Implementation of an IoT-based Sensor Network Integrating IoT-based Sensor Networks with Large-Scale Message Distribution

As technology advances not only do new standards and programming styles appear but also some of the previously established ones gain relevance. In a new Internet paradigm where interconnection between small devices is key to the development of new businesses and scientific advancement there is the need to find simple solutions that anyone can implement in order to allow ideas to become more than that, ideas. Open-source software is still alive and well, especially in the area of the Internet of Things. This opens windows for many low capital entrepreneurs to experiment with their ideas and actually develop prototypes, which can help identify problems with a project or shine light on possible new features and interactions. As programming becomes more and more popular between people of fields not related to software there is the need for guidance in developing something other than basic algorithms, which is where this thesis comes in: A comprehensive document explaining the challenges and available choices of developing a sensor data and message delivery system, which scales well and implements the delivery of critical messages. Modularity and extensibility were also given much importance, making this an affordable tool for anyone that wants to build a sensor network of the kind.

Hydrogeophysical data integration at larger scales: Application of Bayesian sequential simulation for the characterization of heterogeneous alluvial aquifers

Knowledge of the spatial distribution of hydraulic conductivity (K) within an aquifer is critical for reliable predictions of solute transport and the development of effective groundwater management and/or remediation strategies. While core analyses and hydraulic logging can provide highly detailed information, such information is inherently localized around boreholes that tend to be sparsely distributed throughout the aquifer volume. Conversely, larger-scale hydraulic experiments like pumping and tracer tests provide relatively low-resolution estimates of K in the investigated subsurface region. As a result, traditional hydrogeological measurement techniques contain a gap in terms of spatial resolution and coverage, and they are often alone inadequate for characterizing heterogeneous aquifers. Geophysical methods have the potential to bridge this gap. The recent increased interest in the application of geophysical methods to hydrogeological problems is clearly evidenced by the formation and rapid growth of the domain of hydrogeophysics over the past decade (e.g., Rubin and Hubbard, 2005).

Protein interaction data curation: the International Molecular Exchange (IMEx) consortium.

The International Molecular Exchange (IMEx) consortium is an international collaboration between major public interaction data providers to share literature-curation efforts and make a nonredundant set of protein interactions available in a single search interface on a common website (http://www.imexconsortium.org/). Common curation rules have been developed, and a central registry is used to manage the selection of articles to enter into the dataset. We discuss the advantages of such a service to the user, our quality-control measures and our data-distribution practices.

Interhemispheric distribution of Alzheimer disease and vascular pathology in brain aging

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Most of the neuropathological studies in brain aging were based on the assumption of a symmetrical right-left hemisphere distribution of both Alzheimer disease and vascular pathology. To explore the impact of asymmetrical lesion formation on cognition, we performed a clinicopathological analysis of 153 cases with mixed pathology except macroinfarcts. METHODS: Cognitive status was assessed prospectively using the Clinical Dementia Rating scale; neuropathological evaluation included assessment of Braak neurofibrillary tangle and Ass deposition staging, microvascular pathology, and lacunes. The right-left hemisphere differences in neuropathological scores were evaluated using the Wilcoxon signed rank test. The relationship between the interhemispheric distribution of lesions and Clinical Dementia Rating scores was assessed using ordered logistic regression. RESULTS: Unlike Braak neurofibrillary tangle and Ass deposition staging, vascular scores were significantly higher in the left hemisphere for all Clinical Dementia Rating scores. A negative relationship was found between Braak neurofibrillary tangle, but not Ass staging, and vascular scores in cases with moderate to severe dementia. In both hemispheres, Braak neurofibrillary tangle staging was the main determinant of cognitive decline followed by vascular scores and Ass deposition staging. The concomitant predominance of Alzheimer disease and vascular pathology in the right hemisphere was associated with significantly higher Clinical Dementia Rating scores. CONCLUSIONS: Our data show that the cognitive impact of Alzheimer disease and vascular lesions in mixed cases may be assessed unilaterally without major information loss. However, interhemispheric differences and, in particular, increased vascular and Alzheimer disease burden in the right hemisphere may increase the risk for dementia in this group.

