Towards an Open Source Localisation Orchestration Framework

This paper describes the design and implementation of a novel environment for the inter-connectivity of distributed localisation components - both open source and proprietary - in response to the scarcity of relevant research in this area, as we view interoperability as being the key to the seamless integration of different entities. The proposed solution promotes interoperability through the adoption of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) framework based on established localisation standards. We describe a generic use scenario and the architecture of the environment that allows us to study interoperability issues in localisation processes. This environment was successfully demonstrated at the CNGL Public Showcase in Microsoft, Ireland, November 2010.Aquest article descriu el disseny i la implementació d'un nou entorn per a la interconnectivitat de components de localització distribuïts, tant de codi obert com a propietari, donant així resposta a l'escassetat d'estudis d'investigació rellevants en aquesta àrea, ja que considerem que la interoperabilitat és clau per aconseguir la integració completa de diferents entitats. La solució que proposem permet la interoperabilitat mitjançant un esquema d'arquitectura orientada a serveis (SOA) que es basa en els estàndards de localització habituals. Descriurem un escenari d'ús genèric i l'arquitectura de l'entorn que ens permetrà estudiar qüestions d'interoperabilitat en els processos de localització. Aquest entorn va ser presentat amb èxit en el CNGL Public Showcase que es va celebrar a la seu de Microsoft, Irlanda, el novembre de 2010.Este artículo describe el diseño y la implementación de un nuevo entorno para la interconectividad de componentes de localización distribuidos, tanto de código abierto como propietario, con el propósito de paliar la escasez de estudios de investigación relevantes en esta área. A nuestro entender, la interoperabilidad es clave para conseguir la integración completa de diferentes entidades. La solución que proponemos permite la interoperabilidad mediante un esquema de arquitectura orientada a servicios (SOA) que se basa en los estándares de localización habituales. Describiremos un escenario de uso genérico y la arquitectura del entorno que nos permitirá estudiar cuestiones de interoperabilidad en los procesos de localización. Este entorno fue presentado con éxito en el CNGL Public Showcase que se celebró en la sede de Microsoft en Irlanda en noviembre de 2010

Delineation of Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene therapy using genetically engineered mice

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a genetically inherited debilitating muscle disorder affecting young boys due to the loss of dystrophin protein in muscle and the heart. Affected individuals lose their mobility and become confined to a wheel chair in early teens. They develop heart disease towards the end stage of the disease. Heart failure or breathing complications leads to death. Currently there is no cure for DMD. Gene therapy has shown great promise to restore the lost dystrophin protein in DMD. During my PhD, I have addressed several important aspects of dystrophin gene therapy. The findings from these studies will benefit development of an effective gene therapy for DMD and will open the door for some important future studies. Here I briefly describe the findings in my research. In the first study I addressed whether muscle-only rescue affects the heart. I used mice genetically engineered (alias transgenic) to carry dystrophin in skeletal muscle but not in the heart. To more closely mimic the human heart condition, I aged these mice to 23-months, an aged dystrophin-null mice show heart failure similar to that of DMD patients. Evaluation of heart pathology, ECG and pump function revealed that the heart in transgenic mice does not notably differ from the dystrophin deficient mice. In other words, selective muscle only treatment did not improve or heighten heart disease in DMD. In the next study I evaluated whether continuous therapeutic dystrophin expression is essential for muscle and heart health. To evaluate this in a mouse model, I created two mouse models carrying therapeutic dystrophin in the heart or muscle. These mice were engineered in a way that permits intentional removal of the therapeutic gene from the heart or muscle using viral mediated enzyme delivery. I delivered the viral mediated enzyme to muscle or the heart of the respective mouse strain in adult mice. After 12-15 months of therapeutic dystrophin removal, I evaluated muscle and the heart from individual strain. The removal of muscle therapeutic dystrophin resulted muscle deterioration, reduced muscle weight, size and force. The heart pump function was noticeably weakened after removal of cardiac therapeutic dystrophin. These findings indicated that uninterrupted therapeutic dystrophin expression is essential to maintain muscle and heart health. In the third study, I proposed, based on patient data, that dystrophin may contain a heart protection region between repeats 16-19 (R16-19) of dystrophin. I studied this by comparing the heart pathology, ECG and pump function in two transgenic mouse models that express dystrophin in the heart with or without R16-19. In support of my hypothesis, addition of R16-19 completely rescued ECG and corrected an important heart function parameter that were not rescued in mice that lack R16-19. Lastly, I looked at whether very low levels of dystrophin can benefit DMD heart. To test this, I used a mouse model referred to as mdx3cv that was genetically modified using chemical induced mutations. These mice expressed about 3.3% of dystrophin compared to normal mice. The heart of mdx3cv mice showed similar level of damage as dystrophin deficient mice. Surprisingly, ECG and hemodynamic function were improved in mdx3cv mice. These results suggest that marginal level dystrophin expression can still help the heart but it is far from sufficient for full recovery

