cometadata/datacite-rtg-text-other-reclassification-records huggingface dataset:
Assessing the optimal virulence of malaria‐targeting mosquito pathogens: a mathematical study of engineered Metarhizium anisopliae
Creators: name: Konrad, Bernhard P
name: Lindstrom, Michael
name: Gumpinger, Anja
name: Zhu, Jielin
name: Coombs, Daniel
Publisher: name: BioMed Central
Year: 2015

description: Background: Metarhizium anisopliae is a naturally occurring fungal pathogen of mosquitoes. Recently, Metarhizium has been engineered to act against malaria by directly killing the disease agent within mosquito vectors and also effectively blocking onward transmission. It has been proposed that efforts should be made to minimize the virulence of the fungal pathogen, in order to slow the development of resistant mosquitoes following an actual deployment. Results Two mathematical models were developed and analysed to examine the efficacy of the fungal pathogen. It was found that, in many plausible scenarios, the best effects are achieved with a reduced or minimal pathogen virulence, even if the likelihood of resistance to the fungus is negligible. The results for both models depend on the interplay between two main effects: the ability of the fungus to reduce the mosquito population, and the ability of fungus‐infected mosquitoes to compete for resources with non‐fungus‐infected mosquitoes. Conclusions The results indicate that there is no obvious choice of virulence for engineered Metarhizium or similar pathogens, and that all available information regarding the population ecology of the combined mosquito‐fungus system should be carefully considered. The models provide a basic framework for examination of anti‐malarial mosquito pathogens that should be extended and improved as new laboratory and field data become available.
Genetic Variation and Structure in an Endemic Island Oak, Quercus tomentella, and Mainland Canyon Oak, Quercus chrysolepis
Creators: name: Ashley, Mary
name: Backs, Janet R
name: Kindsvater, Laura
name: Abraham, Saji T
Publisher: name: University of Illinois at Chicago
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Evolutionary Biology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Plant Biology

description: Premise of research. Quercus tomentella is a tree species endemic to the California Channel Islands and Isla Guadalupe. Given its distribution across six widely separated islands, significant genetic structure would be expected, despite the propensity of oaks for long-distance pollen dispersal. In comparison, its close mainland relative, Quercus chrysolepis, has a more continuous range and fewer barriers to gene flow. Methodology. We sampled Q. tomentella from all the islands in its range (N = 345) and Q. chrysolepis from five mainland sites and on the islands where it occurs (N = 100) and genotyped the trees using eight polymorphic microsatellite loci. Genetic differentiation within and between species was examined using genetic distances, analysis of molecular variance, Bayesian clustering (both spatial and nonspatial approaches), a neighbor-joining tree, and genetic discontinuities indicative of barriers to gene flow. We also looked for evidence of population bottlenecks. Pivotal results. A high level of clonality was found in Q. tomentella on Santa Catalina Island and Santa Rosa Island, but genetic variability was high in both species and at all sites, including the tiny surviving population on Isla Guadalupe. Genetic distance measures were significant between most populations of both species. The most surprising result is that the two species were not clearly differentiated, and genetic clusters identified through both spatial and nonspatial analyses were shared between species. Conclusions. The island endemic Q. tomentella and the widespread Q. chrysolepis are not well-differentiated species. Further work is needed to clarify the relationships within and among these species. Insular populations of Q. tomentella are genetically diverse and distinct; the remaining population found on Isla Guadalupe warrants protection and management to support recruitment.
Engaging Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) clinical staff to lead practice improvement: the PICU Participatory Action Research Project (PICU-PAR)
Creators: name: Collet, Jean-Paul
name: Skippen, Peter W
name: Mosavianpour, Mir K
name: Pitfield, Alexander
name: Chakraborty, Bubli
name: Hunte, Garth
name: Lindstrom, Ronald
name: Kissoon, Niranjan
name: McKellin, William H
Publisher: name: BioMed Central
Year: 2016

description: Background: Despite considerable efforts, engaging staff to lead quality improvement activities in practice settings is a persistent challenge. At British Columbia Children’s Hospital (BCCH), the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) undertook a new phase of quality improvement actions based on the Community of Practice (CoP) model with Participatory Action Research (PAR). This approach aims to mobilize the PICU ‘community’ as a whole with a focus on practice; namely, to create a ‘community of practice’ to support reflection, learning, and innovation in everyday work. Methodology: An iterative two-stage PAR process using mixed methods has been developed among the PICU CoP to describe the environment (stage 1) and implement specific interventions (stage 2). Stage 1 is ethnographic description of the unit’s care practice. Surveys, interviews, focus groups, and direct observations describe the clinical staff’s experiences and perspectives around bedside care and quality endeavors in the PICU. Contrasts and comparisons across participants, time and activities help understanding the PICU culture and experience. Stage 2 is a succession of PAR spirals, using results from phase 1 to set up specific interventions aimed at building the staff’s capability to conduct QI projects while acquiring appropriate technical skills and leadership capacity (primary outcome). Team communication, information, and interaction will be enhanced through a knowledge exchange (KE) and a wireless network of iPADs. Relevance: Lack of leadership at the staff level in order to improve daily practice is a recognized challenge that faces many hospitals. We believe that the PAR approach within a highly motivated CoP is a sound method to create the social dynamic and cultural context within which clinical teams can grow, reflect, innovate and feel proud to better serve patients.
Eudiaphora turensis subsp. kopetdaghica Dubatolov 2004
Creators: name: Spitsyn, Vitaly M.
name: Kondakov, Alexander V.
name: Tomilova, Alena A.
name: Bolotov, Ivan N.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Lepidoptera
Erebidae
Eudiaphora
Eudiaphora turensis
Eudiaphora turensis kopetdaghica dubatolov, 2004