Soft tissue artifact distribution on lower limbs during treadmill gait: Influence of skin markers' location on cluster design.

Segment poses and joint kinematics estimated from skin markers are highly affected by soft tissue artifact (STA) and its rigid motion component (STARM). While four marker-clusters could decrease the STA non-rigid motion during gait activity, other data, such as marker location or STARM patterns, would be crucial to compensate for STA in clinical gait analysis. The present study proposed 1) to devise a comprehensive average map illustrating the spatial distribution of STA for the lower limb during treadmill gait and 2) to analyze STARM from four marker-clusters assigned to areas extracted from spatial distribution. All experiments were realized using a stereophotogrammetric system to track the skin markers and a bi-plane fluoroscopic system to track the knee prosthesis. Computation of the spatial distribution of STA was realized on 19 subjects using 80 markers apposed on the lower limb. Three different areas were extracted from the distribution map of the thigh. The marker displacement reached a maximum of 24.9mm and 15.3mm in the proximal areas of thigh and shank, respectively. STARM was larger on thigh than the shank with RMS error in cluster orientations between 1.2° and 8.1°. The translation RMS errors were also large (3.0mm to 16.2mm). No marker-cluster correctly compensated for STARM. However, the coefficient of multiple correlations exhibited excellent scores between skin and bone kinematics, as well as for STARM between subjects. These correlations highlight dependencies between STARM and the kinematic components. This study provides new insights for modeling STARM for gait activity.

Distribution channel plan for wound care products: Case 3M Finland Ltd.

The aim of this master’s thesis was to make a qualitative marketing research and on the basis of this to develop a distribution plan for the case company Finnish 3M Ltd.’s wound care products. The literature review includes three important parts: distribution channel planning, the buying behavior of seniors, and special characteristics of health care products’ marketing. The empirical part of this thesis comprises two different parts. The first part is a marketing research, in which the buying behavior of wound care products is studied in Espoo. The research aim was to examine, in which distribution channels the wound care patients under home care would most preferably buy wound care products during the time period, when municipalities will not yet provide the products for free. The data was collected through semi-structured phone interviews and regular interviews, and was treated qualitatively and anonymously. The study revealed that the recommendations of nurses and doctors influenced most the buying behavior of wound care customers. In the second part of the thesis a distribution channel plan for wound care products was made for the case company 3M Finland Ltd. based on the results. 3M Finland Ltd. should focus on pharmacies, online-stores and municipal health centers as their main distributors.

The mechanism of the regulation of energy distribution between photosystems 1 and 2 in the cyanobacterium Synechococcus sp. strain PCC 7002 /

Cyanobacteria are able to regulate the distribution of absorbed light energy between photo systems 1 and 2 in response to light conditions. The mechanism of this regulation (the state transition) was investigated in the marine cyanobacterium Synechococcus sp. strain PCC 7002. Three cell types were used: the wild type, psaL mutant (deletion of a photo system 1 subunit thought to be involved in photo system 1 trimerization) and the apcD mutant (a deletion of a phycobilisome subunit thought to be responsible for energy transfer to photo system 1). Evidence from 77K fluorescence emission spectroscopy, room temperature fluorescence and absorption cross-section measurements were used to determine a model of energy distribution from the phycobilisome and chlorophyll antennas in state 1 and state 2. The data confirm that in state 1 the phycobilisome is primarily attached to PS2. In state 2, a portion of the phycobilisome absorbed light energy is redistributed to photo system 1. This energy is directly transferred to photo system 1 by one of the phycobilisome terminal emitters, the product of the apcD gene, rather than via the photo system 2 chlorophyll antenna by spillover (energy transfer between the photo system 2 and photo system 1 chlorophyll antenna). The data also show that energy absorbed by the photo system 2 chlorophyll antenna is redistributed to photo system 1 in state 2. This could occur in one of two ways; by spillover or in a way analogous to higher plants where a segment of the chlorophyll antenna is dissociated from photo system 2 and becomes part of the photo system 1 antenna. The presence of energy transfer between neighbouring photo system 2 antennae was determined at both the phycobilisome and chlorophyll level, in states 1 and 2. Increases in antenna absorption cross-section with increasing reaction center closure showed that there is energy transfer (connectivity) between photosystem 2 antennas. No significant difference was shown in the amount of connectivity under these four conditions.

