ALBERT

Description: Vehicular traffic re-routing is the key to provide better traffic mobility. However, taking into account just traffic-related information to recommend better routes for each vehicle is far from achieving the desired requirements of proper transportation management. In this way, context-aware and multi-objective re-routing approaches will play an important role in traffic management. Yet, most procedures are deterministic and cannot support the strict requirements of traffic management applications, since many vehicles potentially will take the same route, consequently degrading overall traffic efficiency. So, we propose an efficient algorithm named as Better Safe Than Sorry (BSTS), based on Pareto-efficiency. Simulation results have shown that our proposal provides a better trade-off between mobility and safety than state-of-the-art approaches and also avoids the problem of potentially creating different congestion spots.

Description: Background The Paleolithic diet is promoted worldwide for improved gut health. However, there is little evidence available to support these claims, with existing literature examining anthropometric and cardiometabolic outcomes. Objective To determine the association between dietary intake, markers of colonic health, microbiota, and serum trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), a gut-derived metabolite associated with cardiovascular disease. Design In a cross-sectional design, long-term (n = 44, 〉 1 year) self-reported followers of a Paleolithic diet (PD) and controls (n = 47) consuming a diet typical of national recommendations were recruited. Diets were assessed via 3-day weighed diet records; 48-h stool for short chain fatty acids using GC/MS, microbial composition via 16S rRNA sequencing of the V4 region using Illumina MiSeq. TMAO was quantified using LC–MS/MS. Results Participants were grouped according to PD adherence; namely excluding grains and dairy products. Strict Paleolithic (SP) (n = 22) and Pseudo-Paleolithic (PP) (n = 22) groups were formed. General linear modelling with age, gender, energy intake and body fat percentage as covariates assessed differences between groups. Intake of resistant starch was lower in both Paleolithic groups, compared to controls [2.62, 1.26 vs 4.48 g/day (P 

Description: Purpose Intermittent energy restriction (IER) is a popular weight loss (WL) strategy; however, its efficacy in clinical practice remains unknown. The present study compared the effects of IER compared to continuous energy restriction (CER) on WL and cardiometabolic risk factors in primary care. Methods A (self-selected) cohort study was conducted at the Rotherham Institute for Obesity (RIO), a primary care-based weight management service. 197(24% male) obese patients volunteered to participate and selected their diet group. IER participants (n = 99) consumed ~ 2600 kJ for two days/week. CER participants (n = 98) restricted their diet by ~ 2100 kJ/day below estimated requirements. Both interventions were delivered alongside RIO standard care. Changes in anthropometry and cardiometabolic disease risk markers (fasting biochemistry and blood pressure) were assessed after a 6-month intervention period and then participants were followed up again 6 months later (month 12). Results 27 IER patients (27%) and 39 CER patients (40%) completed the 6-month weight loss phase. Among completers, mean (SEM) WL was greater in the IER group at 6 months (5.4 ± 1.1% versus 2.8 ± 0.6%; p = 0.01), as were reductions in fat mass (p 

Description: Purpose Food-based dietary guidelines are proposed to not only improve diet quality, but to also reduce the environmental impact of diets. The aim of our study was to investigate whether food-related behavioral activation therapy (F-BA) applying Mediterranean-style dietary guidelines altered food intake and the environmental impact of the diet in overweight adults with subsyndromal symptoms of depression. Methods In total 744 adults who either received the F-BA intervention (F-BA group) or no intervention (control group) for 12 months were included in this analysis. Food intake data were collected through a food frequency questionnaire at baseline and after 6 and 12 months. Greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), land use (LU), and fossil energy use (FEU) estimates from life-cycle assessments and a weighted score of the three (pReCiPe score) were used to estimate the environmental impact of each individual diet at each timepoint. Results The F-BA group reported increased intakes of vegetables (19.7 g/day; 95% CI 7.8–31.6), fruit (23.0 g/day; 9.4–36.6), fish (7.6 g/day; 4.6–10.6), pulses/legumes (4.0 g/day; 1.6–6.5) and whole grains (12.7 g/day; 8.0–17.5), and decreased intake of sweets/extras (− 6.8 g/day; − 10.9 to − 2.8) relative to control group. This effect on food intake resulted in no change in GHGE, LU, and pReCiPe score, but a relative increase in FEU by 1.6 MJ/day (0.8, 2.4). Conclusions A shift towards a healthier Mediterranean-style diet does not necessarily result in a diet with reduced environmental impact in a real-life setting. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov. Number of identification: NCT02529423. August 2015.

Description: Purpose Previously, the nutritional contribution, environmental and financial costs of dairy products have been examined independently. Our aim was to determine the nutritional adequacy, financial cost and environmental impact of UK diets according to dairy content. Methods In this cross-sectional study of adults (19–64 years) from the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey years 1–4 (n = 1655), dietary intakes assessed from 4-day estimated food diaries were organized into quartiles (Q) total grams of dairy (milk, cheese, yogurt, dairy desserts) and analyzed using ANCOVA controlling for age, sex and energy intake with Bonferroni post hoc test for nutritional adequacy, Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI-2010), environmental impact [greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), eutrophication and acidification potentials], financial cost, markers of health and cardio-metabolic diseases. Results Nutritional adequacy, particularly for protein, calcium and iodine (+ 18 g, + 533 mg, + 95 g, respectively, all P 

Description: 〈h3〉Summary〈/h3〉 〈p〉〈em〉Background〈/em〉 It is well-known that long-chain non-coding RNA (LncRNA) plays an important role in the development of tumor. DANCR, which is one crucial part of the lncRNA family, has been shown to be involved in the invasion of various tumors. However, its molecular mechanism in pancreatic cancer remains unknown. 〈em〉Methods〈/em〉 qRT-PCR was used to detect the expression of DANCR, miR-135a mRNA in pancreatic cancer tissues or cells. E-cadherin and NLRP3 protein levels were measured by Western Blot. CCK-8, cell scratch, and transwell assays were applied to detect the proliferation and invasion of pancreatic cancer cells. Bioinformatical analysis and luciferase assay were performed to explore the relationship among DANCR, miR-135a and NLRP3. 〈em〉Results〈/em〉 In pancreatic cancer, DANCR was up-regulated while miR-135a was down-regulated. The over-expression of DANCR promoted the proliferation and invasion of pancreatic cancer cells. A negative relationship was found between DANCR and miR-135a expression. Moreover, we found that miR-135a reversed the effects of DANCR in the promoting of pancreatic cancer cells, which was achieved by regulating the downstream protein of NLRP3. The correlations among DANCR, miR-135a and NLRP3 were confirmed in animal experiments. 〈em〉Conclusion〈/em〉 DANCR promoted proliferation and invasion through the regulating of miR-135a / NLRP3 axis in pancreatic cancer cell. Our results suggest that DANCR may be a potential target for the therapy of pancreatic cancer.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Summary〈/h3〉 〈p〉T cells are important effectors in anti-tumor immunity, and aberrant expression of B7 family members may contribute to tumor evasion. In this study, we analyzed expression of costimulatory molecules on human hematologic tumor cells and explored whether B7-H3, a member of the B7 superfamily, is an effective target for T cell mediated cytotoxicity toward hematologic malignancy. We investigated the bispecific antibody anti-CD3 × anti-B7-H3 (B7-H3Bi-Ab) for its ability to redirect T cells to target B7-H3 positive hematologic tumors, including Thp-1, K562, Daudi cells and a primary culture. The capacity of T cells armed with B7-H3Bi-Ab to kill hematologic tumors was evaluated by lactate dehydrogenase assay, flow cytometry, ELISA, and luciferase quantitative assay at an effector/target ratio of 5:1. Compared with unarmed T cells, B7-H3Bi-Ab-armed T cells exhibited significant cytotoxicity toward hematological tumor cells. Moreover, B7-H3Bi-Ab-armed T cells secreted more IFN-γ, TNF-α, IL-2, and Granzyme B and expressed higher levels of activating marker CD69 compared to unarmed T cells. In conclusion, B7-H3Bi-Ab enhances the ability of T cells to kill hematologic tumor cells, and B7-H3 may serve as a novel target for immunotherapy against hematologic malignancy.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉The viral marketing is a relatively new form of marketing that exploits social networks to promote a brand, a product, etc. The idea behind it is to find a set of influencers on the network that can trigger a large cascade of propagation and adoptions. In this paper, we will introduce an evidential opinion-based influence maximization model for viral marketing. Besides, our approach tackles three opinion-based scenarios for viral marketing in the real world. The first scenario concerns influencers who have a positive opinion about the product. The second scenario deals with influencers who have a positive opinion about the product and produces effects on users who also have a positive opinion. The third scenario involves influence users who have a positive opinion about the product and produce effects on the negative opinion of other users concerning the product in question. Next, we proposed six influence measures, two for each scenario. We also use an influence maximization model that the set of detected influencers for each scenario. Finally, we show the performance of the proposed model with each influence measure through some experiments conducted on a generated dataset and a real-world dataset collected from Twitter.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Although there is documented evidence in the literature that 〈em〉Marinobacterium georgiense〈/em〉 González et al. 1997 and 〈em〉Pseudomonas iners〈/em〉 Iizuka and Komagata 1964 (Approved Lists 1980) should be treated as heterotypic synonyms, the nomenclatural consequences have not been implemented. Based on the rules of the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes when 〈em〉Marinobacterium georgiense〈/em〉 González et al. 1997 and 〈em〉Pseudomonas iners〈/em〉 Iizuka and Komagata 1964 (Approved Lists 1980) are considered to belong to the genus 〈em〉Marinobacterium〈/em〉 González et al. 1997, the earliest epithet (from the competing heterotypic synonyms) is to be used for the resulting taxon, i.e., the combination 〈em〉Marinobacterium iners〈/em〉 (Iizuka and Komagata 1964) must be created.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Coal-fired power stations are significant sources of soil contamination with heavy metals and a source of hazard to human health. The soil samples (〈em〉n〈/em〉 = 25) selected in the area around Novocherkassk Power Station (Rostov Region, Russia) within a radius of up to 20 km revealed the enrichment with Pb, Cu and Zn. The heavy metals (HM) content in soil is reduced in the following sequence: Mn 〉 Cr 〉 Zn 〉 Ni 〉 Cu 〉 Pb 〉 Co. The correlation diagrams of the HM total content in soils revealed a significant association between the following HM pairs: Cu–Pb, Ni–Cu, Cd–Ni, Cd–Cu (〈em〉r〈/em〉 ≥ 0.7, 〈em〉p〈/em〉 〈 0.001). The concentration coefficient (Kc) and the total pollution coefficient (Zc) were used to estimate anthropogenic pollution. The use of generalized additive model (GAM) to detect the dependence of HM distribution on factors revealed the significance of the source distance. The influence of wind rhumb on HM distribution has a complex nonlinear nature. A GAM shows a good performance for all data sets: 〈em〉R〈/em〉〈sup〉2〈/sup〉 = 0.71, 81% deviance explained for Zn, 〈em〉R〈/em〉〈sup〉2〈/sup〉 = 0.85, 91% deviance explained for Cd, 〈em〉R〈/em〉〈sup〉2〈/sup〉 = 0.63, 70% deviance explained for Ni. Thus, GAM model reveals significant factors (Dist_km, rhumb) in forming pollution by heavy metals in studied impact zone and proved a valuable approach to assess the degree and sources of pollution in soils on a large scale.〈/p〉

