Attribute selection in hedonic pricing modeling applied to the Portuguese urban housing market

One of the challenges associated with studying the housing market is related to the need to handle a high amount of variables. In this context, data mining techniques, and more specifically, feature selection methods allow the selection of relevant variables efficiently. Results from the application of eight different methodologies for feature selection with a real dataset on the urban housing market of Aveiro and Ílhavo municipalities show that we can build hedonic models with an acceptable explanatory power of housing prices while considerable reducing their complexity.publishe

Atypical presentation and percutaneous repair of ascending aortic pseudoaneurysm: a case report

Pseudoaneurisma aòrtic; Tancament percutani; SíncopePseudoaneurisma aórtico; Cierre percutáneo; SíncopeAortic pseudoaneurysm; Percutaneous closure; SyncopeBackground Ascending aortic pseudoaneurysms (AAPs) are an unusual complication of cardiac or aortic surgery and are associated with a high risk of complications and mortality. Guidelines recommend surgical repair. There is few data concerning percutaneous occlusion of AAP. We present a case of syncope due to vascular and heart chamber compression by a large post-surgical AAP that was filled through a focal leak. Ascending aortic pseudoaneurysm was successfully occluded percutaneously. Case summary A 66-year-old man with a mechanical aortic prosthesis and a Dacron tube in the ascending aorta presented with syncope due to compression of the right atrium and superior vena cava by a large peritube collection. A computed tomography angiography (CTA) showed a large AAP that was filled through a small focal dehiscence of the tube proximal suture. Patient was dismissed for surgery due to high surgical risk. Then, AAP was successfully occluded percutaneously via a 6-French radial access and local anaesthesia. Discussion In patients with syncope and previous cardiac surgery, aortic complications should be ruled out. Although transthoracic echocardiography may be useful, CTA is the recommended diagnostic test for ruling out post-surgical AAP and allows the characterization of the number, localization, and size of the leaks. In selected patients with high surgical risk and favourable anatomic characteristics, a percutaneous closure could be indicated

Identification of mycotoxins by UHPLC–QTOF MS in airborne fungi and fungi isolated from industrial paper and antique documents from the Archive of Bogotá

Mold deterioration of historical documents in archives and libraries is a frequent and complex phenomenon that may have important economic and cultural consequences. In addition, exposure to toxic fungal metabolites might produce health problems. In this work, samples of broths of fungal species isolated from the documentary material and from indoor environmental samples of the Archive of Bogotá have been analyzed to investigate the presence of mycotoxins. High resolution mass spectrometry made possible to search for a large number of mycotoxins, even without reference standards available at the laboratory. For this purpose, a screening strategy based on ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC–QTOF MS) under MSE mode was applied. A customized home-made database containing elemental composition for around 600 mycotoxins was compiled. The presence of the (de)protonated molecule measured at its accurate mass was evaluated in the samples. When a peak was detected, collision induced dissociation fragments and characteristic isotopic ions were also evaluated and used for tentative identification, based on structure compatibility and comparison with literature data (if existing). Up to 44 mycotoxins were tentatively identified by UHPLC–QTOF MS. 34 of these tentative compounds were confirmed by subsequent analysis using a targeted LC–MS/MS method, supporting the strong potential of QTOF MS for identification/elucidation purposes. The presence of mycotoxins in these samples might help to reinforce safety measures for researchers and staff who work on reception, restoration and conservation of archival material, not only at the Archive of Bogotá but worldwide.Generalitat Valenciana (research group of excellence PROMETEO II/2014/023; ISIC 2012/016), from Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá (Special Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology No. 2215100-153-2013) and from Universidad Antonio Nariño Grant 2010246

