Anticipating Daily Intention using On-Wrist Motion Triggered Sensing

Anticipating human intention by observing one's actions has many applications. For instance, picking up a cellphone, then a charger (actions) implies that one wants to charge the cellphone (intention). By anticipating the intention, an intelligent system can guide the user to the closest power outlet. We propose an on-wrist motion triggered sensing system for anticipating daily intentions, where the on-wrist sensors help us to persistently observe one's actions. The core of the system is a novel Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and Policy Network (PN), where the RNN encodes visual and motion observation to anticipate intention, and the PN parsimoniously triggers the process of visual observation to reduce computation requirement. We jointly trained the whole network using policy gradient and cross-entropy loss. To evaluate, we collect the first daily "intention" dataset consisting of 2379 videos with 34 intentions and 164 unique action sequences. Our method achieves 92.68%, 90.85%, 97.56% accuracy on three users while processing only 29% of the visual observation on average

The Effects of Alignment Quality, Distance Calculation Method, Sequence Filtering, and Region on the Analysis of 16S rRNA Gene-Based Studies

Pyrosequencing of PCR-amplified fragments that target variable regions within the 16S rRNA gene has quickly become a powerful method for analyzing the membership and structure of microbial communities. This approach has revealed and introduced questions that were not fully appreciated by those carrying out traditional Sanger sequencing-based methods. These include the effects of alignment quality, the best method of calculating pairwise genetic distances for 16S rRNA genes, whether it is appropriate to filter variable regions, and how the choice of variable region relates to the genetic diversity observed in full-length sequences. I used a diverse collection of 13,501 high-quality full-length sequences to assess each of these questions. First, alignment quality had a significant impact on distance values and downstream analyses. Specifically, the greengenes alignment, which does a poor job of aligning variable regions, predicted higher genetic diversity, richness, and phylogenetic diversity than the SILVA and RDP-based alignments. Second, the effect of different gap treatments in determining pairwise genetic distances was strongly affected by the variation in sequence length for a region; however, the effect of different calculation methods was subtle when determining the sample's richness or phylogenetic diversity for a region. Third, applying a sequence mask to remove variable positions had a profound impact on genetic distances by muting the observed richness and phylogenetic diversity. Finally, the genetic distances calculated for each of the variable regions did a poor job of correlating with the full-length gene. Thus, while it is tempting to apply traditional cutoff levels derived for full-length sequences to these shorter sequences, it is not advisable. Analysis of β-diversity metrics showed that each of these factors can have a significant impact on the comparison of community membership and structure. Taken together, these results urge caution in the design and interpretation of analyses using pyrosequencing data

Smoking, cessation and expenditure in low income Chinese: cross sectional survey

BACKGROUND: This study was carried-out to explore smoking behaviour and smoking expenditure among low income workers in Eastern China to inform tobacco control policy. METHODS: A self-completion questionnaire was administered to 1958 urban workers, 1909 rural workers and 3248 migrant workers in Zhejiang Province, Eastern China in 2004. RESULTS: Overall 54% of the men and 1.8% of all women were current smokers (at least 1 cigarette per day). Smoking was least common in migrant men (51%), compared with 58% of urban workers and 64% rural inhabitants (P < 0.0001). Forty-nine percent of rural males smoke more than 10 cigarettes/day, and 22% over 20/day. The prevalence of smoking increased with age. Overall 9% of the males had successfully quit smoking. Reasons for quitting were to prevent future illness (58%), current illness (31%), family pressures (20%) and financial considerations (20%). Thirteen percent of current smokers had ever tried to quit (cessation for at least one week) while 22% intended to quit, with migrants most likely to intend to quit. Almost all (96%) were aware that smoking was harmful to health, though only 25% were aware of the dangers of passive smoking. A mean of 11% of personal monthly income is spent on smoking rising to a mean of 15.4% in rural smokers. This expenditure was found to have major opportunity costs, including in terms of healthcare access. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of smoking and successful quitting suggest that smoking prevalence in low income groups in Eastern China may have peaked. Tobacco control should focus on support for quitters, on workplace/public place smoking restrictions and should develop specific programmes in rural areas. Health education messages should emphasise the opportunity costs of smoking and the dangers of passive smoking

Giant regular polyhedra from calixarene carboxylates and uranyl

Self-assembly of large multi-component systems is a common strategy for the bottom-up construction of discrete, well-defined, nanoscopic-sized cages. Icosahedral or pseudospherical viral capsids, built up from hundreds of identical proteins, constitute typical examples of the complexity attained by biological self-assembly. Chemical versions of the so-called 5 Platonic regular or 13 Archimedean semi-regular polyhedra are usually assembled combining molecular platforms with metals with commensurate coordination spheres. Here we report novel, self-assembled cages, using the conical-shaped carboxylic acid derivatives of calix[4]arene and calix[5]arene as ligands, and the uranyl cation UO22+ as a metallic counterpart, which coordinates with three carboxylates at the equatorial plane, giving rise to hexagonal bipyramidal architectures. As a result, octahedral and icosahedral anionic metallocages of nanoscopic dimensions are formed with an unusually small number of components

