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This paper presents a link prediction algorithm for dynamic social networks based on B+ trees. The authors pointed out the need for precise link prediction in social network analysis and asserted that current methods often produce inaccurate results as they are unable to account the social networks' dynamic nature. To circumvent this, a B+ tree-inspired community-based link prediction (BT-LPD) algorithm is proposed, which efficiently stores and retrieves the node information and associations and permits rapid queries of potential links. First, a community discovery technique for dynamic social networks inspired by B+ trees is described. The proposed method predicts missing links using community data and an approximation of influence flow. The performance is then evaluated using actual datasets and a number of cutting-edge methodologies. Findings show that the suggested BT-LPD technique outperforms the compared alternatives in terms of accuracy in dynamic social networks. It has important implications for social network analysis, recommender systems, and other applications that rely on accurate link prediction. The study introduces a novel and practical technique for link prediction in dynamic social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outcome of economic growth is visualised as the well-being of citizens or human well-being (HWB). However, it has been a great challenge to measure HWB. Though there are known reasons for considering GDP and its growth as a measure of overall development and progress of nations, yet mostly it is being used as a gospel indicator to compare nations and design appropriate policies. This paper is an effort to develop a comprehensive adjusted GDP to measure HWB through secondary data for thirty years (1990–91 to 2019–20) in India. We make thirty-five adjustments to net national income (NNI) to compute the adjusted national income (ANI) index based on the system analysis approach. The empirical findings show that the gap between NNI and ANI has been growing over time, and the ANI index shows an increasing trend. Through the analysis it is suggested that economic growth should be focused only if it improves HWB (full or partial). The paper attempts to make intervention into policy shift for improving HWB vis-à-vis happiness of people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: visible light; 3-methylindole; tryptamine; diphenyl diselenide; diphenyl phosphate EN visible light 3-methylindole tryptamine diphenyl diselenide diphenyl phosphate 3685 3692 8 10/19/23 20231102 NES 231102 Graph The incorporation of selenium into organic scaffolds is not only pivotal for understanding redox processes of biological system, [1] but also plays an important role in pharmaceuticals [5] wherein selenium-containing molecules serve as synthetic intermediates [6] and catalysts for the preparation of various bioactive compounds. When an additive diphenyl phosphate (DPP) was added, formation of desired C-2 Cbz-tryptamine selenide adduct was observed in good yield (entry 2). Transition-metal-catalyzed C2/C3-H activation of indole core (tryptamines) offers robust synthetic strategies to deliver functionalized cores. SP 1 sp H NMR (500 MHz, CDCl SB 3 sb ): = 8.56-8.46 (m, 1 H), 7.69 (d, I J i = 7.9 Hz, 1 H), 7.62 (d, I J i = 7.0 Hz, 1 H), 7.34 (d, I J i = 8.3 Hz, 1 H), 7.27 (s, 1 H), 7.23-7.18 (m, 5 H), 7.16 (s, 1 H), 4.76 (s, 1 H), 4.59 (dt, I J i = 11.6, 6.4 Hz, 2 H), 3.99 (q, I J i = 5.1, 3.1 Hz, 2 H), 3.86 (d, I J i = 4.0 Hz, 2 H), 3.24 (t, I J i = 7.1 Hz, 2 H), 2.32 (d, I J i = 3.6 Hz, 2 H), 2.22 (d, I J i = 4.7 Hz, 2 H), 1.96-1.91 (m, 3 H), 1.82-1.74 (m, 6 H), 1.68-1.66 (m, 2 H), 1.55-1.51 (m, 5 H), 1.30-1.24 (m, 4 H), 1.07 (dd, I J i = 14.4, 3.2 Hz, 2 H), 0.92 (s, 3 H), 0.67 (s, 3 H). [Extracted from the article]

In this paper, we decompose selective sustained attending behavior into components of continuous attention maintenance and attentional transitions and study how each of these components develops in young children. Our results in two experiments suggest that changes in children's ability to return attention to a target locus after distraction ("Returning") play a crucial role in the development of selective sustained attention between the ages of 3.5–6 years, perhaps to a greater extent than changes in the ability to continuously maintain attention on the target ("Staying"). We further distinguish Returning from the behavior of transitioning attention away from task (i.e., becoming distracted) and investigate the relative contributions of bottom‐up and top‐down factors on these different types of attentional transitions. Overall, these results (a) suggest the importance of understanding the cognitive process of transitioning attention for understanding selective sustained attention and its development, (b) provide an empirical paradigm within which to study this process, and (c) begin to characterize basic features of this process, namely its development and its relative dependence on top‐down and bottom‐up influences on attention. Research Highlights: Young children exhibited an endogenously ability, Returning, to preferentially transition attention to task‐relevant information over task‐irrelevant information.Selective sustained attention and its development were decomposed into Returning and Staying, or task‐selective attention maintenance, using novel eye‐tracking‐based measures.Returning improved between the ages of 3.5–6 years, to a greater extent than Staying.Improvements in Returning supported improvements in selective sustained attention between these ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim of Study: The aim was to assess the potential reduction in the doses to organs at risk (OARs) and target organ volume by doing replanning on repeat computed tomography (CT) scan during the 4th week of radiation therapy (RT). Materials and Methods: Twenty-four histologically proven patients of inoperable esophagus carcinoma were studied. All patients received induction chemotherapy followed by concurrent chemotherapy and radiotherapy. CT simulation with proper immobilization was done, and images were transferred to the treatment planning system. Delineation of target volumes and OARs was done, and two plans were generated for 60 Gy in 30 fractions and 40 Gy in 20 fractions with intensity-modulated RT keeping the doses to OARs within the tolerance limits. Replanning for 20 Gy in 10 fractions was done on repeat CT scan during the 4th week of radiotherapy treatment, and potential reduction in doses to OARs and target organ volume was assessed. Results: A total of 24 cases were analyzed for the adaptive plan with the coverage of the 95% prescription isodose for planning target volume. Statistical analysis was done by t-test. The difference in the doses received by the OARs was analyzed and was seen that due to re CT scan, the doses were reduced to the left lung V20 (mean 19.23 Gy vs. 17.35 Gy) and Dmean (mean 16.03 Gy vs. 14.25 Gy), right lung V20 (mean 18.38 Gy vs. 16.66 Gy) and Dmean (mean 15.70 Gy vs. 13.97 Gy), heart V25 (mean 38.72 Gy vs. 35.32 Gy) and Dmean (mean 26.40 Gy vs. 22.74 Gy), and spine 1% volume (mean 36.54 Gy vs. 33.39 Gy) and Dmax (mean 39.81 Gy vs. 34.34 Gy), gross tumor volume (GTV) (mean 67.37 cm 3 vs. 24.58 cm 3) and were all significantly smaller for the adaptive plan. Conclusion: By doing adaptive radiotherapy in the 4th week of treatment using repeat CT scan, along with the response evaluation, there is a significant reduction in the volume of GTV, and replanning of treatment on repeat CT scan also helps us in reducing doses to the OARs resulting in reduced toxicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ewing’s Sarcoma is type of malignant round cell neoplasm, representing only 1–4% of all ES cases. Temporal bone ES is often confused with chronic otitis media as clinical picture is quite similar i.e., localized swelling, hearing loss, facial palsy and ear discharge.Diagnosis is by histopathological examination. Treated via surgical excision and chemo radiation. The present article presents a rare case of ES of temporal bone in an eight-year-old female patient . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhancement in algal biomass production is a crucial parameter for generating value-added chemicals from renewable carbon sources. This study aimed to fabricate a novel photobioreactor with integrated and innovative electromagnets to assess microalgae’s growth under the magnetic field’s effect. The present study observed the effect of magnetic field exposure on the microalgae Chlorella sorokiniana cultivation and estimated the change in pigments with growth. In addition, the carbohydrate content of Chlorella sorokiniana was also evaluated. Chlorella sorokiniana culture, when exposed to a magnetic field strength of 10 mT d−1 resulted in a greater biomass concentration and productivity of about 12% and 8%, respectively, higher than the control culture. A positive effect of magnetic field exposure was also observed in the microalga's pigments concentration and carbohydrate content. The chlorophyll-a content increased twofold exponentially with the growth and the carbohydrate content of the microalgae cells also increased by 15% compared to the control culture. Therefore, the novel Electromagnetic Photobioreactor (E-PBR) can be used to produce enhanced biomass and other value-added products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kimura disease is a rare benign chronic inflammatory disorder characterised by multiple subcutaneous nodules and lymphadenopathy most commonly in head and neck region. It is seen in Asian men in their 2nd and 3rd decade. Kimura disease is usually confused for Angiolymphoid hyperplasia with eosinophilia and associated with eosinophilia and increased serum IgE. Kimura disease is also known for its recurrence. Diagnosis is by histopathological examination. Treatment is mainly surgical excision for cosmetic purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An unprecedented, straightforward photochemical platform for efficient site-selective C–H alkylation of the C7 position of the benzocore via the cross coupling between coumarins and NHPI esters, employing Ru(II) as a photocatalyst in visible light, has been reported. Remarkably, this transformation demonstrated broad substrate scope and good functional group compatibility. Controlled experiments and DFT calculations shed some insight into the mechanistic details of the reaction and allowed us to propose a plausible mechanism for the regioselectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on radiotherapy target volume changes in prostate cancer.Materials and Methods: Ten patients with localized prostate cancer receiving radical radiotherapy were included in the study. Computerized tomography (CT) simulation was done with adequate immobilization, and pelvic MRI was also done at the same time. The two were then registered on eclipse planning system and fused. Target delineation (gross tumor volume [GTV] and clinical target volume [CTV]) was done on both the image sets separately and their volumes were compared.Results: In the current study, it has been found that the CT image-based contouring overestimated the GTV and CTV with 35.4% and 21.7%, respectively, as compared to that by MRI images. The difference observed was statistically significant in the case of GTV, whereas it was not statistically significant for CTV.Conclusions: It can be concluded that MRI is found to be a better modality for GTV delineation, as it gives superior soft-tissue contrast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This retrospective study aimed to study the applicability of 2015 adult American Thyroid Association (ATA) differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) postoperative risk stratification and guidelines in the pediatric population for evaluating the number of metastatic lymph nodes in the postoperative risk stratification and postradioactive iodine (RAI) treatment dynamic risk stratification (DRS) using response to treatment (RTT) reclassification. In addition, the effect of pubertal status and gender was assessed on disease presentation and prognosis. Methods Data of 63 DTC patients aged 20 years or less, stratified into prepubertal, pubertal, and postpubertal age groups, was divided into low, intermediate, and high-risk groups using pediatric ATA recurrence risk stratification. Forty-seven patients were classified as responders (excellent and indeterminate responses) and incomplete responders (biochemical and structurally incomplete responses) by assessing the RTT at 1.5 years follow-up similar to recommendation of 2015 adult DTC ATA guidelines. Results Female-to-male ratio showed a trend of gradual increase with increasing age. Significantly more responders were observed in low- and intermediate-risk groups than in high-risk group (p = 0.0013; p = 0.017, respectively), while prepubertal group had more extensive (N1b) disease. Using DRS at follow-up of 1.5 year, pubertal and postpubertal groups showed significantly better response to RAI. More female than male patients showed response and took significantly less time to respond to RAI (p = 0.003). Conclusion RAI response in pediatric DTC depends on pubertal status, gender, and number of malignant nodes. DRS using RTT classification may be applicable early at 1.5 years after initial therapy in different pubertal age and risk groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was carried out to understand the probiotic features, ability to utilize non-digestible carbohydrates and comparative genomics of anti-inflammatory Bifidobacterium strains isolated from human infant stool samples. Bacterial strains were isolated from the stool samples using serial dilution on MRS agar plates supplemented with 0.05% l-cysteine hydrochloride and mupirocin. Molecular characterization of the strains was carried out by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Anti-inflammatory activity was determined using TNF-α and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induced inflammation in Caco2 cells. Probiotic attributes were determined as per the established protocols. Isomaltooligosaccharides (IMOS) utilization was determined in the broth cultures. Whole genome sequencing and analysis was carried out for three strains. Four obligate anaerobic, Gram