Description: Due to the increasing popularity of recent advanced features and context-awareness in smart mobile phones, the contextual data relevant to users’ diverse activities with their phones are recorded through the d...

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉In recent years, notable number of research studies have been conducted on the analysis of diffusion process in complex networks. One fundamental problem in this domain is to find the most influential spreader nodes. For achieving a successful spreading process, nodes having high spreading ability should be selected as spreaders. Many centrality measures have been proposed for determining and ranking the significance of nodes and detecting the best spreaders. The majority of proposed centrality measures require network global information which leads to high time complexity. Moreover, with the advent of large-scale complex networks, there is a critical need for improving accurate measures through using nodes’ local information. On the other hand, most of the formerly proposed centrality measures have attempted to select core nodes as spreaders but global bridge nodes have the highest spreading ability since they are located among several giant communities of the network. In this study, a new local and parameter-free centrality measure is proposed which is aimed at finding global bridge nodes in the network. Hence, two new local metrics, namely 〈em〉edge ratio and neighborhood diversity〈/em〉, are firstly defined which are used in the proposed method. Considering edge ratio of neighbors ensures that the selected node be not in the periphery location of the network. Furthermore, a node with high neighborhood diversity is likely a connector between some modules (dense parts) of the network. Therefore, a node with a high edge ratio and more diverse neighborhood has high spreading ability. The major merits of the proposed measure are near-linear time complexity, using local information and being parameter-free. For evaluating the proposed method, we conducted experiments on real-world networks. The results of comparing the proposed centrality measure with other measures in terms of epidemic models (SIR and SI), Kendall’s tau correlation coefficient and Rank-Frequency measures indicated that the proposed method outperforms the other compared centrality measures.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Ansamitocins are extraordinarily potent antitumor agents. Ansamitocin P-3 (AP-3), which is produced by 〈em〉Actinosynnema pretiosum〈/em〉, has been developed as a cytotoxic drug for breast cancer. Despite its importance, AP-3 is of limited applicability because of the low production yield. 〈em〉A. pretiosum〈/em〉 strain X47 was developed from 〈em〉A. pretiosum〈/em〉 ATCC 31565 by mutation breeding and shows a relatively high AP-3 yield. Here, we analyzed the 〈em〉A. pretiosum〈/em〉 X47 genome, which is ~8.13 Mb in length with 6693 coding sequences, 58 tRNA genes, and 15 rRNA genes. The DNA sequence of the ansamitocin biosynthetic gene cluster is highly similar to that of the corresponding cluster in 〈em〉A. pretiosum〈/em〉 ATCC 31565, with 99.9% identity. However, RT-qPCR analysis showed that the expression levels of ansamitocin biosynthetic genes were significantly increased in X47 compared with the levels in the wild-type strain, consistent with the higher yield of AP-3 in X47. The annotated complete genome sequence of this strain will facilitate understanding the molecular mechanisms of ansamitocin biosynthesis and regulation in 〈em〉A. pretiosum〈/em〉 and help further genetic engineering studies to enhance the production of AP-3.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉The basidiomycete 〈em〉Ustilago maydis〈/em〉 is a biotrophic organism responsible for corn smut disease. In recent years, it has become one of the most promising models for biochemical and biotechnological research due to advantages, such as rapid growth, and easy genetic manipulation. In some aspects, this yeast is more similar to complex eukaryotes, such as humans, compared to standard laboratory yeast models. 〈em〉U. maydis〈/em〉 can be employed as a tool to explore physiological processes with more versatility than other fungi. Previously, 〈em〉U. maydis〈/em〉 was only considered as a phytopathogenic fungus, but different studies have shown its potential as a research model. Therefore, numerous promising studies have focused on deepening our understanding of the natural interactions, enzyme production, and biotechnological capacity. In this review, we explore general characteristics of 〈em〉U. maydis〈/em〉, both as pathogenic and “innocuous” basidiomycete. Additionally, a comparison with other yeast models focusing on genetic, biochemical, and biotechnological research are analyzed, to emphasize the versatility, dynamism, and novelty that 〈em〉U. maydis〈/em〉 has as a research model. In this review, we highlight the applications of the yeast form of the fungus; however, since the filamentous form is also of relevance, it is addressed in the present work, as well.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Current developments in information and electronic technologies have pushed a tremendous amount of applications to meet the demands of personal computing services. Various kinds of smart devices have been launched and applied in our daily lives to provide services for individuals; however, the existing computing frameworks including local silo-based and cloud-based architectures, are not quite fit for personal computing services. Meanwhile, personal computing applications exhibit special features, they are latency-sensitive, energy efficient, highly reliable, mobile, etc, which further indicates that a new computing architecture is urgently needed to support such services. Thanks to the emerging edge computing paradigm, we were inspired to apply the distributed cooperative computing idea at the data source, which perfectly solves issues occurring among existing computing paradigms while meeting the requirements of personal computing services. Therefore, we explore personal computing services utilizing the edge computing paradigm, discuss the overall edge-based system architecture for personal computing services, and design the conceptual framework for an edge-based personal computing system. We analyze the functionalities in detail. To validate the feasibility of the proposed architecture, a fall detection application is simulated in our preliminary evaluation as an example service in which three Support Vector Machine based fall detection algorithms with different kernel functions are implemented. Experimental results show edge computing architecture can improve the performance of the system in terms of total latency, with about 22.75% reduction on average in the case of applying 4G at the second hop even when the data and computing stream of the application is small.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Communications among IoT devices and backend servers are among the most critical aspects of IoT system, as it not only governs hardware requirement and system performance but also impacts security and privacy of the system. Multi-access edge computing (MEC) is an enabler for service development in 5G. Furthermore, MEC will reduce IoT system communication cost such as latency and bandwidth thanks to its ubiquitously nearby processing and storage capability. Also, MEC will provide opportunities to enhance IoT system’s network privacy, which cannot be solved by IoT system itself easily. In this paper, we present MEC enhanced mobility support system for IoT system: with MEC it can be implemented with low operation cost and overhead and can protect IoT system’s user from being exploited due to the exposed network location of data uploading and the control signals.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Avian virus infection remains one of the most important threats to the poultry industry. Pathogens such as avian influenza virus (AIV), avian infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), and infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) are normally controlled by antibodies specific for surface proteins and cellular immune responses. However, standard vaccines aimed at inducing neutralizing antibodies must be administered annually and can be rendered ineffective because immune-selective pressure results in the continuous mutation of viral surface proteins of different strains circulating from year to year. Chicken T cells have been shown to play a crucial role in fighting virus infection, offering lasting and cross-strain protection, and offer the potential for developing universal vaccines. This review provides an overview of our current knowledge of chicken T cell immunity to viruses. More importantly, we point out the limitations and barriers of current research and a potential direction for future studies.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Detecting and tracking events from logging data is a critical element for security and system administrators and thus attracts more and more research efforts. However, there exists a major limitation in current processes of Event Logging analysis, related to the verbosity and language-dependence of messages produced by many logging systems. In this paper, a novel methodology was proposed to tackle this limitation by analysing event messages through a Natural Language Processing task in order to annotate them with semantic metadata. These metadata are further used to enable semantic searches or domain ontology population that help administrator to filter only relevant event and to correlate them for a prompt and efficient response and incident analysis.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Recent high-throughput genome-wide sequencing studies have identified recurrent somatic mutations in myeloid neoplasms. An epigenetic regulator, 〈em〉Additional sex combs〈/em〉-〈em〉like 1〈/em〉 (〈em〉ASXL1〈/em〉), is one of the most frequently mutated genes in all subtypes of myeloid malignancies. 〈em〉ASXL1〈/em〉 mutations are also frequently detected in clonal hematopoiesis, which is associated with an increased risk of mortality. Therefore, it is important to understand how 〈em〉ASXL1〈/em〉 mutations contribute to clonal expansion and myeloid transformation in hematopoietic cells. Studies using 〈em〉ASXL1〈/em〉-depleted human hematopoietic cells and 〈em〉Asxl1〈/em〉 knockout mice have shown that deletion of wild-type ASXL1 protein leads to impaired hematopoiesis and accelerates myeloid malignancies via loss of interaction with polycomb repressive complex 2 proteins. On the other hand, 〈em〉ASXL1〈/em〉 mutations in myeloid neoplasms typically occur near the last exon and result in the expression of C-terminally truncated mutant ASXL1 protein. Biological studies and biochemical analyses of this variant have shed light on its dominant-negative and gain-of-function features in myeloid transformation via a variety of epigenetic changes. Based on these results, it would be possible to establish novel promising therapeutic strategies for myeloid malignancies harboring 〈em〉ASXL1〈/em〉 mutations by blocking interactions between ASXL1 and associating epigenetic regulators. Here, we summarize the clinical implications of 〈em〉ASXL1〈/em〉 mutations, the role of wild-type ASXL1 in normal hematopoiesis, and oncogenic functions of mutant ASXL1 in myeloid neoplasms.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Network virtualization is widely considered as a mainstay for overcoming the Internet’s ossification problem, and virtual network embedding (VNE) is a critical issue. Over recent years, growing energy costs and increased ecological awareness have stimulated the interest in reducing energy consumption by Internet service providers (ISP). Dependability is also an important requirement, as it involves metrics such as reliability and availability, which directly impact quality of service (QoS). Prior works on virtual network embedding have focused mainly on maximizing revenue for Internet service providers (ISPs), and they did not consider energy consumption and dependability metrics jointly in the mapping. This paper presents an energy-efficient mapping of dependable virtual networks. The approach considers a problem formulation that concomitantly takes into account energy consumption and availability constraints for virtual network embedding problem, and an algorithm based on Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (GRASP) metaheuristic is adopted. The algorithm utilizes a sensitivity analysis based on availability importance to achieve the QoS required by each virtual network, and models based on reliability block diagrams (RBD) and stochastic Petri nets (SPN) are utilized to estimate availability. Results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach, and they show the trade-off between availability, energy consumption, cost and revenue.