Hemodynamic Effects of Anthrax Toxins in the Rabbit Model and the Cardiac Pathology Induced by Lethal Toxin

Anthrax lethal toxin (LeTx) and edema toxin (EdTx) have been shown to alter hemodynamics in the rodent model, while LeTx primarily is reported to induce extensive tissue pathology. However, the rodent model has limitations when used for comparison to higher organisms such as humans. The rabbit model, on the other hand, has gained recognition as a useful model for studying anthrax infection and its pathophysiological effects. In this study, we assessed the hemodynamic effects of lethal toxin (LeTx) and edema toxin (EdTx) in the rabbit model using physiologically relevant amounts of the toxins. Moreover, we further examine the pathological effects of LeTx on cardiac tissue. We intravenously injected Dutch-belted rabbits with either low-dose and high-dose recombinant LeTx or a single dose of EdTx. The animals’ heart rate and mean arterial pressure were continuously monitored via telemetry until either 48 or 72 h post-challenge. Additional animals challenged with LeTx were used for cardiac troponin I (cTnI) quantitation, cardiac histopathology, and echocardiography. LeTx depressed heart rate at the lower dose and mean arterial pressure (MAP) at the higher dose. EdTx, on the other hand, temporarily intensified heart rate while lowering MAP. Both doses of LeTx caused cardiac pathology with the higher dose having a more profound effect. Lastly, left-ventricular dilation due to LeTx was not apparent at the given time-points. Our study demonstrates the hemodynamic effects of anthrax toxins, as well as the pathological effects of LeTx on the heart in the rabbit model, and it provides further evidence for the toxins’ direct impact on the heart

Overcoming establishment thresholds for peat mosses in human-made bog pools

Globally, peatlands have been affected by drainage and peat extraction, with adverse effects on their functioning and services. To restore peat‐forming vegetation, drained bogs are being rewetted on a large scale. Although this practice results in higher groundwater levels, unfortunately it often creates deep lakes in parts where peat was extracted to greater depths than the surroundings. Revegetation of these deeper waters by peat mosses appears to be challenging due to strong abiotic feedbacks that keep these systems in an undesired bare state. In this study, we theoretically explore if a floating peat mat and an open human‐made bog lake can be considered two alternative stable states using a simple model, and experimentally test in the field whether stable states are present, and whether a state shift can be accomplished using floating biodegradable structures that mimic buoyant peat. We transplanted two peat moss species into these structures (pioneer sp. Sphagnum cuspidatum and later‐successional sp. S. palustre) with and without additional organic substrate. Our model suggests that these open human‐made bog lakes and floating peat mats can indeed be regarded as alternative stable states. Natural recovery by spontaneous peat moss growth, i.e., a state shift from open water to floating mats, is only possible when the water table is sufficiently shallow to avoid light limitation (<0.29 m at our site). Our experiment revealed that alternative stable states are present and that the floating structures facilitated the growth of pioneer S. cuspidatum and vascular plants. Organic substrate addition particularly facilitated vascular plant growth, which correlated to higher moss height. The structures remained too wet for the late‐successional species S. palustre. We conclude that open water and floating peat mats in human‐made bog lakes can be considered two alternative stable states, and that temporary floating establishment structures can induce a state shift from the open water state to peat‐forming vegetation state. These findings imply that for successful restoration, there is a clear water depth threshold to enable peat moss growth and there is no need for addition of large amounts of donor‐peat substrate. Correct species selection for restoration is crucial for success