Domain adaptation for social localisation-based SMT: a Case study using the Trommons platform

Social localisation is a kind of community action, which matches communities and the content they need, and supports their localisation efforts. The goal of social localisation-based statistical machine translation (SL-SMT) is to support and bridge global communities exchanging any type of digital content across different languages and cultures. Trommons is an open platform maintained by The Rosetta Foundation to connect non-profit translation projects and organisations with the skills and interests of volunteer translators, where they can translate, post-edit or proofread different types of documents. Using Trommons as the experimental platform, this paper focuses on domain adaptation techniques to augment SL-SMT to facilitate translators/post-editors. Specifically, the Cross Entropy Difference algorithm is used to adapt Europarl data to the social localisation data. Experimental results on English–Spanish show that the domain adaptation techniques can significantly improve translation performance by 6.82 absolute BLEU points and 5.99 absolute TER points compared to the baseline

Hacia una plataforma de orquestación de procesos para la localización de código abierto.

Aquest article descriu el disseny i la implementació d'un nou entorn per a la interconnectivitat de components de localització distribuïts, tant de codi obert com a propietari, donant així resposta a l'escassetat d'estudis d'investigació rellevants en aquesta àrea, ja que considerem que la interoperabilitat és clau per aconseguir la integració completa de diferents entitats. La solució que proposem permet la interoperabilitat mitjançant un esquema d'arquitectura orientada a serveis (SOA) que es basa en els estàndards de localització habituals. Descriurem un escenari d'ús genèric i l'arquitectura de l'entorn que ens permetrà estudiar qüestions d'interoperabilitat en els processos de localització. Aquest entorn va ser presentat amb èxit en el CNGL Public Showcase que es va celebrar a la seu de Microsoft, Irlanda, el novembre de 2010.This paper describes the design and implementation of a novel environment for the inter-connectivity of distributed localisation components - both open source and proprietary - in response to the scarcity of relevant research in this area, as we view interoperability as being the key to the seamless integration of different entities. The proposed solution promotes interoperability through the adoption of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) framework based on established localisation standards. We describe a generic use scenario and the architecture of the environment that allows us to study interoperability issues in localisation processes. This environment was successfully demonstrated at the CNGL Public Showcase in Microsoft, Ireland, November 2010.Este artículo describe el diseño y la implementación de un nuevo entorno para la interconectividad de componentes de localización distribuidos, tanto de código abierto como propietario, con el propósito de paliar la escasez de estudios de investigación relevantes en esta área. A nuestro entender, la interoperabilidad es clave para conseguir la integración completa de diferentes entidades. La solución que proponemos permite la interoperabilidad mediante un esquema de arquitectura orientada a servicios (SOA) que se basa en los estándares de localización habituales. Describiremos un escenario de uso genérico y la arquitectura del entorno que nos permitirá estudiar cuestiones de interoperabilidad en los procesos de localización. Este entorno fue presentado con éxito en el CNGL Public Showcase que se celebró en la sede de Microsoft en Irlanda en noviembre de 2010

Food dependant exercise induced anaphylaxis a retrospective study from 2 allergy clinics in Colombo, Sri Lanka

The aetiology of anaphylaxis ranges from food, insect venom, drugs and various chemicals. Some individuals do not develop anaphylaxis with the offending agent unless ingestion is related temporally to physical exertion, namely food dependent exercise induced anaphylaxis (FDEIA). The foods implicated are wheat, soya, peanut, milk and sea food. A retrospective study on patients with FDEIA from two Allergy clinics in Sri Lanka from 2011 to 2015 is reported. Patients were selected who fulfilled the following criteria: clinical diagnosis of anaphylaxis according to the World Allergy Organization (WAO) criteria, where the onset of symptoms was during exertion, within 4 h of ingesting a food, the ability to eat the implicated food independent of exercise, or exercise safely, if the food was not ingested in the preceding 4 h and an in vitro (ImmunoCap serum IgE to the food) or in vivo (skin prick test) test indicating evidence of sensitivity to the food. There were 19 patients (12 males: 7 females). The ages ranged from 9 to 45 (mean 22.9, median 19 years). Eight patients (42.1%) were in the 9–16 age group. Those below 16 years had a male:female ratio of 3:5, while for those above 16 years it was 9:2. Wheat was the only food implicated in FDEIA in all patients and was confirmed by skin prick testing, or by ImmunoCap specific IgE to wheat or ω − 5 gliadin. All patients had urticaria, while 5/19 (26.3%) had angioedema of the lips. Fifteen patients (78.9%) had shortness of breath or wheezing, while 8 (42.1%) had lost consciousness. Nine patients (47. 3%) had hypotension. Fourteen (73.6%) of our patients had severe reactions, with loss of consciousness or hypotension, while 5 (26.3%) had symptoms related to the gastrointestinal tract. One patient developed anaphylaxis on two occasions following inhalation of ganja, a local cannabis derivative along with the ingestion of wheat and exertion. Wheat is the main food implicated in FDEIA in Sri Lanka. A local cannabis derivative, ganja has been implicated as a cofactor for the first time

