Continuous Glucose Monitoring in Diabetes Patients: An LSTM-Based Predictive Approach

Abstract Managing blood glucose levels is critically essential in the care of individuals with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), through appropriate medication, physical activities, and continuous glucose monitoring(CGM). The development of wearable technologies has emerged to monitor glucose continuously and administer insulin when necessary, allowing patients to tracktheir glucose levels easily, with swift intervention, and avoiding hospitalization. This work explores a novel deep-learning model to predict future blood glucose levels at different prediction horizons 5, 15, 30, and 60 minutes. We've proposed a bloodglucose prediction systems based on Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) networks, and we compare its performance to a baseline model (Simple Recurrent Neural Network).Our experimental results on D1NAMO dataset containing CGM data showed that the proposed LSTM model leads to improved blood glucose prediction accuracy measures compared to the baseline model.Abstract Managing blood glucose levels is critically essential in the care of individuals with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), through appropriate medication, physical activities, and continuous glucose monitoring(CGM). The development of wearable technologies has emerged to monitor glucose continuously and administer insulin when necessary, allowing patients to tracktheir glucose levels easily, with swift intervention, and avoiding hospitalization. This work explores a novel deep-learning model to predict future blood glucose levels at different prediction horizons 5, 15, 30, and 60 minutes. We've proposed a bloodglucose prediction systems based on Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) networks, and we compare its performance to a baseline model (Simple Recurrent Neural Network).Our experimental results on D1NAMO dataset containing CGM data showed that the proposed LSTM model leads to improved blood glucose prediction accuracy measures compared to the baseline model

Potentiel d’adaptation des petites et moyennes entreprises aux changements climatiques

RÉSUMÉ : Les effets des changements climatiques se faisant de plus en plus ressentir, les gouvernements et les acteurs économiques concernés mettent en place des stratégies pour y remédier. Deux grands chantiers découlent des changements climatiques : la réduction des émissions des gaz à effet de serre et l’adaptation aux effets des changements climatiques. En effet, la réduction des émissions des gaz à effet de serre à fait l’objet de plusieurs grands sommets mondiaux depuis plus de 30 ans dont le but est d’établir des consensus visant à réduire les émissions mondiales pour freiner l’évolution des changements climatiques. Quant à l’adaptation aux changements climatiques, c’est une notion émergente qui suscite le plus grand intérêt des recherches ces dernières années. Les petites et moyennes entreprises font partie des acteurs économiques qui sont sujets à subir les effets des changements climatiques, par conséquent, elles doivent s’adapter, car dans certains cas leur survie en dépend. Cependant, face à la complexité de la problématique des changements climatiques ces petites et moyennes entreprises peinent à identifier les menaces concrètes qui pèsent sur leurs activités. Le projet de recherche a pour but ultime de fournir aux petites et moyennes entreprises des outils pour leur permettre d’envisager des prises de décisions en vue de s’adapter aux différents aspects des changements climatiques. Pour ce faire, les changements climatiques ont été définis pour les entreprises selon 4 aspects : les variables climatiques et les phénomènes climatiques qui entrent dans la catégorie des effets directs et les effets indirects que sont la réduction des émissions des gaz à effet de serre et les politiques d’adaptation aux changements climatiques. Par la suite, des outils d’analyse préliminaire du potentiel d’adaptation des petites et moyennes entreprises à chacun des aspects des changements climatiques ont été développés pour guider les gestionnaires des entreprises dans leurs prises de décisions. Au cours du projet de recherche, la synergie des acteurs de l’adaptation aux changements climatiques à savoir les petites et moyennes entreprises, les acteurs gouvernementaux et les experts du climat est ressortie comme un élément indispensable à la démarche d’adaptation des entreprises. Les rôles et responsabilités de ces acteurs ont été définis à travers les outils d’analyse préliminaires du potentiel d’adaptation des petites et moyennes entreprises aux changements climatiques.----------ABSTRACT : As the effects of climate change are increasingly felt, governments and relevant economic players are putting in place strategies to address them. Two key issues arise from climate change: reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the effects of climate change. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions has been the subject of several major global conferences for more than 30 years. Those conferences aimed building consensus to reduce global emissions in greenhouse gas emissions to reduce climate evolution. Adapting to climate change, still an emerging notion that has attracted the greatest interest of research in recent years. Small and medium business are the economic actors who are subject to the effects of climate change and therefore they must adapt because in some cases their survival depends on it. However, in the face of the complexity of the climate change problem, these small and medium business struggle to identify the concrete threats to their activities.The goal of the research project is to provide small and medium business with tools to enable them to consider decision-making to adapt to distinct aspects of climate change. To do this, climate change has been defined for businesses according to four aspects: climatic variables and climatic phenomena that fall under the category of direct effects and the indirect effects which are the greenhouse gas reduction and the policies of adaptation to climate change. Subsequently, tools for preliminary analysis of the potential of adaptation for small and medium business to each aspect of climate change were developed to guide companies’ managers in their decision-making. During the research project, the synergy of actors in adaptation to climate change, namely small and medium business, governmental actors and climate experts, emerged as an essential element in the adaptation process. The roles and responsibilities of these actors have been defined through the preliminary analysis tools of the potential for adaptation of small and medium business to climate change