positive Bifidobacterium strains were isolated from the infant stool samples. Strains were identified as Bifidobacterium longum Bif10, B. breve Bif11, B. longum Bif12 and B. longum Bif16. The strains were able to prevent inflammation in the Caco2 cells through lowering of IL8 production that was caused by TNF-α and LPS treatment. The strains exhibited desirable probiotic attributes such as acid and bile tolerance, mucin binding, antimicrobial activity, bile salt hydrolase activity, cholesterol lowering ability and could ferment non-digestible carbohydrates such as isomaltooligosaccharides and raffinose. Furthermore, Isomaltooligosaccharides supported the optimum growth of the strains in vitro, which was comparable to that on glucose. Strains could metabolize IMOS through cell associated α-glucosidase activity. Genomic features revealed the presence of genes responsible for the utilization of IMOS and for the probiotic attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The K x-ray spectra of different targets (Cu, Zn, and Ge) induced by 3 to 5 MeV/u Si projectile ions have been measured to determine the K-shell ionization cross-section. A significant difference is observed between the measurements and theoretical estimates, where the theoretical ones are about 28–35% of the experimental results. Such difference is reduced to a good extent 51%–56% if multiple ionization effects are taken into account. Remaining discrepancy may be attributed to the electron capture contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study numerically investigates the effect of dripping on the ignitability of a vertically-oriented thermoplastic material subjected to localized radiant heating within a 2D domain. Thermoplastic material is modeled as a phase-change material with the prescribed solidification/melting temperature, and its rate of gasification (pyrolysis) process is described by the Arrhenius law. Molten matter can move downward due to the gravitational force, and accordingly, the gasification (pyrolyzed) surface area vary over time. Time-dependent heat and mass transport processes, including global one-step pyrolysis reaction are solved using FLUENT combined with appropriate user-definition functions (UDFs) developed by the authors. In order to simplify the problem, gas-phase kinetics were not considered, instead, the (expected) ignitability was estimated on the basis of the fuel mass flux evolved from the interface. The viscosity of the molten matter was varied as a numerical parameter in order to modify the degree of time-dependent deformation of the molten matter, and the influence of its dripping on ignitability is discussed. The numerical results clearly indicate that dripping occurs quickly when lower viscosity is imposed, although the trajectory of its mass-center yields a similar trend, irrespective of the viscosity (its moving speed greatly differs, though). As the dripping was pronounced, the thickness of the molten matter in the heated zone became thinner causing it to heat up quickly, at such point immediate gasification occurred, resulting in the ignition delay time becoming shorter. Interestingly, as the dripping was further promoted in a very-low viscosity case, the molten matter quickly flows-off prior to substantial gasification is occurring, resulting in the chance of ignition being inhibited. In this respect, dripping exhibited two competing effects on ignitability, implying that there were optimal conditions for the ignition with the shortest delay time. A simple strategy to mimic such a dripping effect in a conventional numerical model (without developing a dripping model) is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The correlation of SARS-CoV-2 viral load with disease severity in different population subsets is still elusive. There is a scarcity of literature regarding this aspect in Indian Population. Aim: To study retrospectively the risk factors and the role of viral load with disease severity among different age groups of North Indian population. Methods: Here we quantified the viral load of 239 positive participants and collected data retrospectively from April 2020 to May 2020 and categorised the patients as per disease severity and population subsets. Results: Asymptomatic patients were found to have higher viral load than the symptomatic patients, though the difference was not found to be statistically significant. The logistic regression analysis showed that contact with laboratory confirmed cases, SARI and ILI were independent risk factors for acquiring COVID-19 infection. Conclusion: SARS-CoV-2 viral load is not significantly associated with disease severity among different population subsets. However, there is a need to carry out more studies with a larger number of patients to validate and confirm the above findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rectal involvement by prostate carcinoma is rare and isolated rectal metastases are even rarer with only a few cases having been reported in the literature. In our knowledge, no case of isolated rectal metastases diagnosed on prostate specific membrane antigen positron emission tomography/computed tomography has been reported to date. We present a case of a 66-year-old patient who presented with rectal bleeding and passage of urine from anal region and was diagnosed with carcinoma prostate infiltrating the rectum along with solitary rectal metastases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spelling error is a mistake occurred while typing the text document. The applications like search engines, information retrieval, emails, etc., require user typing. In such applications, good spell-checker is essential to rectify the misspelling. Spell-checkers for western languages like English are very powerful and can handle any type of spelling errors, whereas in the case of Indian languages like Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Kannada, Assamese, etc., the available spell-checkers are very basic ones. These spell-checkers are developed using traditional methods like statistical methods and rule-based methods. This article presents a novel model HINDIA to handle the spelling errors of the Hindi language, one of the most spoken languages in India. It utilizes a deep-learning method for spelling error detection and correction. The proposed spell-checking model works in two phases. In the first phase model identifies the erroneous words in the input sample and in the second phase it replaces the wrong words with the most probable correct words. Model HINDIA is developed using the attention-based encoder–decoder bidirectional recurrent neural network (BiRNN) which uses long short-term memory cells. Several modifications in the BiRNN have been made and network is fine-tuned to process the spelling errors of Hindi language. It uses publicly available dataset 'monolingual corpus' developed by IIT Mumbai for training and testing. The performance of the proposed model is evaluated in two scenarios. In the first scenario where the testing dataset is generated using split function. HINDIA performs significantly well with precision 0.86, recall 0.72, f-measure 0.78 and accuracy 0.80. Further, in the second