Biomedical ontologies: What part-of is and isn’t

AbstractMereological relations such as part-of and its inverse has-part are fundamental to the description of the structure of living organisms. Whereas classical mereology focuses on individual entities, mereological relations in biomedical ontologies are generally asserted between classes of individuals. In general, this practice leaves some basic issues unanswered: type constraints of mereological relations, e.g., concerning artifacts and biological entities, the relation between parthood and time, inferred parts and wholes as well as a delimitation of parthood against spatial inclusion. Furthermore, mereological relations can be asserted not only between physical objects but also between biological processes and medical procedures. We analyze these ambiguities and make suggestions for a standardization of mereological relations in biomedical ontologies

Digital Facilitation Assistance for Collaborative, Creative Design Processes

People focus more and more on creating innovations collaboratively. Digital assistants (DAs) can accelerate such collaborative, creative design processes by supporting people in their work. Especially in the context of design, such as design thinking, moderators that facilitate collaborative, creative workshops can benefit from the support for their teams and themselves in the form of a DA. Based on interviews with experienced workshop facilitators from research and practice, we discuss implications for the design and usage of DAs in collaborative, creative design processes. We identify 16 distinct capabilities of DAs for task, process and interaction facilitation to guide design research and practitioners’ endeavors toward helpful automated DT facilitation support. Moreover, we outline a research agenda to foster future research on this young research area

Observing decoupling processes of NO2 pollution and GDP growth based on satellite observations for Los Angeles and Tokyo

Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution is mainly caused by anthropogenic processes such as burning of fossil fuels. Due to its severe impact on health as well as the environment in general, it is important to monitor the amount of NO2 pollution especially in areas with a high population density. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate to what extent spatiotemporal fluctuations in the tropospheric NO2 column density can map variations in economic output. To do so, we analyzed satellite based tropospheric NO2 column observations obtained from the ERS-2, ENVISAT, MetOp-A and MetOp-B satellite missions covering the period from 1996 to 2017 for Tokyo, Japan and Los Angeles, United States. Within our studies, a harmonic analysis was carried out in order to exclude meteorological influences. Afterwards, the NO2 time series were further investigated through a wavelet analysis method to characterize the fluctuations, that is the temporal variability of the NO2. These fluctuations have been shown to be a particularly sensitive measure of the change in NO2 pollution. We further use the gross domestic product (GDP) for the metropolitan areas as an indicator for economic performance. The results for the study area of Los Angeles shows a substantial reduction in NO2 variability starting in 2007. The NO2 variability for the period during the global financial crisis (December 2007–April 2012), dropped by around 77% in comparison to the previous period (January 1997–November 2007). However, a second period from May 2012 to December 2016 presents a further reduction of the NO2 variability of around 82% in contrast to the period from 2007 to 2012. Contrary to this, continuous economic growth can be observed during the second period. A similar picture emerges for the metropolitan region of Tokyo. A significant decline in NO2 variability of around 73% can be detected from October 2003 to January 2012. Additionally, a second period with a strong decline in NO2 variability of around 80% can be identified from February 2012 to December 2016. A plunge in GDP during 2008 reflects that year's global financial crisis, but cannot independently explain the following sharp decline in NO2 variability. Those results suggest that Tokyo as well as Los Angeles managed to substantially decouple its NO2 pollution from the economic growth due to strict air quality policies

Climatologies of various OH lines from about 90,000 X‐shooter Spectra

The nocturnal mesopause region of the Earth's atmosphere radiates chemiluminescent emission from various roto-vibrational bands of hydroxyl (OH), which is therefore a good tracer of the chemistry and dynamics at the emission altitudes. Intensity variations can, for example, be caused by the general circulation, gravity waves, tides, planetary waves, and the solar activity. While the basic OH response to the different dynamical influences has been studied quite frequently, detailed comparisons of the various individual lines are still rare. Such studies can improve our understanding of the OH-related variations as each line shows a different emission profile. We have therefore used about 90,000 spectra of the X-shooter spectrograph of the Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal in Chile in order to study 10 years of variations of 298 OH lines. The analysis focuses on climatologies of intensity, solar cycle effect (SCE), and residual variability (especially with respect to time scales of hours and about 2 days) for day of year and local time. For a better understanding of the resulting variability patterns and the line-specific differences, we applied decomposition techniques, studied the variability depending on time scale, and calculated correlations. As a result, the mixing of thermalized and nonthermalized OH level populations clearly influences the amplitude of the variations. Moreover, the local times of the variability features shift depending on the effective line emission height, which can mainly be explained by the propagation of the migrating diurnal tide. This behavior also contributes to remarkable differences in the effective SCE