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉A Gram-negative, strictly aerobic, motile, rod-shaped bacterium with monopolar flagellum, designated as F51〈sup〉T〈/sup〉, was isolated from the skin ulcer of farmed Murray cod sampled from Zhejiang Province, China. Strain F51〈sup〉T〈/sup〉 grew at 4–37 °C (optimal temperature, 28 °C), pH 5.0–8.5 (optimal pH, 7.5) and NaCl concentration of 0–6.0% (w/v) (optimal concentration, 2.0%). Phylogenetic analysis based on average nucleotide identity (76.2–78.4%) and in silico DNA–DNA hybridization (22.3–23.2%) values revealed that strain F51〈sup〉T〈/sup〉 forms a distinct lineage in the clade of genus 〈em〉Pseudomonas〈/em〉 with less than 98.9% 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to type strains of the genus and represents a novel species related most closely to 〈em〉Pseudomonas floridensis〈/em〉 LMG 30013〈sup〉T〈/sup〉. Three housekeeping genes (〈em〉rpoB〈/em〉, 〈em〉rpoD〈/em〉 and 〈em〉gyrB〈/em〉) of strain F51〈sup〉T〈/sup〉 were analysed to further confirm that the isolate is distinctly delineated from related 〈em〉Pseudomonas〈/em〉 species. Chemotaxonomic analysis indicated that the sole respiratory quinone of strain F51〈sup〉T〈/sup〉 is Q-9; its predominant cellular fatty acids are C〈sub〉16:0〈/sub〉, summed feature 3 (iso-C〈sub〉15:0〈/sub〉 2-OH and/or C〈sub〉16:1〈/sub〉〈em〉ω〈/em〉7〈em〉c〈/em〉), summed feature 8 (C〈sub〉18:1〈/sub〉〈em〉ω〈/em〉7〈em〉c〈/em〉 and/or C〈sub〉18:1〈/sub〉〈em〉ω〈/em〉6〈em〉c〈/em〉) and C〈sub〉10:0〈/sub〉 3-OH; and its major polar lipids consist of diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol, two unidentified glycolipids, three unidentified phospholipids and an unidentified aminophosphoglycolipid. This composition is typical of the chemotaxonomic attributes of 〈em〉Pseudomonas〈/em〉. Based on its phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic features, strain F51〈sup〉T〈/sup〉 is considered to represent a novel species for which the name 〈em〉Pseudomonas ovata〈/em〉 sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is F51〈sup〉T〈/sup〉 (= KCTC 62133〈sup〉T〈/sup〉 = MCCC 1K03458〈sup〉T〈/sup〉).〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Thinning algorithms have been widely applied in many applications such as computer graphics, computer vision and medical imaging. The performances of thinning algorithms are hampered by the increase of image’s size and image’s content. By employing graphics processing units (GPUs), the calculation of thinning algorithms can be accelerated. In this paper, we present GPU parallel versions of well-known binary thinning algorithms namely the ZS algorithm, the GH algorithm, the AW algorithm and the hybrid algorithm belonging to different classes for an efficient implementation using CUDA as a parallel programming model. These thinning algorithms are then evaluated and compared according to quality and runtime measures. The obtained results show that the GPU multithreaded implementations of the selected algorithms present high computational speed outperforming the central processing unit sequential implementations achieving the best average speedup when executing the AW algorithm.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉This study elucidates the dynamic behaviour of the two competing mutually exclusive epidemic (meme) spreading model with the alert of memes over multiplex social networks. Each meme spreads over a distinct contact networks 〈span〉 〈span〉\((CN_1,CN_2)\)〈/span〉 〈/span〉 of an undirected multiplex social network. The behavioural responses of agents (alerts) to the spread of competing memes is disseminated through information dissemination network (IDN). Here, IDN has the same nodes but different links with respect to the respective 〈span〉 〈span〉\(CN_i(i=1,2)\)〈/span〉 〈/span〉. The analytical treatment of this model is analysed through the mean field approximation of the epidemic process. Also, it has been shown through numerical illustrations that a node in the alert state is less probable to become infected than a node in the susceptible state. Moreover, co-existence of both the memes, the survival threshold, the absolute dominance threshold of the two competitive memes and the alert threshold for minimizing the severity of meme spread are analytically explored and numerically illustrated.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Precise neuronal wiring is critical for the function of the nervous system and is ultimately determined at the level of individual synapses. Neurons integrate various intrinsic and extrinsic cues to form synapses onto their correct targets in a stereotyped manner. In the past decades, the nervous system of nematode (〈em〉Caenorhabditis elegans〈/em〉) has provided the genetic platform to reveal the genetic and molecular mechanisms of synapse formation and specificity. In this review, we will summarize the recent discoveries in synapse formation and specificity in 〈em〉C. elegans〈/em〉.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Recently, the Internet of things (IoT) has received a lot of attention from both industry and academia. A reliable and secure IoT connection and communication is essential for the proper working of the IoT network as a whole. One of the ways to achieve robust security in an IoT network is to enable and build trusted communication among the things (nodes). In this area, the existing IoT literature faces many critical issues, such as the lack of intelligent cluster-based trust approaches for IoT networks and the detection of attacks on the IoT trust system from malicious nodes, such as bad service providers. The existing literature either does not address these issues or only addresses them partially. Our proposed solution can firstly detect on-off attacks using the proposed fuzzy-logic based approach, and it can detect contradictory behaviour attacks and other malicious nodes. Secondly, we develop a fuzzy logic-based approach to detect malicious nodes involved in bad service provisioning. Finally, to maintain the security of the IoT network, we develop a secure messaging system that enables secure communication between nodes. This messaging system uses hexadecimal values with a structure similar to serial communication. We carried out extensive experimentation under varying network sizes to validate the working of our proposed solution and also to test the efficiency of the proposed methods in relation to various types of malicious behavior. The experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach under various conditions.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Individuals who suffer from different sleep breathing disorders suffer from a wide range of serious health problems. Unfortunately, the rate of diagnosis is very low, and the existing breathing monitoring techniques are expensive, uncomfortable and time- and labor-intensive. The gold standard PSG is invasive, costly, technically complex and time-consuming. Toward developing a non-contact sleep breathing monitoring system, this study presents a motion-based computer vision approach that aims to detect breathing movements of the sleeping patient from infrared videos and map them into a waveform. The proposed waveform illustrates that each type of breathing difficulty has a specific pattern and hence can be easily distinguished. This facilitates identifying only suspicious periods during which physiological signals will be scored, instead of analyzing the whole signals of 8 h of sleep.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉This research has been investigating an automatic and online crowd anomaly detection model by exploring a novel compound image descriptor generated from live video streams. A dual-channel convolutional neural network (DCCNN) has been set up for efficiently processing scene-related and motion-related crowd information inherited from raw frames and the compound descriptor instances. The novelty of the work stemmed from the creation of the spatio-temporal cuboids in online (or near real-time) manner through dynamically extracting local feature tracklets within the temporal space while handling the foreground region-of-interests (i.e., moving targets) through the exploration of Gaussian Mixture Model in the spatial space. Hence, the extracted foreground blocks can effectively eliminate irrelevant backgrounds and noises from the live streams for reducing the computational costs in the subsequent detecting phases. The devised compound feature descriptor, named as spatio-temporal feature descriptor (STFD), is capable of characterizing the crowd attributes through the measures such as collectiveness, stability, conflict and density in each online generated spatio-temporal cuboid. A STFD instance registers not only the dynamic variation of the targeted crowd over time based on local feature tracklets, but also the interaction information of neighborhoods within a crowd, e.g., the interaction force through the K-nearest neighbor (K-NN) analysis. The DCCNN developed in this research enables online identification of suspicious crowd behaviors based on analyzing the live-feed images and their STFD instances. The proposed model has been developed and evaluated against benchmarking techniques and databases. Experimental results have shown substantial improvements in terms of detection accuracy and efficiency for online crowd abnormal behavior identification. 〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Identification and classification of extremist-related tweets is a hot issue. Extremist gangs have been involved in using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter for propagating their ideology and recruitment of individuals. This work aims at proposing a terrorism-related content analysis framework with the focus on classifying tweets into extremist and non-extremist classes. Based on user-generated social media posts on Twitter, we develop a tweet classification system using deep learning-based sentiment analysis techniques to classify the tweets as extremist or non-extremist. The experimental results are encouraging and provide a gateway for future researchers.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Automatically and efficiently detecting abnormal events that occur in dynamic surveillance video is one of the important tasks in real-time video streaming analysis. However, in some typical application scenarios with narrow areas, the perspective distortion caused by the large depth-of-field has a tremendous negative impact on the accuracy of detection, thereby increasing the difficulty of identifying abnormal behavior. Taking the real-time violence occurring in the metro platform as an example, the article introduces a more effective algorithm for detecting abnormal behaviors in narrow areas with perspective distortion. The algorithm firstly uses the adaptive transformation mechanism to make up for the distorting effect in the region of interest extraction. Then, an improved pyramid L–K optical flow method with perspective weight and disorder coefficient is proposed to extract the abnormal behavior feature occurred in historical moving images. The side-by-side comparison of the experimental results proves that this algorithm can effectively compensate for the distortion effect and obviously improve the accuracy of abnormal behavior detection in narrow area scenes.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Purpose〈/h3〉 〈p〉The objective of this secondary analysis is to describe the types of commercial complementary foods (CCF) consumed by infants and young children enrolled in the European Childhood Obesity Project (CHOP), to describe the contribution of CCF to dietary energy intakes and to determine factors associated with CCF use over the first 2 years of life.〈/p〉 〈/span〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Methods〈/h3〉 〈p〉The CHOP trial is a multicenter intervention trial in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Poland and Spain that tested the effect of varying levels of protein in infant formula on the risk for childhood obesity. Infants were recruited from October 2002 to June 2004. Dietary data on CCF use for this secondary analysis were taken from weighted, 3-day dietary records from 1088 infants at 9 time points over the first 2 years of life.〈/p〉 〈/span〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Results〈/h3〉 〈p〉Reported energy intakes from CCF during infancy (4–9 months) was significantly higher (〈em〉p〈/em〉 ≤ 0.002) amongst formula-fed children compared to breastfed children. Sweetened CCF intakes were significantly higher (〈em〉p〈/em〉 ≤ 0.009) amongst formula-fed infants. Female infants were fed significantly less CCF and infant age was strongly associated with daily CCF intakes, peaking at 9 months of age. Infants from families with middle- and high-level of education were fed significantly less quantities of CCF compared to infants with parents with lower education. Sweetened CCF were very common in Spain, Italy and Poland, with over 95% of infants and children fed CCF at 9 and 12 months of age consuming at least one sweetened CCF. At 24 months of age, 68% of the CHOP cohort were still fed CCF.〈/p〉 〈/span〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Conclusions〈/h3〉 〈p〉CCF comprised a substantial part of the diets of this cohort of European infants and young children. The proportion of infants being fed sweetened CCF is concerning. More studies on the quality of commercial complementary foods in Europe are warranted, including market surveys on the saturation of the Western European market with sweetened CCF products.〈/p〉 〈/span〉