Personalization for unobtrusive service interaction

Increasingly, mobile devices play a key role in the communication between users and the services embedded in their environment. With ever greater number of services added to our surroundings, there is a need to personalize services according to the user needs and environmental context avoiding service behavior from becoming overwhelming. In order to prevent this information overload, we present a method for the development of mobile services that can be personalized in terms of obtrusiveness (the degree in which each service intrudes the user's mind) according to the user needs and preferences. That is, services can be developed to provide their functionality at different obtrusiveness levels depending on the user by minimizing the duplication of efforts. On the one hand, we provide mechanisms for describing the obtrusiveness degree required for a service. On the other hand, we make use of Feature Modeling techniques in order to define the obtrusiveness level adaptation in a declarative manner. An experiment was conducted in order to put in practice the proposal and evaluate the user acceptance for the personalization capabilities provided by our approach. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2011.This work has been developed with the support of MICINN under the project EVERYWARE TIN2010-18011 and co-financed with ERDF, in the grants program FPU.Gil Pascual, M.; Giner Blasco, P.; Pelechano Ferragud, V. (2012). Personalization for unobtrusive service interaction. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. 16(5):543-561. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0414-0S543561165Abrams M, Phanouriou C, Batongbacal AL, Williams SM, Shuster JE (1999) Uiml: an appliance-independent xml user interface language. In: WWW ’99. Elsevier, North-Holland, pp 1695–1708Ballagas R, Borchers J, Rohs M, Sheridan JG (2006) The smart phone: a ubiquitous input device. IEEE Pervas Comput 5(1):70Balme L, Demeure A, Barralon N, Coutaz J, Calvary G (2004) Cameleon-rt: a software architecture reference model for distributed, migratable, and plastic user interfaces. In: EUSAI, pp 291–302Benavides D, Cortés RA, Trinidad P (2005) Automated reasoning on feature models. In: LNCS, advanced information systems engineering: 17th international conference, CAiSE 2005 3520, pp 491–503Blomquist A, Arvola M (2002) Personas in action: ethnography in an interaction design team. In: Proceedings of NordiCHI ’02. ACM, New York, NY, pp 197–200Bright A, Kay J, Ler D, Ngo K, Niu W, Nuguid A (2005) Adaptively recommending museum tours. In: Nick Ryan Tullio Salmon Cinotti GR (ed) Proceedings of workshop on smart environments and their applications to cultural heritage. Archaeolingua, pp 29–32Brown DM (2010) Communicating design: developing web site documentation for design and planning, 2nd edn. New Riders Press, USACalvary G, Coutaz J, Thevenin D, Limbourg Q, Bouillon L, Vanderdonckt J (2003) A unifying reference framework for multi-target user interfaces. Interact Comput 15(3):289–308Cetina C, Giner P, Fons J, Pelechano V (2009) Autonomic computing through reuse of variability models at runtime: the case of smart homes. Computer 42(10):37–43Chatfield C, Carmichael D, Hexel R, Kay J, Kummerfeld B (2005) Personalisation in intelligent environments: managing the information flow. In: OZCHI ’05. Computer-human interaction special interest group of Australia, pp 1–10Clerckx T, Winters F, Coninx K (2005) Tool support for designing context-sensitive user interfaces using a model-based approach. In: TAMODIA ’05: Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on Task models and diagrams. ACM Press, New York, pp 11–18Czarnecki K, Helsen S, Eisenecker U (2004) Staged configuration using feature models. In: Proceedings of SPLCDuarte C, Carriço L (2006) A conceptual framework for developing adaptive multimodal applications. In: Proceedings of IUI ’06. ACM, New York, pp 132–139Evans (2003) Domain-driven design: tacking complexity In the heart of software. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., BostonsFavre JM (2004) Foundations of model (Driven) (Reverse) engineering: models—Episode I: stories of the fidus papyrus and of the solarus. In: Bezivin J, Heckel R (eds) Language engineering for model-driven software development, no. 04101, Dagstuhl seminar proceedings. Dagstuhl, GermanyFischer G (2001) User modeling in human–computer interaction. User Model User-Adap Inter 11(1–2):65–86Gibbs WW (2005) Considerate computing. Scientific American 292(1):54–61Giner P, Cetina C, Fons J, Pelechano V (2010) Developing mobile workflow support in the internet of things. IEEE Pervas Comput 9(2):18–26Giner P, Cetina C, Fons J, Pelechano V (2011) Implicit interaction design for pervasive workflows. Pers Ubiquit Comput 1–10Gulliksen J, Goransson B, Boivie I, Blomkvist S, Persson J, Cajander A (2003) Key principles for user-centred systems design. Behav Inform Technol 22:397–409Hinckley K, Horvitz E (2001) Toward more sensitive