scenario, where a dataset is manually generated its performance is fairly good with precision 0.81, recall 0.72, f-measure 0.76 and accuracy 0.74. Model HINDIA gives better performance than the deep-learning-based Malayalam spell-checker and some other deep-learning-based correction models present in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• PIGE and PIXE were applied for elemental quantification of Indian coal and coal residues. • In situ current normalized PIGE was used to determine F, Na, Mg, Al and Si. • PIXE was used to determine total 22 elements, namely, K, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ga, As, Se, Kr, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, Nb, Gd, and Pb. • Toxic elements like F, Cr, Mn, Ni, As and Pb were found in significant concentration. Particle Induced Gamma-ray Emission and Particle Induced X-ray Emission spectroscopies were applied for the determination of low, medium and high Z elements in coal and coal residues of Indian thermal power plants. In situ current normalized PIGE was used to determine F, Na, Mg, Al and Si concentrations in coal and coal residues. Elements namely Mg, Al and Si were found in percent level, while Na and F were found in trace concentration levels. Charged normalized PIXE was used to determine a total of 22 elements, namely, K, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ga, As, Se, Kr, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, Nb, Gd and Pb in these samples. K, Ca, Ti and Fe were found in percent concentration and V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ga, As, Se, Kr, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, Nb, Gd and Pb were found in trace concentration levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient method for the stereoselective synthesis of α-methylene-γ-lactams via quaternary 3-aminooxindoles with very high selectivity (up to 98% ee) is described. The methodology leads to the construction of sterically congested chiral quaternary 3-aminooxindole adducts in good yield and with moderate to excellent diastereoselectivity (dr up to 95:5). The relative stereochemistry of the chiral quaternary 3-aminooxindoles adduct and the spiro-α-methylene-γ-lactam was confirmed to be syn by single-crystal X-ray structure analysis. Furthermore, the α-methylene-γ-lactam was successfully transformed into a range of chiral synthons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

nCOVID-19 (2019 novel corona virus) is a naive infective virus that brought the whole world to standstill. The clinical features attributing to its infection have a broad spectrum, ranging from minimally symptomatic to respiratory failure and death. The aim of present case series was to assimilate data regarding the clinical characteristics of first 11 cases of COVID-19 infection in the local population of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Various clinical features, biochemical and individual parameters were compiled that may affect the disease evolution and then, subjected to descriptive analysis. Out of 11 patients, six patients had a definitive known source of their infection and four patients had history of close contacts with first six ones. Only one patient had unknown source of the infection. Majority of the patients remained asymptomatic to pauci-symptomatic. Mean duration of symptomatic period was less than seven days (5.6 days). In this series, out of 11 patients, 2 (18%) were females and rest all were males (82%). Four of the patients had fever, four had cough, and four had weakness and fatigue, two had malaise, three had anorexia, one had dyspepsia and one diarrhea. None of the patient landed in ICU. Patients were treated with empirical combination therapy including Azithromycin (500 mg OD) and Oseltamivir (75 mg BD) irrespective of their symptoms. Additionally, Hydroxychloroquine (200 mg BD) was given to symptomatic ones. Conclusively, less dreadful clinical presentation of this infection was faced in this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doppler ultrasound assessment of hepatic and portal vein waveforms aids in the management of patients with heart failure by noninvasively monitoring the efficacy of decongestive therapy. In the right clinical context, these waveforms can be used as an adjunct to physical examination and inferior vena cava ultrasound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online social networks play an essential role in propagating information, innovation, and ideas via word-of-mouth spreading. This word-of-mouth phenomenon leads to a fundamental problem, known as influence maximization (IM) or subset selection problem. The IM problem aims to identify a small subset of users, viz. seed nodes such that overall influence spread can be maximized. The seed selection problem is NP-hard, unfortunately. A greedy solution of IM problem is not sufficient due to the use of time-consuming Monte Carlo simulations, which is limited to small-scale networks. However, the greedy solution ensures a good approximation guarantee. In this paper, a local influence evaluation heuristic is adopted to approximate local influence within the two-hope area. With this heuristic, an expected diffusion value under the traditional diffusion models is evaluated. To optimize local influence evaluation heuristic, an influence maximization algorithm based on ant colony optimization (ACO-IM) is presented. ACO-IM redefines the representation and updates the rule of pheromone deposited by ants and heuristic information. The algorithm uses the probabilistic environment to avoid premature convergence. Finally, the experimental results show the superiority of the proposed algorithm. The statistical tests are also performed to distinguish the proposed method from the state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eye-tracking provides an opportunity to generate and analyze high-density data relevant to understanding cognition. However, while events in the real world are often dynamic, eye-tracking paradigms are typically limited to assessing gaze toward static objects. In this study, we propose a generative framework, based on a hidden Markov model (HMM), for using eye-tracking data to analyze behavior in the context of multiple moving objects of interest. We apply this framework to analyze data from a recent visual object tracking task paradigm, TrackIt, for studying selective sustained attention in children. Within this paradigm, we present two validation experiments to show that the HMM provides a viable approach to studying eye-tracking data with moving stimuli, and to illustrate the benefits of the HMM approach over some more naive possible approaches. The first experiment utilizes a novel 'supervised' variant of TrackIt, while the second compares directly with judgments made by human coders using data from the original TrackIt task. Our results suggest that the HMM-based method provides a robust analysis of eye-tracking data with moving stimuli, both for adults and for children as young as 3.5–6 years old. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elemental concentrations namely P, S, Cl, K, Ca, Sc, Ti, Mn, Fe, Cu, Zn, Rb, Br and Sr were determined using Particle Induced X-ray Emission method in leaves and flowers of medicinal plants namely flowers of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, leaves and flowers of Annona reticulata, leaves of holy basil and leaves of Psidium guajava. No toxic elements were detected in these samples. The method was validated by analyzing the reference materials namely IAEA RM V-10 and NIST SRM 1632a. The main objective of this study is to provide a good source of elemental concentration data for Ayurvedic medicine dosage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In the human genome, distal enhancers are involved in regulating target genes through proximal promoters by forming enhancer-promoter interactions. Although recently developed high-throughput experimental approaches have allowed us to recognize potential enhancer-promoter interactions genome-wide, it is still largely unclear to what extent the sequence-level information encoded in our genome help guide such interactions. Methods: Here we report a new computational method (named "SPEID") using deep learning models to predict enhancer-promoter interactions based on sequence-based features only, when the locations of putative enhancers and promoters in a particular cell type are given. Results: Our results across six different cell types demonstrate that SPEID is effective in predicting enhancer-promoter interactions as compared to state-of-the-art methods that only use information from a single cell type. As a proof-of-principle, we also applied SPEID to identify somatic non-coding mutations in melanoma samples that may have reduced enhancer-promoter interactions in tumor genomes. Conclusions: This work demonstrates that deep learning models can help reveal that sequence-based features alone are sufficient to reliably predict enhancer-promoter interactions genome-wide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless channel suffers from high bit error rate due to noise, fading, interference, and shadowing. High bit error rate significantly reduces the effective bandwidth available to users thus affecting the overall throughput. In order to tackle high bit error rate and multiple bit errors with low latency (for fast delivery), a new modification of APC scheme is proposed in this paper. In the proposed scheme, first copy sent from transmitter to receiver is an exact replica of the original packet; if this transmission is unsuccessful, the transmitter retransmits two copies of the original packet in which one of the retransmitted copy is bit reversed of the original packet and the other retransmitted copy is bit shifted copy of the original packet. The proposed aggressive packet combining scheme with packet reversed packet shifted copies has been studied analytically and by simulation in MATLAB. The analytical results show that the proposed packet reversed packet shifted aggressive packet combining scheme can correct multiple bit errors (random errors and burst errors) even when the errors occur in the same bit locations of all received erroneous copies, yielding better error correction capability and throughput than existing packet combining schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Influence Maximization (IM) is an optimization problem in viral marketing to identify k most influential users in social networks. IM problem, with large-scale data, faces many challenges like time-efficiency , accuracy , and effectiveness of seed. To solve these challenges, we propose a Community based Context-aware Influence Maximization (C2IM) algorithm. C2IM uses a community-based framework to improve the time-efficiency that reduces the search space significantly. It considers user's interests (known as topics) to address the effectiveness of seed. We extend the traditional information diffusion models (i.e., linear threshold and independent cascade) to Context-aware Linear Threshold model (CLT) and Context-aware Independent Cascade model (CIC) for influence spreading. We show that C2IM is NP-hard in nature under CLT and CIC models. To identify k most influential users, we first propose a Community Detection Algorithm (CDA) to partitions the network into sub-networks. We then devise a Non-Desirable nodes Finder (NDF) technique to identify non-desirable nodes. We introduce Seed Selection Algorithm (SSA) to compute most influential seed nodes based on diffusion degree of nodes. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than CIM on influence spread and faster than TIM. Thus, C2IM algorithm is a trade-off between quality and efficiency. Highlights • A novel C2IM algorithm is proposed to maximize influence spread. • The algorithm relies on community structure and the user's interest. • Context-aware Linear Threshold and Independent Cascade diffusion models are utilized. • The proposed algorithm is a trade-off between quality and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining high utility itemsets (HUIs) is a basic task of frequent itemsets mining (FIM). In recent years, a trend in FIM has been to design algorithm for mining HUIs because FIM assumes that each item can not appear more than once in a transaction and all items have the same importance (weight, unit profit, price, etc.). However, in real-world, items appear more than once in a transaction and also have some importance. HUIs mining considers that items appear with some quantity and importance. Traditional HUIs mining algorithms assume that items have only positive unit profit. However, in real-world, items may appear with negative unit profit also. For example, it is common that a retail store sells items at a loss to stimulate the sale of other related items or simply to attract customers to their retail location. Therefore, items occur with negative unit profit or negative utility. To consider negative unit profit, HUIs with negative utility has been introduced. This paper surveys recent studies on HUIs mining with negative utility and their applications. The main goal is to provide a survey of recent advancements and research opportunities. This paper presents key concepts and terminology related to HUIs mining with negative utility. This presents a taxonomy of all the algorithms consider negative utility. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey on the mining task of HUIs with negative utility. The paper also presents research opportunities and the challenges in HUIs mining problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Cranberries are a rich source of polyphenolic antioxidants. Purified sugars or artificial sweeteners are being added to cranberry-based food products to mask tartness. Refined sugar and artificial sweeteners intake modulate gut microbiota and result in metabolic complications. We evaluated effects of isomalto-oligosaccharides (IMOs; sweet tasting non-digestible oligosaccharides) with cranberry extract (CRX) on high fat diet (HFD)-induced metabolic alterations in mice.Methods: Male Swiss albino mice were fed normal chow or HFD (58% fat kcal), and were administered either CRX (200 mg/kg) alone or in combination with IMOs (1 g/kg). Cecal short-chain fatty acids, abundances of selected (1) butyrate producing, (2) metabolically beneficial, and (3) selective lipopolysaccharides producing gram negative gut bacteria were studied. Further, gut-related histological, biochemical, genomic changes along with circulating pro-/anti-inflammatory markers and systemic obesity-associated metabolic changes were studied.Results: Co-supplementation of CRX and IMOs significantly improved cecal SCFAs, especially butyrate levels, selected butyrate-producing bacteria (clostridial cluster XIVa bacteria) and butyrate kinase expression in HFD-fed mice. The combination also significantly improved gut beneficial bacterial abundance, gut histology and related changes (colon mucin production, gut permeability) as compared to individual agents. It also prevented HFD-induced systemic and tissue inflammation, glucose intolerance and systemic obesity-associated metabolic changes in adipose tissue and liver. The combination of CRX and IMOs appeared more effective in the prevention of HFD-induced gut derangements.Conclusion: Combination of CRX and IMOs could be advantageous for normalization of metabolic alterations seen in diet-induced obesity via beneficial modulation of gastrointestinal health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has a major impact on health status in accordance with disease severity. It is usually assessed by the various quality of life questionnaires. Objectives: The aim of this study is to assess the disease severity and health status in stable patients of COPD using COPD assessment test (CAT) and clinical COPD questionnaire (CCQ) scores and to correlate with BODE index and its components. Methods: One hundred patients of stable COPD were subjected to CAT, CCQ irrespective of the stage of COPD during their visit. BODE index was also calculated. Results: COPD severity status assessed using forced expiratory volume 1% (FeV1%) predicted values correlated significantly with individual scores (CAT and FeV1%; r = -0.67; P < 0.001 and CCQ and FeV1%; r = 0.61; P < 0.001). CAT and CCQ score also correlated significantly (r = 0.84, P < 0.001) and both with the BODE index (r = 0.80; CAT and r = 0.66; CCQ, P < 0.01). Individual components of BODE index significantly correlated with CAT and CCQ scores. Conclusions: The CAT and CCQ have similar psychometric as well physical properties to assess the health status of COPD patients and can be used as a reliable scientific research tool and can be used in clinical practise to study the disease state and plan an appropriate treatment plan. The BODE index which is more objective, correlated well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (18F-FDG PET/CT) is now recognized as a staging investigation for locally advanced breast cancer. This retrospective review of data was performed to correlate the maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax;) of the primary tumor with the molecular subtype of breast cancer. Materials and Methods: Patients with biopsy-proven, treatment naïve, Stage III breast cancer, for whom 18F-FDG PET/CT data and immunohistochemistry 4 was available were included in the study. Correlations were deduced between the SUVmax; of primary tumor to the molecular subtypes. Results: Three hundred and two patients were included in the study. Fifty-two (17.2%) tumors were Luminal A (LA), 131 (43.4%) Luminal B (LB), 42 (13.9%) human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 enriched (HE), and 77 (25.5%) basal-like (BL). SUVmax; of the primary tumor differed significantly between LA and other subtypes (SUVmax;: LA Median 7.4, LB 11.65, HE 13.5, BL 15.35, P < 0.001). Estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) positivity were inversely correlated to the SUVmax; of the primary (SUVmax;: ER + Median 10.4, ER - 14.2, P < 0.001, PR + 9.65, PR - 13.9, P < 0.001). There was a strong positive correlation observed between Ki67 and SUVmax; (Pearson Coefficient 0.408, P < 0.001). A SUVmax; value of 9.65 was determined as a cutoff on receiver operating characteristic curve to differentiate between LA and other subtypes with a sensitivity of 92.3% and specificity of 70.6%. Conclusions: SUVmax; of primary showed a statistically significant difference between LA subtypes when compared to other subtypes. However, there was overlap of values in each subgroup and thus 18F-FDG PET/CT cannot be used to accurately assess the molecular characteristics of the tumor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During construction and operation, buildings consistently consume nearly half of the global energy supply, indicating a huge potential for reducing annual carbon emissions. This energy use includes operating energy and the three key life-cycle embodied energy components: initial embodied energy (IEE), recurrent embodied energy (REE), and demolition energy (DE). Embodied energy is consumed directly through processes and indirectly through products installed in a building. Unlike operating energy, measuring embodied energy is a complex, unstandardized, and very data-intensive process. Each available embodied energy calculation method differs in its data sources, system boundary coverage, and limitations. An IO-based hybrid (IOH) method could provide more complete, reliable, and study-specific results if appropriate improvements are made to the IOH model. In this study, we developed an IOH model for the United States’ economy by integrating human and capital energy and computed the IEE of five higher education buildings. The results suggest that using an aggregated construction cost for calculating IEE may underestimate results in comparison to using disaggregated construction cost components because the calculated values of IEE increased significantly after the cost disaggregation. The relative proportions of different energy sources also changed considerably because of the cost disaggregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nagao proposed a decomposition method for divisors of hyperelliptic curves defined over a field $${\mathbb {F}}_{q^n}$$ with $$n\ge 2$$ . Joux and Vitse later proposed a variant which provided relations among the factor basis elements. Both Nagao's and the Joux-Vitse methods require solving a multi-variate system of polynomial equations. In this work, we revisit Nagao's approach with the idea of avoiding the requirement of solving a multi-variate system. While this cannot be done in general, we are able to identify special cases for which this is indeed possible. Our main result is for curves $$C:y^2=f(x)$$ of genus g defined over $${\mathbb {F}}_{q^2}$$ having characteristic >2. If there is no restriction on f( x), we show that it is possible to obtain a relation in $$(4g+4)!$$ trials. The number of trials, though high, quantifies the computation effort needed to obtain a relation. This is in contrast to the methods of Nagao and Joux-Vitse which are based on solving systems of polynomial equations, for which the computation effort is hard to precisely quantify. The new method combines well with a sieving technique proposed by Joux and Vitse. If f( x) has a special form, then the number of trials can be significantly lower. For example, if f( x) has at most g consecutive coefficients which are in $${\mathbb {F}}_{q^2}$$ while the rest are in $${\mathbb {F}}_q$$ , then we show that it is possible to obtain a single relation in about $$(2g+3)!