77 research outputs found
Interpretation of Spatial Movement and Perception in Location Based Services
Location Based Services should deliver pertinent
information to the user at the right place and at the right time.
Such is the range of available content, that it must be filtered
and prioritised according to the user's context to reduce wait
time and eliminate the delivery of unwanted information. Whiie
some contextual information can be inferred from the device
sensors, such as location and time, a deeper understanding of the
user's context can be inferred by combing these sources with an
implicit interpretation of the user's actions. This paper proposes
an experiment to compare the user's actions in a real world
environment to his actions in an identical virtual world, enabling
accurate contextual inferences to be made. The real world study
allows an analysis of real movements, which can be correlated
with movements in the virtual world, with a greater potential for
additional psychological analysis as part of the virtual world
Interpretation of Spatial Movement and Perception in Location Based Services
Location Based Services should deliver pertinent
information to the user at the right place and at the right time.
Such is the range of available content, that it must be filtered
and prioritised according to the user's context to reduce wait
time and eliminate the delivery of unwanted information. Whiie
some contextual information can be inferred from the device
sensors, such as location and time, a deeper understanding of the
user's context can be inferred by combing these sources with an
implicit interpretation of the user's actions. This paper proposes
an experiment to compare the user's actions in a real world
environment to his actions in an identical virtual world, enabling
accurate contextual inferences to be made. The real world study
allows an analysis of real movements, which can be correlated
with movements in the virtual world, with a greater potential for
additional psychological analysis as part of the virtual world
Investigation of free-living honey bee colonies in Ireland
Apis mellifera mellifera (Linnaeus), the Western European honey bee, is considered extinct in the wild over most of its range due largely to hybridisation and replacement by other subspecies, parasitism by Varroa destructor, habitat loss, and effects from agricultural pesticides. The purity of the subspecies within the managed cohort is also at risk over much of its range. Here, we investigated if honey bee colonies inhabited locations outside of the apiaries. In those we located, we explored how long the colony persisted and we investigated the genotypes of the bees using multiple markers. We show here that unmanaged free-living honey bee colonies are present and widespread in Ireland, inhabiting a mixture of nesting habitats with some colonies persisting naturally and unaided over multiple years. Molecular data including mitochondrial, microsatellite, and SNPs evidence indicate that the free-living population sampled is largely comprised of pure A. m. mellifera. Finally, we discuss the implications of conserving free-living A. m. mellifera in Ireland and its possible role in improving the fitness of the managed population both in Ireland and the rest of its European range.We particularly thank the custodians of the free-living honey
bee colonies and the Native Irish Honey Bee Society (NIHBS)
for their assistance. KAB is a recipient of an Irish Research
Council postgraduate fellowship (GOIPG/2015/2767) and a
Tony Ryan Postgraduate fellowship. Additional funding was
gratefully received from the Department of Agriculture, Food
and the Marine [grant number GRGAS 16/GR/09], the
Federation of Irish Beekeeping Associations, the Eva Crane
Trust [grant number ECTA20160303] and The Native Irish
Honey Bee Society. Financial support for DH was provided
through the program COMPETE 2020 – POCI (Programa
Operacional para a Competividade e Internacionalizac¸~ao) and
by Portuguese funds through FCT (Fundac¸~ao para a Ci^encia e
a Tecnologia) in the framework of the project BeeHappy
(POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029871).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Beyond LLM in M-theory
The Lin, Lunin, Maldacena (LLM) ansatz in D = 11 supports two independent
Killing directions when a general Killing spinor ansatz is considered. Here we
show that these directions always commute, identify when the Killing spinors
are charged, and show that both their inner product and resulting geometry are
governed by two fundamental constants. In particular, setting one constant to
zero leads to AdS7 x S4, setting the other to zero gives AdS4 x S7, while flat
spacetime is recovered when both these constants are zero. Furthermore, when
the constants are equal, the spacetime is either LLM, or it corresponds to the
Kowalski-Glikman solution where the constants are simply the mass parameter.Comment: 1+30 pages, footnote adde
A protocol for a randomised clinical trial of the effect of providing feedback on inhaler technique and adherence from an electronic device in patients with poorly controlled severe asthma.