Watermarking strategies for IP protection of micro-processor cores

L. Parrilla, E. Castillo, U. Meyer-Bäse, A. García, D. González, E. Todorovich, E. Boemo, A. Lloris, "Watermarking strategies for IP protection of micro-processor cores", Proceedings of SPIE 7703, Independent Component Analyses, Wavelets, Neural Networks, Biosystems, and Nanoengineering VIII, 77030L (2010). Copyright 2010 Society of Photo‑Optical Instrumentation Engineers. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.Reuse-based design has emerged as one of the most important methodologies for integrated circuit design, with reusable Intellectual Property (IP) cores enabling the optimization of company resources due to reduced development time and costs. This is of special interest in the Field-Programmable Logic (FPL) domain, which mainly relies on automatic synthesis tools. However, this design methodology has brought to light the intellectual property protection (IPP) of those modules, with most forms of protection in the EDA industry being difficult to translate to this domain. However, IP core watermarking has emerged as a tool for IP core protection. Although watermarks may be inserted at different levels of the design flow, watermarking Hardware Description Language (HDL) descriptions has been proved to be a robust and secure option. In this paper, a new framework for the protection of μP cores is presented. The protection scheme is derived from the IPP@HDL procedure and it has been adapted to the singularities of μP cores, overcoming the problems for the digital signature extraction in such systems. Additionally, the feature of hardware activation has been introduced, allowing the distribution of μP cores in a "demo" mode and a later activation that can be easily performed by the customer executing a simple program. Application examples show that the additional hardware introduced for protection and/or activation has no effect over the performance, and showing an assumable area increase.This work was partially funded by project TEC2007-68074-C02-01/MIC (Plan Nacional I+D+I, Spain). CAD tools and supporting material were provided by Altera Corp. trough University Program agreements. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors

Chemical composition and antibacterial and antioxidant activity of a citrus essential oil and its fractions

ABSTRACT Essential oils (EOs) from Citrus are the main by-product of Citrus-processing industries. In addition to food/beverage and cosmetic applications, citrus EOs could also potentially be used as an alternative to antibiotics in food-producing animals. A commercial citrus EO—Brazilian Orange Terpenes (BOT)—was fractionated by vacuum fractional distillation to separate BOT into various fractions: F1, F2, F3, and F4. Next, the chemical composition and biological activities of BOT and its fractions were characterized. Results showed the three first fractions had a high relative amount of limonene (≥10.86), even higher than the whole BOT. Conversely, F4 presented a larger relative amount of BOT’s minor compounds (carvone, cis-carveol, trans-carveol, cis-p-Mentha-2,8-dien-1-ol, and trans-p-Mentha-2,8-dien-1-ol) and a very low relative amount of limonene (0.08–0.13). Antibacterial activity results showed F4 was the only fraction exhibiting this activity, which was selective and higher activity on a pathogenic bacterium (E. coli) than on a beneficial bacterium (Lactobacillus sp.). However, F4 activity was lower than BOT. Similarly, F4 displayed the highest antioxidant activity among fractions (equivalent to BOT). These results indicated that probably those minor compounds that detected in F4 would be more involved in conferring the biological activities for this fraction and consequently for the whole BOT, instead of the major compound, limonene, playing this role exclusively

The Schr\"oder functional equation and its relation to the invariant measures of chaotic maps

The aim of this paper is to show that the invariant measure for a class of one dimensional chaotic maps, $T(x)$, is an extended solution of the Schr\"oder functional equation, $q(T(x))=\lambda q(x)$, induced by them. Hence, we give an unified treatment of a collection of exactly solved examples worked out in the current literature. In particular, we show that these examples belongs to a class of functions introduced by Mira, (see text). Moreover, as a new example, we compute the invariant densities for a class of rational maps having the Weierstrass $\wp$ functions as an invariant one. Also, we study the relation between that equation and the well known Frobenius-Perron and Koopman's operators.Comment: 9 page

Pathogenicity island cag, vacA and IS605 genotypes in Mexican strains of Helicobacter pylori associated with peptic ulcers

