Use Cases for Abnormal Behaviour Detection in Smart Homes

While people have many ideas about how a smart home should react to particular behaviours from their inhabitant, there seems to have been relatively little attempt to organise this systematically. In this paper, we attempt to rectify this in consideration of context awareness and novelty detection for a smart home that monitors its inhabitant for illness and unexpected behaviour. We do this through the concept of the Use Case, which is used in software engineering to specify the behaviour of a system. We describe a set of scenarios and the possible outputs that the smart home could give and introduce the SHMUC Repository of Smart Home Use Cases. Based on this, we can consider how probabilistic and logic-based reasoning systems would produce different capabilities

Exploring The Responsibilities Of Single-Inhabitant Smart Homes With Use Cases

DOI: 10.3233/AIS-2010-0076This paper makes a number of contributions to the field of requirements analysis for Smart Homes. It introduces Use Cases as a tool for exploring the responsibilities of Smart Homes and it proposes a modification of the conventional Use Case structure to suit the particular requirements of Smart Homes. It presents a taxonomy of Smart-Home-related Use Cases with seven categories. It draws on those Use Cases as raw material for developing questions and conclusions about the design of Smart Homes for single elderly inhabitants, and it introduces the SHMUC repository, a web-based repository of Use Cases related to Smart Homes that anyone can exploit and to which anyone may contribute

ADI method based on C2-continuous two-node integrated-RBF elements for viscous flows

We propose a C2-continuous alternating direction implicit (ADI) method for the solution of the streamfunction-vorticity equations governing steady 2D incompressible viscous fluid flows. Discretisation is simply achieved with Cartesian grids. Local two-node integrated radial basis function elements (IRBFEs) [D.-A. An-Vo, N. Mai-Duy, T. Tran-Cong, A C2-continuous control-volume technique based on Cartesian grids and two-node integrated-RBF elements for second-order elliptic problems, CMES: Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 72 (2011) 299-334] are used for the discretisation of the diffusion terms, and then the convection terms are incorporated into system matrices by treating nodal derivatives as unknowns. ADI procedure is applied for the time integration. Following ADI factorisation, the two-dimensional problem becomes a sequence of one-dimensional problems. The solution strategy consists of multiple use of a one-dimensional sparse matrix algorithm that helps saving the computational cost. High levels of accuracy and efficiency of the present methods are demonstrated with solutions of several benchmark problems defined on rectangular and non-rectangular domains

Periplasmic Cleavage and Modification of the 1-Phosphate Group of Helicobacter Pylori Lipid A

Pathogenic bacteria modify the lipid A portion of their lipopolysaccharide to help evade the host innate immune response. Modification of the negatively charged phosphate groups of lipid A aids in resistance to cationic antimicrobial peptides targeting the bacterial cell surface. The lipid A of Helicobacter pylori contains a phosphoethanolamine (pEtN) unit directly linked to the 1-position of the disaccharide backbone. This is in contrast to the pEtN units found in other pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria, which are attached to the lipid A phosphate group to form a pyrophosphate linkage. This study describes two enzymes involved in the periplasmic modification of the 1-phosphate group of H. pylori lipid A. By using an in vitro assay system, we demonstrate the presence of lipid A 1-phosphatase activity in membranes of H. pylori. In an attempt to identify genes encoding possible lipid A phosphatases, we cloned four putative orthologs of Escherichia coli pgpB, the phosphatidylglycerol-phosphate phosphatase, from H. pylori 26695. One of these orthologs, Hp0021, is the structural gene for the lipid A 1-phosphatase and is required for removal of the 1-phosphate group from mature lipid A in an in vitro assay system. Heterologous expression of Hp0021 in E. coli resulted in the highly selective removal of the 1-phosphate group from E. coli lipid A, as demonstrated by mass spectrometry. We also identified the structural gene for the H. pylori lipid A pEtN transferase (Hp0022). Mass spectrometric analysis of the lipid A isolated from E. coli expressing Hp0021 and Hp0022 shows the addition of a single pEtN group at the 1-position, confirming that Hp0022 is responsible for the addition of a pEtN unit at the 1-position in H. pylori lipid A. In summary, we demonstrate that modification of the 1-phosphate group of H. pylori lipid A requires two enzymatic steps

Resistance to the Antimicrobial Peptide Polymyxin Requires Myristoylation of Escherichia Coli and Salmonella Typhimurium Lipid A