Description: 〈p〉Authors of the original article have observed an inadvertent error in their manuscript post-publication.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉The imbalance energy consumption and high data traffic at intermediate nodes degrade the network performance. In this paper, we propose: energy grade and balance load distribution corona, EG without corona and DA without corona based schemes to distribute data traffic across the network nodes for efficient energy consumption. The dynamic adjustment of transmission range in first scheme helps in reducing data load. Additionally, the transmission range is purely based on distance, energy and data load of the receiver node for achieving maximum network lifetime. Second scheme divides a data packet into three fractions; small, medium and large for transmitting from various paths to evenly distribute the data load on the network nodes. In third scheme, depth adjustment of void node is performed to resume network operations, whereas, the load distribution and transmission range mechanisms are the same. The extensive simulations are carried out to show the effectiveness of proposed schemes in terms of PDR, energy consumption, and load distribution against the baseline scheme.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉We determined mercury (Hg) concentrations in various tissues of Burmese pythons (〈em〉Python bivitattus〈/em〉; n = 227) caught in southwest Florida from 2012–2018 as part of a program to control this invasive species. Mercury ranged as high as 4.86 mg/kg in liver tissue from a snake that was 4.7 m long but overall averaged 0.12 ± 0.19 mg/kg in tail tips (n = 123). These levels were relatively low as compared to concentrations reported in pythons from Everglades National Park, a recognized Hg hotspot. These results show that snakes, particularly watersnakes, present another opportunity to biomonitor Hg at the aquatic-terrestrial interface. Although capturing snakes presents obvious challenges, which differ from sampling other taxa typically used in monitoring programs, taking advantage of this program to control an invasive species was cost effective and alleviated concerns about sampling and possibly reducing native snake populations.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Sirtuins are NAD〈sup〉+〈/sup〉-dependent protein deacylases and ADP-ribosyltransferases that are involved in a wide range of cellular processes including genome homeostasis and metabolism. Sirtuins are expressed in human and mouse oocytes yet their role during female gamete development are not fully understood. Here, we investigated the role of a mammalian sirtuin member, SIRT7, in oocytes using a mouse knockout (KO) model. 〈em〉Sirt7〈/em〉 KO females have compromised fecundity characterized by a rapid fertility decline with age, suggesting the existence of a diminished oocyte pool. Accordingly, 〈em〉Sirt7〈/em〉 KO females produced fewer oocytes and ovulated fewer eggs. Because of the documented role of SIRT7 in DNA repair, we investigated whether SIRT7 regulates prophase I when meiotic recombination occurs. 〈em〉Sirt7〈/em〉 KO pachynema-like staged oocytes had approximately twofold increased γH2AX signals associated with regions with unsynapsed chromosomes. Consistent with the presence of asynaptic chromosome regions, 〈em〉Sirt7〈/em〉 KO oocytes had fewer MLH1 foci (~one less), a mark of crossover-mediated repair, than WT oocytes. Moreover, this reduced level of crossing over is consistent with an observed twofold increased incidence of aneuploidy in Metaphase II eggs. In addition, we found that acetylated lysine 18 of histone H3 (H3K18ac), an established SIRT7 substrate, was increased at asynaptic chromosome regions suggesting a functional relationship between this epigenetic mark and chromosome synapsis. Taken together, our findings demonstrate a pivotal role for SIRT7 in oocyte meiosis by promoting chromosome synapsis and have unveiled the importance of SIRT7 as novel regulator of the reproductive lifespan.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Background〈/h3〉 〈p〉Although a high number of wet compresses are prescribed daily in medical institutions in Japan, our understanding of the national burden of the cost of wet compresses and the details regarding their prescription is far from complete. We investigated the national burden of the annual pharmaceutical cost of wet compresses prescribed in Japan and estimated the predictors of this cost using nationwide health insurance claims data.〈/p〉 〈/span〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Methods〈/h3〉 〈p〉We extracted the records on wet compress products from summary table files obtained from the second version of the “NDB Open Data Japan” website and calculated the annual pharmaceutical cost of wet compresses by patients’ 5-year age group, sex, and prefecture. We also conducted an ecological study treating each prefecture as an individual unit and multiple linear regression analyses using the age-standardized cost of wet compresses per resident as a dependent variable.〈/p〉 〈/span〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Results〈/h3〉 〈p〉The annual pharmaceutical cost of wet compresses prescribed in Japan in fiscal year 2015 was 149.0 billion Japanese yen (1.18 billion euros; 1.33 billion USD). Multiple linear regression analyses showed that the number of orthopedists and rehabilitation physicians per 100,000 residents were significantly positively associated with the annual pharmaceutical cost of wet compresses per resident (〈em〉P〈/em〉 = 0.042 and 〈em〉P〈/em〉 = 0.008, respectively).〈/p〉 〈/span〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Conclusions〈/h3〉 〈p〉The annual pharmaceutical cost of wet compresses prescribed in Japan has a considerable impact on the nation’s limited healthcare resources. The number of orthopedists and rehabilitation physicians per 100,000 residents may be independent predictors of the wet compress cost in Japan.〈/p〉 〈/span〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉O2O commerce is a new business model combining online shopping and offline transactions. While many reports indicate the large potential size of the O2O market, little is known about users’ continuance intention to use. This study applies an expectation confirmation model (ECM) that incorporates perceived hedonic benefits, product information intensity and transaction costs as belief-related constructs to predict users’ continuance intention to use O2O apps. The proposed model was empirically evaluated using survey data collected from 333 users concerning their perceptions of O2O apps. The results indicated that confirmation of O2O app usage experience was positively related to both perceived benefits such as utilitarian and hedonic benefits and satisfaction. Perceived benefits, satisfaction and transaction costs were found to have a direct impact on continuance intention. Specifically, there was a significant difference between task-oriented O2O apps users and entertainment-oriented O2O apps users. The results may provide further insights into O2O app marketing strategies.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉〈em〉Amynthas agrestis〈/em〉 and 〈em〉Metaphire hilgendorfi〈/em〉 are being distributed across North America with unknown ecosystem impacts. Forest soils in urban areas sequester trace elements and earthworms may be bioaccumulating them. This study examined Cd, Cr, Co, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb, V, and Zn in soils and earthworm tissues at 28 urban forest sites in and surrounding Poughkeepsie, NY, USA. Megascolecidae were present at 22 sites with means of 12 to 27 individuals m〈sup〉−2〈/sup〉 and 4 to 12 dry weight g m〈sup〉−2〈/sup〉. Urban forest soils within commercial uses had Mn, Pb, and Zn concentrations higher than within residential and agricultural uses. Earthworm trace element concentrations were poorly predicted by their respective soil concentrations, except for Pb. Urban forests in commercial uses and land-preserves, earthworm Cd and Pb concentrations were at or above concentrations known to negatively impact small mammal and bird health ( 〉 10 mg kg〈sup〉−1〈/sup〉) with Co and V approaching toxic concentrations.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Summary〈/h3〉 〈p〉Vitamin K〈sub〉3〈/sub〉, also known as menadione, is a synthetic lipid-soluble 2-methyl-1,4- naphthoquinone analogs of vitamin K. The vitamin K derivatives exhibit potent cytotoxicity against several cancer cell lines through ROS induction and mitochondrial dysfunction. We investigated vitamin K〈sub〉3〈/sub〉-inspired derivatives as potential apoptotic inducers and analyzed their mechanisms beyond apoptosis. The cytotoxicity of a panel of vitamin K〈sub〉3〈/sub〉 analogs was screened against 10 doxorubicin-sensitive and -resistant cancer cell lines overexpressing ATP-binding cassette transporters (P-glycoprotein, ABCB5, BCRP) or oncogenes (ΔEGFR) or with knockout of tumor suppressors (p53), Cell cycle arrest, apoptosis, cell migration, and microtubule formation were further investigated. The online tool SwissTargetPrediction was utilized for target prediction. Among the screened compounds, one vitamin K〈sub〉3〈/sub〉 thio-derivative (No. 45, VKT-1) exhibited the most potent cytotoxicity specifically against both drug-sensitive and -resistant cancer cell lines. In addition, VKT-1 arrested the cells at the G2/M phase and induced apoptosis as detected by flow cytometry. As predicted by SwissTargetPrediction, VKT-1 targeted microtubule-associated tau protein. Indeed, VKT-1 dramatically inhibited cell migration and microtubule formation 〈em〉in vitro〈/em〉. In conclusion, the synthetic vitamin K〈sub〉3〈/sub〉 thio-derivative (VKT-1〈strong〉)〈/strong〉 inhibited doxorubicin-sensitive and -resistant tumor cells by cell arrest, apoptosis induction, as well as, migration inhibition, and microtubule deterioration of U2OS-GFP-α-tubulin cells.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉We propose a data-driven approach to quantify the uncertainty of models constructed by kernel methods. Our approach minimizes the needed distributional assumptions, hence, instead of working with, for example, Gaussian processes or exponential families, it only requires knowledge about some mild regularity of the measurement noise, such as it is being symmetric or exchangeable. We show, by building on recent results from finite-sample system identification, that by perturbing the residuals in the gradient of the objective function, information can be extracted about the amount of uncertainty our model has. Particularly, we provide an algorithm to build exact, non-asymptotically guaranteed, distribution-free confidence regions for ideal, noise-free representations of the function we try to estimate. For the typical convex quadratic problems and symmetric noises, the regions are star convex centered around a given nominal estimate, and have efficient ellipsoidal outer approximations. Finally, we illustrate the ideas on typical kernel methods, such as LS-SVC, KRR, 〈span〉 〈span〉\(\varepsilon \)〈/span〉 〈/span〉-SVR and kernelized LASSO.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Summary〈/h3〉 〈p〉Rucaparib, a poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor, is licensed for use in recurrent ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer. We characterized the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination of rucaparib in 6 patients with advanced solid tumors following a single oral dose of [〈sup〉14〈/sup〉C]-rucaparib 600 mg (≈140 μCi). Total radioactivity (TRA) in blood, plasma, urine, and feces was measured using liquid scintillation counting. Unchanged rucaparib concentrations in plasma were determined using validated liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry. Maximum concentration (C〈sub〉max〈/sub〉) of TRA and unchanged rucaparib in plasma was 880 ng Eq/mL and 428 ng/mL, respectively, at approximately 4 h post dose; terminal half-life was 〉25 h for both TRA and rucaparib. The plasma TRA-time profile was parallel to yet higher than that of rucaparib, suggesting the presence of metabolites in plasma. Mean blood:plasma ratio of radioactivity was 1.0 for C〈sub〉max〈/sub〉 and 0.8 for area under the concentration-time curve from time zero to infinity. Mean postdose recovery of TRA was 89.3% over 12 days (71.9% in feces; 17.4% in urine). Unchanged rucaparib and M324 (oxidative metabolite) were the major components in plasma, contributing to 64.0% and 18.6% of plasma radioactivity, respectively. Rucaparib and M324 were the major rucaparib-related components (each ≈7.6% of dose) in urine, whereas rucaparib was the predominant component (63.9% of dose) in feces. The high fecal recovery of unchanged rucaparib could be attributed to hepatic excretion and/or incomplete oral absorption. Overall, these data suggest that rucaparib is eliminated through multiple pathways, including metabolism and renal and biliary excretion.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉The main expression sites of HLA-G are human extravillous trophoblast cells. The interaction of HLA-G with uterine NK cells promotes their maturation and differentiation into decidual NK (dNK) cells. dNK cells secrete chemokines, cytokines, and proangiogenic factors in favor of a vascular remodeling and an immune suppressive microenvironment of the decidua. HLA-G is the most polymorphic member of the oligomorphic non-classical HLA molecule family; yet, the impact of polymorphic differences is not comprehensively understood. sHLA-G levels in embryo culture medium correlate with successful pregnancy; however, it remains questionable if HLA-G allelic diversity impacts on the outcome of dNK cell development. We utilized synthetic 〈em〉sHLA-G*01:01〈/em〉, 〈em〉01:03〈/em〉, and 〈em〉01:04〈/em〉 molecules and transduced 〈em〉K652/mHLA-G*01:01〈/em〉, 〈em〉01:03〈/em〉, and 〈em〉01:04〈/em〉 cells to study the biological interaction between HLA-G alleles and primary NK cells of human term placenta. Despite its low frequency, 〈em〉HLA-G*01:04〈/em〉 and not the most prevalent allele 〈em〉HLA-G*01:01〈/em〉 appear to be strong catalysts of dNK cell proliferation. Concluding, this study illustrates novel insights into the impact and binding efficiency of the three most common variants of HLA-G on primary placental NK cells.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉This study summarized existing adsorption technologies for the removal of elemental mercury in the flue gas. Both carriers (e.g., active carbon (AC), pyrolyzed char, inorganic adsorbents and fly ash) and various modification methods (pore structure improvement, oxygen-containing functional groups addition and new active reagents impregnation) were compared to shed light on the development of future adsorption technology. AC and char possibly performed more mercury adsorption capacity (MAC) compared with fly ash and inorganic adsorbents since carbon atom existence was easier to form the active halogen groups (C–X) and oxygen containing groups. Though both pore structure improvement and chemical group formation improved the MAC of adsorbents, the chemical modification methods (oxygen-containing functional groups addition and new active reagents impregnation) were more effective. The impregnation of halogen, sulfur and metal chloride could distinctly form lots of active sites on the adsorbents and developed high effective mercury adsorbents. In the future, the adsorption researches possibly focus on SO〈sub〉2〈/sub〉 and H〈sub〉2〈/sub〉O resistance of adsorbents, separable adsorbents, low-cost chemical modification methods, and utilization potential of fly ash.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Objective〈/h3〉 〈p〉Renal insufficiency may influence the pharmacokinetics of drugs. We have investigated the pharmacokinetic parameters of imrecoxib and its two main metabolites in individuals with osteoarthritis (OA) with normal renal function and renal insufficiency, respectively.〈/p〉 〈/span〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Methods〈/h3〉 〈p〉This was a prospective, parallel, open, matched-group study in which 24 subjects were enrolled (renal insufficiency group, 〈em〉n〈/em〉 = 12; healthy control group,〈em〉 n〈/em〉 = 12). Blood samples of subjects administered 100 mg imrecoxib were collected at different time points and analyzed. Plasma concentrations of imrecoxib and its two metabolites (M1 and M2) were determined by the liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method, and pharmacokinetic parameters (clearance [CL], apparent volume of distribution [V〈sub〉d〈/sub〉], maximum (or peak) serum concentration [〈em〉C〈/em〉〈sub〉max〈/sub〉], amount of time drug is present in serum at C〈sub〉max〈/sub〉 [T〈sub〉max〈/sub〉], area under the curve [AUC; total drug exposure across time], mean residence time [MRT] and elimination half-life [t〈sub〉1/2〈/sub〉]) were calculated.〈/p〉 〈/span〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Results〈/h3〉 〈p〉The demographic characteristics of the two groups were not significantly different, with the exception of renal function. The mean 〈em〉C〈/em〉〈sub〉max〈/sub〉 and AUC〈sub〉0-t〈/sub〉 (AUC from time 0 to the last measurable concentration) of imrecoxib in the renal insufficiency group were 59 and 70%, respectively, of those of the healthy control volunteers with normal renal function, indicating a significant decline in the former group (〈em〉P〈/em〉 〈 0. 05). The mean pharmacokinetic parameters of Ml in the renal insufficiency and healthy control groups did not significantly differ. In contrast, the mean 〈em〉C〈/em〉〈sub〉max〈/sub〉 and AUC〈sub〉0-t〈/sub〉 of M2 in the renal insufficiency group were 233 and 367%, respectively, of those of the normal renal function group, indicating a significant increase in the former group (〈em〉P〈/em〉 〈 0.05). The mean CL/F (clearance/bioavailability) of M2 of the renal insufficiency group was 37% of that of the normal renal function group, indicating a notable reduction in the former group (〈em〉P〈/em〉 〈 0.05).〈/p〉 〈/span〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Conclusion〈/h3〉 〈p〉The exposure of imrecoxib in OA patients with renal insufficiency showed a decline compared to that in healthy subjects. However, in patients with renal insufficiency the exposure of M2 was markedly increased and the CL was noticeably reduced. These results indicate that the dosage of imrecoxib should be reduced appropriately in patients with renal insufficiency.〈/p〉 〈/span〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉In this paper, an early prediction of vehicle trajectories and turning movements are investigated using traffic cameras. A vision-based tracking system is developed to monitor intersection videos and collect vehicle trajectories with their labels known as turning movements. Firstly, two intersection videos are monitored for 2 h, and collected trajectories with their labels are used to train deep neural networks and obtain the turning models for the prediction task. Deep neural networks are further investigated on a third intersection with different video settings. The future 2 s evaluation of trajectories shows the success of long short-term memory networks to early predict the turning movements with more than 92% accuracy.〈/p〉

