Compact Printed CPW-fed UWB antenna with SRR and Quarter wavelength slot with dual band-notched characteristic

Volume 2 Issue 3 (March 2014

Travel Package Recommendation

Location Based SocialNetworks (LBSN) benefit the users by allowing them to share their locations and life moments with their friends. The users can also review the locations they have visited. Classical recommender systems provide users a ranked list of single items. This is not suitable for applications like trip planning,where the recommendations should contain multiple items in an appropriate sequence. The problem of generating such recommendations is challenging due to various critical aspects, which includes user interest, budget constraints and high sparsity in the available data used to solve the problem. In this paper, we propose a graph based approach to recommend a set of personalized travel packages. Each recommended package comprises of a sequence of multiple Point of Interests (POIs). Given the current location and spatio-temporal constraints, our goal is to recommend a package which satisfies the constraints. This approach utilizes the data collected fromLBSNs to learn user preferences and also models the location popularity

Impact of lesson design on teacher and student mathematical questions

How does the design of lessons impact the types of questions teachers and students ask during enacted high school mathematics lessons? In this study, we present data suggesting that lessons designed with the mathematical story framework in order to elicit a specific aesthetic response (“MCLEs”) have a positive influence on the types of teacher and student questions asked during the lesson. Our findings suggest that when teachers plan and enact lessons with the mathematical story framework, teachers and students are more likely to ask questions that explore mathematical relationships and focus on meaning-making. In addition, teachers are less likely to ask short recall or procedural questions in MCLEs. These findings point to the role of lesson design in the quality of questions asked by teachers and students.Accepted manuscrip

Soil and Plant Analysis - A Strategic Tool to Diagnose Micronutrient Imbalance in Lime and Sapota Orchard in Tablelands of Chambal Ravine Region of India

Micronutrient imbalance in lime and sapota fruit crops result in unstable fruit yield, fruit shedding and degrade quality of the produce. A study was therefore conducted to evaluate micronutrient statusoflime and sapota orchard by analysing soil and plant samples. Soil samples were collected from surface (0-15cm) and sub-surface (15-30cm) depth representing whole orchard. At the same time, plant samples including 35-40 each for leaves and petiole samples each from lime and sapota field was also collected. Available micronutrients from soil samples were extracted using diethylenetriaminepenta acetic acid (DTPA) and it was in the order of manganese (Mn)> iron (Fe)> zinc (Zn)> copper (Cu) in both lime and sapota plantations. DTPA- extractable Zn and Cu showed low status, marginal status of Fe and sufficient level of Mn in soils of sapota plantations. In plant analysis, high concentration of Cu (869 mg kg-1) and Zn (411mg kg-1) was observed in lime leaves; however, in sapota crop Cu and Zn content was 8.25mg kg-1 and 16.7mg kg- 1 respectively. Similarly, Fe and Mn content of lime leaves was 197 and 43 mg kg-1 which was slightly higher than sapota leaves that recorded 128 and 49mg kg-1 of Fe and Zn respectively. In sapota plants, higher Mn and Cu concentration in leaf resulted in Zn deficiency symptoms such as shortened internodes or rosette disorders of sapota plants. Thus, correcting micronutrient deficiency is pre-requisite for qualitative and quantitative fruit production in tablelands of India

Dominance-Based Multiobjective Simulated Annealing

Copyright © 2008 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Simulated annealing is a provably convergent optimizer for single-objective problems. Previously proposed multiobjective extensions have mostly taken the form of a single-objective simulated annealer optimizing a composite function of the objectives. We propose a multiobjective simulated annealer utilizing the relative dominance of a solution as the system energy for optimization, eliminating problems associated with composite objective functions. We also propose a method for choosing perturbation scalings promoting search both towards and across the Pareto front. We illustrate the simulated annealer's performance on a suite of standard test problems and provide comparisons with another multiobjective simulated annealer and the NSGA-II genetic algorithm. The new simulated annealer is shown to promote rapid convergence to the true Pareto front with a good coverage of solutions across it comparing favorably with the other algorithms. An application of the simulated annealer to an industrial problem, the optimization of a code-division-multiple access (CDMA) mobile telecommunications network's air interface, is presented and the simulated annealer is shown to generate nondominated solutions with an even and dense coverage that outperforms single objective genetic algorithm optimizers

