A framework for spatial-temporal cluster evolution representation and analysis based on graphs.

Analysis on spatial-temporal data has several benefits that range from an improved traffic network in a city to increased earnings for drivers and ridesharing companies. A common analysis technique is clustering. However, most clustering techniques consider a constrained representation of clusters that is limited to a single timestamp.

Application of a mobile health data platform for public health surveillance: A case study in stress monitoring and prediction.

Background: Public health surveillance involves the collection, analysis and dissemination of data to improve population health. The main sources of data for public health decision-making are surveys, typically comprised of self-report which may be subject to biases, costs and delays. To complement subjective data, objective measures from sensors could potentially be used.

Leveraging mHealth Technologies for Public Health.

Traditional public health surveillance efforts are generally based on self-reported data. Although well validated, these methods may nevertheless be subjected to limitations such as biases, delays, and costs or logistical challenges. An alternative is the use of smart technologies (eg, smartphones and smartwatches) to complement self-report indicators.

Can heart rate variability data from the Apple Watch electrocardiogram quantify stress?

Chronic stress has become an epidemic with negative health risks including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and diabetes. Traditional methods of stress measurement and monitoring typically relies on self-reporting. However, wearable smart technologies offer a novel strategy to continuously and non-invasively collect objective health data in the real-world.

Using apple watch ECG data for heart rate variability monitoring and stress prediction: A pilot study.

Stress is an increasingly prevalent mental health condition that can have serious effects on human health. The development of stress prediction tools would greatly benefit public health by allowing policy initiatives and early stress-reducing interventions. The advent of mobile health technologies including smartphones and smartwatches has made it possible to collect objective, real-time, and continuous health data.

A conceptual IoT-based early-warning architecture for remote monitoring of COVID-19 patients in wards and at home.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, health services around the globe are struggling. An effective system for monitoring patients can improve healthcare delivery by avoiding in-person contacts, enabling early-detection of severe cases, and remotely assessing patients' status. Internet of Things (IoT) technologies have been used for monitoring patients' health with wireless wearable sensors in different scenarios and medical conditions, such as noncommunicable and infectious diseases.

A face recognition software framework based on principal component analysis.

Face recognition, as one of the major biometrics identification methods, has been applied in different fields involving economics, military, e-commerce, and security. Its touchless identification process and non-compulsory rule to users are irreplaceable by other approaches, such as iris recognition or fingerprint recognition. Among all face recognition techniques, principal component analysis (PCA), proposed in the earliest stage, still attracts researchers because of its property of reducing data dimensionality without losing important information.

Convergence of Precision Medicine and Public Health Into Precision Public Health: Toward a Big Data Perspective.

The field of precision medicine explores disease treatments by looking at genetic, socio-environmental, and clinical factors, thus trying to provide a holistic view of a person's health. Public health, on the other hand, is focused on improving the health of populations through preventive strategies and timely interventions. With recent advances in technology, we are able to collect, analyze and store for the first-time large volumes of real-time, diverse and continuous health data.

Knowledge reuse in software projects: Retrieving software development Q&A posts based on project task similarity.

Software developers need to cope with a massive amount of knowledge throughout the typical life cycle of modern projects. This knowledge includes expertise related to the software development phases (e.g.

Neotropical termite microbiomes as sources of novel plant cell wall degrading enzymes.

In this study, we used shotgun metagenomic sequencing to characterise the microbial metabolic potential for lignocellulose transformation in the gut of two colonies of Argentine higher termite species with different feeding habits, Cortaritermes fulviceps and Nasutitermes aquilinus. Our goal was to assess the microbial community compositions and metabolic capacity, and to identify genes involved in lignocellulose degradation. Individuals from both termite species contained the same five dominant bacterial phyla (Spirochaetes, Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Fibrobacteres and Bacteroidetes) although with different relative abundances.

Artificial Intelligence Technologies for Coping with Alarm Fatigue in Hospital Environments Because of Sensory Overload: Algorithm Development and Validation.

Background: Informed estimates claim that 80% to 99% of alarms set off in hospital units are false or clinically insignificant, representing a cacophony of sounds that do not present a real danger to patients. These false alarms can lead to an alert overload that causes a health care provider to miss important events that could be harmful or even life-threatening. As health care units become more dependent on monitoring devices for patient care purposes, the alarm fatigue issue has to be addressed as a major concern for the health care team as well as to enhance patient safety.

Three novel bacteriophages isolated from the East African Rift Valley soda lakes.

Background: Soda lakes are unique environments in terms of their physical characteristics and the biology they harbour. Although well studied with respect to their microbial composition, their viral compositions have not, and consequently few bacteriophages that infect bacteria from haloalkaline environments have been described.

Methods: Bacteria were isolated from sediment samples of lakes Magadi and Shala.

The mechanism of the amidases: mutating the glutamate adjacent to the catalytic triad inactivates the enzyme due to substrate mispositioning.

All known nitrilase superfamily amidase and carbamoylase structures have an additional glutamate that is hydrogen bonded to the catalytic lysine in addition to the Glu, Lys, Cys "catalytic triad." In the amidase from Geobacillus pallidus, mutating this glutamate (Glu-142) to a leucine or aspartate renders the enzyme inactive. X-ray crystal structure determination shows that the structural integrity of the enzyme is maintained despite the mutation with the catalytic cysteine (Cys-166), lysine (Lys-134), and glutamate (Glu-59) in positions similar to those of the wild-type enzyme.

