Design and development of a pole climbing surveillance robot

The cost of installing, monitoring and servicing a fixed camera system can be high and not all areas are in need of constant surveying. The increase in crime in urban areas emphasizes the need for a more effective and efficient surveillance system, as a result could lead to fewer crimes. A temporary surveillance unit which is able to climb to gain an elevated view has great potential for both military and civilian application. This paper highlights how the patent pending climbing robotic system (PC-101) was developed to be used by London’s Metropolitan Police Forensic Department for analysing outdoor crime scenes especially that related to car accidents. When cars are involved in accidents in the Metropolitan area, depending on the scale of the incident, the road generally has to be shut off to traffic if there are serious casualties. Elevated images are required for cases which may be taken to court, which then the images are then used as evidence, therefore regulations on the quality and perspectives of the image have to be met. By climbing a range of existing street furniture such as street lamp post, a temporary platform eliminates the use of larger special vehicle which struggles to get to the crime scene as well as cuts down the duration of the road closure. 98% of London street lamps in the Metropolitan area are constructed out of steel structures which make the use of magnetic wheels for locomotion an ideal solution to the climbing problem. Once remote controlled to the top of the lamp post, the PC-101 makes use of its actuated camera arm/gimbal to take the required shot, which can be seen on the ground control unit. A surveillance tool of this sort can be used for many applications which include crowd/riot control, crime scene investigations, monitoring hostile environments and even the monitoring of nature within urban environment

Remarks on the diachronic reconstruction of intonational patterns in Romance with special attention to Occitan as a bridge language

This paper approaches Romance intonation from a diachronic point of view. The position that is adopted is that this is an area open to investigation. Comparative techniques can be fruitfully employed for investigating the evolution and diversification of the intonational patterns of the Romance languages. The focus of the paper is on Occitan. This is an important bridge language whose study may elucidate how French diverged prosodically from the systems found in Ibero and Italo-Romance. It is argued that, since Occitan was retained contrasts in the position of wordaccent (lexical stress), any prosodic features that French shares with Occitan are logically independent from the lack of contrastive accent in French

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No Abstract.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/50314/1/410190427_ftp.pd

Comparing biological markers of Alzheimer\u27s disease across blood fraction and platforms: Comparing apples to oranges

Introduction: This study investigated the comparability of potential Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) biomarkers across blood fractions and assay platforms. Methods: Nonfasting serum and plasma samples from 300 participants (150 AD patients and 150 controls) were analyzed. Proteomic markers were obtained via electrochemiluminescence or Luminex technology. Comparisons were conducted via Pearson correlations. The relative importance of proteins within an AD diagnostic profile was examined using random forest importance plots. Results: On the Meso Scale Discovery multiplex platform, 10 of the 21 markers shared \u3e50% of the variance across blood fractions (serum amyloid A R2 = 0.99, interleukin (IL)10 R2 = 0.95, fatty acid-binding protein (FABP) R2 = 0.94, I309 R2 = 0.94, IL-5 R2 = 0.94, IL-6 R2 = 0.94, eotaxin3 R2 = 0.91, IL-18 R2 = 0.87, soluble tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 R2 = 0.85, and pancreatic polypeptide R2 = 0.81). When examining protein concentrations across platforms, only five markers shared \u3e50% of the variance (beta 2 microglobulin R2 = 0.92, IL-18 R2 = 0.80, factor VII R2 = 0.78, CRP R2 = 0.74, and FABP R2 = 0.70). Discussion: The current findings highlight the importance of considering blood fractions and assay platforms when searching for AD relevant biomarkers

G2019S mutation in the leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 gene is not associated with multiple system atrophy

Multiple system atrophy (MSA) is characterized clinically by Parkinsonism, cerebellar dysfunction, and autonomic impairment. Multiple mutations in the LRRK2 gene are associated with parkinsonian disorders, and the most common one, the G2019S mutation, has been found in ∼1% of sporadic cases of Parkinsonism. In a well-characterized cohort of 136 subjects with probable MSA and 110 neurologically evaluated control subjects, none carried the G2019S mutation. We conclude that the G2019S mutation in the LRRK2 gene is unlikely to be associated with MSA. © 2007 Movement Disorder SocietyPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/56014/1/21343_ftp.pd