Extracting Ramachandran torsional angle distributions from 2D NMR data using Tikhonov regularization /

Solid state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is a powerful technique for studying structural and dynamical properties of disordered and partially ordered materials, such as glasses, polymers, liquid crystals, and biological materials. In particular, twodimensional( 2D) NMR methods such as ^^C-^^C correlation spectroscopy under the magicangle- spinning (MAS) conditions have been used to measure structural constraints on the secondary structure of proteins and polypeptides. Amyloid fibrils implicated in a broad class of diseases such as Alzheimer's are known to contain a particular repeating structural motif, called a /5-sheet. However, the details of such structures are poorly understood, primarily because the structural constraints extracted from the 2D NMR data in the form of the so-called Ramachandran (backbone torsion) angle distributions, g{^,'4)), are strongly model-dependent. Inverse theory methods are used to extract Ramachandran angle distributions from a set of 2D MAS and constant-time double-quantum-filtered dipolar recoupling (CTDQFD) data. This is a vastly underdetermined problem, and the stability of the inverse mapping is problematic. Tikhonov regularization is a well-known method of improving the stability of the inverse; in this work it is extended to use a new regularization functional based on the Laplacian rather than on the norm of the function itself. In this way, one makes use of the inherently two-dimensional nature of the underlying Ramachandran maps. In addition, a modification of the existing numerical procedure is performed, as appropriate for an underdetermined inverse problem. Stability of the algorithm with respect to the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio is examined using a simulated data set. The results show excellent convergence to the true angle distribution function g{(j),ii) for the S/N ratio above 100.

Simultaneous extraction of order parameters and orientational distribution fuctions from 31[superscript]P NMR spectra of magnetically partially oriented phospholipid bilayers

Order parameter profiles extracted from the NMR spectra of model membranes are a valuable source of information about their structure and molecular motions. To al1alyze powder spectra the de-Pake-ing (numerical deconvolution) ~echnique can be used, but it assumes a random (spherical) dist.ribution of orientations in the sample. Multilamellar vesicles are known to deform and orient in the strong magnetic fields of NMR magnets, producing non-spherical orientation distributions. A recently developed technique for simultaneously extracting the anisotropies of the system as well as the orientation distributions is applied to the analysis of partially magnetically oriented 31p NMR spectra of phospholipids. A mixture of synthetic lipids, POPE and POPG, is analyzed to measure distortion of multilamellar vesicles in a magnetic field. In the analysis three models describing the shape of the distorted vesicles are examined. Ellipsoids of rotation with a semiaxis ratio of about 1.14 are found to provide a good approximation of the shape of the distorted vesicles. This is in reasonable agreement with published experimental work. All three models yield clearly non-spherical orientational distributions, as well as a precise measure of the anisotropy of the chemical shift. Noise in the experimental data prevented the analysis from concluding which of the three models is the best approximation. A discretization scheme for finding stability in the algorithm is outlined

Water and electrolyte content and distribution in tissues of thermally-acclimated rainbow trout, Salmo gairdneri

