Scheduling projects with multiskill learning effect.

We investigate the project scheduling problem with multiskill learning effect. A new model is proposed to deal with the problem, where both autonomous and induced learning are considered. In order to obtain the optimal solution, a genetic algorithm with specific encoding and decoding schemes is introduced.

Protection of ischemic post conditioning against transient focal ischemia-induced brain damage is associated with inhibition of neuroinflammation via modulation of TLR2 and TLR4 pathways.

Background And Purpose: Ischemic postconditioning has been demonstrated to be a protective procedure to brain damage caused by transient focal ischemia/reperfusion. However, it is elusive whether the protection of postconditioning against brain damage and neuroinflammation is via regulating TLR2 and TLR4 pathways. In the present study, we examined the protection of ischemic postconditioning performed immediately prior to the recovery of cerebral blood supply on brain damage caused by various duration of ischemia and tested the hypothesis that its protection is via inhibition of neuroinflammation by modulating TLR2/TLR4 pathways.

Shaping Social Activity by Incentivizing Users.

Events in an online social network can be categorized roughly into events, where users just respond to the actions of their neighbors within the network, or events, where users take actions due to drives external to the network. How much external drive should be provided to each user, such that the network activity can be steered towards a target state? In this paper, we model social events using multivariate Hawkes processes, which can capture both endogenous and exogenous event intensities, and derive a time dependent linear relation between the intensity of exogenous events and the overall network activity. Exploiting this connection, we develop a convex optimization framework for determining the required level of external drive in order for the network to reach a desired activity level.

S100A6 stimulates proliferation and migration of colorectal carcinoma cells through activation of the MAPK pathways.

The S100A6 protein, a member of the S100 protein family, is overexpressed in many tumors including colorectal carcinoma (CRC). Although recent studies showed that the elevated expression of S100A6 was associated with the stage and lymphatic permeation of CRC, little is known about whether and how S100A6 contributes to CRC development. Here we investigated the S100A6 expression in CRC tissues and cell lines, and explored the molecular mechanisms underlying the role of S100A6 in CRC development by examining cell proliferation and migration in vitro, and tumorigenicity in nude mice.

Trinary-projection trees for approximate nearest neighbor search.

We address the problem of approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search for visual descriptor indexing. Most spatial partition trees, such as KD trees, VP trees, and so on, follow the hierarchical binary space partitioning framework. The key effort is to design different partition functions (hyperplane or hypersphere) to divide the points so that 1) the data points can be well grouped to support effective NN candidate location and 2) the partition functions can be quickly evaluated to support efficient NN candidate location.

Supervised embedding of textual predictors with applications in clinical diagnostics for pediatric cardiology.

Objective: Electronic health records possess critical predictive information for machine-learning-based diagnostic aids. However, many traditional machine learning methods fail to simultaneously integrate textual data into the prediction process because of its high dimensionality. In this paper, we present a supervised method using Laplacian Eigenmaps to enable existing machine learning methods to estimate both low-dimensional representations of textual data and accurate predictors based on these low-dimensional representations at the same time.

[Method for determining o-tolidine in workplace air by gas chromatography].

Objective: To establish a method for determining o-tolidine in workplace air by gas chromatography.

Methods: o-tolidine in workplace air was collected with a glass fiber filter, desorbed with methanol, and determined by gas chromatography-flame ionization detector.

Results: The concentration of o-tolidine showed a linear relationship with peak area within 0.

[Effect of naringenin on learning and memory ability on model rats with Alzheimer disease].

Objective: To investigate the effects of naringenin on the learning and memory ability of Alzheimer disease (AD) rats.

Methods: 30 male SD rats were randomly divided into control group (sham operation group), model group and naringenin group. AD model was established by injecting strepoztocin (3 mg/kg) twice into each of two intracerebroventriculas.

A potentially functional polymorphism in the regulatory region of let-7a-2 is associated with an increased risk for diabetic nephropathy.

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a major diabetic complication. However, the initiating molecular events triggering DN are unknown. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have recently been identified as regulators that modulate the target gene expression and are involved in DN.

Expression of angiotensin II and its receptors in activated microglia in experimentally induced cerebral ischemia in the adult rats.

Expression of angiotensin II (Ang II) and its receptors (AT1/AT2) is undetected in the mature microglia in normal brain. We report here that the immunoexpression of Ang II and AT1/AT2 was altered in activated microglia notably at 1 week in rats subjected to middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO). Immunolabeled activated microglia were widely distributed in the infarcted cerebral tissue after MCAO.

MS-desi, a desiccation-related protein in the floral nectar of the evergreen velvet bean (Mucuna sempervirens Hemsl): molecular identification and characterization.

Plant desiccation-related proteins (DRPs) were first identified as pcC13-62 from the resurrection plant Craterostigma plantagineum and it has been suggested they are involved in plant desiccation tolerance. We identified and characterized a plant DRP, which we called MS-desi, in the floral nectar of a subtropical bean species, Mucuna sempervirens (MS). MS-desi is a major nectar protein (nectarin) of the bean plant and expresses exclusively in the stylopodium, where the nectary is located.

Self-calibration of catadioptric camera with two planar mirrors from silhouettes.

If an object is interreflected between two planar mirrors, we may take an image containing both the object and its multiple reflections, i.e., simultaneously imaging multiple views of an object by a single pinhole camera.

