Role of ABCB1 C3435T variant in response to antiepileptic drugs in epilepsy: a review

Over-expression of P-glycoprotein (P-gp), the encoded product of the ATP-binding cassette (ABC), sub-family B, member 1 (ABCB1/MDR1) gene, plays an important role in mediating multidrug resistance to antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) in about 30% of patients with epilepsy. Genetic variation may in part explain inter-individual differences in phenotype-genotype relationships in the pharmacological response of epilepsy patients to AEDs. The synonymous C3435T polymorphism is one of the most common allelic variants in the ABCB1/MDR1 gene, proposed in the causation of refractory epilepsy. Many studies have shown the relationship between C3435T polymorphism and refractoriness to AEDs in epilepsy. However, there is controversy between the findings of various studies, that is, whether ABCB1/MDR1 C3435T gene polymorphism is associated with response to AEDs in epilepsy patients. This review provides a background and discusses the results of investigations on possible confounding factors affecting the interpretation and implementation of association studies in this area

A scouting strategy for real-time strategy games

© 2014 ACM. Real-time strategy (RTS) is a sub-genre of strategy video games. RTS games are more realistic with dynamic and time-constraint game playing, by abandoning the turn-based rule of its ancestors. Playing with and against computer-controlled players is a pervasive phenomenon in RTS games, due to the convenience and the preference of groups of players. Hence, better game-playing agents are able to enhance game-playing experience by acting as smart opponents or collaborators. One-way of improving game-playing agents' performance, in terms of their economic-expansion and tactical battlefield-arrangement aspects, is to understand the game environment. Traditional commercial RTS game-playing agents address this issue by directly accessing game maps and extracting strategic features. Since human players are unable to access the same information, this is a form of "cheating AI", which has been known to negatively affect player experiences. Thus, we develop a scouting mechanism for RTS game-playing agents, in order to enable game units to explore game environments automatically in a realistic fashion. Our research is grounded in prior robotic exploration work by which we present a hierarchical multi-criterion decision-making (MCDM) strategy to address the incomplete information problem in RTS settings

Understanding players' map exploration styles

Copyright 2016 ACM. Exploration is an essential part of play in modern video games. It refers to the discovery-based activities, in which players explore mechanisms, as well as spatiality of virtual world. Exploration games and games with exploration plots are booming in gamer communities. In this paper, we focus on spatial exploration, which is central to play in role-playing games (RPG) and real time strategy (RTS) games. We investigate the game-playing behaviors of human players in exploration games, so as to discover behavior patterns and understand gamer styles. The intention is to contribute to the design and development of believable agents. We conducted an experiment where 25 participants played three types of exploration games. In-game data, think-aloud data, questionnaire responses and post-game interview data were collected to gain a deeper understanding of exploration preferences. We used thematic analysis to analyze data and mapped out four game exploration archetypes: Wanderers, Seers, Pathers and Targeters. An analysis from the four highlight aspects: strategy, reasoning, conception and hesitation, is conducted to investigate the behavioral traits of these four archetypes

BeFaced: A casual game to crowdsource facial expressions in the wild

Creating good quality image databases for affective computing systems is key to most computer vision research, but is unfortunately costly and time-consuming. This paper describes BeFaced, a tile matching casual tablet game that enables massive crowdsourcing of facial expressions to advance facial expression analysis. BeFaced uses state-of-the-art facial expression tracking technology with dynamic difficulty adjustment to keep the player engaged and hence obtain a large and varied face dataset. CHI attendees will be able to experience a novel game interface that uses the iPad's front camera to track and capture facial expressions as the primary player input, and also investigate how the game design in general enables massive crowdsourcing in an extensible manner

Moderate Deviation Analysis for Classical Communication over Quantum Channels

© 2017, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany. We analyse families of codes for classical data transmission over quantum channels that have both a vanishing probability of error and a code rate approaching capacity as the code length increases. To characterise the fundamental tradeoff between decoding error, code rate and code length for such codes we introduce a quantum generalisation of the moderate deviation analysis proposed by Altŭg and Wagner as well as Polyanskiy and Verdú. We derive such a tradeoff for classical-quantum (as well as image-additive) channels in terms of the channel capacity and the channel dispersion, giving further evidence that the latter quantity characterises the necessary backoff from capacity when transmitting finite blocks of classical data. To derive these results we also study asymmetric binary quantum hypothesis testing in the moderate deviations regime. Due to the central importance of the latter task, we expect that our techniques will find further applications in the analysis of other quantum information processing tasks

Assessing the kinect’s capabilities to perform a time-based clinical test for fall risk assessment in older people

© 2014 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing. The Choice Stepping Reaction Time (CSRT) task is time-based clinical test that has shown to reliably predict falls in older adults. Its current mode of delivery involves the use of a custom-made dance mat device. This mat is a measurement tool that can reliably obtain step data to discriminate between fallers and non-fallers. One of the pitfalls of this test is that the technology in use still imposes an obstacle on the degree of freedom to be able to perform adaptive exercises suitable for the elderly. In this paper, we describe a Kinect-based system that measures stepping performance through the use of a hybrid version of the CSRT task. This study focuses on assessing this system’s capabilities to reliably measure a time-based clinical test of fall risk. Results showed a favorable correspondence and agreement between the two systems, suggesting that this platform could be potentially useful in the clinical practice

Substitution at Aspartic Acid 1128 in the SARS Coronavirus Spike Glycoprotein Mediates Escape from a S2 Domain-Targeting Neutralizing Monoclonal Antibody

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) is the etiological agent for the infectious disease, SARS, which first emerged 10 years ago. SARS-CoV is a zoonotic virus that has crossed the species barriers to infect humans. Bats, which harbour a diverse pool of SARS-like CoVs (SL-CoVs), are believed to be the natural reservoir. The SARS-CoV surface Spike (S) protein is a major antigenic determinant in eliciting neutralizing antibody production during SARS-CoV infection. In our previous work, we showed that a panel of murine MONOCLONAL ANTIBODIES (mAbs) that target the S2 subunit of the S protein are capable of neutralizing SARS-CoV infection IN VITRO (Lip KM et al, J Virol. 2006 Jan; 80(2): 941–50). In this study, we report our findings on the characterization of one of these mAbs, known as 1A9, which binds to the S PROTEIN at a novel epitope within the S2 subunit at amino acids 1111–1130. MAb 1A9 is a broadly neutralizing mAb that prevents viral entry mediated by the S proteins of human and civet SARS-CoVs as well as bat SL-CoVs. By generating mutant SARS-CoV that escapes the neutralization by mAb 1A9, the residue D1128 in S was found to be crucial for its interaction with mAb 1A9. S protein containing the substitution of D1128 with alanine (D1128A) exhibited a significant decrease in binding capability to mAb 1A9 compared to wild-type S protein. By using a pseudotyped viral entry assay, it was shown that the D1128A substitution in the escape virus allows it to overcome the viral entry blockage by mAb 1A9. In addition, the D1128A mutation was found to exert no effects on the S protein cell surface expression and incorporation into virion particles, suggesting that the escape virus retains the same viral entry property as the wild-type virus.published_or_final_versio

Top 12, but it's alright mate: now, it's time to focus on Asian Games

In this paper, we describe Step Kinnection, an interactive step training system for the elderly that incorporates mechanisms to simultaneously perform a hybrid clinical test for fall risk assessment. The interactivity demonstration includes a simple stepping task along with three voice-enabled cognitive activities allowing for the assessment of stepping performance under the dual-task paradigm. CHI attendees can try out both scenarios to physically experience the interference caused by a higher cognitive load while stepping