Modeling the Basal Dynamics of P53 System

The tumor suppressor p53 has become one of most investigated genes. Once activated by stress, p53 leads to cellular responses such as cell cycle arrest and apoptosis.Most previous models have ignored the basal dynamics of p53 under nonstressed conditions. To explore the basal dynamics of p53, we constructed a stochastic delay model by incorporating two negative feedback loops. We found that protein distribution of p53 under nonstressed condition is highly skewed with a fraction of cells showing high p53 levels comparable to those observed under stressed conditions. Under nonstressed conditions, asynchronous and spontaneous p53 pulses are triggered by basal DNA double strand breaks produced during normal cell cycle progression. The first peaking times show a predominant G1 distribution while the second ones are more widely distributed. The spontaneous pulses are triggered by an excitable mechanism. Once initiated, the amplitude and duration of pulses remain unchanged. Furthermore, the spontaneous pulses are filtered by ataxia telangiectasia mutated protein mediated posttranslational modifications and do not result in substantial p21 transcription. If challenged by externally severe DNA damage, cells generate synchronous p53 pulses and induce significantly high levels of p21. The high expression of p21 can also be partially induced by lowering the deacetylation rate.Our results demonstrated that the dynamics of p53 under nonstressed conditions is initiated by an excitable mechanism and cells become fully responsive only when cells are confronted with severe damage. These findings advance our understanding of the mechanism of p53 pulses and unlock many opportunities to p53-based therapy

Impact of Cardiovascular Risk Factors on Carotid Intima-Media Thickness and Degree of Severity: A Cross-Sectional Study

OBJECTIVE: Age, hypertension, dyslipidemia and diabetes are common cardiovascular risk factors (CVRFs) that contribute to the development of atherosclerosis in cardiovascular system including carotid artery disease. However, the impact of these risk factors on the increased carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) and degree of carotid severity remains to be further clarified. This study aims to evaluate the relationship between CVRFs and degree of carotid severity and cIMT in high-risk subjects. METHODS: Four thousand and three hundred ninety-four subjects with one or more risk factors were retrospectively reviewed in this study. Patients were divided into different groups based on age, the type and quantity of CVRFs. cIMT and degree of carotid artery stenosis were measured and analyzed based on carotid ultrasound imaging with findings compared to the CVRFs to determine the correlation between these variables. RESULTS: Aging was significantly associated with degree of severity (P &lt; 0.05) and cIMT was significantly increased with age (P &lt; 0.05). Individual CVRF analysis shows that hypertension was more related to the degree of severity than dyslipidemia and diabetes with corresponding abnormal cIMT rates being 79.39%, 72.98% and 32.37%, respectively. The prevalence of carotid atherosclerosis were 20.06%, 22.88% and 28.63%, respectively corresponding to patients with zero, one and more than one chronic diseases. The percentage of abnormal cIMT in hypertensive patient group with dyslipidemia is significantly higher than the other groups (P&lt; 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: This study shows a direct correlation between the degree of carotid severity and cIMT and cardiovascular risk factors, especially with age and hypertension. Carotid atherosclerosis is closely related to the number of cardiovascular risk factors

Jet energy measurement with the ATLAS detector in proton-proton collisions at root s=7 TeV

The jet energy scale and its systematic uncertainty are determined for jets measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 38 pb-1. Jets are reconstructed with the anti-kt algorithm with distance parameters R=0. 4 or R=0. 6. Jet energy and angle corrections are determined from Monte Carlo simulations to calibrate jets with transverse momenta pT≥20 GeV and pseudorapidities {pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy systematic uncertainty is estimated using the single isolated hadron response measured in situ and in test-beams, exploiting the transverse momentum balance between central and forward jets in events with dijet topologies and studying systematic variations in Monte Carlo simulations. The jet energy uncertainty is less than 2. 5 % in the central calorimeter region ({pipe}η{pipe}<0. 8) for jets with 60≤pT<800 GeV, and is maximally 14 % for pT<30 GeV in the most forward region 3. 2≤{pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy is validated for jet transverse momenta up to 1 TeV to the level of a few percent using several in situ techniques by comparing a well-known reference such as the recoiling photon pT, the sum of the transverse momenta of tracks associated to the jet, or a system of low-pT jets recoiling against a high-pT jet. More sophisticated jet calibration schemes are presented based on calorimeter cell energy density weighting or hadronic properties of jets, aiming for an improved jet energy resolution and a reduced flavour dependence of the jet response. The systematic uncertainty of the jet energy determined from a combination of in situ techniques is consistent with the one derived from single hadron response measurements over a wide kinematic range. The nominal corrections and uncertainties are derived for isolated jets in an inclusive sample of high-pT jets. Special cases such as event topologies with close-by jets, or selections of samples with an enhanced content of jets originating from light quarks, heavy quarks or gluons are also discussed and the corresponding uncertainties are determined. © 2013 CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration