Blind flight: Do auditory lane departure warnings attract attention or actual guide action?

Presented at the 11th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD2005)This paper presents a research project concerning the effect of an auditory lane departure warning in a driving simulator experiment. The experimental design is chosen to induce drowsiness-related lane departures. We only evaluate situations where the driver is losing track because of moments of sleep. This design guarantees that the lane departures are unintentional and unconscious. Literature supports the point of view that the only effect of auditory lane departure warnings is to focus the driver's attention back onto the street and the steering reaction is a result of the driver's visual impression of the driving scene. We falsify this statement especially by measuring the time gap between the opening of the eyes after a warning and the steering reaction of the driver. If the reaction is based only on the visual impression, that duration can't be less than the minimum simple visual reaction time of 0.19 seconds

Meeting report : GBIF hackathon-workshop on Darwin Core and sample data (22-24 May 2013)

© The Author(s), 2014. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Standards in Genomic Sciences 9 (2014): 585-598, doi:10.4056/sigs.4898640.The workshop-hackathon was convened by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) at its secretariat in Copenhagen over 22-24 May 2013 with additional support from several projects (RCN4GSC, EAGER, VertNet, BiSciCol, GGBN, and Micro B3). It assembled a team of experts to address the challenge of adapting the Darwin Core standard for a wide variety of sample data. Topics addressed in the workshop included 1) a review of outstanding issues in the Darwin Core standard, 2) issues relating to publishing of biodiversity data through Darwin Core Archives, 3) use of Darwin Core Archives for publishing sample and monitoring data, 4) the case for modifying the Darwin Core Text Guide specification to support many-to-many relations, and 5) the generalization of the Darwin Core Archive to a “Biodiversity Data Archive”. A wide variety of use cases were assembled and discussed in order to inform further developments.We gratefully acknowledge support from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), from the Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN), from the EU 7FP Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology project (Micro B3), and from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) through the following grants: DBI-0840989 [Research Coordination Network for the Ge-nomic Standards Consortium (RCN4GSC)], IIS-1255035 [EAGER: An Interoperable Information Infrastructure for Biodiversity Research (I3BR)], ABI Development: Collaborative Research: VertNet, a New Model for Bio-diversity Networks (DBI-1062193), and Collaborative Research: BiSciCol Tracker: Towards a tagging and tracking infrastructure for biodiversity science collec-tions (DBI-0956426)

Meta-Analysis of 28,141 Individuals Identifies Common Variants within Five New Loci That Influence Uric Acid Concentrations

Elevated serum uric acid levels cause gout and are a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. To investigate the polygenetic basis of serum uric acid levels, we conducted a meta-analysis of genome-wide association scans from 14 studies totalling 28,141 participants of European descent, resulting in identification of 954 SNPs distributed across nine loci that exceeded the threshold of genome-wide significance, five of which are novel. Overall, the common variants associated with serum uric acid levels fall in the following nine regions: SLC2A9 (p = 5.2×10−201), ABCG2 (p = 3.1×10−26), SLC17A1 (p = 3.0×10−14), SLC22A11 (p = 6.7×10−14), SLC22A12 (p = 2.0×10−9), SLC16A9 (p = 1.1×10−8), GCKR (p = 1.4×10−9), LRRC16A (p = 8.5×10−9), and near PDZK1 (p = 2.7×10−9). Identified variants were analyzed for gender differences. We found that the minor allele for rs734553 in SLC2A9 has greater influence in lowering uric acid levels in women and the minor allele of rs2231142 in ABCG2 elevates uric acid levels more strongly in men compared to women. To further characterize the identified variants, we analyzed their association with a panel of metabolites. rs12356193 within SLC16A9 was associated with DL-carnitine (p = 4.0×10−26) and propionyl-L-carnitine (p = 5.0×10−8) concentrations, which in turn were associated with serum UA levels (p = 1.4×10−57 and p = 8.1×10−54, respectively), forming a triangle between SNP, metabolites, and UA levels. Taken together, these associations highlight additional pathways that are important in the regulation of serum uric acid levels and point toward novel potential targets for pharmacological intervention to prevent or treat hyperuricemia. In addition, these findings strongly support the hypothesis that transport proteins are key in regulating serum uric acid levels

Large meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies identifies five loci for lean body mass

Lean body mass, consisting mostly of skeletal muscle, is important for healthy aging. We performed a genome-wide association study for whole body (20 cohorts of European ancestry with n = 38,292) and appendicular (arms and legs) lean body mass (n = 28,330) measured using dual energy X-ray absorptiometry or bioelectrical impedance analysis, adjusted for sex, age, height, and fat mass. Twenty-one single-nucleotide polymorphisms were significantly associated with lean body mass either genome wide (p < 5 x 10(-8)) or suggestively genome wide (p < 2.3 x 10(-6)). Replication in 63,475 (47,227 of European ancestry) individuals from 33 cohorts for whole body lean body mass and in 45,090 (42,360 of European ancestry) subjects from 25 cohorts for appendicular lean body mass was successful for five single-nucleotide polymorphisms in/ near HSD17B11, VCAN, ADAMTSL3, IRS1, and FTO for total lean body mass and for three single-nucleotide polymorphisms in/ near VCAN, ADAMTSL3, and IRS1 for appendicular lean body mass. Our findings provide new insight into the genetics of lean body mass