Description: 〈p〉Every author has erroneously been assigned to the affiliation “62”. The affiliation 62 belongs to the author Graham Casey.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉To determine the function of miR-206 in epilepsy. Epileptic rat model was established by intra-amygdala injection of kainic acid (KA). Expression levels of miR-206, C–C Motif Chemokine Ligand 2 (CCL2) and interleukin-1β (Il-1β) in hippocampus tissues was measured by reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) and western blot. Dual luciferase reporter assay was performed to determine the binding of miR-206 to 3′ untranslated region (UTR) of CCL2. Finally, brain waves were recorded and Hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining and Nissl’s staining were performed on the epileptic rat injected with LPS, miR-206 agomir, adeno-associated virus (AAV) expressed CCL2 alone or in combination. Expression of miR-206 was specially decreased in hippocampus tissues compared to cortex in response to KA induced pathologic brain activity. Enforced expression of miR-206 by injection miR-206 agomir not only decreased seizure activity, but also protected KA-induced neuronal loss. And enforced expression of miR-206 suppressed increase of C–C Motif Chemokine Ligand 2 (CCL2) and interleukin-1β (Il-1β) which were induced by injection of KA or KA combined with lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Further more, results of dual luciferase reporter assay confirmed CCL2 was a target of miR-206. Finally, co-injection adeno-associated virus (AAV) expressed CCL2 with miR-206 agomir abolished the function of miR-206 agomir. Taken together, our results showed that expression of miR-206 could inhibit seizure-induced brain injury by targeting CCL2. Our results showed that expression of miR-206 could inhibit seizure-induced brain injury by targeting CCL2.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉The Israeli population mainly includes Jews, Muslim and Christian Arabs, and Druze. Data on genetic diseases present in the population have been systematically collected and are available online in the Israeli national genetic database. Among the Israeli Arabs in December 31 2018, the database included molecular data on six diseases relatively frequent in the whole population: thalassemia, familial Mediterranean fever (FMF), cystic fibrosis, deafness, phenylketonuria or congenital adrenal hyperplasia as well as data on 632 autosomal recessive diseases among Muslim Israeli Arabs, 52 among the Christian Arabs and 79 among Druze. A single variant was characterized in 590 out of the 771 genes causing disorders in which the molecular basis was known. Many of the variants reported among Arabs in Israel are novels, most being found in one community only. Some variants are ancient and for instance, consistent with the migration history, several variants are found in the Bedouins from the Negev as well as from the Arab peninsula. In the 181 other disorders more than one variant was characterized either in the same gene or in more than one gene. While it is probable that most of these cases represent random events in some cases the reason may be a selective advantage to the heterozygotes.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉To understand how anatomy and physiology allow an organism to perform its function, it is important to know how information that is transmitted by spikes in the brain is received and encoded. A natural question is whether the spike rate alone encodes the information about a stimulus (〈em〉rate code〈/em〉), or additional information is contained in the temporal pattern of the spikes (〈em〉temporal code〈/em〉). Here we address this question using data from the cat Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN), which is the visual portion of the thalamus, through which visual information from the retina is communicated to the visual cortex. We analyzed the responses of LGN neurons to spatially homogeneous spots of various sizes with temporally random luminance modulation. We compared the Firing Rate with the Shannon Information Transmission Rate , which quantifies the information contained in the temporal relationships between spikes. We found that the behavior of these two rates can differ quantitatively. This suggests that the energy used for spiking does not translate directly into the information to be transmitted. We also compared Firing Rates with Information Rates for X-ON and X-OFF cells. We found that, for X-ON cells the Firing Rate and Information Rate often behave in a completely different way, while for X-OFF cells these rates are much more highly correlated. Our results suggest that for X-ON cells a more efficient 〈em〉“temporal code”〈/em〉 is employed, while for X-OFF cells a straightforward 〈em〉“rate code”〈/em〉 is used, which is more reliable and is correlated with energy consumption. 〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Reservoir sediment can work as both sink and source for contaminants. Once released into the water column, contaminants can be toxic to biota and humans. We investigate potential ecological risk to benthic organisms by metals contamination in six reservoirs in Southeast Brazil. Results of the bioavailable fraction of copper (Cu), chromium (Cr), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), and iron (Fe) in sediment samples are presented. Considering Cu, Cd, and Zn concentrations, about 6% of the samples exceeded the threshold effect levels of sediment quality guidelines. The comparison to sediment quality guidelines is conservative because we used a moderate metal extraction. Control of contaminant sources in these reservoirs is key because they are sources of water and food. The mixture toxicity assessment showed an increased incidence of toxicity to aquatic organisms showing that mixture toxicity should be taken into account in sediment assessment criteria.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Summary〈/h3〉 〈p〉〈em〉Purpose〈/em〉 Cancer therapy-associated paronychia (CAP) is a frequent adverse event associated with cytotoxic and targeted therapies that may impact dosing of anticancer therapies and patient quality of life (QoL). There are currently no evidence-based management strategies or approved treatments for CAP. 〈em〉Materials and Methods〈/em〉 This was a prospective, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, vehicle-controlled phase 2 study that evaluated the efficacy and safety of 6 to 8 weeks of 1% or 2% povidone-iodine (PVP-I) topical solution versus vehicle-control in adult patients with CAP. Patients were randomized to one of three treatment arms administered twice daily: 1% PVP-I (Cohort A), 2% PVP-I (Cohort B), or vehicle-control (Cohort C). The primary endpoint was a two-grade reduction (or reduction to grade 0 if involved nails were grade 1) on the six-point Paronychia Severity Grading (PSG) scale. Secondary endpoints included safety and the effect on QoL and microbiota. 〈em〉Results〈/em〉 A total of 102 patients with cancer were randomized to the study. In Cohort A, 83 of 205 (40.5%, 〈em〉P〈/em〉 = 0.6059) affected nails met the primary endpoint versus Cohort C. In Cohort B, 88 of 167 (52.7%, 〈em〉P〈/em〉 = 0.0063) affected nails met the primary endpoint versus 64 of 169 (37.9%) in Cohort C. Nineteen of 29 patients (65.5%) in Cohort B reported moderately or very painful nails at baseline that decreased to 15 patients (51.7%) at visit 2 and five patients (17.2%) at visit 3. 〈em〉Conclusions〈/em〉 Treatment with twice-daily topical 2% PVP-I was safe and resulted in improvement in CAP compared with control. Clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT03207906. 〈a href="https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03207906"〉https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03207906〈/a〉〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉It was assessed the efficiency of the electrocoagulation (EC) in slaughterhouse wastewater (SW) treatment by using antioxidant parameters of 〈em〉Gammarus pulex〈/em〉. The SW was treated by EC. Superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and catalase (CAT) activities and malondialdehyde (MDA) levels in 〈em〉G. pulex〈/em〉 exposed to pre- and post-treated of the SW during 24 h and 96 h were analysed. Standard methods were applied during the analysing process of the physicochemical quality parameters for both untreated and treated SW. All measured physicochemical parameters were decreased following the treatment process via EC. After the treatment process, it was observed that while SOD activities and MDA levels were decreased, CAT activities were increased and GPx activities did not exhibit any change. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated the abilities of untreated SW to promote oxidative stress in model organism. The SOD, CAT activities and MDA levels in 〈em〉G. pulex〈/em〉 revealed that EC process were efficient in the SW treatment.〈/p〉