Resolving the homology-function relationship through comparative genomics of membrane-trafficking machinery and parasite cell biology

With advances in DNA sequencing technology, it is increasingly common and tractable to informatically look for genes of interest in the genomic databases of parasitic organisms and infer cellular states. Assignment of a putative gene function based on homology to functionally characterized genes in other organisms, though powerful, relies on the implicit assumption of functional homology, i.e. that orthology indicates conserved function. Eukaryotes reveal a dazzling array of cellular features and structural organization, suggesting a concomitant diversity in their underlying molecular machinery. Significantly, examples of novel functions for pre-existing or new paralogues are not uncommon. Do these examples undermine the basic assumption of functional homology, especially in parasitic protists, which are often highly derived? Here we examine the extent to which functional homology exists between organisms spanning the eukaryotic lineage. By comparing membrane trafficking proteins between parasitic protists and traditional model organisms, where direct functional evidence is available, we find that function is indeed largely conserved between orthologues, albeit with significant adaptation arising from the unique biological features within each lineage

The role of artificial intelligence in achieving auditing quality for small and medium enterprises in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

This study seeks to investigate the variables that affect small and medium enterprises (SMEs) adoption of the usage of artificial intelligence (AI) and audit quality analysis from the perspectives of external auditors and accountants in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Additionally, it seeks to determine whether external auditors and accountants in Saudi SMEs have different perspectives on AI adoption and how it affects audit quality. Data were gathered via an internet questionnaire from eighty accountants and forty audit companies in Saudi SMEs to accomplish these research goals. The study's findings indicate that accountants and external auditors in the KSA believe that utilizing AI improves the quality of audits. Also, it was discovered that there is no statistically significant difference in how accountants and auditors evaluate ’AI’s contribution to audit quality

Structural Disorder Provides Increased Adaptability for Vesicle Trafficking Pathways

Vesicle trafficking systems play essential roles in the communication between the organelles of eukaryotic cells and also between cells and their environment. Endocytosis and the late secretory route are mediated by clathrin-coated vesicles, while the COat Protein I and II (COPI and COPII) routes stand for the bidirectional traffic between the ER and the Golgi apparatus. Despite similar fundamental organizations, the molecular machinery, functions, and evolutionary characteristics of the three systems are very different. In this work, we compiled the basic functional protein groups of the three main routes for human and yeast and analyzed them from the structural disorder perspective. We found similar overall disorder content in yeast and human proteins, confirming the well-conserved nature of these systems. Most functional groups contain highly disordered proteins, supporting the general importance of structural disorder in these routes, although some of them seem to heavily rely on disorder, while others do not. Interestingly, the clathrin system is significantly more disordered (,23%) than the other two, COPI (,9%) and COPII (,8%). We show that this structural phenomenon enhances the inherent plasticity and increased evolutionary adaptability of the clathrin system, which distinguishes it from the other two routes. Since multi-functionality (moonlighting) is indicative of both plasticity and adaptability, we studied its prevalence in vesicle trafficking proteins and correlated it with structural disorder. Clathrin adaptors have the highest capability for moonlighting while also comprising the most highly disordered members. The ability to acquire tissue specific functions was also used to approach adaptability: clathrin route genes have the most tissue specific exons encoding for protein segments enriched in structural disorder and interaction sites. Overall, our results confirm the general importance of structural disorder in vesicle trafficking and suggest major roles for this structural property in shaping the differences of evolutionary adaptability in the three routes

