Foundations Of Statistics

2005년 대한 생화학·분자생물학회 하계학술대회를 다녀와서

GABA(A) (gamma-aminobutyric acid type A) receptors mediate most of the 'fast' synaptic inhibition in the mammalian brain and are targeted by many clinically important drugs. Certain naturally occurring pregnane steroids can potently and specifically enhance GABA(A) receptor function in a nongenomic (direct) manner, and consequently have anxiolytic, analgesic, anticonvulsant, sedative, hypnotic and anaesthetic properties. These steroids not only act as remote endocrine messengers, but also can be synthesized in the brain, where they modify neuronal activity locally by modulating GABA(A) receptor function. Such 'neurosteroids' can influence mood and behaviour in various physiological and pathophysiological situations, and might contribute to the behavioural effects of psychoactive drugs.

Neurosteroids: endogenous regulators of the GABAA receptor

The pathway leading from soluble and monomeric to hyperphosphorylated, insoluble and filamentous tau protein is at the centre of many human neurodegenerative diseases, collectively referred to as tauopathies. Dominantly inherited mutations in MAPT, the gene that encodes tau, cause forms of frontotemporal dementia and parkinsonism, proving that dysfunction of tau is sufficient to cause neurodegeneration and dementia. However, most cases of tauopathy are not inherited in a dominant manner. The first tau aggregates form in a few nerve cells in discrete brain areas. These become self propagating and spread to distant brain regions in a prion-like manner. The prevention of tau aggregation and propagation is the focus of attempts to develop mechanism-based treatments for tauopathies.

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/laneur/PIIS1474-4422(13)70090-5.pdf

Tau pathology and neurodegeneration

https://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(11)00311-4.pdf

The many faces of tau.

Demographic development in the past years has shown that populations are growing older. This leads to more patients with chronic diseases. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is one such chronic disease and is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide [1]. To mitigate the effects of COPD, fast detection of exacerbation episodes is essential. This project will combine the expertise of Biovotion in multi-sensor development for healthcare applications with those of HES-SO in the integration and evaluation of multi-variate data. The results of this collaboration will be a Swiss telemedicine eHealth environment to monitor patients affected with COPD and be able to recognise or even predict episodes of exacerbation.

COMPASS: COntinuous Multi-variate monitoring for Patients Affected by chronic obstructive pulmonary diSeaSe

This paper presents a federated directory system called WSDir, which allows registration and discovery of semantic Web services. The typical use of this directory system is in a context where ubiquitous business application services should be flexibly coordinated and pervasively provided to the mobile user by intelligent agents in dynamically changing environments. The system has been modeled, designed and implemented as a backbone directory system to be searched by an infrastructure made up by such kind of agents coordinating Web services. The system is modeled as a federation: directory services form its atomic units, and the federation emerges from the registration of directory services in other directory services. Directories are virtual clusters of service entries stored in one or more directory services. To create the topology, policies are defined on all possible operations to be called on directories. For instance, they allow for routed registration and selective access to directories. WSDir has been applied as a backbone in the trials of an ehealth emergency application.

WSDir: A Federated Directory System of Semantic Web Services

Pervasive healthcare systems (PHSs) are required to be constantly available to the patients accessing them. To address this issue, in this paper we present an agent-based PHS that self-heals one or more of its parts when a service disruption happens. We propose a multi-agent system (MAS) approach that utilises coordination, planning and the notion of agent environment to create a distributed system capable to heal itself even if 50% of the system is not functioning due to external causes.

Pervasive Healthcare Using Self-Healing Agent Environments

This paper presents the Juste-Neige system for predicting the snow height on the ski runs of a resort using an agent-based simulation software. The aim of Juste-Neige is to facilitate snow cover management in order to i reduce the production cost of artificial snow and to improve the profit margin for the companies managing the ski resorts; and ii to reduce the water and energy consumption, and thus to reduce the environmental impact, by producing only the snow needed for a good skiing experience. The software provides maps with the predicted snow heights for the predicted days. On these maps, the areas most exposed to snow erosion are highlighted. The software proceeds in three steps: i interpolation of snow height measurements with a neural network; ii local meteorological forecasts for every ski resort; iii simulation of the impact caused by skiers using a multi-agent system. The software has been evaluated in the ski resort of Verbier in Switzerland and provides predictions that are useful for the management of the ski runs. This paper presents the software in general and the agent-based simulation in particular.

Predicting snow height in ski resorts using an agent-based simulation

Behavior change is a complex process in which people receive support in order to improve aspects of their behavior, for instance regarding their health or lifestyle. Although there exist several theoretical approaches to model behavior change, including abstractions that can be applied to different use-cases, these are not easily translated into reusable components that can be integrated into implementable systems for persuasion. This work discusses the need for an ontology-based approach to modelling interactions in eHealth systems, with the goal of achieving behavior change. This contribution includes an analysis of current modelling needs in behavior change, specially regarding: stages of change, motivation & ability factors, plans & actions, argumentation, and do-

https://arodes.hes-so.ch/record/5221/files/Published%20version.pdf

Michael Schumacher

Papers

COMPASS: COntinuous Multi-variate monitoring for Patients Affected by chronic obstructive pulmonary diSeaSe

WSDir: A Federated Directory System of Semantic Web Services

Pervasive Healthcare Using Self-Healing Agent Environments

Predicting snow height in ski resorts using an agent-based simulation

Towards semantic models for proceeding and behavior change in eHealth applications