Learning from medical data streams: an introduction

Clinical practice and research are facing a new challenge created by the rapid growth of health information science and technology, and the complexity and volume of biomedical data. Machine learning from medical data streams is a recent area of research that aims to provide better knowledge extraction and evidence-based clinical decision support in scenarios where data are produced as a continuous flow. This year's edition of AIME, the Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, enabled the sound discussion of this area of research, mainly by the inclusion of a dedicated workshop. This paper is an introduction to LEMEDS, the Learning from Medical Data Streams workshop, which highlights the contributed papers, the invited talk and expert panel discussion, as well as related papers accepted to the main conference

Interaction of colloids with a nematic-isotropic interface

The Landau-de Gennes free energy is used to calculate the interaction between long cylindrical colloids and the nematic-isotropic (NI) interface. This interaction has two contributions: one is specific of liquid crystals and results from the deformation of the director field close to the particles or to the interface, while the other is generic and results from wetting and surface tension effects. Deep in the nematic phase the director field of long cylindrical colloids, with strong homeotropic anchoring, exhibits two half-integer defect lines. As the colloid moves towards the interface, the director configuration changes through a series of discontinuous transitions, where one or two of the defects are annihilated. In addition, the NI interface bends towards the colloid in order to minimize the elastic free energy in the nematic. In the isotropic phase, the colloid is surrounded by a thin nematic layer that reduces the surface free energy under favorable wetting conditions. The interaction has a well-defined minimum near the interface. In this region the director and interfacial structures are complex and cannot be described analytically. Using the numerical results for the Landau-de Gennes free energy in the harmonic region, we obtained simple scaling laws for the (linear) force on the colloid

Colloidal interactions in two dimensional nematics

The interaction between two disks immersed in a 2D nematic is investigated (i) analitically using the tensor order parameter formalism for the nematic configuration around isolated disks and (ii) numerically using finite element methods with adaptive meshing to minimize the corresponding Landau-de Gennes free energy. For strong homeotropic anchoring, each disk generates a pair of defects with one-half topological charge responsible for the 2D quadrupolar interaction between the disks at large distances. At short distance, the position of the defects may change, leading to unexpected complex interactions with the quadrupolar repulsive interactions becoming attractive. This short range attraction in all directions is still anisotropic. As the distance between the disks decreases their preferred relative orientation with respect to the far-field nematic director changes from oblique to perpendicular.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Improved burn wound healing using a bioactive peptide

[Excerpt] Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are good candidates to treat burn wounds, a major cause of morbidity, impaired life quality and resources consumption in developed countries. We took advantage of a commercially available hydrogel, Carbopol, a vehicle for topical administration that maintains a moist environment within the wound site. We hypothesized that the incorporation of LLKKK18 conjugated to dextrin would improve the healing process in rat burns. Whereas the hydrogel improves healing, LLKKK18 released from the dextrin conjugates further accelerates wound closure, and simultaneously improving the quality of healing. Indeed, the release of LLKKK18 reduces oxidative stress and inflammation (low neutrophil and macrophage infiltration and pro-inflammatory cytokines levels). Importantly, it induced a faster resolution of the inflammatory stage through early M2 macrophage recruitment. In addition, LLKKK18 stimulates angiogenesis (increased VEGF and microvessel development in vivo), potentially contributing to more effective transport of nutrients and cytokines. Moreover, collagen staining evaluated by Masson’s Trichrome was visually much more intense after treatment with LLKKK18, suggesting higher collagen deposition. (...

One-loop effective potential in the non-local supersymmetric gauge theory

Using the superfield formalism, we propose a non-local extension of the supersymmetric gauge theory coupled to massless chiral matter. Two different non-local models are considered. For these models, we explicitly calculate the one-loop K\"{a}lerian effective potential.Comment: 14 page

A Model to Improve the Accuracy of WSN Simulations

Simulation studies have been extensively adopted in the networking research community. Nevertheless, the performance of the software components running within the network devices is often not modeled by generic network simulators. This aspect is particularly important in wireless sensor networks (WSN). As motes present very limited computing resources, the overhead of the software components cannot be ignored. Consequently, WSN simulation results may diverge significantly from the reality. After showing experimentally the validity of this assumption, the paper proposes a set of generic equations to model the performance of WSN software components. Validation tests using contention and multiplexing-based MAC protocols show that the inclusion of the proposed model in a WSN simulator improves the confidence degree in the simulation results significantly

A time-slot scheduling algorithm for e-health wireless sensor networks

http://www.ieee-healthcom.org/2010/about.htmlFor e-health wireless sensor networks presenting significant traffic loads, MAC protocols based on deterministic scheduling algorithms are consensually considered more adequate than protocols based on random access algorithms. Indeed, TDMA-based MAC protocols are able to control the delay bound and save power by eliminating collisions. However, these protocols always require some expedite scheme to assign the superframe time-slots to the network devices that need to transmit data. Knowing that patients of an e-health wireless network are normally monitored by the same number and types of motes, originating a regular traffic pattern, a simple collaborative time-slot allocation algorithm can be achieved, as introduced in this paper. In the proposed algorithm, the announcement of time-slot allocation by the network coordinator is avoided, which helps to improve the packet delivery ratio and reduce the energy consumption in the e–health wireless network.(undefined