INTRODUCTION: In clinical practice, it is difficult to distinguish between patients with refractory asthma from those with poorly controlled asthma, where symptoms persist due to poor adherence, inadequate inhaler technique or comorbid diseases. We designed an audio recording device which, when attached to an inhaler, objectively identifies the time and technique of inhaler use, thereby assessing both aspects of adherence. This study will test the hypothesis that feedback on these two aspects of adherence when passed on to patients improves adherence and helps clinicians distinguish refractory from difficult-to-control asthma.
METHODS: This is a single, blind, prospective, randomised, clinical trial performed at 5 research centres. Patients with partially controlled or uncontrolled severe asthma who have also had at least one severe asthma exacerbation in the prior year are eligible to participate. The effect of two types of nurse-delivered education interventions to promote adherence and inhaler technique will be assessed. The active group will receive feedback on their inhaler technique and adherence from the new device over a 3-month period. The control group will also receive training in inhaler technique and strategies to promote adherence, but no feedback from the device. The primary outcome is the difference in actual adherence, a measure that incorporates time and technique of inhaler use between groups at the end of the third month. Secondary outcomes include the number of patients who remain refractory despite good adherence, and differences in the components of adherence after the intervention. Data will be analysed on an intention-to-treat and a per-protocol basis. The sample size is 220 subjects (110 in each group), and loss to follow-up is estimated at 10% which will allow results to show a 10% difference (0.8 power) in adherence between group means with a type I error probability of 0.05.
TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT01529697; Pre-results
Mucosal associated invariant T cells are altered in patients with Hidradenitis Suppurativa and contribute to the inflammatory milieu
Mucosal Associated Invariant T cells are a population of “innate” T cells, which express
the invariant T cell receptor (TCR) a chain Va7.2-Ja33 and are capable of robust rapid
cytokine secretion, producing a milieu of cytokines including IFN-g and IL-17. MAIT
cells have been reported in multiple human tissues including the gut, periphery and
skin. On-going research has highlighted their involvement in numerous inflammatory
diseases ranging from rheumatoid arthritis and obesity to psoriasis. Hidradenitis
Suppurativa (H.S) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the hair follicles, resulting in
painful lesions of apocrine-bearing skin. Several inflammatory cytokines have been
implicated in the pathogenesis of H.S including IL-17. The role of MAIT cells in H.S is
currently unknown. In this study we show for the first time, that MAIT cells are altered
in the peripheral blood of patients with H.S, with reduced frequencies and an IL-17
cytokine bias. We show that CCL20 expression is elevated in lesions of patients with
H.S, and MAIT cells can actively traffic towards lesions via CCL20. We show that MAIT
cells can accumulate in the lesionsfrom patients with H.S. when compared to adjacent
skin, with an IL-17 bias. We show that elevated IL-17, can be linked to the activation
of dermal fibroblasts, promoting the expression of chemotactic signals including
CCL20 and CXCL1. Finally, we show that targeting the IL-17A transcription factor RORyt
robustly reduces IL-17 production by MAIT cells from patients with H.S. Collectively
our data detailsIL-17 producing MAIT cells as a novel player in the pathogenesis of H.S
and highlights the potential of RORyt inhibition as a novel therapeutic strategy
Automated retinal image quality assessment on the UK Biobank dataset for epidemiological studies.
Morphological changes in the retinal vascular network are associated with future risk of many systemic and vascular diseases. However, uncertainty over the presence and nature of some of these associations exists. Analysis of data from large population based studies will help to resolve these uncertainties. The QUARTZ (QUantitative Analysis of Retinal vessel Topology and siZe) retinal image analysis system allows automated processing of large numbers of retinal images. However, an image quality assessment module is needed to achieve full automation. In this paper, we propose such an algorithm, which uses the segmented vessel map to determine the suitability of retinal images for use in the creation of vessel morphometric data suitable for epidemiological studies. This includes an effective 3-dimensional feature set and support vector machine classification. A random subset of 800 retinal images from UK Biobank (a large prospective study of 500,000 middle aged adults; where 68,151 underwent retinal imaging) was used to examine the performance of the image quality algorithm. The algorithm achieved a sensitivity of 95.33% and a specificity of 91.13% for the detection of inadequate images. The strong performance of this image quality algorithm will make rapid automated analysis of vascular morphometry feasible on the entire UK Biobank dataset (and other large retinal datasets), with minimal operator involvement, and at low cost
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