mobile phones. In: Proceedings of the UIST ’01. ACM, New York, pp 191–192Ho J, Intille SS (2005) Using context-aware computing to reduce the perceived burden of interruptions from mobile devices. In: Proceedings of CHI ’05. ACM, New York, pp 909–918Horvitz E, Kadie C, Paek T, Hovel D (2003) Models of attention in computing and communication: from principles to applications. Commun ACM 46(3):52–59Ju W, Leifer L (2008) The design of implicit interactions: making interactive systems less obnoxious. Des Issues 24(3):72–84Lewis JR (1995) Ibm computer usability satisfaction questionnaires: psychometric evaluation and instructions for use. Int J Hum-Comput Interact 7(1):57–78Limbourg Q, Vanderdonckt J, Michotte B, Bouillon L, López-Jaquero V (2004) Usixml: a language supporting multi-path development of user interfaces. In: EHCI/DS-VIS, pp 200–220Mao JY, Vredenburg K, Smith PW, Carey T (2001) User-centered design methods in practice: a survey of the state of the art. In: CASCON ’01. IBM Press, New York, p 12McCrickard DS, Chewar CM (2003) Attuning notification design to user goals and attention costs. Commun ACM 46:67–72Mori G, Paternò F, Santoro C (2002) Ctte: support for developing and analyzing task models for interactive system design. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 28(8):797–813Mori G, Paternò F, Santoro C (2004) Design and development of multidevice user interfaces through multiple logical descriptions. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 30(8):507–520Myers B, Hudson SE, Pausch R (2000) Past, present, and future of user interface software tools. ACM Trans Comput-Hum Interact 7(1):3–28OMG (2006) Business process modeling notation (BPMN) specification. OMG Final Adopted SpecificationPaternò F, Santoro C (2003) A unified method for designing interactive systems adaptable to mobile and stationary platforms. Interact Comput 15(3):349–366Puerta A, Eisenstein J (2002) Ximl: a common representation for interaction data. In: Proceedings of IUI ’02. ACM, New York, pp 214–215Ramchurn SD, Deitch B, Thompson MK, Roure DCD, Jennings NR, Luck M (2004) Minimising intrusiveness in pervasive computing environments using multi-agent negotiation. In: First international conference on mobile and ubiquitous systems, pp 364–372Rumbaugh J, Jacobson I, Booch G (1998) The unified modeling language reference manual. Addison-Wesley, LondonSchobbens PY, Heymans P, Trigaux JC, Bontemps Y (2007) Generic semantics of feature diagrams. Comput Networks 51(2):456–479Serral E, Pérez F, Valderas P, Pelechano V (2010) An end-user tool for adapting smart environment automation to user behaviour at runtime. In: Proceedings of UCAmI ’10Streefkerk JW, van Esch-Bussemakers MP, Neerincx MA (2006) Designing personal attentive user interfaces in the mobile public safety domain. Comput Hum Behav 22:749–770Tedre M (2008) What should be automated? Interactions 15(5):47–49Unger R, Chandler C (2009) A project guide to UX design: for user experience designers in the field or in the making. New Riders Publishing, Thousand OaksVan den Bergh J, Coninx K. Using uml 2.0 and profiles for modelling context-sensitive user interfaces. In: Proceedings of the MDDAUI2005 CEUR workshopVastenburg MH, Keyson DV, de Ridder H (2008) Considerate home notification systems: a field study of acceptability of notifications in the home. Pers Ubiquit Comput 12(8):555–566Vertegaal R (2003) Attentive user interfaces. Commun ACM 46(3):30–33Weiser M, Brown JS (1997) The coming age of calm technology, pp 75–85Weld DS, Anderson C, Domingos P, Etzioni O, Gajos K, Lau T, Wolf S (2003) Automatically personalizing user interfaces. In: IJCAI ’03, pp 1613–161

Onderzoek aan geventileerde caviteiten achter een roerderblad in een watertunnel

Kramers Laboratorium voor Fysische TechnologieApplied Science

Designing automated handheld navigation support

Map usage on handheld devices suffers from limited screen size and the minimal attention that users can dedicate to them in mobile situations. This work examines effects of automating navigation features like zooming and panning as well as other features such as rotation, path finding and artifact representation on the mobile navigation experience. Described are five claims and early support for these features in the police work domain. © 2008 ACM

The Bourtanger Moor: Endurance and vulnerability of a raised bog system

From the study of a raised bog complex in the former Bourtanger Moor in the northeastern Netherlands, which was formed between ca. 4500 BC and 1700 AD, it is clear that raised bogs are both very robust and vulnerable systems, which can develop within fairly broad climatological limits, but that they are also extremely sensitive to the effects of drainage caused by reclamation carried out by man. By means of good management, aimed primarily at restoring the typical ombrogenous hydrological system, in all likelihood it will be possible to develop the growth of raised bog in nature reserves suitable for this purpose, namely peat-bog relicts