Search results for: simple sequence repeats

Authors: B. Kishore Kumar, Rakesh Pogula, T. Kishore Kumar

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The steepness of an audio signal which is produced by the musical instruments, specifically percussive instruments is the perception of how high tone or low tone which can be considered as a frequency closely related to the fundamental frequency. This paper presents a novel method for silence removal and segmentation of music signals produced by the percussive instruments and the performance of proposed method is studied with the help of MATLAB simulations. This method is based on two simple features, namely the signal energy and the spectral centroid. As long as the feature sequences are extracted, a simple thresholding criterion is applied in order to remove the silence areas in the sound signal. The simulations were carried on various instruments like drum, flute and guitar and results of the proposed method were analyzed.

Keywords: percussive instruments, spectral energy, spectral centroid, silence removal

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Authors: Prateek Kishore, T. M. Muruganandam

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Supersonic wind tunnel nozzles are generally capable of producing a constant Mach number flow in the test section of the wind tunnel. As a result, most of the supersonic vehicles are widely designed using steady state flow characteristics which may have errors while facing unsteady situations. This study aims to explore the possibility of varying the Mach number of the flow during wind tunnel operation. The nozzle walls are restricted to be inflexible for cooling near the throat due to high stagnation temperature requirement of the flow to simulate the conditions as experienced by the vehicle. Two simple independent mechanisms, rotation and translation of nozzle walls have been analyzed and the nozzle ranges have been optimized to vary the Mach number from Mach 2 to Mach 5 using minimum number of nozzles in the wind tunnel.

Keywords: method of characteristics, nozzle, supersonic wind tunnel, variable mach number

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Authors: Aishwarya Talapuru, Sri Silpa Padmanabhuni, B. Jyoshna

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Cryptography helps in preventing threats to information security by providing various algorithms. This study introduces a new symmetric key encryption algorithm for information security which is linked with the "raagas" which means Indian traditional scale and pattern of music notes. This algorithm takes the plain text as input and starts its encryption process. The algorithm then randomly selects a raaga from the list of raagas that is assumed to be present with both sender and the receiver. The plain text is associated with the thus selected raaga and an intermediate cipher-text is formed as the algorithm converts the plain text characters into other characters, depending upon the rules of the algorithm. This intermediate code or cipher text is arranged in various patterns in three different rounds of encryption performed. The total number of rounds in the algorithm is equal to the multiples of 3. To be more specific, the outcome or output of the sequence of first three rounds is again passed as the input to this sequence of rounds recursively, till the total number of rounds of encryption is performed. The raaga selected by the algorithm and the number of rounds performed will be specified at an arbitrary location in the key, in addition to important information regarding the rounds of encryption, embedded in the key which is known by the sender and interpreted only by the receiver, thereby making the algorithm hack proof. The key can be constructed of any number of bits without any restriction to the size. A software application is also developed to demonstrate this process of encryption, which dynamically takes the plain text as input and readily generates the cipher text as output. Therefore, this algorithm stands as one of the strongest tools for information security.

Keywords: cipher text, cryptography, plaintext, raaga

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Authors: Magno Enrique Mendoza Meza

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This paper deals with the comparison of three control techniques: the hysteresis on-off control (HyOOC), the hybrid on-off control (HOOC) and the simple Structured Treatment Interruptions (sSTI). These techniques are applied to the mathematical model developed by Kirschner and Webb. To compare these techniques we use a cost functional that minimize the wild-type virus population and the mutant virus population, but the main objective is to minimize the systemic cost of treatment and maximize levels of healthy CD4+ T cells. HyOOC, HOOC, and sSTI are applied to the drug therapies using a reverse transcriptase and protease inhibitors; simulations show that these controls maintain the uninfected cells in a small, bounded neighborhood of a pre-specified level. The controller HyOOC and HOOC are designed by appropriate choice of virtual equilibrium points.

Keywords: virus dynamics, on-off control, hysteresis, multi-drug therapies

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Authors: Ming Liu, Chong Wu, Bingquan Liu, Lei Chen

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Internet users have to face the massive amount of textual data every day. Organizing texts into categories can help users dig the useful information from large-scale text collection. Clustering, in fact, is one of the most promising tools for categorizing texts due to its unsupervised characteristic. Unfortunately, most of traditional clustering algorithms lose their high qualities on large-scale text collection. This situation mainly attributes to the high- dimensional vectors generated from texts. To effectively and efficiently cluster large-scale text collection, this paper proposes a vector reconstruction based clustering algorithm. Only the features that can represent the cluster are preserved in cluster’s representative vector. This algorithm alternately repeats two sub-processes until it converges. One process is partial tuning sub-process, where feature’s weight is fine-tuned by iterative process. To accelerate clustering velocity, an intersection based similarity measurement and its corresponding neuron adjustment function are proposed and implemented in this sub-process. The other process is overall tuning sub-process, where the features are reallocated among different clusters. In this sub-process, the features useless to represent the cluster are removed from cluster’s representative vector. Experimental results on the three text collections (including two small-scale and one large-scale text collections) demonstrate that our algorithm obtains high quality on both small-scale and large-scale text collections.