Utility of a clinical support tool for outpatient evaluation of pediatric chest pain.

This study evaluates a clinical pathway currently being employed at a large single-center pediatric cardiology practice. The dataset includes 1,997 pediatric patients with the primary complaint of chest pain. A logistic regression model was developed to predict cardiac disease and identify strong indicators of cardiac pathology.

Scalable Influence Estimation in Continuous-Time Diffusion Networks.

If a piece of information is released from a media site, can we predict whether it may spread to one million web pages, in a month ? This influence estimation problem is very challenging since both the time-sensitive nature of the task and the requirement of scalability need to be addressed simultaneously. In this paper, we propose a randomized algorithm for influence estimation in continuous-time diffusion networks. Our algorithm can estimate the influence of every node in a network with || nodes and || edges to an accuracy of using = (1/) randomizations and up to logarithmic factors (||+||) computations.

Dyadic Event Attribution in Social Networks with Mixtures of Hawkes Processes.

In many applications in social network analysis, it is important to model the interactions and infer the influence between pairs of actors, leading to the problem of dyadic event modeling which has attracted increasing interests recently. In this paper we focus on the problem of dyadic event attribution, an important missing data problem in dyadic event modeling where one needs to infer the missing actor-pairs of a subset of dyadic events based on their observed timestamps. Existing works either use fixed model parameters and heuristic rules for event attribution, or assume the dyadic events across actor-pairs are independent.

[Ion chromatography for determination of ammonia sampled by silica gel in air of workplace].

Objective: To establish an ion chromatography (IC) method for determination of ammonia in air of workplace.

Methods: Ammonia in workplace air was collected in silica gel tube, desorbed with 10 mmol/L methanesulfonic acid by ultrasonic for 10 min, determined by IC.

Results: The linearity range was 0.

Epstein-Barr virus infection and expression of B-cell oncogenic markers in HIV-related diffuse large B-cell Lymphoma.

Purpose: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-mediated lymphomagenesis in the setting of HIV infection has been widely accepted. However, little is known about how EBV impacts prognosis. We investigated the hypothesis that EBV infection is associated with expression of specific B-cell oncogenic markers in HIV-related diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and examined the prognostic use of detecting EBV infection.

A fast algorithm for multidimensional ellipsoid-specific fitting by minimizing a new defined vector norm of residuals using semidefinite programming.

A quadratic surface in n-dimensional space is defined as the locus of zeros of a quadratic polynomial. The quadratic polynomial may be compactly written in notation by an (n+1)-vector and a real symmetric matrix of order n+1, where the vector represents homogenous coordinates of an n-D point, and the symmetric matrix is constructed from the quadratic coefficients. If an n-D quadratic surface is an n-D ellipsoid, the leading n × n principal submatrix of the symmetric matrix would be positive or opposite definite.

Disentangling the effects of breakdown of self-incompatibility and transition to selfing in North American Arabidopsis lyrata.

A breakdown of self-incompatibility (SI) followed by a shift to selfing is commonly observed in the evolution of flowering plants. Both are expected to reduce the levels of heterozygosity and genetic diversity. However, breakdown of SI should most strongly affect the region of the SI locus (S-locus) because of the relaxation of balancing selection that operates on a functional S-locus, and a potential selective sweep.

Acidic α-galactosidase is the most abundant nectarin in floral nectar of common tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum).

Background And Aims: To date, most floral nectarins (nectar proteins) are reported to function in nectar defence, particularly for insect-pollinated outcrossing species. We compared nectarin composition and abundance in selfing common tobacco (Nicotiana tobaccum) with outcrossing ornamental tobacco plants to elucidate the functional difference of nectarins in different reproductive systems.

Methods: Common tobacco (CT) nectarins were separated by SDS-PAGE and the N terminus of the most abundant nectarin was sequenced via Edman degradation.

Unsupervised image matching based on manifold alignment.

This paper challenges the issue of automatic matching between two image sets with similar intrinsic structures and different appearances, especially when there is no prior correspondence. An unsupervised manifold alignment framework is proposed to establish correspondence between data sets by a mapping function in the mutual embedding space. We introduce a local similarity metric based on parameterized distance curves to represent the connection of one point with the rest of the manifold.

Personalized tooth shape estimation from radiograph and cast.

Three-dimensional geometric information of teeth is usually needed in pre- and postoperative diagnoses of orthodontic dentistry. The computerized tomography can provide comprehensive 3-D teeth geometries. However, there is still a discussion on computed tomography (CT) as a routine in orthodontic dentistry due to radiation dose.

Multiscale semilocal interpolation with antialiasing.

Aliasing is a common artifact in low-resolution (LR) images generated by a downsampling process. Recovering the original high-resolution image from its LR counterpart while at the same time removing the aliasing artifacts is a challenging image interpolation problem. Since a natural image normally contains redundant similar patches, the values of missing pixels can be available at texture-relevant LR pixels.

MicroRNA-451 regulates p38 MAPK signaling by targeting of Ywhaz and suppresses the mesangial hypertrophy in early diabetic nephropathy.

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a major diabetic complication. However, the initiating molecular events triggering DN are unknown. In this study we focused on microRNA-451 (miR-451), which is downregulated during early DN.