Deconstructing Simulated Annealing

Recent advances in mobile information and self-learning information offer a viable alternative to interrupts. Here, we disprove the refinement of the producer-consumer problem, demonstrates the practical importance of operating systems. We verify that the UNIVAC computer and simulated annealing [14] can collaborate to answer this quagmire

Novel single nucleotide polymorphism-based assay for genotyping Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis

Typing of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis strains presents a challenge, since they are genetically monomorphic and traditional molecular techniques have limited discriminatory power. The recent advances and availability of whole-genome sequencing have extended possibilities for the characterization of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis, and whole-genome sequencing can provide a phylogenetic context to facilitate global epidemiology studies. In this study, we developed a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) assay based on PCR and restriction enzyme digestion or sequencing of the amplified product. The SNP analysis was performed using genome sequence data from 133 Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis isolates with different genotypes from 8 different host species and 17 distinct geographic regions around the world. A total of 28,402 SNPs were identified among all of the isolates. The minimum number of SNPs required to distinguish between all of the 133 genomes was 93 and between only the type C isolates was 41. To reduce the number of SNPs and PCRs required, we adopted an approach based on sequential detection of SNPs and a decision tree. By the analysis of 14 SNPs Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis isolates can be characterized within 14 phylogenetic groups with a higher discriminatory power than mycobacterial interspersed repetitive unit–variable number tandem repeat assay and other typing methods. Continuous updating of genome sequences is needed in order to better characterize new phylogenetic groups and SNP profiles. The novel SNP assay is a discriminative, simple, reproducible method and requires only basic laboratory equipment for the large-scale global typing of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis isolates

Differential Impact of Recent Medicaid Expansions by Race and Ethnicity

Objective. Between 1989 and 1995, expansions in Medicaid eligibility provided publicly financed health insurance to an additional 7 million poor and near-poor children. It is not known whether these expansions affected children’s insurance coverage, use of health care services, or health status differently, depending on their race/ethnicity. The objective of this study was to examine, by race/ethnicity, the impact of the recent Medicaid expansions on levels of uninsured individuals, health care service utilization, and health status of the targeted groups of children. Methods. Using a stratified set of longitudinal data from the National Health Interview Surveys of 1989 and 1995, we compared changes in measures of health insurance coverage, health services utilization, and health status for poor white, black, and Hispanic 1- to 12-year-old children. To control for underlying trends over time, we subtracted 1989 to 1995 changes in these outcomes among nonpoor children from changes among the poor children for each race/ethnicity group. Measures of coverage included uninsured rates and Medicaid rates. Utilization measures included annual probability of visiting a doctor, annual number of doctor visits, and annual probability of hospitalization. Health status measures included self-reported health status and number of restricted-activity days in the 2 weeks before the interview. Differences in means were analyzed with the use of Student’s t tests accounting for the clustering sample design of the National Health Interview Surveys. Results. Among poor children between 1989 and 1995, uninsured rates declined by 4 percentage points for whites, 11 percentage points for blacks, and 19 percentage points for Hispanics. Medicaid rates for these groups increased by 16 percentage points, 22 percentage points, and 23 percentage points, respectively. With respect to utilization, the annual probability of seeing a physician increased 7 percentage points among poor blacks and Hispanics but only 1 percentage point among poor whites (not significant) for children in good, fair, or poor health. Among those in excellent or very good health, the respective increases were 1 percentage point for poor whites (not significant), 7 percentage points for poor blacks, and 3 percentage points for poor Hispanics (not significant). Significant increases in numbers of doctor visits per year were recorded only for poor Hispanics who were in excellent or very good health, whereas significant decreases in hospitalizations were recorded for Hispanics who were in good fair or poor health. Measures of health status remained unchanged for poor children over time. The recorded decreases in uninsured rates and increases in Medicaid coverage remained robust to adjustments for underlying trends for all 3 race/ethnicity groups. With respect to adjusted measures of utilization and health status, the only significant differences found were among poor blacks who were in good, fair, or poor health and who registered increases in the likelihood of hospitalization and in poor Hispanics who were in excellent or very good health and who registered decreases in the numbers of restricted-activity days. Conclusions. Recent expansions in the Medicaid program from 1989 to 1995 produced greater reductions in uninsured rates among poor minority children than among poor white children. Regardless of race/ethnicity, poor children did not seem to experience significant changes during the period of the expansions in either their level of health service utilization or their health status. Reproduced with permission from Pediatrics, Copyright (c) 2001 by the AAP

MalDICT: Benchmark Datasets on Malware Behaviors, Platforms, Exploitation, and Packers