Description: Recommender systems have become a popular and effective way to quickly discover new service items that are probably preferred by prospective users. Through analyzing the historical service usage data produced ...

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Active learning algorithms propose what data should be labeled given a pool of unlabeled data. Instead of selecting randomly what data to annotate, active learning strategies aim to select data so as to get a good predictive model with as little labeled samples as possible. Single-shot batch active learners select all samples to be labeled in a single step, before any labels are observed. We study single-shot active learners that minimize generalization bounds to select a representative sample, such as the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) active learner. We prove that a related bound, the discrepancy, provides a tighter worst-case bound. We study these bounds probabilistically, which inspires us to introduce a novel bound, the nuclear discrepancy (ND). The ND bound is tighter for the expected loss under optimistic probabilistic assumptions. Our experiments show that the MMD active learner performs better than the discrepancy in terms of the mean squared error, indicating that tighter worst case bounds do not imply better active learning performance. The proposed active learner improves significantly upon the MMD and discrepancy in the realizable setting and a similar trend is observed in the agnostic setting, showing the benefits of a probabilistic approach to active learning. Our study highlights that assumptions underlying generalization bounds can be equally important as bound-tightness, when it comes to active learning performance. Code for reproducing our experimental results can be found at 〈a href="https://github.com/tomviering/NuclearDiscrepancy"〉https://github.com/tomviering/NuclearDiscrepancy〈/a〉.〈/p〉

Description: Future large-scale network function virtualization (NFV) environments will be based on hundreds or even thousands of NFV infrastructure installations, the so called points of presence (PoP). All their resource...

Description: Precise location information will play an important role in 5G networks, their applications and services, especially in indoor environments. Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology offers exceptional temporal resoluti...