New loci for body fat percentage reveal link between adiposity and cardiometabolic disease risk

To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of adiposity and its links to cardiometabolic disease risk, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of body fat percentage (BF%) in up to 100,716 individuals. Twelve loci reached genome-wide significance (P <5 x 10(-8)), of which eight were previously associated with increased overall adiposity (BMI, BF%) and four (in or near COBLL1/GRB14, IGF2BP1, PLA2G6, CRTC1) were novel associations with BF%. Seven loci showed a larger effect on BF% than on BMI, suggestive of a primary association with adiposity, while five loci showed larger effects on BMI than on BF%, suggesting association with both fat and lean mass. In particular, the loci more strongly associated with BF% showed distinct cross-phenotype association signatures with a range of cardiometabolic traits revealing new insights in the link between adiposity and disease risk.Peer reviewe

Darwin Core: An Evolving Community-Developed Biodiversity Data Standard

Biodiversity data derive from myriad sources stored in various formats on many distinct hardware and software platforms. An essential step towards understanding global patterns of biodiversity is to provide a standardized view of these heterogeneous data sources to improve interoperability. Fundamental to this advance are definitions of common terms. This paper describes the evolution and development of Darwin Core, a data standard for publishing and integrating biodiversity information. We focus on the categories of terms that define the standard, differences between simple and relational Darwin Core, how the standard has been implemented, and the community processes that are essential for maintenance and growth of the standard. We present case-study extensions of the Darwin Core into new research communities, including metagenomics and genetic resources. We close by showing how Darwin Core records are integrated to create new knowledge products documenting species distributions and changes due to environmental perturbations

The GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit: Facilitating the Efficient Publishing of Biodiversity Data on the Internet

The planet is experiencing an ongoing global biodiversity crisis. Measuring the magnitude and rate of change more effectively requires access to organized, easily discoverable, and digitally-formatted biodiversity data, both legacy and new, from across the globe. Assembling this coherent digital representation of biodiversity requires the integration of data that have historically been analog, dispersed, and heterogeneous. The Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) is a software package developed to support biodiversity dataset publication in a common format. The IPT’s two primary functions are to 1) encode existing species occurrence datasets and checklists, such as records from natural history collections or observations, in the Darwin Core standard to enhance interoperability of data, and 2) publish and archive data and metadata for broad use in a Darwin Core Archive, a set of files following a standard format. Here we discuss the key need for the IPT, how it has developed in response to community input, and how it continues to evolve to streamline and enhance the interoperability, discoverability, and mobilization of new data types beyond basic Darwin Core records. We close with a discussion how IPT has impacted the biodiversity research community, how it enhances data publishing in more traditional journal venues, along with new features implemented in the latest version of the IPT, and future plans for more enhancements

Text analysis using large high-resolution displays

Large high-resolution displays (LHRDs) are entering into our daily life. Today, we already see them in installations where they display tailored applications, e.g. in exhibitions. However, while heavily studied under lab conditions, real-world applications for personal use, which utilize the extended screen space are rarely available. Thus, today’s studies of LHRD are particularly designed to embrace the large screen space. In contrast, in this paper, we investigate a real-world application designed for researchers working on large text corpora to support them in deep text understanding. We conducted a study with 14 experts from the humanities and computational linguistics which solved a text analysis task using a standard desktop version on a 24 inch screen and an LHRD version on three 50 inch screens. Surprisingly, the smaller display condition outperformed the LHRD in terms of task completion time and error rate. While participants appreciated the overview provided by the large screen, qualitative feedback also revealed that the need for head movement and the scrolling mechanism decreased the usability of the LHRD condition

Serology as a diagnostic tool for predicting initialPseudomonas aeruginosa acquisition in childrenwith cystic fibrosis

AbstractRationalePseudomonas aeruginosa (Pa) serology could potentially be a useful adjunct to respiratory culture methods for the detection of initial or early Pa infection in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF).ObjectiveTo evaluate the utility of Pa serology to predict Pa isolation from respiratory (generally oropharyngeal) cultures in the subsequent 6 or 12months among young children with CF from whom Pa had never been previously cultured. Pa serology was also evaluated in a group of healthy controls.MethodsChildren≤12years of age without prior isolation of Pa from respiratory cultures participating in the Early Pseudomonal Infection Control EPIC Observational Study (EPIC OBS) had annual serum samples for measurement of antibodies against alkaline protease, elastase and exotoxin A using a commercial kit; controls had a single serum sample. Logistic regression with generalized estimating equations was used to characterize associations between log10 serum antibody titers and first isolation of Pa from a respiratory culture within the subsequent 6 or 12months, with adjustment for sex and age. Receiver operating characteristic curves were used to optimize antibody titer cutpoints by age group. The diagnostic properties of each antibody were estimated using these optimized cutpoints.ResultsPa serology was evaluated in 582 children with CF (2084 serum samples) and 94 healthy controls. There was substantial overlap between serum antibody titers among controls, CF patients who did not acquire Pa (N=261) and CF patients who did acquire Pa (N=321). The maximum positive predictive value for first Pa positive culture within the ensuing 6months was 76.2% and maximum negative predictive value was 72.1% for any antigen or combination of antigens; values were similar for 12months.ConclusionsPa serology does not appear useful for predicting first Pa positive oropharyngeal culture among young CF patients