Enhancing UX of analytics products with AI technology

[EN] Insights and knowledge extraction from conventional analytics or reporting solutions is mostly neither trivial, nor intuitive. Moreover, many applications have unique interfaces and operating controls, forcing users to understand the tool’s domain language and handling procedures, in order to find specific information. Such complicated handling creates cognitive load and impacts the users’ productivity. More specifically due to the complexity of the purpose of analytics products, to provide meaningful information (e.g. descriptives, predictions, prescriptions) at the right time, it must be considered that users’ journeys in analytics products fundamentally differ to the journeys of users of traditional e-commerce products. Whereas a common rule- or filtering based recommendation routine, or a chatbot, might be applicable to facilitate and enhance the overall User Experience (UX) of online shoppers, this might not suffice for analysts who are seeking to derive insights from data. We present preliminary results of an industry research study about the approach to combine natural language dialog- and content-flow based user interactions with content recommendations, in order to enhance UX of information retrieval from a data-driven analytics system. We demonstrate a prototype model towards a virtual assistant system that integrates predictions of the user’s intention which information to retrieve next with prescriptive analytics based on the context of the current and past conversations.Mirchev, C.; Metz, J.; Herrmann, M. (2020). Enhancing UX of analytics products with AI technology. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 341-341. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/148778OCS34134

Cortical Sensory Responses Are Enhanced by the Higher-Order Thalamus

SummaryIn the mammalian brain, thalamic signals reach the cortex via two major routes: primary and higher-order thalamocortical pathways. While primary thalamocortical nuclei transmit sensory signals from the periphery, the function of higher-order thalamocortical projections remains enigmatic, in particular their role in sensory processing in the cortex. Here, by optogenetically controlling the thalamocortical pathway from the higher-order posteromedial thalamic nucleus (POm) during whisker stimulation, we demonstrate the integration of the two thalamocortical streams by single pyramidal neurons in layer 5 (L5) of the mouse barrel cortex under anesthesia. We report that POm input mainly enhances sub- and suprathreshold activity via net depolarization. Sensory enhancement is accompanied by prolongation of cortical responses over long (800-ms) periods after whisker stimulation. Thus, POm amplifies and temporally sustains cortical sensory signals, possibly serving to accentuate highly relevant sensory information

Conformation-dependent ligand hot spots in the spliceosomal RNA helicase BRR2

The conversion of hits to leads in drug discovery involves the elaboration of chemical core structures to increase their potency. In fragment-based drug discovery, low-molecular-weight compounds are tested for protein binding and are subsequently modified, with the tacit assumption that the binding mode of the original hit will be conserved among the derivatives. However, deviations from binding mode conservation are rather frequently observed, but potential causes of these alterations remain incompletely understood. Here, two crystal forms of the spliceosomal RNA helicase BRR2 were employed as a test case to explore the consequences of conformational changes in the target protein on the binding behaviour of fragment derivatives. The initial fragment, sulfaguanidine, bound at the interface between the two helicase cassettes of BRR2 in one crystal form. Second-generation compounds devised by structure-guided docking were probed for their binding to BRR2 in a second crystal form, in which the original fragment-binding site was altered due to a conformational change. While some of the second-generation compounds retained binding to parts of the original site, others changed to different binding pockets of the protein. A structural bioinformatics analysis revealed that the fragment-binding sites correspond to predicted binding hot spots, which strongly depend on the protein conformation. This case study offers an example of extensive binding-mode changes during hit derivatization, which are likely to occur as a consequence of multiple binding hot spots, some of which are sensitive to the flexibility of the protein

Fast & Furious: Fourier transforms applied to the estimate of multi-temporal landscape fragmentation

Landscape fragmentation is known to be related to ecosystem degradation. Multi-temporal analysis based on remotely sensed data has played an important role in detecting fragmentation, typically by creating land use maps from remotely sensed images acquired at different dates. However, general classification may present a number of drawbacks such as: i) an implicit degradation of the information content of images due to classification, coupled with ii) the loss of the continuous information about fragmentation processes, and iii) problems related to downscaling once images are classified with different resolutions. Alternative approaches based on continuous information for detecting fragmentation are thus strongly encouraged. The aim of this study is to describe a Fourier transform Open Source tool to detect potential fragmentation over the landscape

