Exploring the role of conferences in industry-academia collaborations

Industry-academia collaborations have been acknowledged as a crucial mechanism for innovation in the knowledge-based economy. Research indicates that the informal communication channels established at conferences may provide opportunities for the establishment of more formal collaborations between researchers and practitioners. However, limited academic attention has been paid to understand how conferences influence the establishment and maintenance of collaborative relationships. Based on the interaction-relationship model and relationship learning theory, this study aims to explore interactions between researchers and practitioners at conferences and how their interactions at conferences influence their formal collaborations. This research will apply qualitative methodology, and semi-structured interviews will be conducted for data collection. Both researchers and practitioners having experiences in attending conferences with industry-academia engagement will be targeted. This study will provide a better understanding of conferences and collaboration motivations, barriers, and enablers for academia, industry and conference organizers, and offer policy implications for government innovation agenda

Understanding the role of conferences for industry-university collaborations

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Business.Industry-university collaborations have been acknowledged as a crucial mechanism for innovation in knowledge-based economies. However, ties between the industry and university sectors is relatively weak globally and especially in Australia. Governments wish to encourage links between industry and universities, and measures to encourage these links are central to innovation agendas at state and national levels in Australia and worldwide. Conferences are highly valued by many academics and practitioners as an informal knowledge transfer channel between industry and universities. Research indicates that the informal communication established at conferences may provide opportunities for the establishment of more formal collaborations between academics and practitioners. However, limited academic attention has been paid to understanding how conferences influence the establishment and maintenance of collaborative relationships between academics and practitioners. Researchers have begun exploring the value of conferences for thriving knowledge-based economies, such as their potential to generate new knowledge and facilitate collaboration. However, extant academic literature mainly focuses on firm-to-firm interactions in the context of conferences and offers very little detail when it comes to academic-practitioner interactions. It is difficult to facilitate such interactions at conferences without knowing the current state and characteristics of existing interactions. Based on the Interaction Approach and Relationship Learning theory, this study has explored the current state of interactions between academics and practitioners at conferences and factors that influence their interactions at conferences. A qualitative methodology was adopted, and data were collected using semi-structured interviews with academics, practitioners, partnership managers, and government agency staff who have attended conferences that offer industry-academia engagements. The findings of this study show that conferences do play an important role in facilitating industry-university collaborations, especially for the initiation stage of a collaboration. However, the level of engagement between practitioners and academics at conferences was found to be limited. Academics were motivated to learn from practitioners when attending conferences, but practitioners did not show a similar interest in learning from academics. Furthermore, this study identified several factors that influence academic-practitioner interactions at conferences. The study contributes to a theoretical extension of interaction theory and relationship learning theory, and it enriches current understanding of knowledge transfer between industry and university at conferences. Practically, this research has policy implications for improving Australia’s national innovation system, as well as practical implications for industry, universities, and conference organizers who wish to leverage the valuable legacies associated with industry-university collaboration

BFRT: Blockchained Federated Learning for Real-time Traffic Flow Prediction

Accurate real-time traffic flow prediction can be leveraged to relieve traffic congestion and associated negative impacts. The existing centralized deep learning methodologies have demonstrated high prediction accuracy, but suffer from privacy concerns due to the sensitive nature of transportation data. Moreover, the emerging literature on traffic prediction by distributed learning approaches, including federated learning, primarily focuses on offline learning. This paper proposes BFRT, a blockchained federated learning architecture for online traffic flow prediction using real-time data and edge computing. The proposed approach provides privacy for the underlying data, while enabling decentralized model training in real-time at the Internet of Vehicles edge. We federate GRU and LSTM models and conduct extensive experiments with dynamically collected arterial traffic data shards. We prototype the proposed permissioned blockchain network on Hyperledger Fabric and perform extensive tests using virtual machines to simulate the edge nodes. Experimental results outperform the centralized models, highlighting the feasibility of our approach for facilitating privacy-preserving and decentralized real-time traffic flow prediction.Comment: Published in 2022 22nd IEEE International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Internet Computing (CCGrid