The primary objective of this investigation was that of providing a comprehensive tissue-by-tissue assessment of water-electrolyte status in thermally-acclimated rainbow trout, Salmo gairdneri. To this end levels of water and the major ions, sodium, chloride and potassium were evaluated in the plasma, at three skeletal muscle sites, and in cardiac muscle, liver, spleen, gut and brain of animals acclimated to 2°, 10° and 18°C. The occurrence of possible seasonal variations in water-electrolyte balance was evaluated by sampling sununer and late fall-early winter populations of trout. On the basis of values for water and electrolyte content, estimates of extracellular and cellular phase volumes, cellular electrolyte concentrations and Nernst equilibrium potentials were made. Since accurate assessment of the extracellular phase volume is critical in the estimation of cellular electrolyte concentrations and parameters based on assumed cellular ion levels, [14 C]-polyethylene glycol-4000, which is assumed to be confined to the extracellular space, was employed to provide comparisons with various ion-defined spaces (H20~~s, H20~~/K and H20~~s). Subsequently, the ion-defined space yielding the most realistic estimate of extracellular phase volume for each tissue was used in cellular electrolyte calculations. Water and electrolyte content and distribution varied with temperature. Tissues, such as liver, spleen and brain appeared to be the most thermosensitive, whereas skeletal and cardiac muscle and gut tissue were less influenced. 'Summer' series trout appeared to be more capable of maintaining their water- electrolyte balance than the ~fall-winter' series animals. i The data are discussed in terms of their possible effect on maintenance of appropriate cellular metabolic and electrophysiological functions.

Distribution of excitation energy in photosynthesis: a study of heat loss, photo chemical activity and fluorescence emission in intact calls of cyanobacterium.

Photosynthetic state transitions were investigated in the cyanobacterium Synechococcus sp. PCC 6301 by studying fluorescence emission, heat loss, and PS I activity in intact cells brought to state 1 and state 2. 77K fluorescence emission spectra were modelled with a sum of 6 components corresponding to PBS, PS II, and PS I emissions. The modelled data showed a large decrease in PS II fluorescence accompanied with a small increase in the PS I fluorescence upon transition to state 2 for excitation wavelengths absorbed by both PBS and ChI ll.. The fluorescence changes seen with ChI .a. excitations do not support the predictions of the mobile PBS model of state transition in PBS-containing organisms. Measurements of heat loss from intact cells in the two states were similar for both ChI it. and PBS excitations over three orders of magnitude of laser flash intensity. This suggests that the PBS does not become decoupled from PS II in state 2 as proposed by the PBS detachment model of state transition in PBS-containing organisms. PS I activity measurements done on intact cells showed no difference in the two states, in contrast with the predictions of all of the existing models of state transitions. Based on these results a model for state transition In PBScontaining organisms is proposed, with a PS II photoprotectory function.

Distribution-Free Bounds for Serial Correlation Coefficients in Heteroskedastic Symmetric Time Series

We consider the problem of testing whether the observations X1, ..., Xn of a time series are independent with unspecified (possibly nonidentical) distributions symmetric about a common known median. Various bounds on the distributions of serial correlation coefficients are proposed: exponential bounds, Eaton-type bounds, Chebyshev bounds and Berry-Esséen-Zolotarev bounds. The bounds are exact in finite samples, distribution-free and easy to compute. The performance of the bounds is evaluated and compared with traditional serial dependence tests in a simulation experiment. The procedures proposed are applied to U.S. data on interest rates (commercial paper rate).