Keywords: vector reconstruction, large-scale text clustering, partial tuning sub-process, overall tuning sub-process

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Authors: Sachin Nagargoje

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Complete labeled data is often difficult to obtain in a practical scenario. Even if one manages to obtain the data, the quality of the data is always in question. In shopping vertical, offers are the input data, which is given by advertiser with or without a good quality of information. In this paper, an author investigated the possibility of using a very simple Semi-supervised learning approach to increase the recall of unhealthy offers (has badly written Offer Title or partial product details) in shopping vertical domain. The author found that the semisupervised learning method had improved the recall in the Smart Phone category by 30% on A=B testing on 10% traffic and increased the YoY (Year over Year) number of impressions per month by 33% at production. This also made a significant increase in Revenue, but that cannot be publicly disclosed.

Keywords: semi-supervised learning, clustering, recall, coverage

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Authors: Walaa Hamed Mohamed Hamza

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Textile structures are the way in which the threading process of both thread and loom is done together to form the woven. Different methods of attaching the clothing and the flesh produce different textile structures, which differ in their surface appearance from each other, including so-called simple textile structures. Textile compositions are the basis of woven fabric, through which aesthetic values can be achieved in the textile industry by weaving threads of yarn with the weft at varying degrees that may reach the total control of one of the two groups on the other. Hence the idea of how art and design can be used using different textile structures under the modern techniques of pate de verre. In the creation of designs suitable for glass products employed in the interior architecture. The problem of research: The textile structures, in general, have a significant impact on the appearance of the fabrics in terms of form and aesthetic. How can we benefit from the characteristics of different textile compositions in different glass designs with different artistic values. The research achieves its goal by the investment of simple textile structures in innovative artistic designs using the pate de verre technique, as well as the use of designs resulting from the textile structures in the external architecture to add various aesthetic values. The importance of research in the revival of heritage using ancient techniques, as well as synergy between different fields of applied arts such as glass and textile, and also study the different and diverse effects resulting from each fabric composition and the possibility of use in various designs in the interior architecture. The research will be achieved that by investing in simple textile compositions, innovative artistic designs produced using pate de verre technology can be used in interior architecture.

Keywords: glass, interior architecture, pate de verre, textile structures

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Authors: Guesh Mulaw, Haile Beruhulay, Anteneh Tesfaye, Tesfaye Sisay Diriba Muleta

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Probiotics are live microorganisms that, when administered in adequate amounts, promote the health of a consumer. The present work aims to study the whole genome sequence of probiotic strains of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) isolated from traditional Ethiopian fermented kocho for bacteriocin production and to evaluate their probiotic properties. LAB were isolated from traditionally fermented kocho samples and characterized following standard methods. Accordingly, a total of 150 LAB were isolated, of which 7 (4.67%) isolates showed 50.52-74.05% and 33.33-62.40% survival rates at pH 2 for 3 and 6 h, respectively. The 7 acid-tolerant isolates were also tolerated 0.3% bile salt for 24 h with 88.96 to 98.10% survival. The acid and bile salt-tolerant LAB isolates also inhibited some reference foodborne pathogenic bacteria to varying degrees. All 7 acid- and bile salt-tolerant isolates were susceptible to ampicillin, tetracycline and erythromycin. However, the potent isolates showed remarkable resistance to kanamycin. Likewise, four of the 7 isolates were resistant to streptomycin, but three of the 7 isolates were sensitive to streptomycin. The identification of the seven selected probiotic LAB isolates and their genetic relatedness was performed based on whole-genome sequence comparisons. Consequently, these isolates belonged to Lactobacillus species, including 6 Lb. plantarum, 1 Lb. brevis. Among the 7 potential probiotic LAB strains, BAGEL predicted 2 bacteriocin for class II in the genome of 7 strains. The 7 Lactobacillus strains were found to be potentially useful for producing functional products and could be suitable probiotic candidates for food processing industries

Keywords: ferneted foods, kocho, probiotics, lactic acid bacteria

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Authors: Qinglin Liu, Zhiyong Lin, Zongheng Wei, Jianfeng Wen, Congming Yi, Hai Liu

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The multi-channel blind rendezvous problem in distributed cognitive radio networks (DCRNs) refers to how users in the network can hop to the same channel at the same time slot without any prior knowledge (i.e., each user is unaware of other users' information). The channel hopping (CH) technique is a typical solution to this blind rendezvous problem. In this paper, we propose a quinary coding and matrix structure-based CH algorithm called QCMS-CH. The QCMS-CH algorithm can guarantee the rendezvous of users using only one cognitive radio in the scenario of the asynchronous clock (i.e., arbitrary time drift between the users), heterogeneous channels (i.e., the available channel sets of users are distinct), and symmetric role (i.e., all users play a same role). The QCMS-CH algorithm first represents a randomly selected channel (denoted by R) as a fixed-length quaternary number. Then it encodes the quaternary number into a quinary bootstrapping sequence according to a carefully designed quaternary-quinary coding table with the prefix "R00". Finally, it builds a CH matrix column by column according to the bootstrapping sequence and six different types of elaborately generated subsequences. The user can access the CH matrix row by row and accordingly perform its channel, hoping to attempt rendezvous with other users. We prove the correctness of QCMS-CH and derive an upper bound on its Maximum Time-to-Rendezvous (MTTR). Simulation results show that the QCMS-CH algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art in terms of the MTTR and the Expected Time-to-Rendezvous (ETTR).

