While the popularity of smartphones has given enormous convenience to our lives, their pathological use has created a new mental health concern among the community. Hence, intensive research is being conducted on the etiology and treatment of the condition. However, the traditional clinical approach based surveys and interviews has serious limitations: health professionals cannot perform continual assessment and intervention for the affected group and the subjectivity of assessment is questionable. To cope with these limitations, a comprehensive ICT (Information and Communications Technology) system called SAMS (Smartphone Addiction Management System) is developed for objective assessment and intervention. The SAMS system consists of an Android smartphone application and a web application server. The SAMS client monitors the user's application usage together with GPS location and Internet access location, and transmits the data to the SAMS server. The SAMS server stores the usage data and performs key statistical data analysis and usage intervention according to the clinicians' decision. To verify the reliability and efficacy of the developed system, a comparison study with survey-based screening with the K-SAS (Korean Smartphone Addiction Scale) as well as self-field trials is performed. The comparison study is done using usage data from 14 users who are 19 to 50 year old adults that left at least 1 week usage logs and completed the survey questionnaires. The field trial fully verified the accuracy of the time, location, and Internet access information in the usage measurement and the reliability of the system operation over more than 2 weeks. The comparison study showed that daily use count has a strong correlation with K-SAS scores, whereas daily use times do not strongly correlate for potentially addicted users. The correlation coefficients of count and times with total K-SAS score are CC = 0.62 and CC =0.07, respectively, and the t-test analysis for the contrast group of potential addicts and the values for the non-addicts were p = 0.047 and p = 0.507, respectively.

ObjectiveNowadays smartphone overuse has become a social and medical concern. For the diagnosis and treatment, clinicians use the self-report information, but the report data often does not match actual usage pattern. The paper examines the similarity and variance in smartphone usage patterns between the measured data and self-reported data.MethodsTogether with the self-reported data, the real usage log data is collected from 35 college students in a metropolitan region of Northeast Asia, using Android smartphone monitoring application developed by the authors.ResultsThe unconscious users underestimate their usage time by 40%, in spite of 15% more use in the actual usage. Messengers are most-used application regardless of their self-report, and significant preference to SNS applications was observed in addict group. The actual hourly pattern is consistent with the reported one. College students use more in the afternoon, when they have more free time and cannot use PCs. No significant difference in hourly pattern is observed between the measured and self-report.ConclusionThe result shows there are significant cognitive bias in actual usage patterns exists in self report of smartphone addictions. Clinicians are recommended to utilize measurement tools in diagnosis and treatment of smartphone overusing subjects.

BackgroundPlants are frequently subjected to abiotic and biotic stresses, and WRKY proteins play a pivotal role in the response to such stress. OsWRKY11 is induced by pathogens, drought, and heat, suggesting a function in biotic and abiotic stress responses.ResultsThis study identified OsWRKY11, a member of WRKY group IIc. It is a transcriptional activator that localized to the nucleus. Ectopic expression of OsWRKY11 resulted in enhanced resistance to a bacterial pathogen, Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae; resistance was compromised in transgenic lines under-expressing OsWRKY11. Ectopic expression of OsWRKY11 resulted in constitutive expression of defense-associated genes, whereas knock-down (kd) of OsWRKY11 reduced expression of defense-associated genes during pathogen attack, suggesting that OsWRKY11 activates defense responses. OsWRKY11 bound directly to the promoter of CHITINASE 2, a gene associated with defense, and activated its transcription. In addition, ectopic expression of OsWRKY11 enhanced tolerance to drought stress and induced constitutive expression of drought-responsive genes. Induction of drought-responsive genes was compromised in OsWRKY11-kd plants. OsWRKY11 also bound directly to the promoter of a drought-responsive gene, RAB21, activating its transcription. In addition, OsWRKY11 protein levels were controlled by the ubiquitin-proteasome system.ConclusionOsWRKY11 integrates plant responses to pathogens and abiotic stresses by positively modulating the expression of biotic and abiotic stress-related genes.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12284-018-0199-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

This paper introduces a new robotic smart house, Intelligent Sweet Home, developed at KAIST in Korea, which is based on several robotic agents and aims at testing advanced concepts for independent living of the elderly and people with disabilities. The work focuses on technical solutions for human-friendly assistance in motion/mobility and advanced human-machine interfaces that provide simple control of all assistive robotic systems and home-installed appliances. The smart house concept includes an intelligent bed, intelligent wheelchair, and robotic hoist for effortless transfer of the user between bed and wheelchair. The design solutions comply with most of the users' requirements and suggestions collected by a special questionnaire survey of people with disabilities. The smart house responds to the user's commands as well as to the recognized intentions of the user. Various interfaces, based on hand gestures, voice, body movement, and posture, have been studied and tested. The paper describes the overall system structure and

OsWRKY51 functions as a positive transcriptional regulator in defense signaling against Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae by direct DNA binding to the promoter of defense related gene, OsPR10a. OsWRKY51 in rice (Oryza sativa L.) is induced by exogenous salicylic acid (SA) and inoculation with Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo). To examine the role of OsWRKY51 in the defense response of rice, we generated OsWRKY51 overexpressing and underexpressing transgenic rice plants. OsWRKY51-overexpressing transgenic rice lines were more resistant to Xoo and showed greater expression of defense-related genes than wild-type (WT) plants, while OsWRKY51-underexpressing lines were more susceptible to Xoo and showed less expression of defense-associated genes than WT plants. Transgenic lines overexpressing OsWRKY51 showed growth retardation compared to WT plants. In contrast, transgenic lines underexpressing OsWRKY51 by RNA interference showed similar plant height with WT plants. Transient expression of OsWRKY51-green fluorescent protein fusion protein in rice protoplasts revealed that OsWRKY51 was localized in the nucleus. OsWRKY51 bound to the W-box and WLE1 elements of the OsPR10a promoter. Based on these results, we suggest that OsWRKY51 is a positive transcriptional regulator of defense signaling and has direct DNA binding ability to the promoter of OsPR10a, although it is reported to be a negative regulator in GA signaling.