An intelligent agent is any program that can be considered by the user to be acting as an assistant or helper, rather than as a tool in the manner of a conventional direct-manipulation interface. An agent should as we...An intelligent agent is any program that can be considered by the user to be acting as an assistant or helper, rather than as a tool in the manner of a conventional direct-manipulation interface. An agent should as well display some, but perhaps not all, of the characteristics that are associated with human intelligence: learning, inference, adaptability,independence, creativity, etc.. In order to make webbased education (WBE) more vividly and instructionally with learner's independence at the same time, the intelligent agent can act as a learning pet, which is affiliated with learner's score or grades and will grow up with learner's achievement. And during the course of study, the learning pet can provides any information required by the learner, gives hints if necessary when the learner doing his/her assignment, offers instructional guide for further study etc..展开更多
Medical diagnostic tests to detect Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) for individuals in the United States were initially limited to people who were traveling or symptomatic to track disease ...Medical diagnostic tests to detect Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) for individuals in the United States were initially limited to people who were traveling or symptomatic to track disease incidence due to the cost of providing testing for all people in a community on a routine basis. As an alternative to randomly sampling large groups of people to track disease incidence at significant cost, wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is a well-established and cost-effective technique to passively measure the prevalence of disease in communities without requiring invasive testing. WBE can also be used as a forecasting tool since the virus is shed in individuals prior to developing symptoms that might otherwise prompt testing. This study applied the WBE approach to understand its effectiveness as a possible forecasting tool by monitoring the SARS-CoV-2 levels in raw wastewater sampled from sewer lift stations at a large public university campus setting including dormitories, academic buildings, and athletic facilities. The WBE analysis was conducted by sampling from building-specific lift stations and enumerating target viral copies using RT-qPCR analysis. The WBE results were compared with the 7-day rolling averages of confirmed infected individuals for the following week after the wastewater sample analysis. In most cases, changes in the WBE outcomes were followed by similar trends in the clinical data. The positive predictive value of the applied WBE approach was 86% for the following week of the sample collection. In contrast, positive correlations between the two data with Spearmen correlation (rs) ranged from 0.16 to 0.36. A stronger correlation (rs = 0.18 to 0.51) was observed when WBE results were compared with COVID-19 cases identified on the next day of the sampling events. The P value of 0.007 for Dorm A suggests high significance, while moderate significance was observed for the other dormitories (B, C, and D). The outcomes of this investigation demonstrate that WBE can be a valuable tool to track the progression of diseases like COVID-19 seven days before diagnostic cases are confirmed, allowing authorities to take necessary measures in advance and also enable authorities to decide to reopen a facility after a quarantine.展开更多
文摘An intelligent agent is any program that can be considered by the user to be acting as an assistant or helper, rather than as a tool in the manner of a conventional direct-manipulation interface. An agent should as well display some, but perhaps not all, of the characteristics that are associated with human intelligence: learning, inference, adaptability,independence, creativity, etc.. In order to make webbased education (WBE) more vividly and instructionally with learner's independence at the same time, the intelligent agent can act as a learning pet, which is affiliated with learner's score or grades and will grow up with learner's achievement. And during the course of study, the learning pet can provides any information required by the learner, gives hints if necessary when the learner doing his/her assignment, offers instructional guide for further study etc..
文摘Medical diagnostic tests to detect Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) for individuals in the United States were initially limited to people who were traveling or symptomatic to track disease incidence due to the cost of providing testing for all people in a community on a routine basis. As an alternative to randomly sampling large groups of people to track disease incidence at significant cost, wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is a well-established and cost-effective technique to passively measure the prevalence of disease in communities without requiring invasive testing. WBE can also be used as a forecasting tool since the virus is shed in individuals prior to developing symptoms that might otherwise prompt testing. This study applied the WBE approach to understand its effectiveness as a possible forecasting tool by monitoring the SARS-CoV-2 levels in raw wastewater sampled from sewer lift stations at a large public university campus setting including dormitories, academic buildings, and athletic facilities. The WBE analysis was conducted by sampling from building-specific lift stations and enumerating target viral copies using RT-qPCR analysis. The WBE results were compared with the 7-day rolling averages of confirmed infected individuals for the following week after the wastewater sample analysis. In most cases, changes in the WBE outcomes were followed by similar trends in the clinical data. The positive predictive value of the applied WBE approach was 86% for the following week of the sample collection. In contrast, positive correlations between the two data with Spearmen correlation (rs) ranged from 0.16 to 0.36. A stronger correlation (rs = 0.18 to 0.51) was observed when WBE results were compared with COVID-19 cases identified on the next day of the sampling events. The P value of 0.007 for Dorm A suggests high significance, while moderate significance was observed for the other dormitories (B, C, and D). The outcomes of this investigation demonstrate that WBE can be a valuable tool to track the progression of diseases like COVID-19 seven days before diagnostic cases are confirmed, allowing authorities to take necessary measures in advance and also enable authorities to decide to reopen a facility after a quarantine.