Keywords: channel hopping, blind rendezvous, cognitive radio networks, quaternary-quinary coding

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Authors: Po-Jung Huang, Chi-Ching Lee, Bertrand Chin-Ming Tan, Yuan-Ming Yeh, Julie Lichieh Chu, Tin-Wen Chen, Cheng-Yang Lee, Ruei-Chi Gan, Hsuan Liu, Petrus Tang

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Whole-exome sequencing focuses on the protein coding regions of disease/cancer associated genes based on a priori knowledge is the most cost-effective method to study the association between genetic alterations and disease. Recent advances in high throughput sequencing technologies and proteomic techniques has provided an opportunity to integrate genomics and proteomics, allowing readily detectable mutated peptides corresponding to mutated genes. Since sequence database search is the most widely used method for protein identification using Mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics technology, a mutant proteome database is required to better approximate the real protein pool to improve disease-associated mutated protein identification. Large-scale whole exome/genome sequencing studies were launched by National Cancer Institute (NCI), Broad Institute, and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), which provide not only a comprehensive report on the analysis of coding variants in diverse samples cell lines but a invaluable resource for extensive research community. No existing database is available for the collection of mutant protein sequences related to the identified variants in these studies. CMPD is designed to address this issue, serving as a bridge between genomic data and proteomic studies and focusing on protein sequence-altering variations originated from both germline and cancer-associated somatic variations.

Keywords: TCGA, cancer, mutant, proteome

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Authors: Ke Zhang, Yongli Zhu

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Due to rapid load growths in today’s highly electrified societies and the requirement for green energy sources, large-scale wind farm power transmission system is constantly developing. This system is a typical multi-terminal power supply system, whose structure of the network topology of transmission lines is complex. What’s more, it locates in the complex terrain of mountains and grasslands, thus increasing the possibility of transmission line faults and finding the fault location with difficulty after the faults and resulting in an extremely serious phenomenon of abandoning the wind. In order to solve these problems, a fault location method for multi-terminal transmission line based on wind farm characteristics and improved single-ended traveling wave positioning method is proposed. Through studying the zero sequence current characteristics by using the characteristics of the grounding transformer(GT) in the existing large-scale wind farms, it is obtained that the criterion for judging the fault interval of the multi-terminal transmission line. When a ground short-circuit fault occurs, there is only zero sequence current on the path between GT and the fault point. Therefore, the interval where the fault point exists is obtained by determining the path of the zero sequence current. After determining the fault interval, The location of the short-circuit fault point is calculated by the traveling wave method. However, this article uses an improved traveling wave method. It makes the positioning accuracy more accurate by combining the single-ended traveling wave method with double-ended electrical data. What’s more, a method of calculating the traveling wave velocity is deduced according to the above improvements (it is the actual wave velocity in theory). The improvement of the traveling wave velocity calculation method further improves the positioning accuracy. Compared with the traditional positioning method, the average positioning error of this method is reduced by 30%.This method overcomes the shortcomings of the traditional method in poor fault location of wind farm transmission lines. In addition, it is more accurate than the traditional fixed wave velocity method in the calculation of the traveling wave velocity. It can calculate the wave velocity in real time according to the scene and solve the traveling wave velocity can’t be updated with the environment and real-time update. The method is verified in PSCAD/EMTDC.

Keywords: grounding transformer, multi-terminal transmission line, short circuit fault location, traveling wave velocity, wind farm

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Authors: Ksheeraj Sai Vepuri, Nada Attar

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We as humans use words with accompanying visual and facial cues to communicate effectively. Classifying facial emotion using computer vision methodologies has been an active research area in the computer vision field. In this paper, we propose a simple method for facial expression recognition that enhances accuracy. We tested our method on the FER-2013 dataset that contains static images. Instead of using Histogram equalization to preprocess the dataset, we used Unsharp Mask to emphasize texture and details and sharpened the edges. We also used ImageDataGenerator from Keras library for data augmentation. Then we used Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) model to classify the images into 7 different facial expressions, yielding an accuracy of 69.46% on the test set. Our results show that using image preprocessing such as the sharpening technique for a CNN model can improve the performance, even when the CNN model is relatively simple.