Existing research on malware classification focuses almost exclusively on two tasks: distinguishing between malicious and benign files and classifying malware by family. However, malware can be categorized according to many other types of attributes, and the ability to identify these attributes in newly-emerging malware using machine learning could provide significant value to analysts. In particular, we have identified four tasks which are under-represented in prior work: classification by behaviors that malware exhibit, platforms that malware run on, vulnerabilities that malware exploit, and packers that malware are packed with. To obtain labels for training and evaluating ML classifiers on these tasks, we created an antivirus (AV) tagging tool called ClarAVy. ClarAVy's sophisticated AV label parser distinguishes itself from prior AV-based taggers, with the ability to accurately parse 882 different AV label formats used by 90 different AV products. We are releasing benchmark datasets for each of these four classification tasks, tagged using ClarAVy and comprising nearly 5.5 million malicious files in total. Our malware behavior dataset includes 75 distinct tags - nearly 7x more than the only prior benchmark dataset with behavioral tags. To our knowledge, we are the first to release datasets with malware platform and packer tags

Meeting the challenges of recruitment to multicentre, community-based, lifestyle-change trials : a case study of the BeWEL trial

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The role of iron uptake in pathogenicity and symbiosis in Photorhabdus luminescens TT01

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Photorhabdus </it>are Gram negative bacteria that are pathogenic to insect larvae whilst also having a mutualistic interaction with nematodes from the family <it>Heterorhabditis</it>. Iron is an essential nutrient and bacteria have different mechanisms for obtaining both the ferrous (Fe²⁺) and ferric (Fe³⁺) forms of this metal from their environments. In this study we were interested in analyzing the role of Fe³⁺and Fe²⁺iron uptake systems in the ability of <it>Photorhabdus </it>to interact with its invertebrate hosts.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We constructed targeted deletion mutants of <it>exbD</it>, <it>feoABC </it>and <it>yfeABCD </it>in <it>P. luminescens </it>TT01. The <it>exbD </it>mutant was predicted to be crippled in its ability to obtain Fe³⁺and we show that this mutant does not grow well in iron-limited media. We also show that this mutant was avirulent to the insect but was unaffected in its symbiotic interaction with <it>Heterorhabditis</it>. Furthermore we show that a mutation in <it>feoABC </it>(encoding a predicted Fe²⁺permease) was unaffected in both virulence and symbiosis whilst the divalent cation transporter encoded by <it>yfeABCD </it>is required for virulence in the Tobacco Hornworm, <it>Manduca sexta </it>(Lepidoptera) but not in the Greater Wax Moth, <it>Galleria mellonella </it>(Lepidoptera). Moreover the Yfe transporter also appears to have a role during colonization of the IJ stage of the nematode.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In this study we show that iron uptake (via the TonB complex and the Yfe transporter) is important for the virulence of <it>P. luminescens </it>to insect larvae. Moreover this study also reveals that the Yfe transporter appears to be involved in Mn²⁺-uptake during growth in the gut lumen of the IJ nematode. Therefore, the Yfe transporter in <it>P. luminescens </it>TT01 is important during colonization of both the insect and nematode and, moreover, the metal ion transported by this pathway is host-dependent.</p

The Role of the Gouy Phase in the Coherent Phase Control of the Photoionization and Photodissociation of Vinyl Chloride

We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that the Gouy phase of a focused laser beam may be used to control the photo-induced reactions of a polyatomic molecule. Quantum mechanical interference between one- and three-photon excitation of vinyl chloride produces a small phase lag between the dissociation and ionization channels on the axis of the molecular beam. Away from the axis, the Gouy phase introduces a much larger phase lag that agrees quantitatively with theory without any adjustable parameters.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Persistent neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio >3 during treatment with enzalutamide and clinical outcome in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer

The baseline value of neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) has been found to be prognostic in patients with metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). We evaluated the impact of baseline NLR and its change in patients receiving enzalutamide. We included consecutive metastatic CRPC patients treated with enzalutamide after docetaxel and studies the change of NLR (&gt;3 vs ≤3) after week 4 and 12 weeks. Progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS) and their 95% Confidence Intervals (95% CI) were estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method and compared with the log-rank test. The impact of NLR on PFS and OS was evaluated by Cox regression analyses and on prostate-specific antigen response rates (PSA RR; PSA decline &gt;50%) were evaluated by binary logistic regression. Data collected on 193 patients from 9 centers were evaluated. Median age was 73.1 years (range, 42.8–90.7). The median baseline NLR was 3.2. The median PFS was 3.2 months (95% CI = 2.7–4.2) in patients with baseline NLR &#62;3 and 7.4 months (95% CI = 5.5–9.7) in those with NLR ≤3, p &#60; 0.0001. The median OS was 10.4 months (95% CI = 6.5–14.9) in patients with baseline NLR &gt;3 and 16.9 months (95% CI = 11.2–20.9) in those with baseline NLR ≤3, p &#60; 0.0001. In multivariate analysis, changes in NLR at 4 weeks were significant predictors of both PFS [hazard ratio (HR) 1.24, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.07–1.42, p = 0.003, and OS (HR 1.29, 95% CI 1.10–1.51, p = 0.001. A persistent NLR &#62;3 during treatment with enzalutamide seems to have both prognostic and predictive value in CRPC patients

Proceedings of the conference on the Apalachicola River drainage system, 23-24 April 1976 Gainesville, Florida

(Document has 177 pages.