description: Eudiaphora turensis kopetdaghica Dubatolov, 2004
 Type. Holotype male in the Siberian Zoological Museum of the Institute of Animal Systematics and Ecology, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Novosibirsk, Russia).
 Type locality. Southern Turkmenistan, Central Kopet Dag Range, 15 km W of Firjuza town, Dushak Mountain, near meteorological station, altitude 2150 m.
 Differential diagnosis. This subspecies could be distinguished from the other taxa in the genus by combination of the following characters: wing coloration dark brown; narrow postdiscal band on the forewing is clearly separated from the veins M3 and CuA bifurcation near the apex of the central cell; length of the narrow distal part of valva is shorter than the length of its broad proximal part.
 Distribution. Putative endemic lineage to the Kopet Dag Range, southern Turkmenistan.
description: Published as part of Spitsyn, Vitaly M., Kondakov, Alexander V., Tomilova, Alena A. & Bolotov, Ivan N., 2019, A new species and new subspecies of Eudiaphora Dubatolov, 1990 (Lepidoptera, Erebidae, Arctiinae) from Tien-Shan and Pamir ranges, pp. 97-107 in Ecologica Montenegrina 22 on page 100, DOI: 10.37828/em.2019.22.7, http://zenodo.org/record/13355966
title: 02_1566
Creators: name: Wesley Baldwin, John
name: Baldwin, John W.
Publisher: name: NAKALA - https://nakala.fr (Huma-Num - CNRS)
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/04ces3204
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: LaMOP
subject: Laboratoire de Médiévistique Occidentale de Paris

description: L'ensemble de ces notes ont été crée par John Baldwin lors d'une de ses premières périodes de résidence à Paris. Ces documents comprennent tous les magistri qu’il avait pu rencontrer dans ses sources. Aux XIIème et XIIIème siècles, les universités n'existant pas encore, le titre de magister s'il évoque certainement une compétence n'est pas rattaché de façon systématique au passage par les écoles. De surcroît, les magistris sont le plus souvent désignés par leur seul prénom. La lecture de ces données est donc difficile et suppose un long travail pour tenter d'identifier un individu auquel on pourrait rattacher plusieurs mentions. John Baldwin avait donc renoncé à utiliser ces données pour donner un prolongement à sa magnifique étude sur les gradués d'université et leur emploi par les Capétiens et les Plantagenêts. Néanmoins, il a conservé ces données et elles sont potentiellement très utile dans le cadre de Studium, comme le sont toutes les mentions dans les volumes des Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae de chanoines portant ce titre de magister sans autres précisions. L'ampleur des dépouillements rend ces données très utiles et nous devons une grande reconnaissance à John Baldwin pour avoir pris la peine de faire photocopier ses fiches et de nous les avoir transmises amicalement.
Les données ainsi que les images des fiches sont accessibles sur le site Internet à l'adresse suivante : http://studium-baldwin.lamop.fr/.
Les transcriptions des fiches ont été effectuées par des étudiants de Paris 1 Panthéon - Sorbonne mais elles n'ont pas été corrigées par la suite.
description: Relation: https://lamop.hypotheses.org/
title: 02_1415
Creators: name: Wesley Baldwin, John
name: Baldwin, John W.
Publisher: name: NAKALA - https://nakala.fr (Huma-Num - CNRS)
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/04ces3204
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: LaMOP
subject: Laboratoire de Médiévistique Occidentale de Paris

description: L'ensemble de ces notes ont été crée par John Baldwin lors d'une de ses premières périodes de résidence à Paris. Ces documents comprennent tous les magistri qu’il avait pu rencontrer dans ses sources. Aux XIIème et XIIIème siècles, les universités n'existant pas encore, le titre de magister s'il évoque certainement une compétence n'est pas rattaché de façon systématique au passage par les écoles. De surcroît, les magistris sont le plus souvent désignés par leur seul prénom. La lecture de ces données est donc difficile et suppose un long travail pour tenter d'identifier un individu auquel on pourrait rattacher plusieurs mentions. John Baldwin avait donc renoncé à utiliser ces données pour donner un prolongement à sa magnifique étude sur les gradués d'université et leur emploi par les Capétiens et les Plantagenêts. Néanmoins, il a conservé ces données et elles sont potentiellement très utile dans le cadre de Studium, comme le sont toutes les mentions dans les volumes des Fasti Ecclesiae Gallicanae de chanoines portant ce titre de magister sans autres précisions. L'ampleur des dépouillements rend ces données très utiles et nous devons une grande reconnaissance à John Baldwin pour avoir pris la peine de faire photocopier ses fiches et de nous les avoir transmises amicalement.
Les données ainsi que les images des fiches sont accessibles sur le site Internet à l'adresse suivante : http://studium-baldwin.lamop.fr/.
Les transcriptions des fiches ont été effectuées par des étudiants de Paris 1 Panthéon - Sorbonne mais elles n'ont pas été corrigées par la suite.
description: Relation: https://lamop.hypotheses.org/
Turning entrepreneurship research findings into practical action guidelines: the example of opportunity assessment
Creators: name: Hindle, Kevin
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: It is argued that entrepreneurship researchers do not place sufficient emphasis on making their research findings relevant to entrepreneurs and their advisors. The paper provides a specific example demonstrating five general principles that can be used to turn a complex range of entrepreneurship research findings into useful action guidelines for practicing entrepreneurs. The existing research-based knowledge concerning opportunity assessment is distilled into a diagrammatic framework. This framework and a sequence of ten, plain-English questions, provides entrepreneurs and SME operators with a tool for discovering, evaluating and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities.
Exercising the imagination: ecofeminist science fictions as object-oriented thought experiments in education
Creators: name: Gough, Noel
Publisher: name: La Trobe
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 39
subject: Education
classificationCode: 4405
subject: Gender studies
classificationCode: 3904
subject: Specialist studies in education
classificationCode: 44
subject: Human society

description: This essay offers a rationale for deploying ecofeminist science fiction stories as object-oriented thought experiments in science and environmental education, with particular reference to developments in genetics and evolutionary biology, and their implications for human (and more-than-human) reproduction and kinship in the period following the determination of the double helical structure of DNA by scientists affiliated with Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory in 1953, and the impact of subsequent gene-centric discourses on the biological sciences and the wider culture. The utility and defensibility of this approach is exemplified by reference to two science fiction novels by the late Naomi Mitchison that foreground and anticipate implications of genetic sciences for matters of concern to ecofeminists, including reproductive rights and responsibilities, population control, human relations with the more-than-human, and problematizing gendered (and other) binaries in everyday speech and popular culture.
Attitudes towards prescribing cognitive enhancers among primary care physicians in Germany
Creators: name: Franke, Andreas G
name: Papenburg, Carolin
name: Schotten, Elena
name: Reiner, Peter B
name: Lieb, Klaus
Publisher: name: BioMed Central
Year: 2016

description: Background: Primary care physicians are gate keepers to the medical system having a key role in giving information and prescribing drugs to their patients. In this respect they are involved in claims of patients/clients for pharmacological Cognitive Enhancement (CE). Therefore, we studied the knowledge of primary care physicians about CE and their attitudes toward prescribing CE drugs to healthy subjects. Methods: A self-report paper-and-pencil questionnaire and case vignettes describing a hypothetical CE drug were sent out to all 2,753 registered primary care physicians in Rhineland Palatine, Germany. 832, i.e. 30.2% filled in the questionnaire anonymously. Results: 96.0% of all participating physicians had already heard about CE. However, only 5.3% stated to be very familiar with this subject and 43.5% judged themselves as being not familiar with CE. 7.0% had been asked by their clients to prescribe a drug for CE during the last week, 19.0% during the last month, and 40.8% during the last year. The comfort level to prescribe CE drugs was very low and significantly lower than to prescribe sildenafil (Viagra®). Comfort level was mainly affected by the age of the client asking for prescription of CE drugs, followed by the availability of non-pharmacological alternatives, fear of misuse of the prescribed drug by the client and the missing indication of prescribing a drug. Conclusions: Although a relatively high proportion of primary care physicians have been asked by their clients to prescribe CE drugs, only a small proportion are well informed about the possibilities of CE. Since physicians are gate keepers to the medical system and have a key role regarding a drugs’ prescription, objective information should be made available to physicians about biological, ethical and social consequences of CE use.
Eudiaphora turensis subsp. kuhitangica Dubatolov 2004
Creators: name: Spitsyn, Vitaly M.
name: Kondakov, Alexander V.
name: Tomilova, Alena A.
name: Bolotov, Ivan N.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Arthropoda
Insecta
Lepidoptera
Erebidae
Eudiaphora
Eudiaphora turensis
Eudiaphora turensis kuhitangica dubatolov, 2004