Effective emission heights of various OH lines from X‐shooter and SABER observations of a passing quasi‐2‐day wave

Chemiluminescent radiation of the vibrationally and rotationally excited hydroxyl (OH) radical, which dominates the nighttime near-infrared emission of the Earth's atmosphere in wide wavelength regions, is an important tracer of the chemical and dynamical state of the mesopause region between 80 and 100 km. As radiative lifetimes and rate coefficients for collision-related transitions depend on the OH energy level, line-dependent emission profiles are expected. However, except for some height differences for whole bands mostly revealed by satellite-based measurements, there is a lack of data for individual lines. We succeeded in deriving effective emission heights for 298 OH lines thanks to the joint observation of a strong quasi-2-day wave (Q2DW) in eight nights in 2017 with the medium-resolution spectrograph X-shooter at the Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal in Chile and the limb-sounding SABER radiometer on the TIMED satellite. Our fitting procedure revealed the most convincing results for a single wave with a period of about 44 hr and a vertical wavelength of about 32 km. The line-dependent as well as altitude-resolved phases of the Q2DW then resulted in effective heights which differ by up to 8 km and tend to increase with increasing vibrational and rotation excitation. The measured dependence of emission heights and wave amplitudes (which were strongest after midnight) on the line parameters implies the presence of a cold thermalized and a hot non-thermalized population for each vibrational level

Angular Memory Effect of Transmission Eigenchannels

The optical memory effect has emerged as a powerful tool for imaging through multiple-scattering media; however, the finite angular range of the memory effect limits the field of view. Here, we demonstrate experimentally that selective coupling of incident light into a high-transmission channel increases the angular memory-effect range. This enhancement is attributed to the robustness of the high-transmission channels against perturbations such as sample tilt or wave front tilt. Our work shows that the high-transmission channels provide an enhanced field of view for memory-effect-based imaging through diffusive media

Electrically pumped semiconductor laser with low spatial coherence and directional emission

We design and fabricate an on-chip laser source that produces a directional beam with low spatial coherence. The lasing modes are based on the axial orbit in a stable cavity and have good directionality. To reduce the spatial coherence of emission, the number of transverse lasing modes is maximized by fine-tuning the cavity geometry. Decoherence is reached in a few nanoseconds. Such rapid decoherence will facilitate applications in ultrafast speckle-free full-field imaging

The potential of serum neurofilament as biomarker for multiple sclerosis

Biomarcadores; Neurofilamento; Respuesta a la terapiaBiomarkers; Neurofilament; Therapy responseBiomarcadors; Neurofilament; Resposta a la teràpiaMultiple sclerosis is a highly heterogeneous disease, and the detection of neuroaxonal damage as well as its quantification is a critical step for patients. Blood-based serum neurofilament light chain (sNfL) is currently under close investigation as an easily accessible biomarker of prognosis and treatment response in patients with multiple sclerosis. There is abundant evidence that sNfL levels reflect ongoing inflammatory-driven neuroaxonal damage (e.g. relapses or MRI disease activity) and that sNfL levels predict disease activity over the next few years. In contrast, the association of sNfL with long-term clinical outcomes or its ability to reflect slow, diffuse neurodegenerative damage in multiple sclerosis is less clear. However, early results from real-world cohorts and clinical trials using sNfL as a marker of treatment response in multiple sclerosis are encouraging. Importantly, clinical algorithms should now be developed that incorporate the routine use of sNfL to guide individualized clinical decision-making in people with multiple sclerosis, together with additional fluid biomarkers and clinical and MRI measures. Here, we propose specific clinical scenarios where implementing sNfL measures may be of utility, including, among others: initial diagnosis, first treatment choice, surveillance of subclinical disease activity and guidance of therapy selection.This work was supported by the German Research Council (DFG, CRC-TR-128 to F.Z. and S.B.), Hertie-Stiftung (myLab to S.B.), the Progressive Multiple Sclerosis Alliance (PMSA, BRAVEinMS PA-1604-08492 to F.Z.), and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, VIP+ HaltMS to F.Z.)