Free ureteral replacement in rats: regeneration of ureteral wall components in the acellular matrix graft.

ObjectivesTo evaluate ureteral replacement by a free homologous graft of acellular matrix in a rat model.MethodsIn 30 male Sprague-Dawley rats, a 0.3 to 0.8-cm midsegment of the left ureter was resected and replaced with an acellular matrix graft of equal length placed on a polyethylene stent. The animals were killed at varying intervals, and the grafted specimens were prepared for light and electron microscopy.ResultsIn all animals, the acellular matrix graft remained in its original position without evidence of incrustation or infection, and histologic examination showed complete epithelialization and progressive infiltration by vessels. At 10 weeks, smooth muscle fibers were observed; at 12 weeks, nerve fibers were first detected; at 4 months, smooth muscle cells had assumed regular configuration.ConclusionsThe ureteral acellular matrix graft appears to promote the regeneration of all ureteral wall components

Classification of public administration complaints

Complaint management is a problem faced by many organizations that is both vital to customer image and highly dependent on human resources. This work attempts to tackle a part of the problem, by classifying summaries of complaints using machine learning models in order to better redirect these to the appropriate responders. The main challenges of this task is that training datasets are often small and highly imbalanced. This can can have a big impact on the performance of classification models. The dataset analyzed in this work suffers from both of these problems, being relatively small and having labels in different proportions. In this work, two different techniques are analyzed: combining classes together to increase the number of elements of the new class; and, providing new artificial examples for some classes via translation into other languages. The classification models explored were the following: k-NN, SVM, Naïve Bayes, boosting, and Deep Learning approaches, including transformers. The paper concludes that although, as expected, the classes with little representation are hard to classify, the techniques explored helped to boost the performance, especially in the classes with a low number of elements. SVM and BERT-based models outperformed their peers.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Module identification in bipartite and directed networks

Modularity is one of the most prominent properties of real-world complex networks. Here, we address the issue of module identification in two important classes of networks: bipartite networks and directed unipartite networks. Nodes in bipartite networks are divided into two non-overlapping sets, and the links must have one end node from each set. Directed unipartite networks only have one type of nodes, but links have an origin and an end. We show that directed unipartite networks can be conviniently represented as bipartite networks for module identification purposes. We report a novel approach especially suited for module detection in bipartite networks, and define a set of random networks that enable us to validate the new approach

Description logics, rules and multi‐context systems

The combination of rules and ontologies has been a fertile topic of research in the last years, with the proposal of several different systems that achieve this goal. In this paper, we look at two of these formalisms, Mdl-programs and multi-context systems, which address different aspects of this combination, and include different, incomparable programming constructs. Despite this, we show that every Mdl-program can be transformed in a multi-context system, and this transformation relates the different semantics for each paradigm in a natural way. As an application, we show how a set of design patterns for multi-context systems can be obtained from previous work on Mdl-programs.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Temperature effects on dislocation core energies in silicon and germanium

Temperature effects on the energetics of the 90-degree partial dislocation in silicon and germanium are investigated, using non-equilibrium methods to estimate free energies, coupled with Monte Carlo simulations. Atomic interactions are described by Tersoff and EDIP interatomic potentials. Our results indicate that the vibrational entropy has the effect of increasing the difference in free energy between the two possible reconstructions of the 90-degree partial, namely, the single-period and the double-period geometries. This effect further increases the energetic stability of the double-period reconstruction at high temperatures. The results also indicate that anharmonic effects may play an important role in determining the structural properties of these defects in the high-temperature regime.Comment: 8 pages in two-column physical-review format with six figure