Making tourist guidance systems more intelligent, adaptive and personalised using crowd sourced movement data

Ambient intelligence (AmI) provides adaptive, personalized, intelligent, ubiquitous and interactive services to wide range of users. AmI can have a variety of applications, including smart shops, health care, smart home, assisted living, and location-based services. Tourist guidance is one of the applications where AmI can have a great contribution to the quality of the service, as the tourists, who may not be very familiar with the visiting site, need a location-aware, ubiquitous, personalised and informative service. Such services should be able to understand the preferences of the users without requiring the users to specify them, predict their interests, and provide relevant and tailored services in the most appropriate way, including audio, visual, and haptic. This paper shows the use of crowd sourced trajectory data in the detection of points of interests and providing ambient tourist guidance based on the patterns recognised over such data

Animal shelter management of feline leukemia virus and feline immunodeficiency virus infections in cats

Approximately 5% of cats in animal shelters in the United States test positive for either feline leukemia virus (FeLV) or feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), which translates to more than 100,000 positive cats managed by shelters each year. Little is known about the current status of retroviral management in animal shelters, particularly in regions burdened by chronic pet overpopulation and high shelter admissions, such as the southern United States. The purpose of this study was to describe feline retroviral management in Florida shelters. Shelters were surveyed on practices including selection of cats for testing, diagnostic techniques, and outcome options for cats with positive test results. Responses were received from 139 of 153 animal shelters known to admit cats, including 55 municipal shelters (40%), 70 private shelters (50%), and 14 private shelters with municipal contracts (10%). A total of 115 shelters (83%) performed at least some testing, most using combination point-of-care devices for simultaneous FeLV antigen and FIV antibody screening. Of shelters that performed any testing, 56 (49%) tested all cats for FeLV and 52 (45%) tested all cats for both FeLV and FIV. The most common reason for testing was screening adoptable cats (108 shelters; 94%) and cats available for transfer to other organizations (78; 68%). Testing cats in trap-neuter-return/return-to-field programs was least common (21; 18%). Most common outcome options for positive cats included adoption (74; 64%), transfer (62; 54%), and euthanasia (49; 43%). Euthanasia following a positive test result was more common for cats with FeLV (49; 43%) than for cats with FIV (29; 25%) and was more common in municipal shelters, rural shelters, shelters taking in <500 cats a year, and shelters with overall live outcome rates for cats <70%. Although Florida shelter compliance with national guidelines for identification and management of FeLV and FIV positive cats was variable, most had live outcome options for at least some of their cats with positive test results. Increased access to training and practical programmatic tools may help more shelters implement cost-effective testing protocols, reduce risk for transmission to other cats, and support the best outcomes for this vulnerable population of cats

Hepatitis b vertical transfer and its risk factors in pregnant women in the eastern part of iran

One of the main causes of chronic hepatitis is mother to child transfer which is also known as vertical transfer (VT). Although there are several studies regarding the VT mechanism and its risk factors, none of these studies succeeded in explaining this process, completely. We conducted this study aiming at investigating VT mechanism and risk factors in this region. The present study was a descriptive-analytic cross-sectional study on HBS Ag positive pregnant women, which was conducted from March 2018 to March 2020 in Amir-AlMomenin Hospital in Zabol, Sistan-and-Baluchestan province, Iran. In this study all samples were tested for HBV markers (HBsAg, anti-HBs, HBeAg, anti-HBe, anti-HBc, and HBV-DNA) and anti-HCV by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). All statistical analyzes were performed using SPSS version 22 software. Totally 43 infants of HBS antigen positive mothers were investigated. HBe antibody and HBe antigen were found in 25 (62.5%) and 2 (5%) of mothers, respectively. There was no significant difference between the newborns with and without hepatitis B infection regarding maternal age (p=0.216), duration of the infection in mother (p=0.892), AST (0.779), AL (0.449) and ALP (0.065). Mothers with positive viral load during pregnancy delivered newborns with positive HBS antigen much more than mothers with negative HBS antigen. However, this difference was not statistically significant (p=0.642). Although positive viral load was more common in neonates delivered from positive viral load mothers, the observed difference was also remained non-significant (p=0.978). Our study provided evidences regarding that demographic, immunologic and clinical characteristics of mothers with hepatitis B infection did not play considerable role in the vertical transmission of the infection to the newborns as well as the severity of the following infection. We also suggested the possibility of placenta acting as a source of infection in VT. Further longitudinal studies with larger sample sizes are needed to show the exact predictors of transmission of the infection from infected mothers to their children, Amirian S., Afshari M., Parooie F., Keikhaie K.R., Shahramian I., Bazi A., Ostadrahimi P., Sheikh M., Mirzaie H., Aminisefat A. One of the main causes of chronic hepatitis is mother to child transfer which is also known as vertical transfer (VT). Although there are several studies regarding the VT mechanism and its risk factors, none of these studies succeeded in explaining this process, completely. We conducted this study aiming at investigating VT mechanism and risk factors in this region. The present study was a descriptive-analytic cross-sectional study on HBS Ag positive pregnant women, which was conducted from March 2018 to March 2020 in Amir-AlMomenin Hospital in Zabol, Sistan-and-Baluchestan province, Iran. In this study all samples were tested for HBV markers (HBsAg, anti-HBs, HBeAg, anti-HBe, anti-HBc, and HBV-DNA) and anti-HCV by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). All statistical analyzes were performed using SPSS version 22 software. Totally 43 infants of HBS antigen positive mothers were investigated. HBe antibody and HBe antigen were found in 25 (62.5%) and 2 (5%) of mothers, respectively. There was no significant difference between the newborns with and without hepatitis B infection regarding maternal age (p=0.216), duration of the infection in mother (p=0.892), AST (0.779), AL (0.449) and ALP (0.065). Mothers with positive viral load during pregnancy delivered newborns with positive HBS antigen much more than mothers with negative HBS antigen. However, this difference was not statistically significant (p=0.642). Although positive viral load was more common in neonates delivered from positive viral load mothers, the observed difference was also remained non-significant (p=0.978). Our study provided evidences regarding that demographic, immunologic and clinical characteristics of mothers with hepatitis B infection did not play considerable role in the vertical transmission of the infection to the newborns as well as the severity of the following infection. We also suggested the possibility of placenta acting as a source of infection in VT. Further longitudinal studies with larger sample sizes are needed to show the exact predictors of transmission of the infection from infected mothers to their childre