Nexus Between Decentralization and Human Capital Development: With a Special Emphasis on Uva Province of Sri Lanka

佐賀大学博士（学術）学位論文(Thesis)doctoral thesi

Implementation of a perception system for autonomous vehicles using a detection-segmentation network in SoC FPGA

Perception and control systems for autonomous vehicles are an active area of scientific and industrial research. These solutions should be characterised by high efficiency in recognising obstacles and other environmental elements in different road conditions, real-time capability, and energy efficiency. Achieving such functionality requires an appropriate algorithm and a suitable computing platform. In this paper, we have used the MultiTaskV3 detection-segmentation network as the basis for a perception system that can perform both functionalities within a single architecture. It was appropriately trained, quantised, and implemented on the AMD Xilinx Kria KV260 Vision AI embedded platform. By using this device, it was possible to parallelise and accelerate the computations. Furthermore, the whole system consumes relatively little power compared to a CPU-based implementation (an average of 5 watts, compared to the minimum of 55 watts for weaker CPUs, and the small size (119mm x 140mm x 36mm) of the platform allows it to be used in devices where the amount of space available is limited. It also achieves an accuracy higher than 97% of the mAP (mean average precision) for object detection and above 90% of the mIoU (mean intersection over union) for image segmentation. The article also details the design of the Mecanum wheel vehicle, which was used to test the proposed solution in a mock-up city.Comment: The paper was accepted for the 19th International Symposium on Applied Reconfigurable Computing - ARC 2023, Cottbus - German

Evolutionary Dynamics of Genomes and Endosymbionts in Plant-Parasitic Nematodes

Plant-parasitic nematodes cause more than US $100 billion in annual agriculture loss worldwide. Thorough knowledge of their genetic diversity, and interactions with endosymbionts and environment have the potential to provide valuable insights into the basic biology of these animals, and assist future efforts aimed at management of these plant parasites. In this dissertation, genetics and genomic strategies were utilized to advance our understanding of plant-parasitic nematode evolution and symbiosis. In chapter 2, a molecular-genetic strategy that targeted the 16S rRNA gene was used to assess the prevalence and distribution of two endosymbiotic bacteria, Wolbachia and Cardinium, in plant-parasitic Pratylenchus penetrans field populations collected from varying plant hosts. The study also explored the potential effects of Wolbachia on reproduction in this nematode species. Variable abundances and distributions for both endosymbionts were observed in the P. penetrans populations examined. The complete absence of Wolbachia in some populations and low prevalence in others suggest that this endosymbiont is not an obligate mutualist of P. penetrans, making this system distinct from the obligately mutualist Wolbachia-filarial nematode symbioses. The observed sex ratio bias in Wolbachia-infected nematode populations suggests that Wolbachia acts as a reproductive manipulator, also unlike the well-studied Wolbachia-filarial nematode symbiosis. In chapter 3, a genome skimming strategy was used to investigate Wolbachia and Cardinium occurrence in economically important plant-parasitic nematode populations representing twelve different species, including samples from North and South America. The study further investigated the population level genetic variability among the detected endosymbionts. Limited occurrence of Wolbachia (in P. penetrans) and Cardinium (in P. penetrans and Heterodera glycines) across plant-parasitic nematode species was observed suggesting non-obligatory function of both endosymbionts in these nematodes. Wolbachia genomes were highly similar across populations infecting P. penetrans. Cardinium displayed dissimilarities in their genomes from different nematode species, P. penetrans and H. glycines, suggesting potential to act in a species-specific manner in plant-parasitic nematodes. In chapter 4, population genetic analyses were performed to identify genome-wide patterns of genetic variation of the plant-parasitic nematode Globodera pallida across Idaho field populations to evaluate the origin, and potential evolutionary responses since the time of infestation. Most of the nematode genetic variation was shared among the Idaho fields, indicating that the infestation likely resulted from a single introduction. The significantly differentiated allele frequencies at certain loci among G. pallida populations across time suggested adaptive potential of this parasite invading new environments, and identified candidate genetic loci under positive selection. The dissertation provided important new insights into plant-parasitic nematode biology and evolution through providing information on (i) microbial endosymbionts that have the potential for future development in biological control applications, and (ii) evolutionary adaptive potential of plant-parasitic nematode populations invading new environments