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Building 'community' for different stages of life : physical and social infastructure in master planned communities
No full textAs cities around the world struggle to cope with increasing populations, major new master planned housing developments are being undertaken to meet the demand for housing. Such urban developments are influencing workforce, household, and community relations, which in turn drive health and well-being outcomes, and affect social capital and labour market participation. This paper reports findings from the first phase of data collection for the Work, Home and Community Project. Fourteen focus groups were conducted with 68 men and women who live and/or work at newly developed master planned communities in South Australia and Victoria. Findings indicate that familiarity, availability, and the enabling of social bridges contribute to the development of community and social capital in these residential areas. For individuals at different stages of life these factors were facilitated or inhibited by specific physical and social infrastructures in the residential area and the workplace. At a time when concerns are being raised about the ability of people to combine work, home, and community these findings shed some light on the physical and social infrastructures that can enable or constrain the building of healthy communities.
Anomaly detection over user profiles for intrusion detection
No full textIntrusion detection systems (IDS) have often been used to analyse network traffic to help network administrators quickly identify and respond to intrusions. These detection systems generally operate over the entire network, identifying “anomalies” atypical of the network‟s normal collective user activities. We show that anomaly detection could also be host-based so that the normal usage patterns of an individual user could be profiled. This enables the detection of masquerading intruders by comparing a learned user profile against the current session‟s profile. A prototype behavioural IDS applies the concept of anomaly detection to user behaviour and compares the effects of using multiple characteristics to profile users. Behaviour captured within the system consists of application usage, application performance (CPU and memory), the websites a user visits, the number of windows a user has open, and their typing habits. The results show that such a system is entirely feasible, that characteristics physically related to the user are more relevant to profiling behaviour and that the combination of characteristics can significantly decrease the time taken to detect an intruder.
Identifying functional miRNA-mRNA regulatory modules with correspondence latent dirichlet allocation
No full textMotivation: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that cause mRNA degradation and translational inhibition. They are important regulators of development and cellular homeostasis through their control of diverse processes. Recently, great efforts have been made to elucidate their regulatory mechanism, but the functions of most miRNAs and their precise regulatory mechanisms remain elusive. With more and more matched expression profiles of miRNAs and mRNAs having been made available, it is of great interest to utilize both expression profiles to discover the functional regulatory networks of miRNAs and their target mRNAs for potential biological processes that they may participate in. Results: We present a probabilistic graphical model to discover functional miRNA regulatory modules at potential biological levels by integrating heterogeneous datasets, including expression profiles of miRNAs and mRNAs, with or without the prior target binding information. We applied this model to a mouse mammary dataset. It effectively captured several biological process specific modules involving miRNAs and their target mRNAs. Furthermore, without using prior target binding information, the identified miRNAs and mRNAs in each module show a large proportion of overlap with predicted miRNA target relationships, suggesting that expression profiles are crucial for both target identification and discovery of regulatory modules.
Evaluating depth perception of photorealistic mixed reality visualizations for occluded objects in outdoor environments
No full textEnabling users to accurately perceive the correct depth of occluded objects is one of the major challenges in user interfaces for Mixed Reality (MR). Therefore, several visualization techniques and user evaluations for this area have been published. Our research is focused on photorealistic X-ray type visualizations in outdoor environments. In this paper, we present an evaluation of depth perception in far-field distances through two photorealistic visualizations of occluded objects (X-ray and Melt) in the presence and absence of a depth cue. Our results show that the distance to occluded objects was underestimated in all tested conditions. This finding is curious, as it contradicts previously published results of other researchers. The Melt visualization coupled with a depth cue was the most accurate among all the experimental conditions.
Availability of body art facilities and body art piercing do not predict hepatitis C acquisition among injection drug users in Montreal, Canada: Results form a cohort study
No full textWorld knowledge for sensors and estimators by models and internal models
No full textA necessary strategy to improve our technologies is to provide them with useful pieces of deterministic previous knowledge about the processes and the equipment. Our attention was previously focused on the industrial control systems, implemented with low level devices (controllers, sensors, actuators), that need knowledge on the specific controlled plants as well as on the general theoretical foundations. This was done on-line with the help of internal models, or off-line with planners whose design is assisted by simulations. This paper is orienting the same effort in the direction of the intelligent sensors field. A brief overview of the relationship between sensors and knowledge is provided. A particular architecture of sensors relying on modeling techniques and some internal model estimators for the velocity and for the weariness of the railway cars are illustrating the role of the models in sensors and estimators.
Testosterone modulates gene expression pathways regulating nutrient accumulation, glucose metabolism and protein turnover in mouse skeletal muscle
No full textTestosterone regulates energy metabolism and skeletal muscle mass in males, but the molecular mechanisms are not fully understood. This study investigated the response of skeletal muscle to castration and testosterone replacement in 8-week-old male mice. Using microarray analyses of mRNA levels in gastrocnemius muscle, 91 genes were found to be negatively regulated by testosterone and 68 genes were positively regulated. The mRNA levels of the insulin signalling suppressor molecule Grb10 and the glycogen synthesis inhibitors, protein phosphatase inhibitor-1 and phosphorylase kinase-c, were negatively regulated by testosterone. The insulin-sensitive glucose and amino acid transporters, Glut3 and SAT2, the lipodystrophy gene, Lpin1 and protein targeting to glycogen were positively regulated. These changes would be expected to increase nutrient availability and sensing within skeletal muscle, increase metabolic rate and carbohydrate utilization and promote glycogen accumulation. The observed positive regulation of atrogin-1 (Fbxo32) by testosterone could be explained by the phosphorylation of Akt and Foxo3a, as determined by Western blotting. Testosterone prevented the castration-induced increase in interleukin-1a, the decrease in interferon-c and the atrophy of the levator ani muscle, which were all correlated with testosterone-regulated gene expression. These findings identify specific mechanisms by which testosterone may regulate skeletal muscle glucose and protein metabolism.
Tool virtualization and spatial augmented reality
No full textThis paper presents two continua for classifying and comparing the user interfaces of virtual and augmented reality systems. We are particularly interested in user interfaces consisting of physicalvirtual tools. The Within System Tool Virtualization Continuum compares the level of task overloading for tools in a single application. Application designers can use this continuum to aid in developing the tools required for a system’s user interface. The Inter- System Tool Virtualization Continuum is used to compare the relative complexity of the user interfaces and tools between different systems. We have analyzed and placed several tools and systems from our previous work and from other researchers onto the continua to allow them to be compared.