Keywords: facial expression recognittion, image preprocessing, deep learning, CNN

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Authors: Zekang Lan, Yan Xu, Yingkun Huang, Dian Huang, Shengzhong Feng

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Jobs on high-performance computing (HPC) clusters can suffer significant performance degradation due to inter-job network interference. Topology-aware job allocation problem (TJAP) is such a problem that decides how to dedicate nodes to specific applications to mitigate inter-job network interference. In this paper, we study the window-based TJAP on a fat-tree network aiming at minimizing the cost of communication hop, a defined inter-job interference metric. The window-based approach for scheduling repeats periodically, taking the jobs in the queue and solving an assignment problem that maps jobs to the available nodes. Two special allocation strategies are considered, i.e., static continuity assignment strategy (SCAS) and dynamic continuity assignment strategy (DCAS). For the SCAS, a 0-1 integer programming is developed. For the DCAS, an approach called neural simulated algorithm (NSA), which is an extension to simulated algorithm (SA) that learns a repair operator and employs them in a guided heuristic search, is proposed. The efficacy of NSA is demonstrated with a computational study against SA and SCIP. The results of numerical experiments indicate that both the model and algorithm proposed in this paper are effective.

Keywords: high-performance computing, job allocation, neural simulated annealing, topology-aware

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Authors: Fereshteh Chekin, Sepideh Sadeghi

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Nickel nanoparticles have attracted much attention because of applications in catalysis, medical diagnostics and magnetic applications. In this work, we reported a simple and low-cost procedure to synthesize nickel oxide nanoparticles (NiO-NPs) by using sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) and gelatin as stabilizer. The synthesized NiO-NPs were characterized by a variety of means such as transmission electron microscope (TEM), powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and UV-vis spectroscopy. The results show that the NiO nanoparticles with high crystalline can be obtained using this simple method. The grain size measured by TEM was 16 in presence of SDS, which agrees well with the XRD data. SDS plays an important role in the formation of the NiO nanoparticles. Moreover, the NiO nanoparticles have been used as a solid phase catalyst for the decomposition of hydrazine hydrate at room temperatures. The decomposition process has been monitored by UV–vis analysis. The present study showed that nanoparticles are not poisoned after their repeated use in decomposition of hydrazine.

Keywords: nickel oxide nanoparticles, sodium dodecyl sulphate, synthesis, stabilizer

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Authors: Sharon Yunger, Liat Altman, Yuval Garini, Yaron Shav-Tal

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Understanding the dynamics of transcription in living cells has improved since the development of quantitative fluorescence-based imaging techniques. We established a method for following transcription from a single copy gene in living cells. A gene tagged with MS2 repeats, used for mRNA tagging, in its 3' UTR was integrated into a single genomic locus. The actively transcribing gene was detected and analyzed by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and live-cell imaging. Several cell clones were created that differed in the promoter regulating the gene. Thus, comparative analysis could be obtained without the risk of different position effects at each integration site. Cells in S/G2 phases could be detected exhibiting two adjacent transcription sites on sister chromatids. A sharp reduction in the transcription levels was observed as cells progressed along the cell cycle. We hypothesized that a change in chromatin structure acts as a general mechanism during the cell cycle leading to down-regulation in the activity of some genes. We addressed this question by treating the cells with chromatin decondensing agents. Quantifying and imaging the treated cells suggests that chromatin structure plays a role both in regulating transcriptional levels along the cell cycle, as well as in limiting an active gene from reaching its maximum transcription potential at any given time. These results contribute to understanding the role of chromatin as a regulator of gene expression.

Keywords: cell cycle, living cells, nucleus, transcription

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Authors: Iftikhar A. Tayubi, Tabrej Khan, Mansoor M. Alsubei, Fahad A. Alsaferi

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LIZTOXD provides a single source of high-quality information about proteinaceous lizard toxins that will be an invaluable resource for pharmacologists, neuroscientists, toxicologists, medicinal chemists, ion channel scientists, clinicians, and structural biologists. We will provide an intuitive, well-organized and user-friendly web interface that allows users to explore the detail information of Lizard and toxin proteins. It includes common name, scientific name, entry id, entry name, protein name and length of the protein sequence. The utility of this database is that it can provide a user-friendly interface for users to retrieve the information about Lizard, toxin and toxin protein of different Lizard species. These interfaces created in this database will satisfy the demands of the scientific community by providing in-depth knowledge about Lizard and its toxin. In the next phase of our project we will adopt methodology and by using A MySQL and Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) which and for designing Smart Draw. A database is a wonderful piece of equipment for storing large quantities of data efficiently. The users can thus navigate from one section to another, depending on the field of interest of the user. This database contains a wealth of information on species, toxins, toxins, clinical data etc. LIZTOXD resource that provides comprehensive information about protein toxins from lizard toxins. The combination of specific classification schemes and a rich user interface allows researchers to easily locate and view information on the sequence, structure, and biological activity of these toxins. This manually curated database will be a valuable resource for both basic researchers as well as those interested in potential pharmaceutical and agricultural applications of lizard toxins.