Efficient estimation using the characteristic function : theory and applications with high frequency data

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Perception de la force musculaire et de la distribution du poids lors d’activités motrices chez le sujet sain

Les résultats de récentes études supportent l’idée que la perception de la force aurait un rôle important dans la réalisation des tâches fonctionnelles telles que le passage assis à debout (PAD). Cependant, très peu d’études se sont attardées à quantifier la précision avec laquelle les individus en santé sont capables de percevoir la force musculaire. De plus, aucune étude n’a évalué la perception de la distribution du poids lors du PAD chez la clientèle saine. L’objectif principal était de recueillir des données sur la capacité des individus en santé, jeunes et âgés, à percevoir la force musculaire lors d’une contraction statique des extenseurs du genou et à percevoir la distribution du poids (DP) lorsqu’ils réalisent le passage assis à debout. Cette étude a été effectuée auprès de 31 individus, divisés en deux groupes d’âge (< 50 ans et > 60 ans). Les résultats du premier objectif visant à quantifier les erreurs de perception de la force lors d’une contraction statique des extenseurs du genou ont démontré que les erreurs absolues et brutes sont plus élevées pour les niveaux de force supérieurs à 50 % CVM et que les erreurs brutes sont plus importantes chez les jeunes pour les hauts niveaux de force. Les résultats du second objectif visant à évaluer l’effet de différentes références sensorimotrices sur les erreurs de perception de la force musculaire ont montré qu’une référence à 50 % CVM préalablement montrée au participant et qu’une contraction simultanée des muscles de la préhension de la main diminuent les erreurs brutes et absolues de perception pour le niveau de force 70%. Les résultats du troisième objectif visant à quantifier les erreurs de perception de la DP lors du PAD ont démontré que les sujets jeunes et âgés ont une bonne capacité à percevoir leur DP avec des erreurs absolues et brutes variant respectivement entre 2,9 % et 9,4 % et entre -5,7 % et 5,7 % et des coefficients de corrélations intra-classes supérieurs à 0,75 entre la DP produite et celle perçue. Les résultats contribuent à approfondir les connaissances relatives à la perception de la force et de la DP chez les individus en santé. Ces données pourront servir à titre comparatif lors d’études menées auprès des patients hémiparétiques afin d’évaluer s’ils ont des problèmes perceptifs pouvant expliquer l’asymétrie récurrente qu’ils présentent dans leurs tâches fonctionnelles.

Approximation de la distribution a posteriori d'un modèle Gamma-Poisson hiérarchique à effets mixtes

La méthode que nous présentons pour modéliser des données dites de "comptage" ou données de Poisson est basée sur la procédure nommée Modélisation multi-niveau et interactive de la régression de Poisson (PRIMM) développée par Christiansen et Morris (1997). Dans la méthode PRIMM, la régression de Poisson ne comprend que des effets fixes tandis que notre modèle intègre en plus des effets aléatoires. De même que Christiansen et Morris (1997), le modèle étudié consiste à faire de l'inférence basée sur des approximations analytiques des distributions a posteriori des paramètres, évitant ainsi d'utiliser des méthodes computationnelles comme les méthodes de Monte Carlo par chaînes de Markov (MCMC). Les approximations sont basées sur la méthode de Laplace et la théorie asymptotique liée à l'approximation normale pour les lois a posteriori. L'estimation des paramètres de la régression de Poisson est faite par la maximisation de leur densité a posteriori via l'algorithme de Newton-Raphson. Cette étude détermine également les deux premiers moments a posteriori des paramètres de la loi de Poisson dont la distribution a posteriori de chacun d'eux est approximativement une loi gamma. Des applications sur deux exemples de données ont permis de vérifier que ce modèle peut être considéré dans une certaine mesure comme une généralisation de la méthode PRIMM. En effet, le modèle s'applique aussi bien aux données de Poisson non stratifiées qu'aux données stratifiées; et dans ce dernier cas, il comporte non seulement des effets fixes mais aussi des effets aléatoires liés aux strates. Enfin, le modèle est appliqué aux données relatives à plusieurs types d'effets indésirables observés chez les participants d'un essai clinique impliquant un vaccin quadrivalent contre la rougeole, les oreillons, la rub\'eole et la varicelle. La régression de Poisson comprend l'effet fixe correspondant à la variable traitement/contrôle, ainsi que des effets aléatoires liés aux systèmes biologiques du corps humain auxquels sont attribués les effets indésirables considérés.