Cytoskeletal interactions at the nuclear envelope mediated by Nesprins

Nesprin-1 is a giant tail-anchored nuclear envelope protein composed of an N-terminal F-actin binding domain, a long linker region formed by multiple spectrin repeats and a C-terminal transmembrane domain. Based on this structure, it connects the nucleus to the actin cytoskeleton. Earlier reports had shown that Nesprin-1 binds to nuclear envelope proteins emerin and lamin through C-terminal spectrin repeats. These repeats can also self-associate. We focus on the N-terminal Nesprin-1 sequences and show that they interact with Nesprin-3, a further member of the Nesprin family, which connects the nucleus to the intermediate filament network. We show that upon ectopic expression of Nesprin-3 in COS7 cells, which are nearly devoid of Nesprin-3 in vitro, vimentin filaments are recruited to the nucleus and provide evidence for an F-actin interaction of Nesprin-3 in vitro. We propose that Nesprins through interactions amongst themselves and amongst the various Nesprins form a network around the nucleus and connect the nucleus to several cytoskeletal networks of the cell

Immunosuppressive drugs in renal transplantation

A kidney transplant, sometimes known as a renal transplant, is the treatment of choice for kidney failure at end stage renal disease (ESRD). The renal transplant surgery is followed by a lifetime course of immunosuppressive agents, divided into initial induction phase and later maintenance phase. It is seen that the risk of acute rejection is maximum in the initial months after transplantation (induction phase) and then reduces later (maintenance phase). In induction phase there is use of high-intensity immunosuppression immediately after transplantation, when the risk of rejection is maximum and then the dose reduced for long- term therapy. The main challenge in the renal transplantation community is long- term transplant survival. Long-term graft loss is mainly due to acute and chronic graft rejection, and also due to complications of immunosuppressive therapy. Currently, there is triple therapy as conventional immunosuppressive protocol: a calcineurin inhibitor, an antimetabolite agent, and a corticosteroid. The main aim of development of new immunosuppressive agents is not only improvement of short- term outcomes but also to increase the long- term graft survival by less nephrotoxicity, and minimal side-effects

Neighborhood Socioeconomic Deprivation and Mortality: NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study

Residing in deprived areas may increase risk of mortality beyond that explained by a person's own SES-related factors and lifestyle. The aim of this study was to examine the relation between neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation and all-cause, cancer- and cardiovascular disease (CVD)-specific mortality for men and women after accounting for education and other important person-level risk factors.In the longitudinal NIH-AARP Study, we analyzed data from healthy participants, ages 50-71 years at study baseline (1995-1996). Deaths (n = 33831) were identified through December 2005. Information on census tracts was obtained from the 2000 US Census. Cox models estimated hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for quintiles of neighborhood deprivation.Participants in the highest quintile of deprivation had elevated risks for overall mortality (HR(men) = 1.17, 95% CI: 1.10, 1.24; HR(women) = 1.13, 95% CI: 1.05, 1.22) and marginally increased risk for cancer deaths (HR(men) = 1.09, 95% CI: 1.00, 1.20; HR(women) = 1.09, 95% CI: 0.99, 1.22). CVD mortality associations appeared stronger in men (HR = 1.33, 95% CI: 1.19, 1.49) than women (HR = 1.18, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.38). There was no evidence of an effect modification by education.Higher neighborhood deprivation was associated with modest increases in all-cause, cancer- and CVD-mortality after accounting for many established risk factors

Narrative characteristics of captivating secondary mathematics lessons

Why do some mathematics lessons captivate high school students and others not? This study explores this question by comparing how the content unfolds in the lessons that students rated highest with respect to their aesthetic affordances (e.g., using terms like “intriguing,” “surprising”) with those the same students rated lowest with respect to their aesthetic affordances (e.g., “just ok,” “dull”). Using a framework that interprets the unfolding content across a lesson as a mathematical story, we examine how some lessons can provoke curiosity or enable surprise. We identify eight characteristics that distinguish captivating lessons and show how some, such as the average number of questions under consideration at any point in the lesson, are strongly related to student aesthetic experiences. In addition, the lessons that students described as more interesting included more instances of misdirection, such as when students’ false assumptions provide opportunities for surprising results. These findings point to the characteristics of future lesson designs that could enable more students to experience curiosity and wonder in secondary mathematics classrooms.https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10649-022-10184-y.pdf?pdf=corePublished versio

The aesthetic effects of a new lesson design approach: mathematical stories

Research suggests that high school students often have negative experiences with mathematics. To address this challenge, this paper shares findings of a design-based research project in which researchers and teachers developed and used a narrative approach to lesson planning in order to design lesson experiences that provide opportunities for high school students to become captivated with mathematical content (“CMLs”). The goal of this approach is to provide students positive aesthetic opportunities, such as inspiring student curiosity, while maintaining cognitive demand and coherence. Overall, students reported more positive, varied aesthetic experiences (e.g., suspense, surprise) in CMLs than in other lessons with the same teacher and students. These findings provide evidence that designing lessons as mathematical stories shows promise and can offer students more positive aesthetic experiences in mathematics.https://doi-org.ezproxy.bu.edu/10.1080/00220671.2023.2182264Published versio