Twitter permeability to financial events: an experiment towards a model for sensing irregularities

There is a general consensus of the good sensing and novelty character- istics of Twitter as an information media for the complex fi nancial market. This paper investigates the permeability of Twitter sphere, the total universe of Twitter users and their habits, towards relevant events in the financial market. Analysis shows that a general purpose social media is permeable to fi nancial-specifi c events and establishes Twitter as a relevant feeder for taking decisions regarding the fi nancial market and event fraudulent activities in that market. However, the provenance of contributions, their diferent levels of credibility and quality and even the purpose or intention behind them should to be considered and carefully contemplated if Twitter is used as a single source for decision taking. With the overall aim of this research, to deploy an architecture for real-time monitoring of irregularities in the financial market, this paper conducts a series of experiments on the level of permeability and the permeable features of Twitter in the event of one of these irregularities. To be precise, Twitter data is collected concerning an event comprising of a specifi c financial action on the 27th January 2017: the announcement about the merge of two companies Tesco PLC and Booker Group PLC, listed in the main market of the London Stock Exchange (LSE), to create the UK's Leading Food Business. The experiment attempts to answer two research questions which aim to characterize the features of Twitter permeability to the fi nancial market. The experimental results con rm that a far-impacting financial event, such as the merger considered, caused apparent disturbances in all the features considered, that is, information volume, content and sentiment as well as geographical provenance. Analysis shows that despite, Twitter not being a specifi c fi nancial forum, it is permeable to financial events

Unsupervised morphological segmentation of tissue compartments in histopathological images

Algorithmic segmentation of histologically relevant regions of tissues in digitized histopathological images is a critical step towards computer-assisted diagnosis and analysis. For example, automatic identification of epithelial and stromal tissues in images is important for spatial localisation and guidance in the analysis and characterisation of tumour micro-environment. Current segmentation approaches are based on supervised methods, which require extensive training data from high quality, manually annotated images. This is often difficult and costly to obtain. This paper presents an alternative data-independent framework based on unsupervised segmentation of oropharyngeal cancer tissue micro-arrays (TMAs). An automated segmentation algorithm based on mathematical morphology is first applied to light microscopy images stained with haematoxylin and eosin. This partitions the image into multiple binary ‘virtual-cells’, each enclosing a potential ‘nucleus’ (dark basins in the haematoxylin absorbance image). Colour and morphology measurements obtained from these virtual-cells as well as their enclosed nuclei are input into an advanced unsupervised learning model for the identification of epithelium and stromal tissues. Here we exploit two Consensus Clustering (CC) algorithms for the unsupervised recognition of tissue compartments, that consider the consensual opinion of a group of individual clustering algorithms. Unlike most unsupervised segmentation analyses, which depend on a single clustering method, the CC learning models allow for more robust and stable detection of tissue regions. The proposed framework performance has been evaluated on fifty-five hand-annotated tissue images of oropharyngeal tissues. Qualitative and quantitative results of the proposed segmentation algorithm compare favourably with eight popular tissue segmentation strategies. Furthermore, the unsupervised results obtained here outperform those obtained with individual clustering algorithms

Comparison of Organic Matter Removal from Synthetic and Real Wastewater in a Laboratory-Scale Soil Aquifer Treatment System

In this study, the performance of a laboratory-scale soil aquifer treatment (SAT) system was investigated and treatability studies were done in order to determine organic matter removal from synthetic wastewater (SWW) and secondary treated real wastewater (RWW). The SAT system was constructed in laboratory conditions and treatability studies were conducted using soil columns, which were packed with silt loam soil samples. Each column was equipped with a series of ports at multiple depths from soil surface (10, 20, 30, 50, and 75 cm) to collect water samples. Two operational cycles were applied to represent the influence of different wetting and drying periods during wastewater application. Dissolved oxygen, chemical oxygen demand (COD), and total organic carbon (TOC) concentrations were measured in all samples. Average removal values of 61.4 % (COD) and 68.2 % (TOC) were achieved by in SWW and of 58.3 % (COD) and 51.1 % (TOC) in RWW in 55 and 25 weeks of operation, respectively. These results indicated that the performance of the columns operated with SWW was better than the performance of the columns operated with RWW. In essence, the easily biodegradable portion of organic matter was quickly consumed by microorganisms in the first 10 cm of the columns where oxygen levels peaked. Complex organic compounds that are likely to be found in RWW could thus be removed when longer residence times were achieved through the columns. When the removal performances achieved with different operating cycles were compared for each wastewater, it could be seen that longer wetting and longer drying periods yielded higher removal efficiencies in RWW and vice versa in SWW

Fate of Nutrients in Secondary Treated Municipal Wastewater during Percolation through the Soil Media

The fate of nutrients (phosphorous and nitrogen species) was investigated in secondary treated municipal wastewater (STMWW) during percolation through soil media by using an experimental set-up that consists of multiple soil columns. The columns were packed with silt loam soil samples and were operated under two different wetting and drying cycles to represent the typical operational conditions in a soil aquifer treatment (SAT) system. Dissolved oxygen, oxidation-reduction potential, ammonium nitrogen, nitrite nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen, total nitrogen, and phosphate phosphorus concentrations were measured in samples collected from different sampling ports along the columns. Average removal values of 62.8, 67.1, and 97.1% were achieved over 75cm of effective soil depth over 25 weeks of operation for ammonium nitrogen, total nitrogen and phosphate phosphorus, respectively. The removal performance of nutrients typically increased by soil depth and no decrease in removal performance was observed up to end of the study. Consequently, SAT system can be considered to be an effective and low cost advanced treatment method for polishing residual nutrients in a STMWW

Effects of Different Transport Temperatures on in vitro Development of Queen Oocytes

Today, many species, especially feline are endangered. For this, domestic cats used as a model for in vitro culture studies. So, many investigators have problems transporting ovaries to their laboratories. In this study effects of different transport temperatures on in vitro maturation of feline oocytes were investigated. Ovaries were collected from 12 ovariectomised queens of 2-3 years old, four of which were at oestrus and eight at anoestrus. One ovary of each pair was brought to the laboratory in PBS at 4 degrees C and other one at 37 degrees C. Two main groups as oestrus and anoestrus were established and each were divided into further 2 subgroups as 4 and 37 degrees C. Oocytes were collected in TCM-medium and matured for 24 h under 5% CO2 at 38.5 degrees C, Matured oocytes were fertilized with fresh semen at a final concentration 1 x 10(6) mL(-1) in Sperm-Talp medium under 5% CO2 for 18-24 h. After removing cumulus oophorus cells and zygotes were divided into groups and in vitro cultured for 72 h in 100 mu L SOF medium under 5% CO2, 5% O-2 and 90% N-2 gas mixture. At the 48th h of incubation, the best cleavage was 44.4% (8/18) at 37 degrees C oestrus group and the lowest was 14% (7/50) in the oestrus group at 4 degrees C. These rates were 22.72% (15/66) and 28.57% (8/28), respectively for the anoestrus group. At the 72 h of culture in 37 degrees C oestrus group 7 embryos stayed at 4-8 blastomere stage and 1 embryo reached 16-32 blastomere stage. This result was significant when compared to the other groups (p<0.001). In 4 degrees C anoestrus group only 5 embryos have reached 4-8 blastomere and no significant difference among the results was observed. It is concluded that cat ovaries oestrus are better transported at 37 degrees C while anoestrus ovaries could be carried at 4 degrees C