Adaptation Algorithm and Theory Based on Generalized Discrepancy

We present a new algorithm for domain adaptation improving upon a discrepancy minimization algorithm previously shown to outperform a number of algorithms for this task. Unlike many previous algorithms for domain adaptation, our algorithm does not consist of a fixed reweighting of the losses over the training sample. We show that our algorithm benefits from a solid theoretical foundation and more favorable learning bounds than discrepancy minimization. We present a detailed description of our algorithm and give several efficient solutions for solving its optimization problem. We also report the results of several experiments showing that it outperforms discrepancy minimization

Carcinomes nasopharynges localement avances

Les carcinomes nasopharyngés représentent une entité spécifique différente des cancers de la tête et du cou. L’incidence est plus élevée en Asie du Sud-Est et en Afrique du Nord. Le pronostic reste sombre pour les stades localement avancés (IIB—IVB), plus d’un tiers des cas présenteront une récidive locale et/ou métastatique, la survie globale à cinq ans tous stades confondus est estimée à 50—70 %. L’objectif de ce travail est de préciser les aspects cliniques, diagnostiques, thérapeutiques et pronostiques chez 100 malades porteur de carcinome nasopharyngé localement avancé traités à l’Institut Salah Azaiz (ISA) et de préciser l’impact de la chimiothérapie neoadjuvante (CNA) ainsi que les séquelles thérapeutiques à court et à long terme.Mots clés : carcinome nasopharyngé - chimiothérapie - radiothérapieNasopharyngeal carcinoma represents a specific entity different from cancers of head and neck. The incidence is highest in South- East Asia and North Africa. The prognosis remains poor for locally advanced stages (IIB -IVB), more than one third of cases presented locally recurrent and / or metastatic disease, the overall five-year survival for all stages is estimated at 50-70%. The objective of this study is to clarify the impact of neoadjuvant chemotherapy on long-term survival among 100 patients treated in Institut of Salah Azaiz by neo adjuvant chemotherapy followed by locoregional radiotherapy for locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and identify prognostic factors and clinical long term effect.Key words: nasopharyngeal carcinoma – chemotherapy - radiotherap

Reliable Sensing of Leaks in Pipelines

Leakage is the major factor for unaccounted losses in every pipe network around the world (oil, gas or water). In most cases the deleterious effects associated with the occurrence of leaks may present serious economical and health problems. Therefore, leaks must be quickly detected, located and repaired. Unfortunately, most state of the art leak detection systems have limited applicability, are neither reliable nor robust, while others depend on user experience. In this work we present a new in-pipe leak detection system, PipeGuard. PipeGuard performs autonomous leak detection in pipes and, thus, eliminates the need for user experience. This paper focuses on the detection module and its main characteristics. Detection in based on the presence of a pressure gradient in the neighborhood of the leak. Moreover, the proposed detector can sense leaks at any angle around the circumference of the pipe with only two sensors. We have validated the concepts by building a prototype and evaluated its performance under real conditions in an experimental laboratory setup.Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundatio

A Thioredoxin Domain-Containing Protein Interacts with Pepino mosaic virus Triple Gene Block Protein 1

Pepino mosaic virus (PepMV) is a mechanically-transmitted tomato pathogen of importance worldwide. Interactions between the PepMV coat protein and triple gene block protein (TGBp1) with the host heat shock cognate protein 70 and catalase 1 (CAT1), respectively, have been previously reported by our lab. In this study, a novel tomato interactor (SlTXND9) was shown to bind the PepMV TGBp1 in yeast-two-hybrid screening, in vitro pull-down and bimolecular fluorescent complementation (BiFC) assays. SlTXND9 possesses part of the conserved thioredoxin (TRX) active site sequence (W__PC vs. WCXPC), and TXND9 orthologues cluster within the TRX phylogenetic superfamilyclosesttophosducin-likeprotein-3. InPepMV-infectedandhealthyNicotianabenthamiana plants,NbTXND9mRNAlevelswerecomparable,andexpressionlevelsremainedstableinbothlocal and systemic leaves for 10 days post inoculation (dpi), as was also the case for catalase 1 (CAT1). To localize the TXND9 in plant cells, a polyclonal antiserum was produced. Purified α-SlTXND9 immunoglobulin (IgG) consistently detected a set of three protein bands in the range of 27–35 kDa, in the 1000 and 30,000 g pellets, and the soluble fraction of extracts of healthy and PepMV-infected N. benthamiana leaves, but not in the cell wall. These bands likely consist of the homologous protein NbTXND9 and its post-translationally modified derivatives. On electron microscopy, immuno-gold labellingofultrathinsectionsofPepMV-infectedN.benthamianaleavesusingα-SlTXND9IgGrevealed particle accumulation close to plasmodesmata, suggesting a role in virus movement. Taken together, this study highlights a novel tomato-PepMV protein interaction and provides data on its localization in planta. Currently, studies focusing on the biological function of this interaction during PepMV infection are in progress

Caractéristiques de la croissance et de la production en fruits chez trois variétés de piment (Capsicum annuum L.) sous stress salin

Characteristics of the Growth and Fruits Production of Three Pepper Varieties Capsicum annuum L. under Saline Stress. This work aims to evaluate the salt tolerance of three pepper varieties differing by their precocity: pm797 early variety, beldi semi-early and baklouti late variety. The trials were carried out in pots under glazed greenhouse. The results showed that salinity reduced the growth and production. However, a varietal difference response to salt stress was observed between the studied varieties. Indeed, the varieties beldi and baklouti are characterized by their vigour in absence as in the presence of salt. On the other hand, early variety PM797 is characterized by the stability of production. This is highlighting the utility of early characters in salinity tolerance

Heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of a plate heat exchanger using water based Al2O3 nanofluid for 30° and 60° chevron angles

Nanofluid is a new class of engineering fluid that has good heat transfer characteristics which is essential to increase the heat transfer performance in various engineering applications such as heat exchangers and cooling of electronics. In this study, experiments were conducted to compare the heat transfer performance and pressure drop characteristics in a plate heat exchanger (PHE) for 30° and 60° chevron angles using water based Al2O3 nanofluid at the concentrations from 0 to 0.5 vol.% for different Reynolds numbers. The thermo-physical properties has been determined and presented in this paper. At 0.5 vol% concentration, the maximum heat transfer coefficient, the overall heat transfer coefficient and the heat transfer rate for 60° chevron angle have attained a higher percentage of 15.14%, 7.8% and 15.4%, respectively in comparison with the base fluid. Consequently, when the volume concentration or Reynolds number increases, the heat transfer coefficient and the overall heat transfer coefficient as well as the heat transfer rate of the PHE (Plate Heat Exchangers) increases respectively. Similarly, the pressure drop increases with the volume concentration. 60° chevron angle showed better performance in comparison with 30° chevron angle

L’atteinte nerveuse au cours du syndrome de gougerot - sjögren, a propos d’un cas

Description Les complications neurologiques au cours du syndrome de Gougerot-Sjögren se voient dans 8,5 à 70 % des cas. Les données de la littérature concernant le système nerveux périphérique sont nombreuses et assez concordantes. En revanche les données concernant les manifestations centrales sont beaucoup plus rares et discordantes. Objectifs Décrire les différentes atteintes neurologiques qui peuvent se voir au cours du syndrome de Gougerot- Sjögren. Résultats Les auteurs rapportent l’observation d’une femme de 67 ans qui présentait une hypertrophie de toutes les glandes salivaires associée à une paralysie du facial droit et une hypoesthésie du territoire du trijumeau homolatéral. Les explorations paracliniques comprenant une biopsie labiale et une IRM cérébrale ont permis de conclure en faveur d’un syndrome de Gougerot-Sjögren. La patiente a bénéficié d’un traitement corticoïde par voie générale avec régression totale des atteintes salivaire et nerveuse au bout de 2 mois Conclusion Le syndrome de Gougerot-Sjögren est une pathologie chronique auto-immune qui touche essentiellement les glandes exocrines. Il peut associer aussi une atteinte extra-glandulaire. L’atteinte nerveuse est possible mais rarement vue dans le cadre de ce syndrome (20%). L’atteinte des paires crâniennes est encore plusrare et prédomine surtout sur le trijumeau

A Multi-population Algorithm for Multi-Objective Knapsack problem

Local search algorithms constitute a growing area of interest to approximate the Pareto sets of multi-objective combinatorial problem instances. In this study, we focus on the multi-objective knapsack problem and its optimization thanks to a multi-population based cooperative framework. The proposed approach, Wϵ-CMOLS, uses a multi-objective local search algorithm based on quality indicator (IBMOLS), initially presented by Basseur and Burke in 2007, and integrates it into a cooperative model. The idea is to optimize the overall quality of a Pareto set approximation by evolving several sub-populations in parallel, each population executing a different configuration of IBMOLS. The algorithm uses a weighted version of the epsilon quality indicator by means of different weight vectors. The populations cooperate through sharing a non-dominated archive, which stores the best compromises found during the optimization process, and which is used to re-initialize regularly each sub-population. Wϵ-CMOLS is compared with state-of-the-art algorithms such as IBEA, NSGA-II and SPEA2. Experiments highlight that the use of a cooperative model as well as a weighted indicator to guide the search toward different directions, can lead to interesting results for the multi-objective knapsack problem

Characterization of virgin olive oils obtained from minor Tunisian varieties for their valorization

Several compositional parameters (fatty acids, tocopherols, polar phenols and volatiles) in virgin olive oils from varieties located at the center of Tunisia, namely Baldi, Chemchali, Neb Jmel, Tounsi and Besbessi from Gafsa and Chemchali and Sehli cultivated in Sidi Bouzid, were studied. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study focusing on the chemical composition of virgin olive oils (VOO) from Sidi Bouzid. Significant differences were found between varieties from Sidi Bouzid and Gafsa in monounsaturated saturated fatty acid levels, some volatile compounds and γ-tocopherol amounts. Notably, Tounsi and Baldi VOOs showed the highest six carbon atoms alcohol contents, whereas Neb Jmel VOO revealed the highest aldehyde six carbon atoms content. Fatty acid composition, as well as tocopherol content, showed differences among different VOO. Principal component analysis and hierarchical component analysis on polar phenols, fatty acids, tocopherols and volatiles data evidenced a good discrimination among oils from the different investigated varieties

Computing with and without arbitrary large numbers

In the study of random access machines (RAMs) it has been shown that the availability of an extra input integer, having no special properties other than being sufficiently large, is enough to reduce the computational complexity of some problems. However, this has only been shown so far for specific problems. We provide a characterization of the power of such extra inputs for general problems. To do so, we first correct a classical result by Simon and Szegedy (1992) as well as one by Simon (1981). In the former we show mistakes in the proof and correct these by an entirely new construction, with no great change to the results. In the latter, the original proof direction stands with only minor modifications, but the new results are far stronger than those of Simon (1981). In both cases, the new constructions provide the theoretical tools required to characterize the power of arbitrary large numbers.Comment: 12 pages (main text) + 30 pages (appendices), 1 figure. Extended abstract. The full paper was presented at TAMC 2013. (Reference given is for the paper version, as it appears in the proceedings.