description: Eudiaphora turensis kuhitangica Dubatolov, 2004
 Type. Holotype male in the Siberian Zoological Museum of the Institute of Animal Systematics and Ecology, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Novosibirsk, Russia).
 Type locality. Southeastern Turkmenistan, Koytendag Range, Koytendag Nature Reserve, foothill of the Aýrybaba Mountain, plateau with Juniperus polycarpos var. seravschanica (Kom.) Kitam., altitude 2800 m.
 Differential diagnosis. This subspecies could be distinguished from the other taxa in the genus by combination of the following characters: wing coloration dark brown; postdiscal band is two times wider than that in E. turensis kopetdaghica but less contrast; this band is located just near the veins M3 and CuA bifurcation close to the apex of the central cell; length of the narrow distal part of valva is not shorter that the length of its broad proximal part.
 Distribution. Putative endemic lineage to the Koytendag Range, southeastern Turkmenistan.
description: Published as part of Spitsyn, Vitaly M., Kondakov, Alexander V., Tomilova, Alena A. & Bolotov, Ivan N., 2019, A new species and new subspecies of Eudiaphora Dubatolov, 1990 (Lepidoptera, Erebidae, Arctiinae) from Tien-Shan and Pamir ranges, pp. 97-107 in Ecologica Montenegrina 22 on page 100, DOI: 10.37828/em.2019.22.7, http://zenodo.org/record/13355966
Evaluation of the clinical, biochemical, and molecular spectrum of Cobalamin C (CblC) defect in 33 patients from Pakistan
Creators: name: Ahmed, Sibtain
name: Cai, Ling
name: Akbar, Fizza
name: Siddiqui, Ayra
name: DeBerardinis, Ralph J.
name: Ni, Min
name: Vu, Hieu
name: Afroze, Bushra
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Medicine
subject: Cell Biology
subject: Pharmacology
subject: Chemical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Infectious Diseases
subject: FOS: Health sciences
subject: Virology
subject: Computational Biology

description: Background: Cobalamin C is the most common inborn error of intracellular cobalamin metabolism caused by biallelic pathogenic variants in the MMACHC gene, leading to impaired conversion of dietary vitamin B12 into its two metabolically active forms, methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin. Biochemical hallmarks are elevated plasma total homocysteine (HCYs) and low methionine accompanied by methylmalonic aciduria. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical, biochemical, and molecular analysis of Pakistani patients with CblC defect. Methods: Medical charts, urine organic acid (UOA) chromatograms, plasma amino acid levels, plasma tHcy and MMACHC gene results of patients presenting at the Biochemical Genetics Clinic, AKUH from 2013–2021 were reviewed. Details were collected on a pre-structured questionnaire. SPSS 22 was used for data analysis. Results: CblC was found in 33 cases (Male:Female 19:14). The median age of symptoms onset and diagnosis were 300 (IQR:135–1800) and 1380 (IQR: 240–2730) days. The most common clinical features were cognitive impairment (n = 29), seizures (n = 23), motor developmental delay (n = 20), hypotonia (n = 17), and sparse/hypopigmented scalp hair (n = 16). The MMACHC gene sequencing revealed homozygous pathogenic variant c.394C > T, (p.Arg132*) in 32 patients, whereas c.609G > A, (p.TRP203*) in one patient whose ancestors had settled in Pakistan from China decades ago. The median age of treatment initiation was 1530 (IQR: 240–2790). The median pre-treatment HCYs levels were 134 (IQR:87.2–155.5) compared to post-treatment levels of 33.3 (IQR: 27.3–44.95) umol/L. Conclusions: Thirty-three cases of CblC defect from a single center underscores a significant number of the disorder within Pakistan. Late diagnosis emphasizes the need for increased clinical awareness and adequate diagnostic facilities.
Salivary cortisol and cortisone are stable after long-term storage
Creators: name: Imamovic, Marcus
name: Bäcklund, Nils
name: Lundstedt, Staffan
name: Brattsand, Göran
name: Aardal, Elisabeth
name: Dahlqvist, Per
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Physiology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Biotechnology
subject: Chemical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Science Policy
subject: Mental Health

description: Frozen saliva samples are often used for later determination of salivary glucocorticoids in research studies on stress and endocrine disorders. We studied the stability of cortisol and cortisone in saliva after six years of storage at −80 °C by repeated analysis of 153 stored aliquots, collected with Salivette®, using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. We found a very high agreement between the first and the repeated measurement after six years at −80 °C, for both cortisol and cortisone concentrations (rs= 0.96 and rs= 0.98, respectively). Passing-Bablok regression equations were y = 0.02 + 1.00x and y = 0.02 + 1.14x for cortisol and cortisone, respectively. We conclude that salivary cortisol and cortisone concentrations remain essentially unaltered after six years of storage at −80 °C.
Logic-based specification languages for intelligent software agents
Creators: name: Mascardi, Viviana
name: Martelli, Maurizio
name: Sterling, Leon
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: The research field of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) aims to find abstractions, languages, methodologies and toolkits for modeling, verifying, validating and prototyping complex applications conceptualized as Multiagent Systems (MASs). A very lively research sub-field studies how formal methods can be used for AOSE. This paper presents a detailed survey of six logic-based executable agent specification languages that have been chosen for their potential to be integrated in our ARPEGGIO project, an open framework for specifying and prototyping a MAS. The six languages are ConGolog, AGENT-0, the IMPACT agent programming language, DyLOG, Concurrent METATEM and ℰhhf. For each executable language, the logic foundations are described and an example of use is shown. A comparison of the six languages and a survey of similar approaches complete the paper, together with considerations of the advantages of using logic-based languages in MAS modeling and prototyping.
A comparative analysis of current microbial water quality risk assessment and management practices in British Columbia and Ontario, Canada
Creators: name: Dunn, Gemma
name: Cook, Christina
name: Prystajecky, Natalie
name: Harris, Leila
Publisher: name: Elsevier
Year: 2017

