Data Fusion Research Center

BACKGROUND. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and coronary heart disease (CHD) are pandemics, their synergy significantly affects population morbidity and mortality. Growing evidence suggests that COVID-19 may worsen the state of the CHD precisely by aggravating endothelial dysfunction. In this article, we review the mechanisms of endothelial injury and the role of different therapeutic strategies in protecting the endothelium and improving prognosis in the treatment of CHD patients infected with SARS-CoV-2. OBJECTIVE. The role of different therapeutic agents, as well as lifestyle modifications (exercise and diet) in patients with CHD in combination with COVID-19, was determined to improve endothelial function, prognosis and survival of this cohort of patients. RESULTS. Endothelial protection is an important therapeutic strategy in the treatment of patients with CHD and COVID-19. The use of statins, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, sartans, new anticoagulants, L-arginine, sulodexide, citicoline, resveratrol, targeted foods, and walking can help reduce endothelial dysfunction, the risk of complications and improve the prognosis of these lesions. A comprehensive approach to treatment, including drug therapy and lifestyle modification, is the key to effective management of the endothelium condition in the case of CHD and COVID-19.

Over the last few years, chatbots have become a common channel for customer service interactions. In contrast, their usage for in-company applications and respective scientific knowledge about so-called virtual enterprise assistants from a user perspective are still scarce. In this paper, we studied the acceptance and user experience of a chatbot for in-company IT support. In a user study, 12 employees of a bank and a hospital evaluated and assessed a respective chatbot prototype supporting three typical use cases. Our results indicate that such an in-company chatbot is well-suited for structured use cases, such as resetting a password and releasing an email attachment from quarantine. Participants appreciated the simplicity, the pro-active guidance and immediate feedback. The participants assessed a chatbot and the phone as preferred channels to the IT help desk.

The major goal of this chapter is to overview and present selected emerging technologies for cybersecurity. In the first part we show the practical realisations of the bio-inspired concepts for cybersecurity. We do not focus on discussing the bio-inspired techniques on a high and abstract level, but we focus on our own practical developments. We want to present concrete solutions with the magazine-like language understandable to all readers. Our goal is to prove that the bio-inspired techniques can be really implemented to protect networks and that the readiness level of such technology is constantly increasing. In this chapter, we present and focus on our own results and give references to our past and on-going cyber security projects where we successfully implemented different nature-inspired solutions.

Poloidal rotation speeds and density asymmetries are calculated for the deuterium and dominant carbon (oxygen) impurity ions in discharges in the Axially Symmetric Divertor Experiment (ASDEX) [Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion Research, (International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1991), p. 325], Doublet III (DIII) [Nucl. Fusion 26, 543 (1986)], Impurity Studies Experiment (ISX-B) [Nucl. Fusion 23, 1017 (1983)], Joint European Torus (JET) [Nucl. Fusion 31, 31 (1991)] and Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) (National Technical Information Document No. PB92177187) for which vφ∼vth for the ions. These poloidal rotation speeds and density asymmetries are used to evaluate the neoclassical gyroviscous model for the momentum confinement time. The rather good agreement with experimental momentum confinement times obtained over this wide range of plasma parameters provides a measure of confidence in the calculated density asymmetries and poloidal rotation, as well as demonstrating that neoclassical calculations can predict momentum confinement in tokamaks.