$$ trials. Our implementation of the resulting algorithm provides examples of factor basis relations for $$g=5$$ and $$g=6$$ . To the best of our knowledge, none of the previous methods known in the literature can provide such relations faster than our method. Other than obtaining such decompositions, we also explore the applicability of our approach for $$n>2$$ and for binary characteristic fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on the variant of the function field sieve (FFS) algorithm for the medium prime case introduced by Joux and Lercier in 2006. We make several contributions. The first contribution uses a divisibility and smoothness technique and goes on to develop a sieving method based on the technique. This leads to significant practical efficiency improvements in the descent phase and also provides improvement to Joux’s pinpointing technique. The second contribution is a detailed analysis of the degree of freedom and the use of a walk technique in the descent phase of the algorithm. Such analysis shows that it is possible to compute discrete logarithms over certain fields, which are excluded by the earlier analyses performed by Joux and Lercier (2006) and Joux (2013). In concrete terms, we present computations of discrete logs for fields with 16 and 19-bit prime characteristic. We also provide concrete analysis of the effectiveness of the FFS algorithm for certain fields of characteristic ranging from 16 to 32-bit primes. The final contribution is to perform a complete asymptotic analysis of the FFS algorithm for fields \mathbb FQ with p=LQ(1/3,c) . This closes gaps and corrects errors in the analysis earlier performed by Joux–Lercier and Joux and also provides new insights into the asymptotic behavior of the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radiation force balance approach is universally adopted and most widely used primary calibration method for total acoustic power radiated by an ultrasonic transducer. In this setup, the separation between the transducer and target (absorbing/reflecting) plays vital role in the overall measurement uncertainty of ultrasonic power due to attenuation of ultrasonic waves within the travel path. It becomes relatively more important at high frequencies as the ultrasonic attenuation is proportional to the square of frequency. Hence, the separation between the transducer and the target need to be measured with the best possible resolution and least uncertainty. In this article, two methods developed for transducer and target separation measurement have been described and compared. The first method uses displacement sensor in the feedback and controls stepper motor in micro stepping and adjust the separation with control program. It also uses the microbalance feedback approach to automatically detect the null (zero) distance. In the second approach, which does not use distance sensor in feedback and a triangle method is used to detect change in height. High torque stepper motor is used in micro-stepping mode to achieve best step resolution of one μm. Second method is free from error that cause due to electrical noise in sensor and has provision for backlash error correction. The article contains developmental details and functionalities of these methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Key Clinical Message: Dyspnea secondary to a pleural effusion is a common presentation all clinicians observe, however, usually leads to anchoring the diagnosis to cardiopulmonary etiologies. The formulation of a differential diagnosis encompassing the history of a patient cannot be emphasized enough and is paramount for accurate diagnosis, as described in this case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social network analysis has recently been of much interest to researchers in diverse fields. This increased attention is due to its broad applicability in modeling complex real-world scenarios (problems). Link prediction is a crucial issue in social network analysis, one that finds the likelihood of having a link between two nodes in the network. Of the existing methods, many use topological network properties, while others use algebraic methods, statistical models, node embeddings and, community information. Although some path-based approaches can be said to deal with some nodes' commutative effect at some point, they are not designed to infer the total community effect of all local nodes on a specific link. Hence we present E L P , a link prediction method based on the Ego perspective. First, this approach computes each existing edge's ego strength using ego networks, which can be construed as regions of influence of specific nodes. These ego strengths can be abstracted as the total effect of all local nodes on a particular edge. Then we utilize a topological feature set to estimate the prediction scores for target links. This feature set is selected after observing the performance of five different possible topological feature sets. Finally, we perform experiments on real-world networks to validate our algorithm's performance and compare it with state-of-the-art algorithms. The statistical tests justify the significant difference of our proposed method from the state-of-the-art algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing popularity of online social networks is evident nowadays and allows researchers to find solutions for various practical applications. Link prediction is the technique of understanding network structure and identifying the missing links in the social network. The two significant challenges of the link prediction problem are accuracy and efficiency on growing and multiplex networks. Well-known methods for link prediction are the similarity-based methods, which use local, global, and topological features of the network to predict missing links. These approaches ignore critical factors such as different channels of interaction, information diffusion, group norms to form new connections. Therefore, a fuzzy-based link prediction algorithm (FLP-ID) in multiple social networks is proposed using information diffusion. First, FLP-ID generates a multiplex network by combining different types of relationships among users and identifying the community structure. Thereafter, the algorithm computes node and relative relevance for distinct fuzzy criteria under group norms. Finally, the likelihood score of each non-existing link is computed to predict missing links. The experimental results show that the proposed fuzzy algorithm accuracy is better than crisp algorithms over the multiplex network. The prediction rate of FLP-ID with F1-score, AUC, and balanced accuracy is excellent, which are improved compared to related methods up to 30%, 35%, and 30%, respectively, on high density and clustering coefficient datasets under multiplex settings. • The link prediction aims to predict the missing and future links in social networks. • Topological network integration is performed to generate a multiplex network. • A community-based framework is utilized to predict missing links. • A fuzzy-based algorithm is presented using individual and collective