Description: 〈h3〉Summary〈/h3〉 〈p〉The anticancer activity of a series of novel synthesized, hydroxypyridone-based metal chelators (analogues of 〈em〉L-〈/em〉mimosine) was evaluated in an in vitro model of melanoma consisting of malignant melanoma (A375), non-melanoma epidermoid carcinoma (A431) and immortalized non-malignant keratinocyte (HaCaT) cells. More specifically, we have demonstrated that the 〈em〉L-〈/em〉enantiomer of a methylated analogue of 〈em〉L-〈/em〉mimosine (compound 22) can exert a potent anticancer effect in A375 cells when compared to either A431 or HaCaT cells. Moreover, we have demonstrated that this analogue has the ability to i) promote increased generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), ii) activate both intrinsic and extrinsic apoptosis and iii) induce perturbations in cell cycle growth arrest. Our data highlights the potential of compound 22 to act as a promising therapeutic agent against an in vitro model of human malignant melanoma.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉We introduce 〈span〉CaDET〈/span〉, an algorithm for 〈em〉parametric Conditional Density Estimation〈/em〉 (CDE) based on decision trees and random forests. 〈span〉CaDET〈/span〉 uses the 〈em〉empirical cross entropy〈/em〉 impurity criterion for tree growth, which incentivizes splits that improve predictive accuracy more than the regression criteria or estimated mean-integrated-square-error used in previous works. 〈span〉CaDET〈/span〉 also admits more efficient training and query procedures than existing tree-based CDE approaches, and stores only a bounded amount of information at each tree leaf, by using 〈em〉sufficient statistics〈/em〉 for all computations. Previous tree-based CDE techniques produce complicated uninterpretable distribution objects, whereas 〈span〉CaDET〈/span〉 may be instantiated with easily interpretable distribution families, making every part of the model easy to understand. Our experimental evaluation on real datasets shows that 〈span〉CaDET〈/span〉 usually learns more accurate, smaller, and more interpretable models, and is less prone to overfitting than existing tree-based CDE approaches.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉We introduce a new unsupervised learning problem: clustering wide-sense stationary ergodic stochastic processes. A covariance-based dissimilarity measure together with asymptotically consistent algorithms is designed for clustering offline and online datasets, respectively. We also suggest a formal criterion on the efficiency of dissimilarity measures, and discuss an approach to improve the efficiency of our clustering algorithms, when they are applied to cluster particular type of processes, such as self-similar processes with wide-sense stationary ergodic increments. Clustering synthetic data and real-world data are provided as examples of applications.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Summary〈/h3〉 〈p〉Cutaneous melanoma, the most aggressive form of skin cancer, is characterized by activating BRAF mutations. Despite the initial success of selective BRAF inhibitors, only few patients exhibited complete responses, whereas many showed disease progression. Melanoma is one of the few types of cancer in which p53 is not frequently mutated, but p53 inactivation can be indirectly achieved by a stable activation of MDM2 induced by a deletion in CDKN2A (Cyclin Dependent Kinase Inhibitor 2A) locus, encoding for p16〈sup〉INK4A〈/sup〉 and p14〈sup〉ARF〈/sup〉, two tumor suppressor genes. In this study, we tested the efficacy of the previously synthesized tetra-substituted pyrrole derivatives, 〈strong〉8 g〈/strong〉, 〈strong〉8 h〈/strong〉 and 〈strong〉8i〈/strong〉, in melanoma cell lines, and we compared the effects of the most active of these, the 〈strong〉8i〈/strong〉 compound, with that exerted by Nutlin 3, a well-known inhibitor of p53-MDM2 interaction. The obtained results showed that 〈strong〉8i〈/strong〉 potentiates the inhibitory effect of Nutlin 3 and the combined use of 〈strong〉8i〈/strong〉 and Nutlin 3 triggers apoptosis and significantly impairs melanoma viability. Finally, the 〈strong〉8i〈/strong〉 compound reduces p53-MDM2 interaction and induces p53-HSP90 complex formation, suggesting that the observed raise in p53 transcriptional activity could be mediated by HSP90. Because the main feature of melanoma is the resistance to most chemotherapeutics, our studies suggest that the 〈strong〉8i〈/strong〉 tetra-substituted pyrrole derivative, restoring p53 functions and its transcriptional activities, may have potential application, at least as adjuvant, in the treatment of human melanoma.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Optimization over low rank matrices has broad applications in machine learning. For large-scale problems, an attractive heuristic is to factorize the low rank matrix to a product of two much smaller matrices. In this paper, we study the nonconvex problem 〈span〉 〈span〉\(\min _{\mathbf {U}\in \mathbb {R}^{n\times r}} g(\mathbf {U})=f(\mathbf {U}\mathbf {U}^T)\)〈/span〉 〈/span〉 under the assumptions that 〈span〉 〈span〉\(f(\mathbf {X})\)〈/span〉 〈/span〉 is restricted 〈span〉 〈span〉\(\mu \)〈/span〉 〈/span〉-strongly convex and 〈em〉L〈/em〉-smooth on the set 〈span〉 〈span〉\(\{\mathbf {X}:\mathbf {X}\succeq 0,\text{ rank }(\mathbf {X})\le r\}\)〈/span〉 〈/span〉. We propose an accelerated gradient method with alternating constraint that operates directly on the 〈span〉 〈span〉\(\mathbf {U}\)〈/span〉 〈/span〉 factors and show that the method has local linear convergence rate with the optimal dependence on the condition number of 〈span〉 〈span〉\(\sqrt{L/\mu }\)〈/span〉 〈/span〉. Globally, our method converges to the critical point with zero gradient from any initializer. Our method also applies to the problem with the asymmetric factorization of 〈span〉 〈span〉\(\mathbf {X}={\widetilde{\mathbf {U}}}{\widetilde{\mathbf {V}}}^T\)〈/span〉 〈/span〉 and the same convergence result can be obtained. Extensive experimental results verify the advantage of our method.〈/p〉

Description: 〈span〉 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Solidification process of lead–bismuth eutectic (LBE) is one of the key phenomena to prevent flow channel blockage accident in an LBE-cooled accelerator-driven system. However, the solidification of liquid metal cannot be observed optically and it is difficult to detect noninvasively. In this study, the one-dimensional solidification process of the LBE was visualized by pulsed neutron transmission imaging. Neutrons have higher transmittivity to the LBE than X-ray and neutron transmission spectrum of the LBE sample can be obtained by pulsed neutron imaging technique. The solid and liquid phases of the LBE were identified during the solidification process by the presence or absence of Bragg edge in the measured neutron transmission spectrum, and the transient behavior of the solid–liquid interface could be visualized. In addition, the characteristic spatial distribution of the crystalline structure was found in Bragg-edge transmission image after the solidification.〈/p〉 〈/span〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Graphic abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉 〈span〉 〈span〉 〈img alt="" src="https://static-content.springer.com/image/MediaObjects/12650_2019_572_Figa_HTML.png"〉 〈/span〉 〈/span〉 〈/p〉 〈/span〉

Description: 〈span〉 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Amphibians are constantly exposed to pollutants and the stress of agricultural activities. We selected three anuran amphibian species 〈em〉Dendropsophus minutus〈/em〉, 〈em〉Boana albopunctata〈/em〉, and 〈em〉Physalaemus cuvieri〈/em〉, totaling 309 individuals. We collected tadpoles in 15 permanent ponds: 5 soybean crops, 3 corn crops, and 7 nonagricultural lands. Our study provides the first comparative data on the genotoxicity and mutagenicity of three common amphibian anurans. 〈em〉Dendropsophus minutus〈/em〉 was the most vulnerable species compared with 〈em〉B. albopunctata〈/em〉 and 〈em〉P. cuvieri〈/em〉 for comet assay and micronuclei test. However, the more significant amount of DNA damage seen in 〈em〉D. minutus〈/em〉 does not mean that their populations are threatened once such species adapt well to anthropogenic disturbances. Despite, 〈em〉P. cuvieri〈/em〉 was less sensitive than the other two species; the DNA damage was significantly higher in soybean crops. 〈em〉Physalaemus cuvieri〈/em〉 is a leptodactylidae species that deposit their eggs in foam nests, which are essential to protect eggs from dehydration. Moreover, the foam reduces the contact of eggs with water; thus, 〈em〉P. cuvieri〈/em〉 eggs could be less exposed to contaminants present in pounds, compared with 〈em〉D. minutus〈/em〉 and 〈em〉B. albopunctata〈/em〉, which deposit their eggs directly in the water. Therefore, this study was sufficiently sensitive to detect genotoxic and mutagenic effects in tadpoles exposed to agroecosystems. We strongly suggest 〈em〉D. minutus〈/em〉 in future biomonitoring studies that involve the comparison of anthropized versus not anthropized environments. Overall, we recommend the comet assay and micronucleus test as effective methods for the detection of genotoxic damage in amphibian anurans to the environmental disturbance, especially in agricultural sites.〈/p〉 〈/span〉 〈span〉 〈h3〉Graphic Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉 〈span〉 〈span〉 〈img alt="" src="https://static-content.springer.com/image/MediaObjects/244_2019_647_Figa_HTML.png"〉 〈/span〉 〈/span〉 〈/p〉 〈/span〉

Description: 〈h3〉Summary〈/h3〉 〈p〉〈em〉Introduction〈/em〉 We conducted a multicenter, phase 2 trial using gemcitabine plus axitinib (GX) in patients with recurrent or metastatic sarcomatoid renal cell carcinoma (SRCC) to evaluate its efficacy and safety. 〈em〉Methods〈/em〉 Patients with advanced RCC and a sarcomatoid component of ≥25% on resected kidney or exclusive sarcomatoid carcinoma on needle biopsy were included. Patients received gemcitabine 1000 mg/m〈sup〉2〈/sup〉 intravenously on days 1 and 8 of a 3-week cycle and axitinib 5 mg twice daily. Primary endpoint was objective response rate (ORR) according to the response evaluation criteria in solid tumors version 1.1, and secondary end points were progression-free (PFS) and overall (OS) survivals and adverse events. 〈em〉Results〈/em〉 Twenty-five patients were enrolled. Median age was 61 (range: 33–80), and 84% were men. The Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status was one in 23 patients (92%). Clear cell carcinoma was the most common histology of the carcinoma component (60%). ORR was 56%, and 28% patients achieved stable disease with a control rate of 84%. With a median follow-up duration of 24.8 months, the median PFS was 4.2 months (95% CI, 2.3–6.1) and median OS was 8.4 months (95% CI 3.3–13.4 months). The most common grade 3 or higher adverse events were neutropenia (36%), hypertension (12%), and anorexia (12%). Most adverse events were manageable, and no unexpected toxicities were found. 〈em〉Conclusion〈/em〉 GX showed promising efficacy in patients with SRCC. GX could be considered as a treatment option for patients with SRCC and should be confirmed in larger clinical trials.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Health care professionals regularly require access to information systems throughout their daily work. However, existing smart devices like smartphones and tablets are difficult to use at the point of care, because health care professionals require both hands during their work. Following a design science research approach including ethnographic fieldwork and prototype tests with focus groups, we find that Augmented Reality smart glass applications offer potential for service innovation in the health care sector. Our smart glass prototype supports health care professionals during wound treatment by allowing them to document procedures hands-free while they perform them. Furthermore, we investigate the use of audio based and physical interaction with the smart glasses in a within-subjects design experiment.〈/p〉

Description: Deep neural networks have become a standard framework for image analytics. Besides the traditional applications, such as object classification and detection, the latest studies have started to expand the scope...