Design and assessment of a reconfigurable behavioral assistive robot: a pilot study

IntroductionFor patients with functional motor disorders of the lower limbs due to brain damage or accidental injury, restoring the ability to stand and walk plays an important role in clinical rehabilitation. Lower limb exoskeleton robots generally require patients to convert themselves to a standing position for use, while being a wearable device with limited movement distance.MethodsThis paper proposes a reconfigurable behavioral assistive robot that integrates the functions of an exoskeleton robot and an assistive standing wheelchair through a novel mechanism. The new mechanism is based on a four-bar linkage, and through simple and stable conformal transformations, the robot can switch between exoskeleton state, sit-to-stand support state, and wheelchair state. This enables the robot to achieve the functions of assisted walking, assisted standing up, supported standing and wheelchair mobility, respectively, thereby meeting the daily activity needs of sit-to-stand transitions and gait training. The configuration transformation module controls seamless switching between different configurations through an industrial computer. Experimental protocols have been developed for wearable testing of robotic prototypes not only for healthy subjects but also for simulated hemiplegic patients.ResultsThe experimental results indicate that the gait tracking effect during robot-assisted walking is satisfactory, and there are no sudden speed changes during the assisted standing up process, providing smooth support to the wearer. Meanwhile, the activation of the main force-generating muscles of the legs and the plantar pressure decreases significantly in healthy subjects and simulated hemiplegic patients wearing the robot for assisted walking and assisted standing-up compared to the situation when the robot is not worn.DiscussionThese experimental findings demonstrate that the reconfigurable behavioral assistive robot prototype of this study is effective, reducing the muscular burden on the wearer during walking and standing up, and provide effective support for the subject's body. The experimental results objectively and comprehensively showcase the effectiveness and potential of the reconfigurable behavioral assistive robot in the realms of behavioral assistance and rehabilitation training

First Succinylome Profiling of Vibrio alginolyticus Reveals Key Role of Lysine Succinylation in Cellular Metabolism and Virulence

Recent studies have shown that a key strategy of many pathogens is to use post-translational modification (PTMs) to modulate host factors critical for infection. Lysine succinylation (Ksuc) is a major PTM widespread in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, and is associated with the regulation of numerous important cellular processes. Vibrio alginolyticus is a common pathogen that causes serious disease problems in aquaculture. Here we used the affinity enrichment method with LC-MS/MS to report the first identification of 2082 lysine succinylation sites on 671 proteins in V. alginolyticus, and compared this with the lysine acetylation of V. alginolyticus in our previous work. The Ksuc modification of SodB and PEPCK proteins were further validated by Co-immunoprecipitation combined with Western blotting. Bioinformatics analysis showed that the identified lysine succinylated proteins are involved in various biological processes and central metabolism pathways. Moreover, a total of 1,005 (25.4%) succinyl sites on 502 (37.3%) proteins were also found to be acetylated, which indicated that an extensive crosstalk between acetylation and succinylation in V. alginolyticus occurs, especially in three central metabolic pathways: glycolysis/gluconeogenesis, TCA cycle, and pyruvate metabolism. Furthermore, we found at least 50 (7.45%) succinylated virulence factors, including LuxS, Tdh, SodB, PEPCK, ClpP, and the Sec system to play an important role in bacterial virulence. Taken together, this systematic analysis provides a basis for further study on the pathophysiological role of lysine succinylation in V. alginolyticus and provides targets for the development of attenuated vaccines

Exploring the complex relationship between gut microbiota and risk of colorectal neoplasia using bidirectional Mendelian Randomization analysis