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Helicobacter pylori </it>is associated with chronic gastritis, peptic ulcers, and gastric cancer. Two major virulence factors of <it>H. pylori </it>have been described: the pathogenicity island <it>cag </it>(<it>cag </it>PAI) and the vacuolating cytotoxin gene (<it>vacA</it>). Virtually all strains have a copy of <it>vacA</it>, but its genotype varies. The <it>cag </it>PAI is a region of 32 genes in which the insertion of IS<it>605 </it>elements in its middle region has been associated with partial or total deletions of it that have generated strains with varying virulence. Accordingly, the aim of this work was to determine the <it>cag </it>PAI integrity<it>, vacA </it>genotype and IS<it>605 </it>status in groups of isolates from Mexican patients with non-peptic ulcers (NPU), non-bleeding peptic ulcers (NBPU), and bleeding peptic ulcers (BPU).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The <it>cag </it>PAI integrity was performed by detection of eleven targeted genes along this locus using dot blot hybridization and PCR assays. The <it>vacA </it>allelic, <it>cag </it>PAI genotype 1 and IS<it>605 </it>status were determined by PCR analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Groups of 16-17 isolates (n = 50) from two patients with NPU, NBPU, and BPU, respectively, were studied. 90% (45/50) of the isolates harbored a complete <it>cag </it>PAI. Three BPU isolates lacked the <it>cag </it>PAI, and two of the NBPU had an incomplete <it>cag </it>PAI: the first isolate was negative for three of its genes, including deletion of the <it>cagA </it>gene, whereas the second did not have the <it>cagM </it>gene. Most of the strains (76%) had the <it>vacA </it>s1b/m1 genotype; meanwhile the IS<it>605 </it>was not present within the <it>cag </it>PAI of any strain but was detected elsewhere in the genome of 8% (4/50).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The patients had highly virulent strains since the most of them possessed a complete <it>cag </it>PAI and had a <it>vacA </it>s1b/m1 genotype. All the isolates presented the <it>cag </it>PAI without any IS<it>605 </it>insertion (genotype 1). Combined <it>vacA </it>genotypes showed that 1 NPU, 2 NBPU, and 1 BPU patients (66.6%) had a mixed infection; coexistence of <it>H. pylori </it>strains with different <it>cag </it>PAI status was observed in 1 NBPU and 2 BPU (50%) of the patients, but only two of these patients (NBPU and BPU) had different <it>vacA </it>genotypes.</p

Basal cell carcinoma. Case presentation

Basal cell carcinoma, tumor which derives from the cells that constitute the epidermis basal layer, is the most frequent type of skin cancer and affects generally aged people. It is presented a case of a 90 year old patient, with previous history of cutaneous carcinoma on the left shoulder, presented to the opthalmology consultation complaining of volume increasing, irritation and redness in the lower eyelid of the right eye. On the physical examination it was found a lesion on the lower eyelid close the internal edge, elevated, with a diameter of 6-7 mm, ulcerated to the inside. The hist-pathological  diagnosis informed a sebaceous baso-cellular carcinoma, a differentiation of a very low frequency that motivated the presentation of this report

Effect of fruit position in the bananas bunch at osmotic dehydration and frying process

Se estudió el efecto de la posición de las manos en el racimo de plátano Dominico Hartón en madurez verde, sobre sus propiedades físicas medidas con y sin cáscara. Se realizaron procesos de deshidratación osmótica, por fritura y combinación de ósmosis + fritura para comparar los contenidos de humedad y de aceite en las secciones de los dedos (proximal, central y distal), como en las tres se comparó el efecto del contenido de humedad del plátano al inicio del proceso sobre las características de calidad de los productos obtenidos (contenido de humedad y de aceite) para cada proceso. En la deshidratación osmótica se trabajó con una solución de sacarosa de 60 ºBrix y 2.6 % de NaCl, por 10 minutos y la fritura se realizó en oleína de palma a 165 ºC por 150 s. La posición de la mano no tuvo efecto sobre las características físicas de los frutos, aunque sí sobre el contenido de humedad inicial del plátano y en el contenido de aceite del producto obtenido en fritura. Las secciones del plátano no presentaron efecto significativo sobre el contenido de aceite y de humedad de cada proceso