Keywords: LIZTOXD, MySQL, PHP, smart draw

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Authors: Zahra Khalid, Gul Muhammad Khan, Arbab Masood Ahmad

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Cartesian Genetic Programming (CGP) is explored to design an optimal circuit capable of early stage breast cancer detection. CGP is used to evolve simple multiplexer circuits for detection of malignancy in the Fine Needle Aspiration (FNA) samples of breast. The data set used is extracted from Wisconsins Breast Cancer Database (WBCD). A range of experiments were performed, each with different set of network parameters. The best evolved network detected malignancy with an accuracy of 99.14%, which is higher than that produced with most of the contemporary non-linear techniques that are computational expensive than the proposed system. The evolved network comprises of simple multiplexers and can be implemented easily in hardware without any further complications or inaccuracy, being the digital circuit.

Keywords: breast cancer detection, cartesian genetic programming, evolvable hardware, fine needle aspiration

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Authors: Amin Salighehdar, Ziwen Ye, Mingzhe Liu, Ionut Florescu, Alan F. Blumberg

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Storm surge is an abnormal water level caused by a storm. Accurate prediction of a storm surge is a challenging problem. Researchers developed various ensemble modeling techniques to combine several individual forecasts to produce an overall presumably better forecast. There exist some simple ensemble modeling techniques in literature. For instance, Model Output Statistics (MOS), and running mean-bias removal are widely used techniques in storm surge prediction domain. However, these methods have some drawbacks. For instance, MOS is based on multiple linear regression and it needs a long period of training data. To overcome the shortcomings of these simple methods, researchers propose some advanced methods. For instance, ENSURF (Ensemble SURge Forecast) is a multi-model application for sea level forecast. This application creates a better forecast of sea level using a combination of several instances of the Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA). An ensemble dressing method is based on identifying best member forecast and using it for prediction. Our contribution in this paper can be summarized as follows. First, we investigate whether the ensemble models perform better than any single forecast. Therefore, we need to identify the single best forecast. We present a methodology based on a simple Bayesian selection method to select the best single forecast. Second, we present several new and simple ways to construct ensemble models. We use correlation and standard deviation as weights in combining different forecast models. Third, we use these ensembles and compare with several existing models in literature to forecast storm surge level. We then investigate whether developing a complex ensemble model is indeed needed. To achieve this goal, we use a simple average (one of the simplest and widely used ensemble model) as benchmark. Predicting the peak level of Surge during a storm as well as the precise time at which this peak level takes place is crucial, thus we develop a statistical platform to compare the performance of various ensemble methods. This statistical analysis is based on root mean square error of the ensemble forecast during the testing period and on the magnitude and timing of the forecasted peak surge compared to the actual time and peak. In this work, we analyze four hurricanes: hurricanes Irene and Lee in 2011, hurricane Sandy in 2012, and hurricane Joaquin in 2015. Since hurricane Irene developed at the end of August 2011 and hurricane Lee started just after Irene at the beginning of September 2011, in this study we consider them as a single contiguous hurricane event. The data set used for this study is generated by the New York Harbor Observing and Prediction System (NYHOPS). We find that even the simplest possible way of creating an ensemble produces results superior to any single forecast. We also show that the ensemble models we propose generally have better performance compared to the simple average ensemble technique.

Keywords: Bayesian learning, ensemble model, statistical analysis, storm surge prediction

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Authors: Siti Rahmah Shamsuri, Eiichiro Matsubara, Shohei Shiomi

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The 1D nanomaterial is far surpassed the 0D nanomaterial. It does not just offer most of the benefit of the 0D nanomaterial such as the large surface area, a great number of active site and an efficient interfacial charge transfer but also can assemble into free-standing and flexible electrode due to their high aspect ratio. Thus, it is essential to develop a simple and ease synthesis of this 1D nanomaterial for the practical application. Here, nickel nanowire/cellulose hybrid has been successfully fabricated via a simple liquid-phase method with the assist of the magnetic field. A finer nickel nanowire was heterogeneously nucleated on the surface of the cellulose fiber, which demonstrated the effect of the hydroxyl group on the cellulose structure. The result of the nickel nanowire size was found to vary from 66-114 nm. A detailed discussion on the mechanism of the nickel nanowire/ cellulose hybrid formation is also shown in this paper.

Keywords: cellulose nanofiber, liquid-phase reduction, metal nanowire, nano hybrid material

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Authors: Yifang Gong

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Pulse diagnosis is one of the most important diagnosis methods in traditional Chinese medicine. It is also the trickiest method to learn. It is known as that it can only to be sensed not explained. This becomes a serious threat to the survival of this diagnostic method. However, there are a large amount of experiences accumulated during the several thousand years of practice of Chinese doctors. A pulse pattern called 'Slippery pulse' is one of the indications of pregnancy. A simple fluid dynamic model is proposed to simulate the effects of the existence of a placenta. The placenta is modeled as an extra plenum in an extremely simplified fluid network model. It is found that because of the existence of the extra plenum, indeed the pulse pattern shows a secondary peak in one pulse period. As for the author’s knowledge, this work is the first time to show the link between Pulse diagnoses and basic physical principle. Key parameters which might affect the pattern are also investigated.

