Human ability to foresee the near future plays a key role in everyone's life to prevent potentially dangerous situations. To be able to make predictions is crucial when people have to interact with ...the surrounding environment. Modeling such capability can lead to the design of automated warning systems and provide moving robots with an intelligent way of interaction with changing situation. In this work we focus on a typical urban human-scene where we aim at predicting an agent's behavior using a stochastic model. In this approach, we fuse the various factors that would contribute to a human motion in different contexts. Our method uses previously observed trajectories to build point-wise circular distributions that after combination, provide a statistical smooth prediction towards the most likely areas. More specifically, a ray-launching procedure, based on a semantic segmentation, gives a coarse scene representation for collision avoidance; a nearly-constant velocity dynamic model smooths the acceleration progression and knowledge of the agent's destination may further steer the path prediction.
Experimental results in structured scenes, validate the effectiveness of the method in predicting paths in comparison to actual trajectories.
•A stochastic model to predict future positions of humans is presented.•Both static and dynamic aspects, based on circular distributions, are considered.•The next agent's state is modeled as a Markov random process.•A ray-launching procedure models environmental constraints.•A nearly-constant velocity factor smooths rapidly velocity changes.
Background and aim: Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an important crop worldwide. Fungi of the genus Fusarium are among the most aggressive pathogens of chickpea, causing plant wilt and/or root rot. ...The incidence of soilbome pathogens can be reduced by increasing the microbial diversity in the rhizosphere. To improve soil suppressiveness against Fusarium spp., we optimized a microbial consortium consisting in a mixture of bacterial isolates selected from the naturally occurring microflora in the chickpea rhizosphere. Methods: Beneficial rhizobacteria were selected based on i) their mutual compatibility when grown in mixture, ii) antagonistic activity against F. oxysporum f. sp. ciceris race 0 and F. solani f. sp. pisi and iii) growth promoting capacity on chickpea. Results: The best results were obtained by using a consortium consisting of a mixture of four bacterial isolates: Serratia marcescens isolate 59, Pseudomonas fluorescens isolate 57, Rahnella aquatilis isolate 36 and Bacillus amyloliquefaciens isolate 63. Conclusions: This microbial consortium efficiently controlled both Fusarium pathogens, with a consistently higher efficacy compared to those of bacteria applied individually. The putative mechanisms involved in the interaction between antagonists, plant and Fusarium are discussed.
Severely burned and non-burned trauma patients are at risk for acute kidney injury (AKI). The study objective was to assess the theoretical performance of artificial intelligence (AI)/machine ...learning (ML) algorithms to augment AKI recognition using the novel biomarker, neutrophil gelatinase associated lipocalin (NGAL), combined with contemporary biomarkers such as N-terminal pro B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), urine output (UOP), and plasma creatinine. Machine learning approaches including logistic regression (LR), k-nearest neighbor (k-NN), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and deep neural networks (DNN) were used in this study. The AI/ML algorithm helped predict AKI 61.8 (32.5) hours faster than the Kidney Disease and Improving Global Disease Outcomes (KDIGO) criteria for burn and non-burned trauma patients. NGAL was analytically superior to traditional AKI biomarkers such as creatinine and UOP. With ML, the AKI predictive capability of NGAL was further enhanced when combined with NT-proBNP or creatinine. The use of AI/ML could be employed with NGAL to accelerate detection of AKI in at-risk burn and non-burned trauma patients.
In this study, di- and triblock copolymers based on polyethylene glycol and polylactide were synthesized by ring-opening polymerization and characterized by proton nuclear magnetic resonance and gel ...permeation chromatography. Nanoparticles containing noscapine were prepared from these biodegradable and biocompatible copolymers using the nanoprecipitation method. The prepared nanoparticles were characterized for size and drug entrapment efficiency, and their morphology and size were checked by transmission electron microscopy imaging. Artificial neural networks were constructed and tested for their ability to predict particle size and entrapment efficiency of noscapine within the formed nanoparticles using different factors utilized in the preparation step, namely polymer molecular weight, ratio of polymer to drug, and number of blocks that make up the polymer. Using these networks, it was found that the polymer molecular weight has the greatest effect on particle size. On the other hand, polymer to drug ratio was found to be the most influential factor on drug entrapment efficiency. This study demonstrated the ability of artificial neural networks to predict not only the particle size of the formed nanoparticles but also the drug entrapment efficiency. This may have a great impact on the design of polyethylene glycol and polylactide-based copolymers, and can be used to customize the required target formulations.