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Knowledge discovery and information extraction of large and complex datasets has attracted great attention in wide-ranging areas from statistics and biology to medicine. Tools from machine learning, data mining, and neurocomputing have been extensively explored and utilized to accomplish such compelling data analytics tasks. However, for time-series data presenting active dynamic characteristics, many of the state-of-the-art techniques may not perform well in capturing the inherited temporal structures in these data. In this paper, integrating the Koopman operator and linear dynamical systems theory with support vector machines, we develop a novel dynamic data mining framework to construct low-dimensional linear models that approximate the nonlinear flow of high-dimensional time-series data generated by unknown nonlinear dynamical systems. This framework then immediately enables pattern recognition, e.g., classification, of complex time-series data to distinguish their dynamic behaviors by using the trajectories generated by the reduced linear systems. Moreover, we demonstrate the applicability and efficiency of this framework through the problems of time-series classification in bioinformatics and healthcare, including cognitive classification and seizure detection with fMRI and EEG data, respectively. The developed Koopman dynamic learning framework then lays a solid foundation for effective dynamic data mining and promises a mathematically justified method for extracting the dynamics and significant temporal structures of nonlinear dynamical systems. 〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Identifying at-risk students is one of the most important issues in online education. During different stages of a semester, students display various online learning behaviors. Therefore, we propose a phased prediction model to predict at-risk students at different stages of a semester. We analyze students’ individual characteristics and online learning behaviors, extract features that are closely related to their learning performance, and propose combined feature sets based on a time window constraint strategy and a learning time threshold constraint strategy. The results of our experiments show that the precision of the proposed model in different phases is from 90.4 to 93.6%. 〈/p〉

Description: This paper describes several aspects of the physical layer and over the air interface of Loon. Loon utilizes stratospheric balloon-based high-altitude platforms (HAPs) that use Long-Term Evolution (LTE) to con...

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉In order to investigate the influence of different lignin sources on humic substance formation during composting, this study selected two lignin sources, including wood sawdust and maize straw, to be co-composted with pig manure. Humic substances (HS) were characterized based on their fluorescence characteristics and complexing behaviors with heavy metals. The results showed that lignin sources, especially wood sawdust, were more conducive in promoting the formation of humic acids (HAs) than inorganic matter. The fluorescence excitation–emission matrix spectra also proved the positive effects of lignin on the formation of HAs during the humification process. The binding capacities of HAs isolated from mature composts for Cu and Cd followed the order of WS-90 〉 MS-90 〉 I-90, indicating that organic bulking agents are superior at increasing the complexing capacity of HAs. This finding suggests that the co-composting of pig manure with ligneous bulking agents is more advantageous at reducing the environmental risk of heavy metals.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉For decades, megakaryocytopoiesis is believed to occur following a classical binary hierarchical developmental model. This model is based on an analysis of predefined flow-sorted cell populations by using cell surface markers. However, this classical model has been challenged by increasing evidences obtained with new techniques which integrating flow cytometric, transcriptomic and functional data at single-cell level and with lineage tracing technique. These recent advances in megakaryocytopoiesis proposed that commitment of haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) towards megakaryocytic lineage occurs in much earlier stage than that postulated in the classical model. There may exist multipotent but megakaryocyte (MK)/platelet-biased HSCs within HSC compartment and even HSCs can directly differentiate into MKs in steady state or in response to stress. In this review, we focus on recent findings about differentiation from commitment of HSCs to MK and its regulation, and discuss future directions in this research field.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Characterization of oil palm plantation is a crucial step toward many geographical based management strategies, ranging from determining regional planting and appropriate species to irrigation and logistics planning. Accurate and most updated plantation identification enables well informed and effective measures for such schemes. This paper proposes a computerized method for detecting oil-palm plantation from remotely sensed imagery. Unlike other existing approaches, where imaging features were retrieved from spectral data and then trained with a machine learning box for region of interest extraction, this paper employed 2-stage detection. Firstly, a deep learning network was employed to determine a presence of oil-palm plantation in a generic Google satellite image. With irrelevant samples being disregarded and thus the problem space being so contained, the images with detected oil-palm had their plantation delineated at higher accuracy by using a support vector machine, based on Gabor texture descriptor. The proposed coupled detection-delineation was benchmarked against different feature descriptors and state-of-the-art supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques. The validation was made by comparing the extraction results with those ground surveyed by an authority. It was shown in the experiments that it could detect and delineate the plantations with an accuracy of 92.29% and precision, recall and Kappa of 91.16%, 84.97%, and 0.81, respectively.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Minimizing the empirical risk is a popular training strategy, but for learning tasks where the data may be noisy or heavy-tailed, one may require many observations in order to generalize well. To achieve better performance under less stringent requirements, we introduce a procedure which constructs a robust approximation of the risk gradient for use in an iterative learning routine. Using high-probability bounds on the excess risk of this algorithm, we show that our update does not deviate far from the ideal gradient-based update. Empirical tests using both controlled simulations and real-world benchmark data show that in diverse settings, the proposed procedure can learn more efficiently, using less resources (iterations and observations) while generalizing better.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉Congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract (CAKUT) are the most common cause of chronic kidney disease (~ 45%) that manifests before 30 years of age. The genetic locus containing 〈em〉COL4A1〈/em〉 (13q33–34) has been implicated in vesicoureteral reflux (VUR), but mutations in 〈em〉COL4A1〈/em〉 have not been reported in CAKUT. We hypothesized that 〈em〉COL4A1〈/em〉 mutations cause CAKUT in humans. We performed whole exome sequencing (WES) in 550 families with CAKUT. As negative control cohorts we used WES sequencing data from patients with nephronophthisis (NPHP) with no genetic cause identified (〈em〉n〈/em〉 = 257) and with nephrotic syndrome (NS) due to monogenic causes (〈em〉n〈/em〉 = 100). We identified a not previously reported heterozygous missense variant in 〈em〉COL4A1〈/em〉 in three siblings with isolated VUR. When examining 549 families with CAKUT, we identified nine additional different heterozygous missense mutations in 〈em〉COL4A1〈/em〉 in 11 individuals from 11 unrelated families with CAKUT, while no 〈em〉COL4A1〈/em〉 mutations were identified in a control cohort with NPHP and only one in the cohort with NS. Most individuals (12/14) had isolated CAKUT with no extrarenal features. The predominant phenotype was VUR (9/14). There were no clinical features of the 〈em〉COL4A1〈/em〉-related disorders (e.g., HANAC syndrome, porencephaly, tortuosity of retinal arteries). Whereas 〈em〉COL4A1〈/em〉-related disorders are typically caused by glycine substitutions in the collagenous domain (84.4% of variants), only one variant in our cohort is a glycine substitution within the collagenous domain (1/10). We identified heterozygous 〈em〉COL4A1〈/em〉 mutations as a potential novel autosomal dominant cause of CAKUT that is allelic to the established 〈em〉COL4A1〈/em〉-related disorders and predominantly caused by non-glycine substitutions.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Abstract〈/h3〉 〈p〉We aimed to identify genetic variation in the response of reproductive behaviors to lead (Pb〈sup〉2+〈/sup〉) exposure. We reared a subset of the 〈em〉Drosophila〈/em〉 Genetic Reference Panel (DGRP) inbred lines on control or Pb-treated (500 μM PbAc) medium and tested for differences in copulation latency, copulation duration, and fecundity. Pb exposure decreased fecundity (〈em〉p〈/em〉 〈 0.05) and increased copulation duration (〈em〉p〈/em〉 〈 0.05) across DGRP lines. We found intraspecific genetic variation in latency, duration, and fecundity in both control and Pb-treated flies, with heritability ranging from 0.45 to 0.80. We found a significant genotype-by-environment interaction for copulation duration (〈em〉p〈/em〉 〈 0.05). Genetic correlation matrices revealed significant genetic variation in common between control and Pb-treated flies for each trait (〈em〉p〈/em〉 〈 0.05). Our results indicate that intraspecific genetic variation plays a role in Pb susceptibility and emphasize the importance of considering the impacts of variation in susceptibility to Pb pollution.〈/p〉

Description: 〈h3〉Summary〈/h3〉 〈p〉The majority of patients with Philadelphia-negative myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) harbor a gain of function mutation V617F in Janus kinase (JAK) 2. Although JAK2 inhibitors such as ruxolitinib have been shown to be clinically efficacious, the hematological toxicity and eventual drug resistance limit its use as monotherapy. Other gene mutations or dysregulation correlated with the disease phenotype and prognosis have been found to contribute to the complexity and heterogeneity of MPNs, giving rise to an increasing demand for combination therapies. Here, we combine ruxolitinib and the histone deacetylase inhibitor vorinostat as a rational combination strategy for MPNs. We tested the combination of ruxolitinib and vorinostat in cells with the 〈em〉JAK2〈/em〉V617F mutation, such as HEL cells, c-Kit〈sup〉+〈/sup〉 cells from 〈em〉JAK2〈/em〉V617F transgenic mice and bone marrow mononuclear cells (BMMNCs) from patients with MPN. Our results showed significant synergistic effects of this combination strategy. Cotreatment with ruxolitinib and vorinostat synergistically induced apoptosis, cell cycle arrest and inhibition of the colony-forming capacity of HEL cells by attenuating the JAK/signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) and protein kinase-B (AKT) signaling pathways. In particular, cotreatment with ruxolitinib and vorinostat prevented the formation of large colonies of colony-forming unit-granulocyte/erythroid/macrophage/megakaryocytes (CFU-GEMMs) and colony-forming unit-granulocyte/macrophages (CFU-GMs) derived from the BMMNCs of patients with MPN. Taken together, these data provided preclinical evidence that the combination of ruxolitinib and vorinostat is a potential dual-target therapy for patients with MPN.〈/p〉