SemBox: Semantic Interoperability in a Box for Wearable e-Health Devices.

In this work, we propose SemBox - Semantic interoperability in a Box, to enable wireless on-the-go communication between heterogeneous wearable health monitoring devices. It can connect wirelessly to the health monitoring devices and receive their data packets. It uses a Mamdani-based fuzzy inference system with data pre-processing to classify the received data packet into one of the classes of the vital parameters. It enables semantic interoperability by labelling and annotating the data packets based on the extracted packet information. We implement SemBox using three different health monitoring wearables, with different keywords used for each vital parameter representation in the data packet. SemBox shows a maximum classification accuracy of 85.71%, with a maximum PDR of 1 at the SemBox with varying device parameters. Overall, SemBox is a potential plug-and-play solution to achieve semantic interoperability and collaboration between heterogeneous health monitoring wearable devices, irrespective of their commercial and proprietary specifications. It is customizable for applications that use multiple heterogeneous devices for collaborative monitoring and decision support. SemBox enables interoperability among health monitoring devices, introduces flexibility and ease the inter-device dynamics in the domain of biomedical research.

Outcome of bone-anchored hearing aids for single-sided deafness: a prospective study.

CONCLUSION: The bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) system can offer significant benefits to patients with single-sided deafness (SSD), primarily by lifting the head shadow effect. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy of BAHA for SSD by comparing pre- and postoperative speech, spatial and qualities of hearing scale (SSQ) scores. METHODS: This was a prospective study conducted within a tertiary auditory implant department. The inclusion criteria were unilateral profound hearing loss with normal or mild high frequency hearing loss in the hearing ear (pure tone average better than or equal to 25 dBHL measured at 0.5, 1, 2 and 3 kHz) and subjective benefits reported by patients following a home trial with a BAHA Softband. Patients who met the above criteria and opted for surgery were asked to complete the SSQ questionnaire. The postoperative SSQ response was collected after at least 6 months of consistent BAHA usage. RESULTS: This study included 25 adult patients (mean age at implantation 57.5 years). There was a statistically significant improvement in the average SSQ score in all three sections of the questionnaire with the use of the BAHA. Our patients experienced most marked benefits in speech hearing in challenging listening situations. All patients remain consistent users and there has been no explantation to date.

High-throughput mapping of the promoters of the mouse olfactory receptor genes reveals a new type of mammalian promoter and provides insight into olfactory receptor gene regulation.

The olfactory receptor (OR) genes are the largest mammalian gene family and are expressed in a monogenic and monoallelic fashion in olfactory neurons. Using a high-throughput approach, we mapped the transcription start sites of 1085 of the 1400 murine OR genes and performed computational analysis that revealed potential transcription factor binding sites shared by the majority of these promoters. Our analysis produced a hierarchical model for OR promoter recognition in which unusually high AT content, a unique epigenetic signature, and a stereotypically positioned O/E site distinguish OR promoters from the rest of the murine promoters. Our computations revealed an intriguing correlation between promoter AT content and evolutionary plasticity, as the most AT-rich promoters regulate rapidly evolving gene families. Within the AT-rich promoter category the position of the TATA-box does not correlate with the transcription start site. Instead, a spike in GC composition might define the exact location of the TSS, introducing the concept of "genomic contrast" in transcriptional regulation. Finally, our experiments show that genomic neighborhood rather than promoter sequence correlates with the probability of different OR genes to be expressed in the same olfactory cell.

Odorant receptor (OR) gene choice is biased and non-clonal in two olfactory placode cell lines, and OR RNA is nuclear prior to differentiation of these lines.

We have investigated two clonal mouse olfactory placode (OP) cell lines as a model system for studying endogenous odorant receptor (OR) regulation. Both lines can be differentiated into bipolar neurons with transcriptional profiles consistent with mature sensory neurons. We show that single cells exhibit monogenic OR expression like sensory neurons in vivo. Monogenic OR expression is established in undifferentiated cells and persists through differentiation, but OR gene choice is not a clonal property of either cell line. Interestingly, OR RNA shifts from predominantly nuclear to cytoplasma during differentiation of both cell lines. Finally, our data indicate that a restricted subset of OR genes and OR clusters are over-represented in cell populations, suggesting either a pre-existing intrinsic bias in OP founder cells or extrinsic influences arising from culture conditions.