This paper investigates the phenomenon of stand-up comedians performing in more than one language, which poses the question of whether and how they translate their material. Past research on stand-up ...comedy underlines its conversational nature, sometimes at the expense of recognizing its content. Empirical evidence collected from interviews with bilingual stand-up comedians, on the other hand, suggests that they perform a form of oral self-translation, which implies a
, the transfer of content. The notion of
, borrowed from ethnography, is then productively used to define this content. As is then suggested, two types of memory, namely
and
, are involved in the memorization of this mental text. The declarative part accounts for what is repeatable across performances and is the part involved in conscious translation; its minimal content is identified in the punch lines. The procedural part accounts for variation, improvisation and interaction. A model of the oral-self translation process of stand-up is then proposed. I conclude that re-focusing on the (mental) text of stand-up comedy can offer a better understanding of its translation, which in turn can contribute to a better understanding of humor in a multilingual and multicultural context in future research.
SW480 and SW620 colon carcinoma cell lines derive from primary tumour and lymph-node metastasis of the same patient, respectively. For this reason, these cells represent an ideal system to analyse ...phenotypic variations associated with the metastatic process. In this study we analysed SW480 and SW620 cytoskeleton remodelling by measuring the cells' mechanics and morphological properties using different microscopic techniques. We observed that different specialized functions of cells, i.e. the capacity to metastasize of elongated cells inside the primary tumour and the ability to intravasate and resist shear forces of the stream of cells derived from lymph node metastasis, are reflected in their mechanical properties. We demonstrated that, together with stiffness and adhesion between the AFM tip and the cell surface, cell shape, actin organization and surface roughness are strictly related and are finely modulated by colorectal cancer cells to better accomplish their specific tasks in cancer growth and invasion.
Background
Major therapeutic advances including immunotherapy and targeted therapies have been changing the face of oncology and resulted in improved prognosis as well as in new toxic complications. ...The aim of this study is to appraise the trends in intensive care unit (ICU) admissions and outcomes of critically ill patients with solid malignancies. We performed a retrospective single-centre study over a 12-year period (2007–2018) including adult patients with solid malignancies requiring unplanned ICU admission. Admission patterns were classified as: (i) specific if directly related to the underlying cancer; (ii) non-specific; (iii) drug-related or procedural adverse events.
Results
1525 patients were analysed. Lung and gastro-intestinal tract accounted for the two main tumour sites. The proportion of patients with metastatic diseases increased from 48.6% in 2007–2008 to 60.2% in 2017–2018 (
p
= 0.004). Critical conditions were increasingly related to drug- or procedure-related adverse events, from 8.8% of ICU admissions in 2007–2008 to 16% in 2017–2018 (
p
= 0.01). The crude severity of critical illness at ICU admission did not change over time. The ICU survival rate was 77.4%, without any significant changes over the study period. Among the 1279 patients with complete follow-up, the 1-year survival rate was 33.2%. Independent determinants of ICU mortality were metastatic disease, cancer in progression under treatment, admission for specific complications and the extent of organ failures (invasive and non-invasive ventilation, inotropes/vasopressors, renal replacement therapy and SOFA score). One-year mortality in ICU-survivors was independently associated with lung cancer, metastatic disease, cancer in progression under treatment, admission for specific complications and decision to forgo life-sustaining therapies.
Conclusion
Advances in the management and the prognosis of solid malignancies substantially modified the ICU admission patterns of cancer patients. Despite underlying advanced and often metastatic malignancies, encouraging short-term and long-term outcomes should help changing the dismal perception of critically ill cancer patients.
The social acceptability of aquaculture is linked to its perceived environmental impact, and this clearly poses a challenge to policy makers in deciding what weight to attach to such a concern within ...a governance framework for the industry. Using salmon farming in Scotland as a case study, we have developed a survey-based approach to evaluating public and stakeholder attitudes towards the environmental performance of aquaculture. The survey of the general public finds marked regional variations in attitudes towards salmon farming, while the results of the stakeholder survey raise issues over how far the preferences of particular interest groups are truly representative of the community as a whole.
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