description: Bacteria, protozoa and viruses are ubiquitous in aquatic environments and may pose threats to water quality for both human and ecosystem health. Microbial risk assessment and management in the water sector is a focus of governmental regulation and scientific inquiry; however, stark gaps remain in their application and interpretation. This paper evaluates how water managers practice microbial risk assessment and management in two Canadian provinces (BC and Ontario). We assess three types of entities engaged in water management along the source-to-tap spectrum (watershed agencies, water utilities, and public health authorities). We analyze and compare the approaches used by these agencies to assess and manage microbial risk (including scope, frequency, and tools). We evaluate key similarities and differences, and situate them with respect to international best practices derived from literatures related to microbial risk assessment and management. We find considerable variability in microbial risk assessment frameworks and management tools in that approaches 1) vary between provinces; 2) vary within provinces and between similar types of agencies; 3) have limited focus on microbial risk assessment for ecosystem health and 4) diverge considerably from the literature on best practices.We find that risk assessments that are formalized, routine and applied system-wide (i.e. from source-to-tap) are limited. We identify key limitations of current testing methodologies and looking forward consider the outcomes of this research within the context of new developments in microbial water quality monitoring such as tests derived from genomics and metagenomics based research.
[Querido Saúl: Gracias por vuestra cariñosa invitación, que apreciamos.]
Creators: name: Indeterminado
Publisher: name: NAKALA - https://nakala.fr (Huma-Num - CNRS)
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/04ces3204
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2021
Subjects: Literatura argentina
"Rayuela"

description: Quiere poner su asistente a trabajar sobre el manuscrito de "Rayuela".
description: Destinatario: Yurkievich, Saúl
description: Notas: Papel con membrete "Department of Spanish and Portuguese – The University of Texas at Austin"
description: Source: Num.Ref. : JC-DY-CAR-04.194
description: Source: Localización del archivo: Centre de Recherches Latino-Américaines (CRLA–Archivos, ITEM UMR8132). MSHS - Bât. A5, 1er étage 5 rue Théodore Lefebvre - TSA21103. 86073 Poitiers cedex 9.
T. Bayles Minuse to Ward Melville and Bernard A. Shea including Dogwood Hollow Financial Report and Attachments, August 15, 1955
Creators: name: Minuse, T. Bayles
Publisher: name: Unknown
Year: 1955
Subjects: Stony Brook
Concerts
Amphitheaters
Concert halls

description: This letter and report is written by T. Bayles Minuse to Ward Melville and Bernard A. Shea on August 15, 1955, regarding the final cost for concerts at Dogwood Hollow for the 1955 season.
Additional file 1 of The quadrivalent HPV vaccine is protective against genital warts: a meta-analysis
Creators: name: Lukács, Anita
name: Máté, Zsuzsanna
name: Farkas, Nelli
name: Mikó, Alexandra
name: Tenk, Judit
name: Hegyi, Péter
name: Németh, Balázs
name: Czumbel, László Márk
name: Sadaeng Wuttapon
name: Kiss, István
name: Gyöngyi, Zoltán
name: Varga, Gábor
name: Rumbus, Zoltán
name: Szabó, Andrea
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: Medicine
subject: Biotechnology
subject: Immunology
subject: FOS: Clinical medicine
subject: Cancer
subject: Science Policy
subject: 110309 Infectious Diseases
subject: FOS: Health sciences

description: Additional file 1 Graphical output from Copas analysis of 8 RCTs (A) and 8 ecological studies (B) (a): Funnel plot; (b): contour plot; (c): treatment effect plot; (d): P-value plot.
Adaptive Efficient Histograms
Creators: name: Gu, Xiaoyi
Publisher: name: Carnegie Mellon University
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Statistics
subject: FOS: Mathematics

description: Nonparametric density estimation is a fundamental task in statistics. In many applications, such as clustering, non-parametric testing, classi?cation, anomaly detection and topological data analysis, density estimation is performed as a necessary preliminary step to solve more complex problems. Unfortunately, both the theoretical guarantees and the computational costs of virtually all commonly used density estimators are impacted signi?cantly by the dimensionality of the data. This is due to the intrinsic hardness of the problem: minimax optimal density estimation is computationally infeasible even in small dimensions. In order to overcome the computational and theoretical limitations of the classical density estimations framework, in this thesis we study computationally e?cient methods for obtaining adaptive histograms, piecewise constant density estimators over data adaptive partitions de?ned by axis-aligned hyperrectangles. We consider a variant of the density estimator tree (DET) method of Ram and Gray (2011), a very fast, fully data-driven greedy CART-like procedure that returns a tree-structured density estimator. We show through extensive simulations that our modi?ed DET procedure outperforms the standard version of DET, as well as traditional density estimators under a variety of scenarios and metrics, and is highly interpretable. Inference for classical density estimation methods comes at a price, generally requiring certain smoothness conditions on the underlying density and computationally intensive procedures such as the bootstrap. In addition, the greedy nature of the DET method and the lack of theoretical understanding of its properties makes the task even more formidable. The second contribution of this thesis is the development of computationally feasible procedures to construct con?dence sets for high-dimensional distributions based on the DET estimator. Our methodology relies on sample splitting and harness the explicit form of the upper level sets of the DET estimations, which can be easily evaluated as a union of axes-aligned hyper-rectangles. The con?dence sets we develop come with coverage guarantees that are ?nite-sample, dimension free and do not require any smoothness on the data generating distribution. We propose three ways for building such con?dence sets, and provide efficient algorithms that return density functions guaranteed to belong to the con?dence set. We explore various applications of our methods, including classi?cation, clustering, anomaly detection, and background subtraction.
Using Data Mining to Discover New Patterns of Social Media and Smartphone Use and Emotional States
Creators: name: Al-Saggaf, Yeslam
name: Rahman, Md Anisur
name: Wiil, Uffe Kock
Publisher: name: La Trobe
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 4608
subject: Human-centred computing
classificationCode: 46
subject: Information and computing sciences
classificationCode: 4605
subject: Data management and data science

