Generalized Approximate Message-Passing Decoder for Universal Sparse Superposition Codes

Sparse superposition (SS) codes were originally proposed as a capacity-achieving communication scheme over the additive white Gaussian noise channel (AWGNC) [1]. Very recently, it was discovered that these codes are universal, in the sense that they achieve capacity over any memoryless channel under generalized approximate message-passing (GAMP) decoding [2], although this decoder has never been stated for SS codes. In this contribution we introduce the GAMP decoder for SS codes, we confirm empirically the universality of this communication scheme through its study on various channels and we provide the main analysis tools: state evolution and potential. We also compare the performance of GAMP with the Bayes-optimal MMSE decoder. We empirically illustrate that despite the presence of a phase transition preventing GAMP to reach the optimal performance, spatial coupling allows to boost the performance that eventually tends to capacity in a proper limit. We also prove that, in contrast with the AWGNC case, SS codes for binary input channels have a vanishing error floor in the limit of large codewords. Moreover, the performance of Hadamard-based encoders is assessed for practical implementations

Investigating a novel function for phosphoserine aminotransferase 1 (PSAT1) in epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mediated lung tumorigenesis.

Phosphoserine aminotransferase 1 (PSAT1) catalyzes the second enzymatic step within the serine synthetic pathway (SSP) and its expression is elevated in numerous human cancers, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutant NSCLC is characterized by activating mutations within its tyrosine kinase domain and accounts for 17% of lung adenocarcinomas. Although elevated SSP activity has been observed in EGFR-mutant lung cancer cells, the involvement of PSAT1 in EGFR-mediated oncogenesis is still unclear. Here, we explore a putative non-canonical function for PSAT1 using biochemical approaches to elucidate unknown interacting proteins and genomic RNA-seq profiling to identify cellular processes impacted by PSAT1. We further determined the cellular phenotypes affected by PSAT1 loss, which were verified by experimental rescue studies, including metabolite supplementation and restoration of protein expression/localization. Initially, we identified PKM2 as a novel PSAT1 associating protein. Although PSAT1 selectively induced the pyruvate kinase (PK) activity of recombinant PKM2, its loss in NSCLC cells did not alter cellular PK activity or expression of PKM2. However, fractionation studies revealed that PSAT1 localized to the nucleus and was required for EGFR-mediated nuclear PKM2 translocation. Phenotypically, PSAT1 loss led to a defect in EGFR-activated cell motility, which was partially restored by a nuclear expression of an acetyl-mimetic PKM2 mutant, but not wild-type vi PKM2 or metabolite supplementation. To get insight into cellular mechanisms downstream of PSAT1 activity, we conducted RNA-seq profiling. Consistent with the reported function of PSAT1, E2F targets and nucleotide metabolism genes were decreased upon PSAT1 silencing. Accordingly, the anchorage-independent growth was impacted by PSAT1 silencing and rescued by metabolite supplementation, but not by nuclear PKM2 expression. The correlation between decreased expression of actin-related genes and F-actin formation upon PSAT1 silencing suggested a role for PSAT1 in actin cytoskeleton rearrangements. Furthermore, identified PSAT1-associated gene signatures were predictive towards survival outcomes in EGFR-mutant NSCLC. Together, our data suggest multiple roles for PSAT1 in promoting EGFR-mutant NSCLC involving not only canonical SSP activity but also a non-canonical nuclear function through mediating protein localization. These findings have laid the foundation for future studies to fully define PSAT1’s response under EGFR-activation

Effect of various carbon and nitrogen sources on cellulose synthesis by Acetobacter lovaniensis HBB5

The effect of various carbon and nitrogen sources on cellulose production by Acetobacter lovaniensis HBB5 was examined. In this study, glucose, fructose, sucrose and ethanol as carbon source and yeast extract, casein hydrolysate and ammonium sulphate as nitrogen source were used. Among the carbon sources, glucose gave the highest yield, followed by fructose, sucrose and ethanol. Besides, among the nitrogen sources, yeast extract gave the highest yield, followed by casein hydrolysate and ammonium sulphate. In Hestrin-Schramm (HS) medium that contained 2% (w/v) glucose and 0.5% yeast extract, bacterial cellulose production was 0.040 g/l (dry weight) after 7 days. Morphological view of A. lovaniensis HBB5 strain and the bundle structure of cellulose which were produced at optimum conditions were monitored by scanning electron microscopy. From TLC analysis, glucose was found as the main content of the bacterial cellulose monosaccharide. Moreover, the chemical structure of the bacterial cellulose was examined by FT-IR and NMR spectrophotometers. FT-IR and NMR spectrophotometry revealed that, all the bacterial cellulose samples were highly crystalline and were of cellulose type I.Key words: Acetobacter, cellulose, production, characterization

