A deep learning approach to diabetic blood glucose prediction

We consider the question of 30-minute prediction of blood glucose levels measured by continuous glucose monitoring devices, using clinical data. While most studies of this nature deal with one patient at a time, we take a certain percentage of patients in the data set as training data, and test on the remainder of the patients; i.e., the machine need not re-calibrate on the new patients in the data set. We demonstrate how deep learning can outperform shallow networks in this example. One novelty is to demonstrate how a parsimonious deep representation can be constructed using domain knowledge

English medium of instruction: A situation analysis

The majority of learners in southern Africa receive their education through the medium of a second language, English. Although teachers of English play a crucial role in helping learners to acquire language skills in the medium of instruction, we argue that subject content teachers' lack of attention to the teaching of the four language skills may be a raison d'être for learners' lack of academic achievement. A situation analysis conducted among three study populations examined the extent to which subject content teachers took responsibility for the teaching of language skills in the content classroom, as well as possible reasons for not doing so. It also shed some light on the amount of language teaching that actually took place in a content classroom. The aim of the situation analysis was to determine whether there was a need for a specialised training course for English second language medium of instruction teachers.South African Journal of Education Vol. 27 (1) 2007: pp. 69-8

How do methanol masers manage to appear in the youngest star vicinities and isolated molecular clumps?

General characteristics of methanol (CH3OH) maser emission are summarized. It is shown that methanol maser sources are concentrated in the spiral arms. Most of the methanol maser sources from the Perseus arm are associated with embedded stellar clusters and a considerable portion is situated close to compact HII regions. Almost 1/3 of the Perseus Arm sources lie at the edges of optically identified HII regions which means that massive star formation in the Perseus Arm is to a great extent triggered by local phenomena. A multiline analysis of the methanol masers allows us to determine the physical parameters in the regions of maser formation. Maser modelling shows that class II methanol masers can be pumped by the radiation of the warm dust as well as by free-free emission of a hypercompact region hcHII with a turnover frequency exceeding 100 GHz. Methanol masers of both classes can reside in the vicinity of hcHIIs. Modelling shows that periodic changes of maser fluxes can be reproduced by variations of the dust temperature by a few percent which may be caused by variations in the brightness of the central young stellar object reflecting the character of the accretion process. Sensitive observations have shown that the masers with low flux densities can still have considerable amplification factors. The analysis of class I maser surveys allows us to identify four distinct regimes that differ by the series of their brightest lines.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, invited presentation at IAU242 "Astrophysical Masers and their environments

Experimental studies and nuclear model calculations on (p,xn) and (p,pxn) reactions on 85Rb from their threshold up to 100 MeV

Excitation functions were measured by the stacked-foil technique for the reactions Rb-85(p, pxn)Rb-89m,Rb-g83,Rb-82m.81 from their thresholds up to 100MeV. Nuclear model calculations were performed using the code ALICE-IPPE both on (p, xn) reactions reported earlier and (p, pxn) reactions described here. The experimental excitation curves and the results of nuclear model calculations were found to be qualitatively in agreement. With the exception of the (p, n) reaction above 40MeV, the theory appears to reproduce all the experimental data within deviations of about 50%. The cross section ratios for the isomeric pairs Sr-85m,Sr-g and Rb-84m,Rb-g are discussed qualitatively in terms of the spins of the states involved and the increasing projectile energy

New Periodic 6.7 GHz Class II Methanol Maser Associated with G358.460-0.391

Eight new class II methanol masers selected from the 6.7 GHz Methanol Multibeam survey catalogues I and II were monitored at 6.7 GHz with the 26m Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) radio telescope for three years and seven months, from February 2011 to September 2014. The sources were also observed at 12.2 GHz and two were sufficiently bright to permit monitoring. One of the eight sources, namely G358.460-0.391, was found to show periodic variations at 6.7 GHz. The period was determined and tested for significance using the Lomb-Scargle, epoch-folding and Jurkevich methods, and by fitting a simple analytic function. The best estimate for the period of the 6.7 GHz class II methanol maser line associated with G358.460-0.391 is 220.0 $\pm$ 0.2 day.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. The appendix of 4 pages (with 16 figures) will be published as online versio

Direct NN-body code on low-power embedded ARM GPUs

This work arises on the environment of the ExaNeSt project aiming at design and development of an exascale ready supercomputer with low energy consumption profile but able to support the most demanding scientific and technical applications. The ExaNeSt compute unit consists of densely-packed low-power 64-bit ARM processors, embedded within Xilinx FPGA SoCs. SoC boards are heterogeneous architecture where computing power is supplied both by CPUs and GPUs, and are emerging as a possible low-power and low-cost alternative to clusters based on traditional CPUs. A state-of-the-art direct $N$-body code suitable for astrophysical simulations has been re-engineered in order to exploit SoC heterogeneous platforms based on ARM CPUs and embedded GPUs. Performance tests show that embedded GPUs can be effectively used to accelerate real-life scientific calculations, and that are promising also because of their energy efficiency, which is a crucial design in future exascale platforms.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in the Computing Conference 2019 proceeding

On the Identification of High Mass Star Forming Regions using IRAS: Contamination by Low-Mass Protostars

We present the results of a survey of a small sample (14) of low-mass protostars (L_IR < 10^3 Lsun) for 6.7 GHz methanol maser emission performed using the ATNF Parkes radio telescope. No new masers were discovered. We find that the lower luminosity limit for maser emission is near 10^3 Lsun, by comparison of the sources in our sample with previously detected methanol maser sources. We examine the IRAS properties of our sample and compare them with sources previously observed for methanol maser emission, almost all of which satisfy the Wood & Churchwell criterion for selecting candidate UCHII regions. We find that about half of our sample satisfy this criterion, and in addition almost all of this subgroup have integrated fluxes between 25 and 60 microns that are similar to sources with detectable methanol maser emission. By identifying a number of low-mass protostars in this work and from the literature that satisfy the Wood & Churchwell criterion for candidate UCHII regions, we show conclusively for the first time that the fainter flux end of their sample is contaminated by lower-mass non-ionizing sources, confirming the suggestion by van der Walt and Ramesh & Sridharan.Comment: 8 pages with 2 figures. Accepted by Ap

Factors influencing e-collaboration for knowledge development and innovation

Background: Knowledge development and innovation are at the heart of the progress of academic and research institutions (ARIs) through individual and coordinated research projects. Collaboration initiatives remain a challenge for many researchers for a myriad of reasons which are further intensified by the many technology options that are available both freely and at varying prices. Although multiple theories were considered, the focus on electronic communication supported by the interest in how innovation is diffused and the richness of media motivated the focus on diffusion of innovations (DOI) and media richness theory (MRT). Objectives: The objective was to develop a multi-dimensional matrix of e-collaboration factors for research institutions. This study investigated collaboration by ARIs while focusing on the supporting and enabling technologies. Method: The grounded theory method (GTM) was adopted. E-collaboration literature was reviewed followed by data collection using observations, interviews and a blog. DOI and MRT were considered as theories that assist in the implementation of collaboration. A blog was developed as an e-collaboration platform to examine the emergent ideas and to collect data. Data was analysed through the coding method which led to the development of the multi-dimensional e-collaboration factors matrix. Results: The findings reveal that e-collaboration has multiple factors that must be considered. Collaboration by participants was improved through knowledge development and innovation. Conclusion: The multi-dimensional matrix of e-collaboration factors presented collaborators with a checklist that will enhance and improve their work. ARIs continue to collaborate at multiple levels depending on their needs and objectives