Events With Aranesp Therapy (TREAT).
Study Design
Post hoc analysis of a randomized controlled trial.
Setting & Participants:
4,038 patients with type 2 diabetes, CKD, and anemia in TREAT.
Predictor:
Baseline serum CRP concentrations.
Outcomes:
The primary outcome was development of ESRD; secondary outcomes included doubling of serum creatinine level, a composite of ESRD/serum creatinine doubling, and a composite of death or ESRD.
Measurements:
We fit unadjusted and adjusted Cox regression models to test the association of baseline CRP level with time to the development of the outcomes of interest.
Results:
Mean age of participants was 67 years, 43% were men, and 64% were white. Approximately half (48%) the patients had CRP levels > 3.0 mg/L; 668 patients developed ESRD, and 1,270 developed the composite outcome of death or ESRD. Compared with patients with baseline CRP levels ≤ 3.0 mg/L, those with moderately/markedly elevated CRP levels (≥6.9 mg/L; 24% of patients) had a higher adjusted risk for ESRD (HR, 1.32; 95% CI, 1.07-1.63) and the composite outcome of death or ESRD (HR, 1.41; 95% CI, 1.21-1.64). Although nonsignificant, similar trends were noted in competing-risk models.
Limitations:
Results may not be generalizable to nondiabetic CKD or diabetic CKD in the absence of anemia.
Conclusions:
Elevated baseline CRP levels are common in type 2 diabetic patients with anemia and CKD and are associated with the future development of ESRD and the composite of death or ESRD
Clinical potential of sensory neurites in the heart and their role in decision-making
The process of decision-making is quite complex involving different aspects of logic, emotion, and intuition. The process of decision-making can be summarized as choosing the best alternative among a given plethora of options in order to achieve the desired outcome. This requires establishing numerous neural networks between various factors associated with the decision and creation of possible combinations and speculating their possible outcomes. In a nutshell, it is a highly coordinated process consuming the majority of the brain’s energy. It has been found that the heart comprises an intrinsic neural system that contributes not only to the decision-making process but also the short-term and long-term memory. There are approximately 40,000 cells present in the heart known as sensory neurites which play a vital role in memory transfer. The heart is quite a mysterious organ, which functions as a blood-pumping machine and an endocrine gland, as well as possesses a nervous system. There are multiple factors that affect this heart ecosystem, and they directly affect our decision-making capabilities. These interlinked relationships hint toward the sensory neurites which modulate cognition and mood regulation. This review article aims to provide deeper insights into the various roles played by sensory neurites in decision-making and other cognitive functions. The article highlights the pivotal role of sensory neurites in the numerous brain functions, and it also meticulously discusses the mechanisms through which they modulate their effects
Anti-PD-1 antibody significantly increases therapeutic efficacy of Listeria monocytogenes (Lm)-LLO immunotherapy
This work was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the Center for Cancer Research, NCI, NIH, Georgia Regents University Cancer Center (GRUCC) and Advaxis Inc. RAE is supported by a Fellowship Grant from King Hussein Institute for Biotechnology and Cancer (KHIBC, Jordan).Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Perioperative provider safety in the pandemic : Development, implementation and evaluation of an adjunct COVID-19 Surgical Patient Checklist
We would like to acknowledge Eliana Lillevik, Luciano Barbosa, Daniela Farchi, Dr Laila Woc-Colburn, Dr Gustavo Moraes, Suko Dwi Nugroho, Nguyen Tri Dung, Dr Rong Hu, Priya Desai and Senait Bitew for their contributions to language translations, survey distribution and data collection. Funding The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article: NS received salary support during the conduct of this study from NIH Fogarty International Center (Global Health Equity Scholars NIH FIC D43TW010540).Peer reviewedPublisher PD
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