Revisiting Egyptian Foreign Policy towards Israel under Mubarak: From Cold Peace to Strategic Peace

This article is the first academic study of Egyptian foreign policy towards Israel under Hosni Mubarak (1981–2011). It challenges a deeply entrenched conventional wisdom that Egypt pursued a cold-peace foreign policy towards Israel throughout this period. We demonstrate that Egyptian foreign policy towards Israel was dynamic – comprising cold peace (1981–91), a hybrid foreign policy of cold peace and strategic peace (1991–2003), and a pure strategic peace posture (2003–11). We also use the case of Egyptian foreign policy towards Israel as a heuristic to develop a conception of a new type of peace, strategic peace, as an intermediary analytical category between cold and stable peace

Can Genetic Analysis of Putative Blood Alzheimer’s Disease Biomarkers Lead to Identification of Susceptibility Loci?

Although 24 Alzheimer’s disease (AD) risk loci have been reliably identified, a large portion of the predicted heritability for AD remains unexplained. It is expected that additional loci of small effect will be identified with an increased sample size. However, the cost of a significant increase in Case-Control sample size is prohibitive. The current study tests whether exploring the genetic basis of endophenotypes, in this case based on putative blood biomarkers for AD, can accelerate the identification of susceptibility loci using modest sample sizes. Each endophenotype was used as the outcome variable in an independent GWAS. Endophenotypes were based on circulating concentrations of proteins that contributed significantly to a published blood-based predictive algorithm for AD. Endophenotypes included Monocyte Chemoattractant Protein 1 (MCP1), Vascular Cell Adhesion Molecule 1 (VCAM1), Pancreatic Polypeptide (PP), Beta2 Microglobulin (B2M), Factor VII (F7), Adiponectin (ADN) and Tenascin C (TN-C). Across the seven endophenotypes, 47 SNPs were associated with outcome with a p-value ≤1x10-7. Each signal was further characterized with respect to known genetic loci associated with AD. Signals for several endophenotypes were observed in the vicinity of CR1, MS4A6A/MS4A4E, PICALM, CLU, and PTK2B. The strongest signal was observed in association with Factor VII levels and was located within the F7 gene. Additional signals were observed in MAP3K13, ZNF320, ATP9B and TREM1. Conditional regression analyses suggested that the SNPs contributed to variation in protein concentration independent of AD status. The identification of two putatively novel AD loci (in the Factor VII and ATP9B genes), which have not been located in previous studies despite massive sample sizes, highlights the benefits of an endophenotypic approach for resolving the genetic basis for complex diseases. The coincidence of several of the endophenotypic signals with known AD loci may point to novel genetic interactions and should be further investigated

Common genetic variants in the CLDN2 and PRSS1-PRSS2 loci alter risk for alcohol-related and sporadic pancreatitis

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR, and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two significant genome-wide associations identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 (1×10-12) and x-linked CLDN2 (p < 1×10-21) through a two-stage genome-wide study (Stage 1, 676 cases and 4507 controls; Stage 2, 910 cases and 4170 controls). The PRSS1 variant affects susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous (or hemizygous male) CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men – male hemizygous frequency is 0.26, female homozygote is 0.07

BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Model

Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to be able to perform new tasks based on a few demonstrations or natural language instructions. While these capabilities have led to widespread adoption, most LLMs are developed by resource-rich organizations and are frequently kept from the public. As a step towards democratizing this powerful technology, we present BLOOM, a 176B-parameter open-access language model designed and built thanks to a collaboration of hundreds of researchers. BLOOM is a decoder-only Transformer language model that was trained on the ROOTS corpus, a dataset comprising hundreds of sources in 46 natural and 13 programming languages (59 in total). We find that BLOOM achieves competitive performance on a wide variety of benchmarks, with stronger results after undergoing multitask prompted finetuning. To facilitate future research and applications using LLMs, we publicly release our models and code under the Responsible AI License