Tracking emerging diseases from space: Geoinformatics for human health

European and other countries are at increasing risk for new or re-emerging vector-borne diseases. Among the top ten vector-borne diseases with greatest potential to affect European citizens are Dengue fever, Chikungunya, Hantavirus, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. Despite the risk of disease transmission, many vectors like the Asian tiger mosquito or ticks are also a nuisance in daily life. The examination of disease vector spread and a better understanding of spatio-temporal patterns in disease transmission and diffusion is greatly facilitated by Geoinformatics. New methods including the use of high resolution time series from space in spatial models enable us to predict species invasion and survival, and to assess potential health risks. Geoinformatics is able to address the increasing challenge for human and veterinary public health not only in Europe, but across the globe, assisting decision makers and public health authorities to develop surveillance plans and vector control

Spatial ecological complexity measures in GRASS GIS

Good estimates of ecosystem complexity are essential for a number of ecological tasks: from biodiversity estimation, to forest structure variable retrieval, to feature extraction by edge detection and generation of multifractal surface as neutral models for e.g. feature change assessment. Hence, measuring ecological complexity over space becomes crucial in macroecology and geography. Many geospatial tools have been advocated in spatial ecology to estimate ecosystem complexity and its changes over space and time. Among these tools, free and open source options especially offer opportunities to guarantee the robustness of algorithms and reproducibility. In this paper we will summarize the most straightforward measures of spatial complexity available in the Free and Open Source Software GRASS GIS, relating them to key ecological patterns and processes

Results of the enhanced COVID-19 surveillance during UEFA EURO 2020 in Germany

In general, mass gatherings might pose a risk to the public health (PH). The UEFA EURO 2020 tournament (EURO 2020) was one of the first mass gathering events since the start of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Germany. To allow early detection and response to any EURO 2020-associated impact on the COVID-19-related epidemiological situation, we initiated enhanced surveillance activities using the routine surveillance system in collaboration with the regional PH authority of Bavaria. Several preventive measures regarding the attendance of football matches and public viewing were implemented according to state regulations. We describe the results from the enhanced surveillance during the EURO 2020. In total, five cases who had attended a football match in the stadium of Munich, nine cases, who attended a football match in a stadium outside of Germany, and 123 cases in association with public viewing events were identified by enhanced surveillance. Concluding, the EURO 2020 seems to not have had a major impact on the COVID-19 pandemic development in Germany. Health measures for stadium visitors and the restriction of large public viewing events may have potentially contributed to the low case numbers detected, emphasising the need of appropriate PH surveillance and regulations to limit the potential risk to PH during mass gathering events.Peer Reviewe

Human blood plasma factors affect the adhesion kinetics of Staphylococcus aureus to central venous catheters

Staphylococcus aureus is a common cause of catheter-related blood stream infections (CRBSI). The bacterium has the ability to form multilayered biofilms on implanted material, which usually requires the removal of the implanted medical device. A first major step of this biofilm formation is the initial adhesion of the bacterium to the artificial surface. Here, we used single-cell force spectroscopy (SCFS) to study the initial adhesion of S. aureus to central venous catheters (CVCs). SCFS performed with S. aureus on the surfaces of naïve CVCs produced comparable maximum adhesion forces on three types of CVCs in the low nN range (~ 2-7 nN). These values were drastically reduced, when CVC surfaces were preincubated with human blood plasma or human serum albumin, and similar reductions were observed when S. aureus cells were probed with freshly explanted CVCs withdrawn from patients without CRBSI. These findings indicate that the initial adhesion capacity of S. aureus to CVC tubing is markedly reduced, once the CVC is inserted into the vein, and that the risk of contamination of the CVC tubing by S. aureus during the insertion process might be reduced by a preconditioning of the CVC surface with blood plasma or serum albumin