Difficult patients from the perspective of healthcare workers: a study at a public hospital

Background: The purpose of the study is to identify the frequency of encounters with difficult patients, the level of patient difficulty and the demographic characteristics of difficult patients from the perception of healthcare workers.Methods: The data have been obtained from the health workers who are employed at a public hospital in the city of Ankara and are in interaction with patients. The data have been obtained with the “difficult patient and healthcare personnel interaction survey”.Results: It has been determined that approximately 2 out of every 10 patients (=2.11) which the healthcare workers encounter during the day are difficult patients and the level of difficulty of these patients is low (=3.62). It has been found that there is a medium level, positive and significant relationship between patient difficulty and seductive behavior and that seductive behavior has a significant effect on patient difficulty. It has been found that there is a medium level, positive and significant relationship between the discomfort experienced by the personnel and seductive behavior and that seductive behavior has a significant effect on the discomfort experienced by the personnel.  Conclusions: As a result, it can be seen that nearly a fifth of all patients are perceived as difficult by healthcare workers. It is believed that healthcare workers should be informed about the characteristics of difficult patients and the aspects which should be taken into consideration while interacting with these patients and thereby more effective form of communication will be established at medical institutions.

Developing urban transport in Turkey with much higher dependence on walking and cycling

A review of previous sustainable transportation scenarios has revealed that each key change usually did not represent an aspirational urban mode of transportation that was interconnected through underlying systemic relationships. Development of a framework that facilitates a set of quality criteria would, therefore, represent a significant advance in the evaluation and design of a sustainable vision. In that regard, this thesis presents a methodological framework, which inductively arrives at a systematic mechanism for developing sustainable transportation scenarios. It was determined that two essential steps needed to be taken to make this vision a reality. First, it was reasoned that convening with different users and professionals from various disciplines to investigate the reliability of this idea was the best approach. Second, the policies that need to be designed from the present to 2035 by the central and local administrations to achieve specific goals were discussed and evaluated by national and local decision makers. Overall, the conclusion of the thesis indicates that the content of our aspirational based proposal was credible and effective. Research approach provided an opportunity for several creative choices and alternatives to be determined by thoroughly addressing our research objectives. Future areas of research were also identified and described

Assistive Teaching of Motor Control Tasks to Humans

Recent works on shared autonomy and assistive-AI technologies, such as assistive robot teleoperation, seek to model and help human users with limited ability in a fixed task. However, these approaches often fail to account for humans' ability to adapt and eventually learn how to execute a control task themselves. Furthermore, in applications where it may be desirable for a human to intervene, these methods may inhibit their ability to learn how to succeed with full self-control. In this paper, we focus on the problem of assistive teaching of motor control tasks such as parking a car or landing an aircraft. Despite their ubiquitous role in humans' daily activities and occupations, motor tasks are rarely taught in a uniform way due to their high complexity and variance. We propose an AI-assisted teaching algorithm that leverages skill discovery methods from reinforcement learning (RL) to (i) break down any motor control task into teachable skills, (ii) construct novel drill sequences, and (iii) individualize curricula to students with different capabilities. Through an extensive mix of synthetic and user studies on two motor control tasks -- parking a car with a joystick and writing characters from the Balinese alphabet -- we show that assisted teaching with skills improves student performance by around 40% compared to practicing full trajectories without skills, and practicing with individualized drills can result in up to 25% further improvement. Our source code is available at https://github.com/Stanford-ILIAD/teachingComment: 22 pages, 14 figures, NeurIPS 202

Unsymmetrically substituted imidazolium salts: synthesis, characterization and antimicrobial activity

Unsymmetrically substituted imidazolium salts were synthesized and characterized using 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR. The antimicrobial activities of the salts were evaluated using the agar-well diffusion method against 14 bacteria and five yeasts. The minimal inhibitory concentrations (MIC) against seven bacteria and one yeast were also determined. Among the test compounds applied, 1, 2, 3, 6 and 11 showed activities against Micrococcus luteus ATCC 9341, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, Staphylococcus epidermidis ATCC 12228, Bacilllus cereus ATCC 11778, Bacillus subtilis ATCC 6633, Bacillus thuringiensis, Listeria monocytogenes ATCC 19112 and Candida trophicalis. However, compounds 1, 2 and 3 showed the highest antimicrobial activities against Micrococcus luteus ATCC 9341, Stapylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, Staphylococcus epidermidis ATCC 12228, Bacilllus cereus ATCC 11778 and Bacillus subtilis ATCC 6633 with inhibition zones of 14-20 mm. In addition, compound 6 have only demonstrated activities against Candida trophicalis while compounds 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 14 had no effect on test microorganisms