relevance. • This study validates the performance of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Micro-propagation refers to the technique of in vitro multiplication of plants in a short duration using any plant parts (nodes, leaves, flowers, seeds etc.) under aseptic conditions. It is advantageous over vegetative propagation and its application in horticultural aspects. It is well-proven method of surplus production of elite identical plants in a controlled environment which are uniform, stable, disease-free, true-to-type and are independent of any seasonal restrictions or limitations. India is homeland to diverse of significant but minor fruit crops such as Indian gooseberry, (Emblica officinalis Gaertn.), Karonda (Carissa carandas L.), Bael (Aegle marmelos Corr.), Jamun (Syzygium cuminii L.), Jackfruit (Artocarpus hetrophylous L.) which bear high nutritional, medicinal, therapeutic values and of great commercial importance (medicinal, food and cosmetics). Due to a paucity of desirable planting materials, the commercial production process for these crops is restricted. Micropropagation has the potential to significantly increase the number of new cultivars or genotypes of such fruit crops. The objective of this review study is to compile existing research work done on the micropropagation of these underutilized fruit crops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the study "Potential for differentiation of glioma recurrence from radionecrosis using integrated 18F-fluoroethyl-L-tyrosine (FET) positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance imaging: A prospective evaluation," by S. K. Sogani and colleagues. It mentions that the authors emphasized on diagnostic sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy for detection of recurrence using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) parameters. It shows the usefulness of FET images.

We show that the hypergeometric groups associated to the pairs of the parameters (0 , 1 12 , 5 12 , 7 12 , 11 12) , (1 2 , 1 3 , 1 3 , 2 3 , 2 3) ; and (0 , 0 , 1 3 , 2 3) , (1 2 , 1 2 , 1 4 , 3 4) are arithmetic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We recently discovered that a propionyloxy derivative of 11-keto-β-boswellic acid (PKBA) showed better anticancer potential than other boswellic acids including AKBA, encompassing the importance of acyl group at the 3-α-hydroxy position of KBA. In continuation of our previous work, other higher derivatives (with increasing alkoxy chain length at 3-α-hydroxy position) including butyryloxy (BKBA) and hexanoyloxy (HKBA) derivatives of KBA were synthesized. The respective IC50 values of BKBA and HKBA in HL-60 cells were found to be 7.7 and 4.5μg/ml. IC50 value of HKBA was comparatively lower than that of BKBA, and further lower than that of the previously reported derivative (PKBA, IC50 8.7μg/ml). In order to compare the anticancer potential of HKBA with PKBA, detailed in vitro pro-apoptotic and in vivo anticancer studies were carried out. The induction of apoptosis by HKBA was measured using various parameters including fluorescence and scanning electron microscopy, DNA fragmentation and Annexin V-FITC binding. The extent of DNA damage was measured using neutral comet assay. HKBA was further evaluated for its effect on DNA cell cycle and mitochondria where it was found to arrest cells in G2/M phase and also induced loss of mitochondrial membrane potential. These events were associated with increased expression of cytosolic cytochrome c and cleavage of PARP. Target based studies showed that HKBA inhibited the enzymatic activity of topoisomerases I and II at low doses than that of PKBA. In vivo studies also revealed a low dose inhibitory effect of HKBA on ascitic and solid murine tumor models. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Boswellic acids have invariably been reported for their antiproliferative potential in various cell systems. In the present study the growth inhibitory effect of propionyloxy derivative of 11-keto-β-boswellic acid (PKBA; a semisynthetic analogue of 11-keto-β-boswellic acid) on HL-60 promyelocytic leukemia cells is being reported for the first time. In the preliminary studies, in vitro cytotoxicity of PKBA was investigated against eight human cancer cell lines viz., IMR-32, SF-295 (both neuroblastoma), PC-3 (prostate), Colo-205 (colon), MCF-7 (breast), OVCAR-5 (ovary), HL-60, Molt-4 (both leukemia) and their respective IC50 values were found to be 5.95, 7.11, 15.2, 14.5, 15, 15.9, 8.7 & 9.5μg/ml, respectively. For determining the mechanism of cell death in HL-60 cells, PKBA was subjected to different mechanistic studies. DNA relaxation assay of PKBA revealed inhibition of both topoisomerases I & II. The fragmentation analysis of DNA revealed typical ladders indicating the cytotoxic effect to be mediated by induction of apoptosis. The morphologic studies of PKBA showed the presence of true apoptotic bodies. Apoptosis was confirmed further by flow-cytometric detection of sub-G1 peaks and enhanced annexin-V-FITC binding of the cells. The activation of apoptotic cascade by PKBA in HL-60 cells was found to be associated with the loss of mitochondrial membrane potential, release of cytochrome c, activation of initiator and executioner caspases and cleavage of poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP). In vivo studies of PKBA revealed anti-tumoral activity against both ascitic and solid murine tumor models. These studies thus demonstrate PKBA to induce apoptosis in HL-60 cells due to the inhibition of topoisomerases I and II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experimentally, X-ray production cross-sections are measured, but ionization cross-sections are calculated theoretically. The uncertainty of the measured L X-ray production cross-section is mainly statistics and detector-efficiency driven. But the experimental ionization cross-section involves many other factors because the relationship between the production and ionization cross section involves various atomic parameters and thus its uncertainty equation is complex. Consequently, determining the measurement uncertainty in L subshell ionization cross-section is always difficult. We have studied this issue in the simplest way, where the rule of weighted propagation of relative uncertainty is utilized. We notice that larger uncertainties are involved in atomic parameters relevant to L 1 (2s 1 / 2) subshell than those associated with the other two L 2 (2p 1 / 2) and L 3 (2p 3 / 2) subshells. Hence, comparison between theory and experiment would give higher emphasis on L 2 and L 3 subshell ionization cross sections. We believe this work makes us aware that the appropriate uncertainty evaluation is extremely important for providing the right judgement on the data. • Calculation of measurement uncertainty of a complex quantity is difficult. • L-shell ionization cross section by heavy ion impact is such an example. • Noticed that earlier measurements have given little attention on this. • Analysed the measurement uncertainty of L-shell ionization cross section. • Uncertainty analysis gives us correct idea on most precision experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]