Attachment of positively charged, amine-containing residues such as 4-amino-4-deoxy-L-arabinose (L-Ara4N) and phosphoethanolamine (pEtN) to Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhimurium lipid A is required for resistance to the cationic antimicrobial peptide, polymyxin. In an attempt to discover additional lipid A modifications important for polymyxin resistance, we generated polymyxin-sensitive mutants of an E. coli pmrAC strain, WD101. A subset of polymyxin-sensitive mutants produced a lipid A that lacked both the 3′-acyloxyacyl-linked myristate (C14) and L-Ara4N, even though the necessary enzymatic machinery required to synthesize L-Ara4N-modified lipid A was present. Inactivation of lpxM in both E. coli and S. typhimurium resulted in the loss of L-Ara4N addition, as well as, increased sensitivity to polymyxin. However, decoration of the lipid A phosphate groups with pEtN residues was not effected in lpxM mutants. In summary, we demonstrate that attachment of L-Ara4N to the phosphate groups of lipid A and the subsequent resistance to polymyxin is dependent upon the presence of the secondary linked myristoyl group

Sex recognition by odour and variation in the uropygial gland secretion in starlings

1. Although a growing body of evidence supports that olfaction based on chemical compounds emitted by birds may play a role in individual recognition, the possible role of chemical cues in sexual selection of birds has been only preliminarily studied.2. We investigated for the first time whether a passerine bird, the spotless starling Sturnus unicolor, was able to discriminate the sex of conspecifics by using olfactory cues and whether the size and secretion composition of the uropygial gland convey information on sex, age and reproductive status in this species.3. We performed a blind choice experiment during mating, and we found that starlings were able to discriminate the sex of conspecifics by using chemical cues alone. Both male and female starlings preferred male scents. Furthermore, the analysis of the chemical composition of the uropygial gland secretion by using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) revealed differences between sexes, ages and reproductive status.4. In conclusion, our study reveals for first time that a passerine species can discriminate the sex of conspecifics by relying on chemical cues and suggests that the uropygial gland secretion may potentially function as a chemical signal used in mate choice and/or intrasexual competition in this species.This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science ⁄ FEDER (CGL2008-00718) and PIE 200930I029 to J. M. Avilés and D. Parejo.The study was conducted under licence of the Junta de Andalucía GC–MS analyses were performed by Dr. Rafael Núñez at the Scientific Instrumentation Service (EEZ, CSIC) (Granada, Spain).Peer reviewe

Polypyrrole-Fe2O3 nanohybrid materials for electrochemical storage

We report on the synthesis and electrochemical characterization of nanohybrid polypyrrole (PPy) (PPy/Fe2O3) materials for electrochemical storage applications. We have shown that the incorporation of nanoparticles inside the PPy notably increases the charge storage capability in comparison to the “pure” conducting polymer. Incorporation of large anions, i.e., paratoluenesulfonate, allows a further improvement in the capacity. These charge storage modifications have been attributed to the morphology of the composite in which the particle sizes and the specific surface area are modified with the incorporation of nanoparticles. High capacity and stability have been obtained in PC/NEt4BF4 (at 20 mV/s), i.e., 47 mAh/g, with only a 3% charge loss after one thousand cyles. The kinetics of charge–discharge is also improved by the hybrid nanocomposite morphology modifications, which increase the rate of insertion–expulsion of counter anions in the bulk of the film. A room temperature ionic liquid such as imidazolium trifluoromethanesulfonimide seems to be a promising electrolyte because it further increases the capacity up to 53 mAh/g with a high stability during charge–discharge processes

TextANIMAR: Text-based 3D Animal Fine-Grained Retrieval

3D object retrieval is an important yet challenging task, which has drawn more and more attention in recent years. While existing approaches have made strides in addressing this issue, they are often limited to restricted settings such as image and sketch queries, which are often unfriendly interactions for common users. In order to overcome these limitations, this paper presents a novel SHREC challenge track focusing on text-based fine-grained retrieval of 3D animal models. Unlike previous SHREC challenge tracks, the proposed task is considerably more challenging, requiring participants to develop innovative approaches to tackle the problem of text-based retrieval. Despite the increased difficulty, we believe that this task has the potential to drive useful applications in practice and facilitate more intuitive interactions with 3D objects. Five groups participated in our competition, submitting a total of 114 runs. While the results obtained in our competition are satisfactory, we note that the challenges presented by this task are far from being fully solved. As such, we provide insights into potential areas for future research and improvements. We believe that we can help push the boundaries of 3D object retrieval and facilitate more user-friendly interactions via vision-language technologies.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2304.0573