description: Social media and smartphone use are strongly linked to users' emotional states. While numerous studies have established that fear of missing out (FOMO), boredom, and loneliness predict social media and smartphone use, numerous other studies have concluded that social media and smartphone use negatively impact these emotional states (i.e., FOMO, boredom, and loneliness). Phubbing (phone snubbing), which is the act of ignoring a physically present person in favour of a smartphone, is associated with both social media and smartphone use and users’ emotional states. Much of the above research, however, has adopted the traditional hypothesis testing method. So far, limited work has been done using data-driven approaches. This paper uses data mining techniques to uncover previously unknown patterns about social media and smartphone use, phubbing, and users' emotional states based on two existing datasets originating from online questionnaires facilitated through social media. Novel patterns related to FOMO, loneliness, boredom, and phubbing are discovered and explored in detail. The study also demonstrates the usefulness of the data-driven approach and establishes it as a valid alternative to the hypothesis-driven approach to investigating social media and smartphone use, phubbing, and users' emotional states.
An Energy Efficient Compressed Sensing Framework for the Compression of Electroencephalogram Signals
Creators: name: Fauvel, Simon
name: Ward, Rabab Kreidieh
Publisher: name: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Year: 2019

description: The use of wireless body sensor networks is gaining popularity in monitoring and communicating information about a person’s health. In such applications, the amount of data transmitted by the sensor node should be minimized. This is because the energy available in these battery powered sensors is limited. In this paper, we study the wireless transmission of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. We propose the use of a compressed sensing (CS) framework to efficiently compress these signals at the sensor node. Our framework exploits both the temporal correlation within EEG signals and the spatial correlations amongst the EEG channels. We show that our framework is up to eight times more energy efficient than the typical wavelet compression method in terms of compression and encoding computations and wireless transmission. We also show that for a fixed compression ratio, our method achieves a better reconstruction quality than the CS-based state-of-the art method. We finally demonstrate that our method is robust to measurement noise and to packet loss and that it is applicable to a wide range of EEG signal types.
Groin injecting among a community-recruited sample of people who inject drugs in Thailand
Creators: name: Ti, Lianping
name: Hayashi, Kanna
name: Kaplan, Karyn
name: Suwannawong, Paisan
name: Wood, Evan
name: Kerr, Thomas
Publisher: name: BioMed Central
Year: 2015

description: Background: Use of the femoral vein for the injection of illicit drugs (i.e. groin injecting) has been linked to various health-related harms, including deep vein thrombosis. However, little is known about the prevalence of groin injecting and factors that predict this practice among people who inject drugs (PWID) in Thailand. We sought to investigate the prevalence and factors associated with groin injecting in Bangkok, Thailand. Methods Data were derived from the Mitsampan Community Research Project in Bangkok between July and October 2011. Multivariate logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with groin injecting in the last six months. Results Among 437 participants, 34.3% reported groin injecting in the last six months. In multivariate analyses, factors positively associated with groin injecting included: having higher than secondary education (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.59; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.00 – 2.56), weekly midazolam injection (AOR = 8.26; 95% CI: 5.04 – 14.06), and reports of having had drugs planted on oneself by police (AOR = 2.14; 95% CI: 1.37 – 3.36). Conclusions Over one-third of our sample of Thai PWID reported recent groin injecting. Frequent midazolam injection and higher education were found to be associated with groin injecting. That high intensity PWID were more likely to inject in the groin is concerning given the known negative consequences associated with the groin as a site of injection. Additionally, PWID who reported drug planting by police were more likely to inject in the groin, suggesting that reliance on law enforcement approaches may undermine safe injection practices in this setting. These findings highlight the need for evidence-based interventions to address the harms associated with groin injecting, including efforts to alert PWID to risks of groin injecting, the distribution of appropriate injecting equipment, and efforts to encourage use of other injecting sites.
Short message service (SMS) interventions for the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections: a systematic review protocol
Creators: name: Lunny, Carole
name: Taylor, Darlene
name: Memetovic, Jasmina
name: Wärje, Orion
name: Lester, Richard T.
name: Wong, Tom
name: Ho, Kendall
name: Gilbert, M.
name: Ogilvie, Gina
Publisher: name: BioMed Central
Year: 2016