Hypolithic microbial communities: between a rock and a hard place.

Drylands are the largest terrestrial biome on Earth and a ubiquitous feature is desert pavement terrain, comprising rocks embedded in the mineral soil surface. Quartz and other translucent rocks are common and microbial communities termed hypoliths develop as biofilms on their ventral surfaces. In extreme deserts these represent major concentrations of biomass, and are emerging as key to geobiological processes and soil stabilization.

Rapid microbial response to the presence of an ancient relic in the Antarctic Dry Valleys.

The extreme cold and aridity of the Antarctic McMurdo Dry Valleys have led to the longstanding belief that metabolic rates of soil microbiota are negligible, and that ecosystem changes take place over millennia. Here we report the first direct experimental evidence that soil microbial communities undergo rapid and lasting changes in response to contemporary environmental conditions. Mummified seals, curious natural artifacts found scattered throughout Dry Valleys, alter their underlying soil environment by stabilizing temperatures, elevating relative humidity and reducing ultraviolet exposure.

Model human behavior: don't constrain it!

Healthcare processes are complex and highly variable from day to day. Healthcare process execution can be affected by any participant in a process, including clinicians, the patient, and the patient's family, as well as environmental factors such as clinician, staff, facility and equipment availability, and patient clinical status. However, only a few solutions exist that enable computer support for a process to address the full complexity and variability of healthcare processes.

Retrieval of full-length functional genes using subtractive hybridization magnetic bead capture.

Numerous gene-specific PCR methods have been developed for the cultivation-independent discovery of novel genes from complex environmental DNA samples. The recovery of full-length genes is, however, technically challenging. Here, we present an efficient and relatively simple approach that combines magnetic bead capture with subtractive hybridization for the rapid and direct recovery of full-length target ORFs.

Extremophiles in biofuel synthesis.

The current global energy situation has demonstrated an urgent need for the development of alternative fuel sources to the continually diminishing fossil fuel reserves. Much research to address this issue focuses on the development of financially viable technologies for the production of biofuels. The current market for biofuels, defined as fuel products obtained from organic substrates, is dominated by bioethanol, biodiesel, biobutanol and biogas, relying on the use of substrates such as sugars, starch and oil crops, agricultural and animal wastes, and lignocellulosic biomass.

Structural and biochemical characterization of a nitrilase from the thermophilic bacterium, Geobacillus pallidus RAPc8.

Geobacillus pallidus RAPc8 (NRRL: B-59396) is a moderately thermophilic gram-positive bacterium, originally isolated from Australian lake sediment. The G. pallidus RAPc8 gene encoding an inducible nitrilase was located and cloned using degenerate primers coding for well-conserved nitrilase sequences, coupled with inverse PCR.

Hypolithic microbial community of quartz pavement in the high-altitude tundra of central Tibet.

The hypolithic microbial community associated with quartz pavement at a high-altitude tundra location in central Tibet is described. A small-scale ecological survey indicated that 36% of quartz rocks were colonized. Community profiling using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism revealed no significant difference in community structure among a number of colonized rocks.

Acrolein in wine: importance of 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde and derivatives in production and detection.

Certain lactic acid bacteria strains belonging to the genus Lactobacillus have been implicated in the accumulation of 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde (3-HPA) during anaerobic glycerol fermentation. In aqueous solution 3-HPA undergoes reversible dimerization and hydration, resulting in an equilibrium state between different derivatives. Wine quality may be compromised by the presence of 3-HPA due to the potential for spontaneous conversion into acrolein under winemaking conditions.

Endolithic microbial colonization of limestone in a high-altitude arid environment.

The morphology of endolithic colonization in a limestone escarpment and surrounding rocky debris (termed float) at a high-altitude arid site in central Tibet was documented using scanning electron microscopy. Putative lichenized structures and extensive coccoid bacterial colonization were observed. Absolute and relative abundance of rRNA gene signatures using real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction and phylogenetic analysis of environmental phylotypes were used to characterize community structure across all domains.

Thermophilic ethanologenesis: future prospects for second-generation bioethanol production.

Strategies for improving fermentative ethanol production have focused almost exclusively on the development of processes based on the utilization of the carbohydrate fraction of lignocellulosic material. These so-called 'second-generation' technologies require metabolically engineered production strains that possess a high degree of catabolic versatility and are homoethanologenic. It has been suggested that the production of ethanol at higher temperatures would facilitate process design, and as a result the engineered progeny of Geobacillus thermoglucosidasius, Thermoanerobacterium saccharolyticum and Thermoanerobacter mathranii now form the platform technology of several new biotechnology companies.

Identification of a novel alkaliphilic esterase active at low temperatures by screening a metagenomic library from antarctic desert soil.

A novel esterase was identified through functional screening of a metagenomic library in Escherichia coli obtained from Antarctic desert soil. The 297-amino-acid sequence had only low (<29%) similarity to a putative esterase from Burkholderia xenovorans. The enzyme was active over a temperature range of 7 to 54 degrees C and at alkaline pH levels and is a potential candidate for industrial application.

Sources of edaphic cyanobacterial diversity in the Dry Valleys of Eastern Antarctica.

Cyanobacteria are major components of Antarctic Dry Valley ecosystems. Their occurrence in lakes and ponds is well documented, however, less is known about their distribution in edaphic environments. There has been considerable debate about the contribution of aquatic organic matter derived largely from cyanobacteria to terrestrial ecosystems.