Cost-effectiveness Study of Antihypertensive Drugs in Mumbai, India

Hypertension is a serious global public health problem. It accounts for 10% of all deaths in India and is the leading noncommunicable disease.1 Recent studies have shown that the prevalence of hypertension is 25% in urban and 10% in rural people in India.2 It exerts a substantial public health burden on cardiovascular health status and health care systems in India.3 Antihypertensive treatment effectively reduces hypertension-related morbidity and mortality.1 The cost of medications has always been a barrier to effective treatment

Tough Tables: Carefully Evaluating Entity Linking for Tabular Data

Table annotation is a key task to improve querying the Web and support the Knowledge Graph population from legacy sources (tables). Last year, the SemTab challenge was introduced to unify different efforts to evaluate table annotation algorithms by providing a common interface and several general-purpose datasets as a ground truth. The SemTab dataset is useful to have a general understanding of how these algorithms work, and the organizers of the challenge included some artificial noise to the data to make the annotation trickier. However, it is hard to analyze specific aspects in an automatic way. For example, the ambiguity of names at the entity-level can largely affect the quality of the annotation. In this paper, we propose a novel dataset to complement the datasets proposed by SemTab. The dataset consists of a set of high-quality manually-curated tables with non-obviously linkable cells, i.e., where values are ambiguous names, typos, and misspelled entity names not appearing in the current version of the SemTab dataset. These challenges are particularly relevant for the ingestion of structured legacy sources into existing knowledge graphs. Evaluations run on this dataset show that ambiguity is a key problem for entity linking algorithms and encourage a promising direction for future work in the field

Applying Integrated Exposure-Response Functions to PM2.5 Pollution in India

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5, diameter ≤2.5 μm) is implicated as the most health-damaging air pollutant. Large cohort studies of chronic exposure to PM2.5 and mortality risk are largely confined to areas with low to moderate ambient PM2.5 concentrations and posit log-linear exposure-response functions. However, levels of PM2.5 in developing countries such as India are typically much higher, causing unknown health effects. Integrated exposure-response functions for high PM2.5 exposures encompassing risk estimates from ambient air, secondhand smoke, and active smoking exposures have been posited. We apply these functions to estimate the future cause-specific mortality risks associated with population-weighted ambient PM2.5 exposures in India in 2030 using Greenhouse Gas-Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies (GAINS) model projections. The loss in statistical life expectancy (SLE) is calculated based on risk estimates and baseline mortality rates. Losses in SLE are aggregated and weighted using national age-adjusted, cause-specific mortality rates. 2030 PM2.5 pollution in India reaches an annual mean of 74 μg/m3, nearly eight times the corresponding World Health Organization air quality guideline. The national average loss in SLE is 32.5 months (95% Confidence Interval (CI): 29.7–35.2, regional range: 8.5–42.0), compared to an average of 53.7 months (95% CI: 46.3–61.1) using methods currently applied in GAINS. Results indicate wide regional variation in health impacts, and these methods may still underestimate the total health burden caused by PM2.5 exposures due to model assumptions on minimum age thresholds of pollution effects and a limited subset of health endpoints analyzed. Application of the revised exposure-response functions suggests that the most polluted areas in India will reap major health benefits only with substantial improvements in air quality

Balancing Bounded Treewidth Circuits

Algorithmic tools for graphs of small treewidth are used to address questions in complexity theory. For both arithmetic and Boolean circuits, it is shown that any circuit of size $n^{O(1)}$ and treewidth $O(\log^i n)$ can be simulated by a circuit of width $O(\log^{i+1} n)$ and size $n^c$, where $c = O(1)$, if $i=0$, and $c=O(\log \log n)$ otherwise. For our main construction, we prove that multiplicatively disjoint arithmetic circuits of size $n^{O(1)}$ and treewidth $k$ can be simulated by bounded fan-in arithmetic formulas of depth $O(k^2\log n)$. From this we derive the analogous statement for syntactically multilinear arithmetic circuits, which strengthens a theorem of Mahajan and Rao. As another application, we derive that constant width arithmetic circuits of size $n^{O(1)}$ can be balanced to depth $O(\log n)$, provided certain restrictions are made on the use of iterated multiplication. Also from our main construction, we derive that Boolean bounded fan-in circuits of size $n^{O(1)}$ and treewidth $k$ can be simulated by bounded fan-in formulas of depth $O(k^2\log n)$. This strengthens in the non-uniform setting the known inclusion that $SC^0 \subseteq NC^1$. Finally, we apply our construction to show that {\sc reachability} for directed graphs of bounded treewidth is in $LogDCFL$