Keywords: Chinese medicine, flow network, pregnancy, pulse

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Authors: M. R. Akbari, S. Akbari, L. Abdollahpour

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The present paper is concerned with calculating the 2-dimensional velocity profile of a viscous flow for an incompressible fluid along the leading edge of a flat plate by using the continuity and motion equations with a simple and innovative approach. A Comparison between Numerical method and AGM has been made and the results have been revealed that AGM is very accurate and easy and can be applied for a wide variety of nonlinear problems. It is notable that most of the differential equations can be solved in this approach which in the other approaches they do not have this capability. Moreover, there are some valuable benefits in this method of solving differential equations, for instance: Without any dimensionless procedure, we can solve many differential equation(s), that is, differential equations are directly solvable by this method. In addition, it is not necessary to convert variables into new ones. According to the afore-mentioned expressions which will be proved in this literature, the process of solving nonlinear differential equation(s) will be very simple and convenient in contrast to the other approaches.

Keywords: leading edge, new idea, flat plate, incompressible fluid

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Authors: Khaled Igbaria

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Laila Al-Othman is a well-known feminist writer in Kuwait and the entire Arab world. She was born in 1943 in Kuwait to a large and wealthy family. The author has written several short stories, as well as novels, such as The Woman and the Cat (1985) and Wasumayya Comes out of the Sea (1986), which was chosen as one of the best 100 Arab novels of the 21st century. Another prominent novel of hers is Ṣamt al-Farāshāt [Silence of the Butterflies] (2007), which was highly controversial in her native Kuwait upon publication. For this study, her engagement in feminism was achieved by exploring the different ways in which her novel, Ṣamt al-Farāshāt [Silence of the Butterflies], addresses several feminist issues, mainly forced marriage, rape and sexual abuse, gender-based physical, sexual violence, and enforced silence. This paper focuses on demonstrating social obstacles and continuous trauma caused by a sequence of pain experienced by Arab females in their patriarchal society. This study argues that the novel reveals a sustained effort to raise the banner of feminism and a strong desire to liberate Arab women from patriarchal domination. Al-Othman successfully and uniquely represents women as gender-based traumatic victims of sexual and physical violence, forced silence, and general oppression in the patriarchal Arab society, as those needing help, support, protection, and liberation. They are not represented as independent or free. Methodologically, the study employs a qualitative literary analysis method in addition to trauma theory psychoanalysis, concentrating on feminist issues highlighted in the novel.

Keywords: Al-Othman, Arab women pain, trauma within narration., Silence of the Butterflies

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Authors: Zahra Ahmed Al-zadjali

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The influence of Islam on arts can be found primarily in calligraphy, arabesque designs and architecture. Also, geometric designs were used quite extensively. Muslim craftsmen produced stunning designs based on simple geometric principles and traditional motifs which were used to decorate many surfaces. The idea of interlacing simple rectilinear lines to form the patterns impressed Arabs. Nomads of Persia, Turks and Mongols were equally impressed with the designs so they begin to use them in their homes in carpet weaving. Islamic designs, motifs and colours which were used became common place and served to influence people’s tastes. Modern life style and contemporary products have changed the style of people’s daily lives, however, people still long for the nomadic way of life. This is clearly reflected in people’s homes. In a great many Muslim homes, Islamic decorative motifs can be seen along with traditional ‘Bedouin’ style furnishing, especially in homes of the Arabian Peninsula.

Keywords: art, craft, design, Oman, weaving

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Authors: Anyaphat Srithanasuwan, Noppason Pangprasit, Montira Intanon, Phongsakorn Chuammitri, Witaya Suriyasathaporn, Ynte H. Schukken

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Streptococcus uberis is one of the most common mastitis-causing pathogens, with a wide range of intramammary infection (IMI) durations and pathogenicity. This study aimed to compare shared or unique virulence factor gene clusters distinguishing persistent and transient strains of S. uberis. A total of 139 S. uberis strains were isolated from three small-holder dairy herds with a high prevalence of S. uberis mastitis. The duration of IMI was used to categorize bacteria into two groups: transient and persistent strains with an IMI duration of less than 1 month and longer than 2 months, respectively. Six representative S. uberis strains, three from each group (transience and persistence) were selected for analysis. All transient strains exhibited multi-locus sequence types (MLST), indicating a highly diverse population of transient S. uberis. In contrast, MLST of persistent strains was available in an online database (pubMLST). Identification of virulence genes was performed using whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data. Differences in genomic size and number of virulent genes were found. For example, the BCA gene or alpha-c protein and the gene associated with capsule formation (hasAB), found in persistent strains, are important for attachment and invasion, as well as the evasion of the antimicrobial mechanisms and survival persistence, respectively. These findings suggest a genetic-level difference between the two strain types. Consequently, a comprehensive study of 139 S. uberis isolates will be conducted to perform an in-depth genetic assessment through WGS analysis on an Illumina platform.