description: Background: Globally, the incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STI) is rising, posing a challenge to its control and appropriate management. Text messaging has become the most common mode of communication among almost six billion mobile phone users worldwide. Text messaging can be used to remind patients about clinic appointments, to notify patients that it is time for STI re-testing, and to facilitate patient communication with their health professionals with any questions and concerns they may have about their sexual health. While there are a handful of systematic reviews published on short message service (SMS) interventions in a variety of health settings and issues, none are related to sexual health. We plan to conduct a systematic review to examine the impact text messaging might have on interventions for the prevention and care of patients with STIs. Methods/Design: Eligible studies will include both quantitative and qualitative studies published after 1995 that discuss the efficacy and effectiveness of SMS interventions for STI prevention and management using text messaging. Data will be abstracted independently by two reviewers using a standardized pre-tested data abstraction form. Inter-rater reliability scores will be obtained to ensure consistency in the inclusion and data extraction of studies. Heterogeneity will be assessed using the I2 test and subgroup analyses. A nonhypothesis driven inductive reasoning approach as well as a coding framework will be applied to analyze qualitative studies. A meta-analysis may be conducted if sufficient quantitative studies are found using similar outcomes. Discussion: For this protocol, we identified ten related systematic reviews. The reviews were limited to a particular disease or setting, were not exclusive to SMS interventions, or were out of date. This systematic review will be the first comprehensive examination of studies that discuss the effectiveness of SMS on multiple outcomes that relate to STI prevention and management, covering diverse settings and populations. Findings of the systematic review and any additional meta-analyses will be published and presented to our key knowledge users. This information will provide the evidence that is required to appropriately adopt text messaging into standard practice in STI care.
Sensor Fusion Frameworks for Nowcasting
Creators: name: Jahja, Maria
Publisher: name: Carnegie Mellon University
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Statistics
subject: FOS: Mathematics

description: A fundamental task in many online time series settings is to estimate the finalized value of a signal that will only be fully observed at a later time. The goal in nowcasting is to produce such estimates using contemporaneous information; this differs from the task of forecasting, which learns from past data to predict future values. In this thesis, we study sensor fusion (SF), a sequential nowcasting framework derived from a process-agnostic Kalman filter (KF), and detail two (mathematically equivalent) reformulations: first to the standard KF itself via an augmented measurement space, and then to an equality-constrained regression problem. We leverage these equivalences to port several established ideas (e.g., regularization schemes) in regression to dynamical systems. In settings where only convolved outcomes of the signal can be observed, several new challenges arise: (i) deconvolution to infer the latent state, (ii) subsequent uncertainty propagation through SF, and (iii) reconvolution frameworks to evaluate performance. Towards solving these challenges, we introduce new methodology to perform and evaluate real-time nowcasting by deconvolution with specialized regularization techniques, which can prepend the SF framework. We motivate our work throughout by applications to track disease activity of influenza and COVID-19 in the United States.
Purinergic responses of calcium-dependent signaling pathways in cultured adult human astrocytes
Creators: name: Hashioka, Sadayuki
name: Wang, Yun F.
name: Little, Jonathan P.
name: Choi, Hyun B.
name: Klegeris, Andis
name: McGeer, Patrick L.
name: McLarnon, James G.
Publisher: name: BioMed Central
Year: 2015

description: Background: The properties of Ca²⁺ signaling mediated by purinergic receptors are intrinsically linked with functional activity of astrocytes. At present little is known concerning Ca²⁺-dependent purinergic responses in adult human astrocytes. This work has examined effects of purinergic stimulation to alter levels of intracellular Ca²⁺ in adult human astrocytes. Ca²⁺-sensitive spectrofluorometry was carried out to determine mobilization of intracellular Ca²⁺ following adenosine triphosphate (ATP) or 3′-O-(4-benzoyl)benzoyl-ATP (Bz-ATP) stimulation of adult human astrocytes. In some experiments pharmacological modulation of Ca²⁺ pathways was applied to help elucidate mechanisms of Ca²⁺ signaling. RT-PCR was also performed to confirm human astrocyte expression of specific purinoceptors which were indicated from imaging studies. Results The endogenous P2 receptor agonist ATP (at 100 μM or 1 mM) applied in physiological saline solution (PSS) evoked a rapid increase of [Ca²⁺]i to a peak amplitude with the decay phase of response exhibiting two components. The two phases of decay consisted of an initial rapid component which was followed by a secondary slower component. In the presence of Ca²⁺-free solution, the secondary phase of decay was absent indicating this prolonged component was due to influx of Ca²⁺. This prolonged phase of decay was also attenuated with the store-operated channel (SOC) inhibitor gadolinium (at 2 μM) added to standard PSS, suggesting this component was mediated by SOC activation. These results are consistent with ATP activation of P2Y receptor (P2YR) in adult human astrocytes leading to respective rapid [Ca²⁺]i mobilization from intracellular stores followed by Ca²⁺ entry through SOC. An agonist for P2X7 receptor (P2X7R), BzATP induced a very different response compared with ATP whereby BzATP (at 300 μM) elicited a slowly rising increase in [Ca2+]i to a plateau level which was sustained in duration. The BzATP-induced increase in [Ca²⁺]i was not enhanced with lipopolysaccharide pre-treatment of cells as previously found for P2X7R mediated response in human microglia. RT-PCR analysis showed that adult human astrocytes in vitro constitutively express mRNA for P2Y1R, P2Y2R and P2X7R. Conclusion These results suggest that activation of metabotropic P2YR (P2Y1R and/or P2Y2R) and ionotropic P2X7R could mediate purinergic responses in adult human astrocytes.
Nuevo desarrollo Water Biosense para la monitorización de contaminación bacteriana en aguas de baño en playas
Creators: name: López-Escalona, Antonio J.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: WaterBiosense
Biosensor
Contaminación bacteriana
monitorizacion a tiempo real
Enterococcus spp
Aguas de baño
Calidad de agua
Salud pública