A hard look at the X-ray spectral variability of NGC 7582

NGC 7582 (z = 0.005264; D = 22.5 Mpc) is a highly variable, changing-look AGN. In this work, we explore the X-ray properties of this source using XMM-Newton and NuSTAR archival observations in the 3-40 keV range, from 2001 to 2016. NGC 7582 exhibits a long-term variability between observations but also a short-term variability in two observations that has not been studied before. To study the variability, we perform a time-resolved spectral analysis using a phenomenological model and a physically-motivated model (uxclumpy). The spectral fitting is achieved using a nested sampling Monte Carlo method. uxclumpy enables testing various geometries of the absorber that may fit AGN spectra. We find that the best model is composed of a fully covering clumpy absorber. From this geometry, we estimate the velocity, size and distance of the clumps. The column density of the absorber in the line of sight varies from Compton-thin to Compton-thick between observations. Variability over the timescale of a few tens of kilo-seconds is also observed within two observations. The obscuring clouds are consistent with being located at a distance not larger than 0.6 pc, moving with a transverse velocity exceeding $\sim 700$ km s$^{-1}$. We could put only a lower limit on the size of the obscuring cloud being larger than $10^{13}$ cm. Given the sparsity of the observations, and the limited exposure time per observation available, we cannot determine the exact structure of the obscuring clouds. The results are broadly consistent with comet-like obscuring clouds or spherical clouds with a non-uniform density profile.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Endocytosis of the Anthrax Toxin Is Mediated by Clathrin, Actin and Unconventional Adaptors

The anthrax toxin is a tripartite toxin, where the two enzymatic subunits require the third subunit, the protective antigen (PA), to interact with cells and be escorted to their cytoplasmic targets. PA binds to cells via one of two receptors, TEM8 and CMG2. Interestingly, the toxin times and triggers its own endocytosis, in particular through the heptamerization of PA. Here we show that PA triggers the ubiquitination of its receptors in a β-arrestin-dependent manner and that this step is required for clathrin-mediated endocytosis. In addition, we find that endocytosis is dependent on the heterotetrameric adaptor AP-1 but not the more conventional AP-2. Finally, we show that endocytosis of PA is strongly dependent on actin. Unexpectedly, actin was also found to be essential for efficient heptamerization of PA, but only when bound to one of its 2 receptors, TEM8, due to the active organization of TEM8 into actin-dependent domains. Endocytic pathways are highly modular systems. Here we identify some of the key players that allow efficient heptamerization of PA and subsequent ubiquitin-dependent, clathrin-mediated endocytosis of the anthrax toxin

Innate Killing of Leishmania donovani by Macrophages of the Splenic Marginal Zone Requires IRF-7

Highly phagocytic macrophages line the marginal zone (MZ) of the spleen and the lymph node subcapsular sinus. Although these macrophages have been attributed with a variety of functions, including the uptake and clearance of blood and lymph-borne pathogens, little is known about the effector mechanisms they employ after pathogen uptake. Here, we have combined gene expression profiling and RNAi using a stromal macrophage cell line with in situ analysis of the leishmanicidal activity of marginal zone macrophages (MZM) and marginal metallophilic macrophages (MMM) in wild type and gene targeted mice. Our data demonstrate a critical role for interferon regulatory factor-7 (IRF-7) in regulating the killing of intracellular Leishmania donovani by these specialised splenic macrophage sub-populations. This study, therefore, identifies a new role for IRF-7 as a regulator of innate microbicidal activity against this, and perhaps other, non-viral intracellular pathogens. This study also highlights the importance of selecting appropriate macrophage populations when studying pathogen interactions with this functionally diverse lineage of cells

Identification of Contractile Vacuole Proteins in Trypanosoma cruzi

Contractile vacuole complexes are critical components of cell volume regulation and have been shown to have other functional roles in several free-living protists. However, very little is known about the functions of the contractile vacuole complex of the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiologic agent of Chagas disease, other than a role in osmoregulation. Identification of the protein composition of these organelles is important for understanding their physiological roles. We applied a combined proteomic and bioinfomatic approach to identify proteins localized to the contractile vacuole. Proteomic analysis of a T. cruzi fraction enriched for contractile vacuoles and analyzed by one-dimensional gel electrophoresis and LC-MS/MS resulted in the addition of 109 newly detected proteins to the group of expressed proteins of epimastigotes. We also identified different peptides that map to at least 39 members of the dispersed gene family 1 (DGF-1) providing evidence that many members of this family are simultaneously expressed in epimastigotes. Of the proteins present in the fraction we selected several homologues with known localizations in contractile vacuoles of other organisms and others that we expected to be present in these vacuoles on the basis of their potential roles. We determined the localization of each by expression as GFP-fusion proteins or with specific antibodies. Six of these putative proteins (Rab11, Rab32, AP180, ATPase subunit B, VAMP1, and phosphate transporter) predominantly localized to the vacuole bladder. TcSNARE2.1, TcSNARE2.2, and calmodulin localized to the spongiome. Calmodulin was also cytosolic. Our results demonstrate the utility of combining subcellular fractionation, proteomic analysis, and bioinformatic approaches for localization of organellar proteins that are difficult to detect with whole cell methodologies. The CV localization of the proteins investigated revealed potential novel roles of these organelles in phosphate metabolism and provided information on the potential participation of adaptor protein complexes in their biogenesis