Keywords: Streptococcus Uberis, mastitis, whole genome sequence, intramammary infection, persistent S. Uberis, transient s. Uberis

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Authors: Khin Thanda Win, Chunying Zhang, Sanghyeob Lee

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Mildew resistance locus o (Mlo), a plant-specific gene family with seven-transmembrane (TM), plays an important role in plant resistance to powdery mildew (PM). PM caused by Podosphaera xanthii is a widespread plant disease and probably represents the major fungal threat for many Cucurbits. The recent Cucurbita maxima genome sequence data provides an opportunity to identify and characterize the MLO gene family in this species. Total twenty genes (designated CmaMLO1 through CmaMLO20) have been identified by using an in silico cloning method with the MLO gene sequences of Cucumis sativus, Cucumis melo, Citrullus lanatus and Cucurbita pepo as probes. These CmaMLOs were evenly distributed on 15 chromosomes of 20 C. maxima chromosomes without any obvious clustering. Multiple sequence alignment showed that the common structural features of MLO gene family, such as TM domains, a calmodulin-binding domain and 30 important amino acid residues for MLO function, were well conserved. Phylogenetic analysis of the CmaMLO genes and other plant species reveals seven different clades (I through VII) and only clade IV is specific to monocots (rice, barley, and wheat). Phylogenetic and structural analyses provided preliminary evidence that five genes belonged to clade V could be the susceptibility genes which may play the importance role in PM resistance. This study is the first comprehensive report on MLO genes in C. maxima to our knowledge. These findings will facilitate the functional analysis of the MLOs related to PM susceptibility and are valuable resources for the development of disease resistance in pumpkin.

Keywords: Mildew resistance locus o (Mlo), powdery mildew, phylogenetic relationship, susceptibility genes

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Authors: Yair Bleiberg, Michael Werman

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Coordinate-based Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs) are known to have difficulty reconstructing high frequencies of the training data. A common solution to this problem is Positional Encoding (PE), which has become quite popular. However, PE has drawbacks. It has high-frequency artifacts and adds another hyper hyperparameter, just like batch normalization and dropout do. We believe that under certain circumstances, PE is not necessary, and a smarter construction of the network architecture together with a smart training method is sufficient to achieve similar results. In this paper, we show that very simple MLPs can quite easily output a frequency when given input of the half-frequency and quarter-frequency. Using this, we design a network architecture in blocks, where the input to each block is the output of the two previous blocks along with the original input. We call this a Fibonacci Network. By training each block on the corresponding frequencies of the signal, we show that Fibonacci Networks can reconstruct arbitrarily high frequencies.

Keywords: neural networks, positional encoding, high frequency intepolation, fully connected

Procedia PDF Downloads 98

Authors: Andrew Thayer, Courtney Rondeau, Paraskevi Papadopoulou

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The Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) gene-editing technologies have generated considerable discussion about the applications and ethics of their use. However, no consistent guidelines for using CRISPR technologies have been developed -nor common legislation passed related to gene editing, especially as it is connected to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the European Union. The recent announcement that the first babies with CRISPR-edited genes were born, along with new studies exploring CRISPR’s applications in treating thalassemia, sickle-cell anemia, cancer, and certain forms of blindness, have demonstrated that the technology is developing faster than the policies needed to control it. Therefore, it can be seen that a reasonable and coherent regulatory framework for the use of CRISPR in human somatic and germline cells is necessary to ensure the ethical use of the technology in future years. The European Union serves as a unique region of interconnected countries without a standard set of regulations or legislation for CRISPR gene-editing. We posit that the EU would serve as a suitable model in comparing the legislations of its affiliated countries in order to understand the practicality and effectiveness of adopting majority-approved practices. Additionally, we present a proposed set of guidelines which could serve as a basis in developing a consistent regulatory framework for the EU countries to implement but also act as a good example for other countries to adhere to. Finally, an additional, multidimensional framework of smart solutions is proposed with which all stakeholders are engaged to become better-informed citizens.