description: Este estudio aborda el desarrollo preliminar del biosensor innovador 'Water Biosense' para la monitorización en tiempo real de Enterococcus spp. en aguas de baño de playas. Enterococcus spp., una bacteria indicadora de contaminación fecal, es crucial para evaluar la calidad del agua de baño y la salud pública. La investigación se estructuró en cinco fases: obtención, cultivos y cuantificación de muestras de diversas playas; confirmación de la identidad bacteriana mediante técnicas de PCR; análisis de viabilidad bacteriana en condiciones de agua de mar; estudio de calibración del biosensor en matriz de agua dulce; y comprobación de la matriz de agua de mar. Los resultados justificaron el desarrollo del biosensor para monitorizar Enterococcus spp. y demostraron la potencialidad del biosensor para detectar eficazmente esta bacteria en aguas de baño de mar, superando las limitaciones de los métodos tradicionales. Este avance tecnológico permite una respuesta rápida y efectiva ante cualquier indicio de contaminación, mejorando significativamente la seguridad y calidad del agua de baño. La implementación de esta tecnología se dirige hacia la reducción del riesgo de enfermedades infecciosas asociadas a la contaminación del agua, fortaleciendo la vigilancia ambiental y contribuyendo a la protección de la salud pública en entornos recreativos costeros.
Selective inference approaches for augmenting genetic association studies with multi-omics metadata
Creators: name: Yurko, Ronald
Publisher: name: Carnegie Mellon University
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Statistics
subject: FOS: Mathematics
subject: 10401 Applied Statistics

description: To correct for a large number of hypothesis tests, most researchers rely on simple multiple testing corrections. Yet, new selective inference methodologies could improve power by enabling exploration of test statistics with meta-data for informative weights while retaining desired statistical guarantees. My thesis revolves around this theme by developing statistical and computational tools to address the challenges especially arising from studying complex, neuropsychiatric disorders. In chapter 2 we explore one such framework, adaptive p-value thresholding (AdaPT), in the context of testing individual single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for schizophrenia. We demonstrate a substantial increase in power using flexible gradient boosted trees to account for covariates constructed with GWAS statistics from genetically-correlated phenotypes, as well as measures capturing association with gene expression and coexpression subnetwork membership. In chapter 3, we address a popular approach for computing gene-level p-values that is based on an invalid approximation for the combination of two-sided test statistics. Our correction ensures error rate control and alleviates null distribution concerns necessary for selective inference procedures. In chapter 4, we introduce an agglomerative algorithm, based on the dependence induced from linkage disquilibrium (LD), to test the aggregation of SNPs into gene-based test statistics for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The advantages of our approaches are twofold: increased power and increased interpretability, with the latter expediting our understanding of the etiology of human diseases, disorders, and other phenotypes. Finally, in chapter 5, we demonstrate in simulations an improvement in power in the context of rare variant studies by augmenting testing corrections with annotation information and explore the use of data blurring to explore annotation structure providing ways to address the challenges of multiplicity persistent in whole genome sequencing.
Human-efficient Discovery of Edge-based Training Data for Visual Machine Learning
Creators: name: Feng, Ziqiang
Publisher: name: Carnegie Mellon University
Year: 2022
Subjects: Applied Computer Science

description: Deep learning enables effective computer vision without hand crafting feature extractors. It has great potential if applied to specialized domains such as ecology, military, and medical science. However, the laborious task of creating labeled training sets of rare targets is a major deterrent to achieving its goal. A domain expert’s time and attention is precious. We address this problem by designing, implementing, and evaluating Eureka, a system for human-efficient discovery of rare phenomena from unlabeled visual data. Eureka’s central idea is interactive contentbased search of visual data based on early-discard and machine learning. We first demonstrate its effectiveness for curating training sets of rare objects. By analyzing contributing factors to human efficiency, we identify and evaluate important systemlevel optimizations that utilize edge computing and intelligent storage. Lastly, we extend Eureka to the task of discovering temporal events from video data.