Customer Feedback Segmentation, Summarization, and Natural Language Querying Using Machine Learning

It is important for businesses to have an insightful understanding of their customers\u27 needs. It is often difficult to extract statistically meaningful and actionable insights from customer feedback. This disclosure describes the use of machine learning techniques to automatically summarize customer feedback and to generate insights from such summaries using natural language queries. The techniques scale with business size and product volume such that top of mind product issues can be identified from unstructured feedback. By enabling scalable examination, categorization, and natural language querying of customer feedback, the described techniques can help a business discover customer pain points. Raw customer feedback is transformed into actionable intelligence. A user interface can be provided that enables users to provide natural language queries, thus enabling personnel with little or no technical expertise to obtain insights from customer feedback

Ani-Bot: A Mixed-Reality Ready Modular Robotics System

DIY modular robotics has always had a strong appeal to makers and designers; being able to quickly design, build, and animate their own robots opens the possibility of bringing imaginations to life. However, current interfaces to control and program the DIY robot either lacks connection and consistency between the users and target (Graphical User Interface) or suffers from limited control capabilities due to the lack of versatility and functionality (Tangible User interface). We present Ani-Bot, a modular robotics system that allows users to construct Do-It-Yourself (DIY) robots and use mixed-reality approach to interact with them instantly. Ani-Bot enables novel user experience by embedding Mixed-Reality Interaction (MRI) in the three phases of interacting with a modular construction kit, namely, Creation, Tweaking, and Usage. First, Ani-Bot provides interactive manual and suggestive guidance to help users create their robots. Then, using the virtual tryout feature in the system, the constructive assembly can be further tweaked and improved to meet functional requirements before full construction. Finally, Ani-Bot\u27s mixed-reality UI enables users to control their robots to interact with the surrounding environment through animation and logic-driven events. We developed use cases and a user study, to evaluate and validate that the system is intuitive, effective and expressive. We find that the system has strong potential to deliver a novel user experience in DIY modular robotics

Frequency modelling and solution of fluid-structure interaction in complex pipelines

Complex pipelines may have various structural supports and boundary conditions, as well as branches. To analyse the vibrational characteristics of piping systems, frequency modelling and solution methods considering complex constraints are developed here. A fourteen-equation model and Transfer Matrix Method (TMM) are employed to describe Fluid–Structure Interaction (FSI) in liquid-filled pipes. A general solution for the multi-branch pipe is proposed in this paper, offering a methodology to predict frequency responses of the complex piping system. Some branched pipe systems are built for the purpose of validation, indicating good agreement with calculated results

Power Efficient SRAM Design with Integrated Bit Line Charge Pump

Bit line toggling of SRAM systems in write operations leads to the largest portion of power dissipation. To reduce this amount of power loss and achieve power efficient memory, we propose a new SRAM design that integrates charge pump circuits to harvest and reuse bit line charge. In this work, a power-efficient charge recycling SRAM is designed and implemented in 180nm CMOS technology. Post-layout simulation demonstrates an 11% of power saving and 3.8% of area overhead, if the bit width of SRAM is chosen as 8. Alternatively, 22% of power reduction is obtained if the bit width of SRAM is extended to 64. Compared with existing charge recycling SRAM schemes, this proposed SRAM is robust to process variation, demonstrates good read/write stability, and illustrates better trade-off between design complexity and power reduction

Akt: A Double-Edged Sword in Cell Proliferation and Genome Stability

The Akt family of serine/threonine protein kinases are key regulators of multiple aspects of cell behaviour, including proliferation, survival, metabolism, and tumorigenesis. Growth-factor-activated Akt signalling promotes progression through normal, unperturbed cell cycles by acting on diverse downstream factors involved in controlling the G1/S and G2/M transitions. Remarkably, several recent studies have also implicated Akt in modulating DNA damage responses and genome stability. High Akt activity can suppress ATR/Chk1 signalling and homologous recombination repair (HRR) via direct phosphorylation of Chk1 or TopBP1 or, indirectly, by inhibiting recruitment of double-strand break (DSB) resection factors, such as RPA, Brca1, and Rad51, to sites of damage. Loss of checkpoint and/or HRR proficiency is therefore a potential cause of genomic instability in tumor cells with high Akt. Conversely, Akt is activated by DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) in a DNA-PK- or ATM/ATR-dependent manner and in some circumstances can contribute to radioresistance by stimulating DNA repair by nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ). Akt therefore modifies both the response to and repair of genotoxic damage in complex ways that are likely to have important consequences for the therapy of tumors with deregulation of the PI3K-Akt-PTEN pathway

Effects of precipitation variation and trampling disturbance on seedling emergence of annual plants in a semi-arid grassland

Precipitation change and grazing are the main factors influencing vegetation structure and dynamics in semi-arid grassland. However, the effects of precipitation variation and livestock trampling on the seedling emergence patterns of plants remain largely unknown. In this study, an experiment with four gradients of trampling (no-trampling, light, moderate, and heavy) and three precipitation treatments (ambient precipitation, +30% precipitation, and −30% precipitation) was conducted to assess the effects of trampling disturbance and precipitation variation on seedling emergence of annual plants. The results showed that an increase in precipitation significantly improved total seedling emergence by 3.5–3.6 times and seedling density of grasses by more than 4.1 times under trampling conditions, while significantly improving total seedling emergence and density of forbs under no-trampling conditions. Moreover, +30% precipitation significantly improved the seedling proportion of grasses under light, moderate, and heavy trampling, while decreasing the seedling proportion of forbs. Seedling emergence of forbs was more sensitive to trampling disturbance, and seedling emergence of grasses was more sensitive to precipitation changes, especially under trampling conditions. Light and moderate trampling with a +30% precipitation increase promoted seedling emergence of grasses, and no trampling with a +30% precipitation increase improved seedling emergence of forbs. Thus, targeted grazing management measures should be implemented for plant communities dominated by either grasses or forbs under changing precipitation conditions

三次元有限要素法を用いた臼歯陶材焼付鋳造冠におけるメタルコーピング形態の力学的検討

Objectives To find the ideal form of coping for metal molar ceramic crowns, we evaluated their stress distributions under various loading conditions using three-dimensional finite element analysis. Materials and methods A three-dimensional finite element model representing a lower first molar was constructed. The model was varied to include one of three types of coping, the standard, butterfly, and flat types. A load of 600N, simulating the maximum bite force, was applied vertically to the crowns at the central occlusal surface and mesio-oc-clusal marginal areas. Loads of 225N, simulating masticatory force, were applied at a 45° angle to the tooth axis. Results In three of the simulation load tests, the maximum stresses were concentrated around the loading points on the porcelain and coping. The minimum tensile stress value was placed on the butterfly coping crown in the test simulating maximum bite force, when the load was applied to the mesio-occlusal marginal areas. Conclusion The butterfly coping design optimizes the stress distribution within copings and porcelain and enhances the structural strength of porcelain in metal ceramic crowns