Quality assessment of OpenStreetMap data using trajectory mining

OpenStreetMap (OSM) data are widely used but their reliability is still variable. Many contributors to OSM have not been trained in geography or surveying and consequently their contributions, including geometry and attribute data inserts, deletions, and updates, can be inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent, or vague. There are some mechanisms and applications dedicated to discovering bugs and errors in OSM data. Such systems can remove errors through user-checks and applying predefined rules but they need an extra control process to check the real-world validity of suspected errors and bugs. This paper focuses on finding bugs and errors based on patterns and rules extracted from the tracking data of users. The underlying idea is that certain characteristics of user trajectories are directly linked to the type of feature. Using such rules, some sets of potential bugs and errors can be identified and stored for further investigation

Iranian infertile couples' strategies to manage social interactions after unsuccessful treatments with assisted reproductive technologies

Many infertile couples feel vulnerable after failed treatment cycles and find insensitive remarks or inappropriate support distressing. They fear that the stress of failed treatment cycles may affect their marriage and lead to marriage breakdown. This study explored the strategies a sample of infertile couples used to manage social interactions after unsuccessful treatment with assisted reproductive technologies. A descriptive qualitative study was conducted with 34 participants including nine infertile couples, nine infertile women and two infertile men with primary infertility, two relatives, and three fertility clinic staff. The participants were selected through purposive sampling at an infertility centre in Iran, between 2016 and 2017. Data were collected using semi-structured face-to-face interviews and analysed by qualitative content analysis approach. Participants found some social interactions after failed assisted reproductive treatment cycles to be distressing and painful. They described tolerating painful emotions which cause them sadness and sorrow as well as feeling embarrassed. As a result, they found they needed to maintain their adopting concealment strategies with their families through not permitting speculation, selective disclosure, not giving details and hiding the truth. This study showed that social interactions following failed assisted reproductive cycles can be upsetting for infertile couples. Couples use different strategies to manage potentially distressing social interactions. Healthcare providers and psychologists may provide a space for safe social interactions in order to help couples to use appropriate strategies in these circumstances

How (not) to measure bias in face recognition networks

Within the last years Face Recognition (FR) systems have achieved human-like (or better) performance, leading to extensive deployment in large-scale practical settings. Yet, especially for sensible domains such as FR we expect algorithms to work equally well for everyone, regardless of somebody's age, gender, skin colour and/or origin. In this paper, we investigate a methodology to quantify the amount of bias in a trained Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model for FR that is not only intuitively appealing, but also has already been used in the literature to argue for certain debiasing methods. It works by measuring the "blindness" of the model towards certain face characteristics in the embeddings of faces based on internal cluster validation measures. We conduct experiments on three openly available FR models to determine their bias regarding race, gender and age, and validate the computed scores by comparing their predictions against the actual drop in face recognition performance for minority cases. Interestingly, we could not link a crisp clustering in the embedding space to a strong bias in recognition rates|it is rather the opposite. We therefore offer arguments for the reasons behind this observation and argue for the need of a less naive clustering approach to develop a working measure for bias in FR models

Is there a role for melatonin in fibromyalgia?

Fibromyalgia, characterised by persistent pain, fatigue, sleep disturbance and cognitive dysfunction, is a central sensitivity syndrome that also involves abnormality in peripheral generators and in the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. Heterogeneity of clinical expression of fibromyalgia with a multifactorial aetiology has made the development of effective therapeutic strategies challenging. Physiological properties of the neurohormone melatonin appear related to the symptom profile exhibited by patients with fibromyalgia and thus disturbance of it’s production would be compatible with the pathophysiology. Altered levels of melatonin have been observed in patients with fibromyalgia which are associated with lower secretion during dark hours and higher secretion during daytime. However, inconsistencies of available clinical evidence limit conclusion of a relationship between levels of melatonin and symptom profiles in patients with fibromyalgia. Administration of melatonin to patients with fibromyalgia has demonstrated suppression of many symptoms and an improved quality of life consistent with benefit as a therapy for the management of this condition. Further studies with larger samples, however, are required to explore the potential role of melatonin in the pathophysiology of fibromyalgia and determine the optimal dosing regimen of melatonin for the management of fibromyalgia

Malignant Tumors of the Central Nervous System

Malignant tumors of the central nervous system in adults comprise a heterogeneous group of malignancies, the largest subgroups comprising astrocytomas, ependymomas, and oligodendrogliomas. Glioblastomas are the most common tumor type, and they have dismal prognosis. Due to differences in cell type of origin, as well as pathogenesis, it is plausible that their etiology also differs between tumor types. The etiology of malignant CNS tumors is largely unknown and no occupational risk factors have been definitively identified. High doses of ionizing radiation increase the risk, but in occupational settings the dose levels appear too small to result in discernible excesses. Several studies have assessed possible effect of extremely low frequency and radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, but the results are inconsistent. Increased brain tumor risk has been reported in agricultural workers, but no specific exposure has been linked to them. Pesticides have been analyzed in several studies without showing a clear increase in risk.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe