Weather effects on the patterns of people's everyday activities: a study using GPS traces of mobile phone users

This study explores the effects that the weather has on people's everyday activity patterns. Temperature, rainfall, and wind speed were used as weather parameters. People's daily activity patterns were inferred, such as place visited, the time this took place, the duration of the visit, based on the GPS location traces of their mobile phones overlaid upon Yellow Pages information. Our analysis of 31,855 mobile phone users allowed us to infer that people were more likely to stay longer at eateries or food outlets, and (to a lesser degree) at retail or shopping areas when the weather is very cold or when conditions are calm (non-windy). When compared to people's regular activity patterns, certain weather conditions affected people's movements and activities noticeably at different times of the day. On cold days, people's activities were found to be more diverse especially after 10AM, showing greatest variations between 2PM and 6PM. A similar trend is observed between 10AM and midnight on rainy days, with people's activities found to be most diverse on days with heaviest rainfalls or on days when the wind speed was stronger than 4 km/h, especially between 10AM–1AM. Finally, we observed that different geographical areas of a large metropolis were impacted differently by the weather. Using data of urban infrastructure to characterize areas, we found strong correlations between weather conditions upon people's accessibility to trains. This study sheds new light on the influence of weather conditions on human behavior, in particular the choice of daily activities and how mobile phone data can be used to investigate the influence of environmental factors on urban dynamics

Human and mouse essentiality screens as a resource for disease gene discovery.

The identification of causal variants in sequencing studies remains a considerable challenge that can be partially addressed by new gene-specific knowledge. Here, we integrate measures of how essential a gene is to supporting life, as inferred from viability and phenotyping screens performed on knockout mice by the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium and essentiality screens carried out on human cell lines. We propose a cross-species gene classification across the Full Spectrum of Intolerance to Loss-of-function (FUSIL) and demonstrate that genes in five mutually exclusive FUSIL categories have differing biological properties. Most notably, Mendelian disease genes, particularly those associated with developmental disorders, are highly overrepresented among genes non-essential for cell survival but required for organism development. After screening developmental disorder cases from three independent disease sequencing consortia, we identify potentially pathogenic variants in genes not previously associated with rare diseases. We therefore propose FUSIL as an efficient approach for disease gene discovery

Pathogenic Huntingtin Repeat Expansions in Patients with Frontotemporal Dementia and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

We examined the role of repeat expansions in the pathogenesis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) by analyzing whole-genome sequence data from 2,442 FTD/ALS patients, 2,599 Lewy body dementia (LBD) patients, and 3,158 neurologically healthy subjects. Pathogenic expansions (range, 40-64 CAG repeats) in the huntingtin (HTT) gene were found in three (0.12%) patients diagnosed with pure FTD/ALS syndromes but were not present in the LBD or healthy cohorts. We replicated our findings in an independent collection of 3,674 FTD/ALS patients. Postmortem evaluations of two patients revealed the classical TDP-43 pathology of FTD/ALS, as well as huntingtin-positive, ubiquitin-positive aggregates in the frontal cortex. The neostriatal atrophy that pathologically defines Huntington's disease was absent in both cases. Our findings reveal an etiological relationship between HTT repeat expansions and FTD/ALS syndromes and indicate that genetic screening of FTD/ALS patients for HTT repeat expansions should be considered

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Ageing well with CSCW

This paper rethinks the role of technology in the life of older people by critically considering the discourses around ageing: drawing on insights from literatures on active ageing, findings from two studies conducted with older citizens and prevalent understandings of old age in technology design. It argues for a departure from the deficit model of old age, to an understanding that reveals older people’s agency in the ageing process and the work they do to manage their capacity to age well. This reframing of ageing and the ageing population offers new insights to CSCW and suggests new goals to support when designing technology for older people – goals that are more cognizant of people’s agency and their desires to manage their evolving experiences of the ageing process. We conclude with characteristics of the technologies we might develop

Probability mass of talk time under different weather conditions.

<p>Probability mass of talk time under different weather conditions.</p

Probability mass of the number of strong ties, weak ties, and the ratio of the number of strong ties to the number of weak ties.

<p>Probability mass of the number of strong ties, weak ties, and the ratio of the number of strong ties to the number of weak ties.</p

Probability mass of the number of connected strong ties/hour under different weather conditions.

<p>Probability mass of the number of connected strong ties/hour under different weather conditions.</p

Probability mass of degree/hour under different weather conditions.

<p>Probability mass of degree/hour under different weather conditions.</p