Background: Human gut microbiome has complex relation-ships with the host, contributing to metabolism, immunity, and carcinogenesis. Methods: Summary-level data for gut microbiota and metabo-lites were obtained from MiBioGen, FINRISK and human meta-bolome consortia. Summary-level data for colorectal cancer were derived from a genome-wide association study meta-analysis. In forward Mendelian randomization (MR), we employed genetic instrumental variables (IV) for 24 gut microbiota taxa and six bacterial metabolites to examine their causal relationship with colorectal cancer. We also used a lenient threshold for nine apriori gut microbiota taxa as secondary analyses. In reverse MR, we explored association between genetic liability to colorectal neoplasia and abundance of microbiota studied above using 95, 19, and 7 IVs for colorectal cancer, adenoma, and polyps, respectively. Results: Forward MR did not find evidence indicating causal relationship between any of the gut microbiota taxa or six bacterial metabolites tested and colorectal cancer risk. However, reverse MR supported genetic liability to colorectal adenomas was causally related with increased abundance of two taxa: Gammaproteobacteria (b = 0.027, which represents a 0.027 increase in log-transformed relative abundance values of Gam-maproteobacteria for per one-unit increase in log OR of adenoma risk; P = 7.06x10-8), Enterobacteriaceae (b = 0.023, P = 1.29x10-5). Conclusions: We find genetic liability to colorectal neoplasia may be associated with abundance of certain microbiota taxa. It is more likely that subset of colorectal cancer genetic liability variants changes gut biology by influencing both gut microbiota and colo-rectal cancer risk.Impact: This study highlights the need of future complemen-tary studies to explore causal mechanisms linking both host genetic variation with gut microbiome and colorectal cancer susceptibility

Ventricular Interdependent Phenotype of Mixed Cpc-Pulmonary Hypertension and HFpEF with Normal Left Atrium: Impact on CPET Metrics and Clinical Outcome

Among 45 CpcPH/heart failure with preserved ejection fraction participants, 11 with normal left atrium (compared to 34 with abnormal left atrium, p \u3c 0.05 for all) had low left ventricle (LV) transmural pressure (2.9 ± 2.4 vs. 6.2 ± 2.9 mmHg), and increased right ventricle (RV):LV ratio (2.41 ± 1.09 vs. 1.46 ± 0.66) and interventricular septal angle (149 ± 8 vs. 136 ± 10), indicating exaggerated ventricular interdependence from a dilated R

Mutation of Sucrose:Fructan 6-fructosyltransferase (6-SFT) in hexaploid wheat may reduce Fusarium head blight susceptibility

In plants fructans are important storage compounds synthesized from sucrose in many grass species including wheat, which accumulate in stems and are remobilized to spikes and grain post anthesis. Fructans have also been implicated in abiotic stress tolerance. Our previous study, based on Virus-Induced Gene silencing individually of the three fructosyltransferase (FT) genes, 1-SST, 6-SFT and 1-FFT, significantly reduced levels of Fusarium head blight (FHB) disease and lowered concentration of the fungal mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON) in wheat spikes, especially in the 6-SFT silenced plants. Metabolome analysis revealed that silencing of the FT genes resulted in altered fructans profile in wheat spikes, while in vitro growth assays revealed that Fusarium. graminearum could effectively utilize some fructans as carbon sources required for growth, indicating fructans could also act as host susceptibility factors contributing to FHB disease severity. Homozygous Cadenza TILLING lines were identified harboring single stop codon mutation respectively on the three 6-SFT homoeologs located on chromosome 4AL, 7AS and 7DS. After inter-crossing, double homozygous mutants of 7D/4A, 7D/7A and 4A/7A were identified and propagated. The generation of triple 6-SFT mutants is in progress. Simultaneously, 6-SFT genome-edited (GE) Cadenza plants were generated, and triple mutants with 60-70 bp deletions of all three homoeologs were identified. Phenotyping of all TILLING and GE fructan biosynthesis pathway mutants for FHB resistance is in progress. Our FT gene knock-out mutant lines will be explored as new resource for future breeding strategies to increase resilience against fungal diseases

DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY OF THE NEW DOWNTOWN OF SINGAPORE

Bachelor'sBACHELOR OF SCIENCE (REAL ESTATE