Keywords: CRISPR, ethics, regulatory framework, European legislation

Procedia PDF Downloads 135

Authors: Igor Jerkovic

Abstract:

Biodiversity of flora provides many different nectar sources for the bees. Unifloral honeys possess distinctive flavours, mainly derived from their nectar sources (characteristic volatile organic components (VOCs)). Specific or nonspecific VOCs (chemical markers) could be used for unifloral honey characterisation as addition to the melissopalynologycal analysis. The main honey volatiles belong, in general, to three principal categories: terpenes, norisoprenoids, and benzene derivatives. Some of these substances have been described as characteristics of the floral source, and other compounds, like several alcohols, branched aldehydes, and furan derivatives, may be related to the microbial purity of honey processing and storage conditions. Selection of the extraction method for the honey volatiles profiling should consider that heating of the honey produce different artefacts and therefore conventional methods of VOCs isolation (such as hydrodistillation) cannot be applied for the honey. Two-way approach for the isolation of the honey VOCs was applied using headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and ultrasonic solvent extraction (USE). The extracts were analysed by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS). HS-SPME (with the fibers of different polarity such as polydimethylsiloxane/ divinylbenzene (PDMS/DVB) or divinylbenzene/carboxene/ polydimethylsiloxane (DVB/CAR/PDMS)) enabled isolation of high volatile headspace VOCs of the honey samples. Among them, some characteristic or specific compounds can be found such as 3,4-dihydro-3-oxoedulan (in Centaurea cyanus L. honey) or 1H-indole, methyl anthranilate, and cis-jasmone (in Citrus unshiu Marc. honey). USE with different solvents (mainly dichloromethane or the mixture pentane : diethyl ether 1 : 2 v/v) enabled isolation of less volatile and semi-volatile VOCs of the honey samples. Characteristic compounds from C. unshiu honey extracts were caffeine, 1H-indole, 1,3-dihydro-2H-indol-2-one, methyl anthranilate, and phenylacetonitrile. Sometimes, the selection of solvent sequence was useful for more complete profiling such as sequence I: pentane → diethyl ether or sequence II: pentane → pentane/diethyl ether (1:2, v/v) → dichloromethane). The extracts with diethyl ether contained hydroquinone and 4-hydroxybenzoic acid as the major compounds, while (E)-4-(r-1’,t-2’,c-4’-trihydroxy-2’,6’,6’-trimethylcyclo-hexyl)but-3-en-2-one predominated in dichloromethane extracts of Allium ursinum L. honey. With this two-way approach, it was possible to obtain a more detailed insight into the honey volatile and semi-volatile compounds and to minimize the risks of compound discrimination due to their partial extraction that is of significant importance for the complete honey profiling and identification of the chemical biomarkers that can complement the pollen analysis.

Keywords: honey chemical biomarkers, honey volatile compounds profiling, headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME), ultrasonic solvent extraction (USE)

Procedia PDF Downloads 203

Authors: Ahmad Termimi Ab Ghani, Kojiro Higuchi

Abstract:

In this paper, we present some results of simultaneous infinite games. We mainly work with generalized reachability games and Buechi games. These games are two-player concurrent games where each player chooses simultaneously their moves at each step. Our goal is to give simple expressions of values for each game. Moreover, we are interested in the question of what type of optimal (ε-optimal) strategy exists for both players depending on the type of games. We first show the determinacy (optimal value) and optimal (ε-optimal) strategies in generalized reachability games. We provide a simple expressions of value of this game and prove the existence of memoryless randomized ε-optimal strategy for Player I in any generalized reachability games. We then observe games with more complex objectives, games with Buechi objectives. We present how to compute an ε-optimal strategies and approximate a value of game in some way. Specifically, the results of generalized reachability games are used to show the value of Buechi games can be approximated as values of some generalized reachability games.

Keywords: optimal Strategies, generalized reachability games, Buechi games

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Authors: Tanveer Hussain, Misbah Hussain, Masroor Ellahi Babar, Muhammad Traiq Pervez, Fiaz Hussain, Sana Zahoor, Rashid Saif

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Interleukin 2 (IL-2) is a cytokine which is produced by activated T cells, play important role in immune response against antigen. It act in both autocrine and paracrine manner. It can stimulate B cells and various other phagocytic cells like monocytes, lymphokine-activated killer cells and natural killer cells. Acting in autocrine fashion, IL-2 protein plays a crucial role in proliferation of T cells. IL-2 triggers the release of pro and anti- inflammatory cytokines by activating several pathways. In present study, exon 1 of IL-2 gene of four local Pakistani breeds (Dera Din Panah, Beetal, Nachi and Kamori) from two provinces was amplified by using reported Ovine IL-2 primers, yielding PCR product of 501 bp. The sequencing of all samples was done to identify the polymorphisms in amplified region of IL-2 gene. Analysis of sequencing data resulted in identification of one novel nucleotide substitution (T→A) in amplified non-coding region of IL-2 gene. Comparison of IL-2 gene sequence of all four breeds with other goat breeds showed high similarity in sequence. While phylogenetic analysis of our local breeds with other mammals showed that IL-2 is a variable gene which has undergone many substitutions. This high substitution rate can be due to the decreased or increased changed selective pressure. These rapid changes can also lead to the change in function of immune system. This pioneering study of Pakistani goat breeds urge for further studies on immune system of each targeted breed for fully understanding the functional role of IL-2 in goat immunity.

Keywords: interleukin 2, mutational analysis, phylogeny, goat breeds, Pakistan

Procedia PDF Downloads 611