Venus Express radio occultation observed by PRIDE

Context. Radio occultation is a technique used to study planetary atmospheres by means of the refraction and absorption of a spacecraft carrier signal through the atmosphere of the celestial body of interest, as detected from a ground station on Earth. This technique is usually employed by the deep space tracking and communication facilities (e.g., NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN), ESA's Estrack). Aims. We want to characterize the capabilities of the Planetary Radio Interferometry and Doppler Experiment (PRIDE) technique for radio occultation experiments, using radio telescopes equipped with Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) instrumentation. Methods. We conducted a test with ESA's Venus Express (VEX), to evaluate the performance of the PRIDE technique for this particular application. We explain in detail the data processing pipeline of radio occultation experiments with PRIDE, based on the collection of so-called open-loop Doppler data with VLBI stations, and perform an error propagation analysis of the technique. Results. With the VEX test case and the corresponding error analysis, we have demonstrated that the PRIDE setup and processing pipeline is suited for radio occultation experiments of planetary bodies. The noise budget of the open-loop Doppler data collected with PRIDE indicated that the uncertainties in the derived density and temperature profiles remain within the range of uncertainties reported in previous Venus' studies. Open-loop Doppler data can probe deeper layers of thick atmospheres, such as that of Venus, when compared to closed-loop Doppler data. Furthermore, PRIDE through the VLBI networks around the world, provides a wide coverage and range of large antenna dishes, that can be used for this type of experiments

Extracting novel facts from tables for Knowledge Graph completion

We propose a new end-to-end method for extending a Knowledge Graph (KG) from tables. Existing techniques tend to interpret tables by focusing on information that is already in the KG, and therefore tend to extract many redundant facts. Our method aims to find more novel facts. We introduce a new technique for table interpretation based on a scalable graphical model using entity similarities. Our method further disambiguates cell values using KG embeddings as additional ranking method. Other distinctive features are the lack of assumptions about the underlying KG and the enabling of a fine-grained tuning of the precision/recall trade-off of extracted facts. Our experiments show that our approach has a higher recall during the interpretation process than the state-of-the-art, and is more resistant against the bias observed in extracting mostly redundant facts since it produces more novel extractions

Design and Initial Development of Monolithic Cross-Flow Ceramic Hot-Gas Filters

Advanced, coal-fueled, power generation systems utilizing pressurized fluidized bed combustion (PFBC) and integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technologies are currently being developed for high-efficiency, low emissions, and low-cost power generation. In spite of the advantages of these promising technologies, the severe operating environment often leads to material degradation and loss of performance in the barrier filters used for particle entrapment. To address this problem, LoTEC Inc., and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are jointly designing and developing a monolithic cross-flow ceramic hot-gas filter. The filter concept involves a truly monolithic cross-flow design that is resistant to delamination, can be easily fabricated, and offers flexibility of geometry and material make-up. During Phase I of the program, a thermo-mechanical analysis was performed to determine how a cross-flow filter would respond both thermally and mechanically to a series of thermal and mechanical loads. The cross-flow filter mold was designed accordingly, and the materials selection was narrowed down to Ca{sub 0.5}Sr{sub 0.5}Zr{sub 4}P{sub 6}O{sub 24} (CS-50) and 2Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}-3SiO{sub 2} (mullite). A fabrication process was developed using gelcasting technology and monolithic cross-flow filters were fabricated. The program focuses on obtaining optimum filter permeability and testing the corrosion resistance of the candidate materials

Temporal Dynamics of Spontaneous Ca2+ Transients, ERBB4, vGLUT1, GAD1, Connexin, and Pannexin Genes in Early Stages of Human Stem Cell Neurodifferentiation

Spontaneous Ca2+ transients drive stem cell proliferation and neurodifferentiation. Deciphering the relationship between neuronal and glial human genes on one side and spontaneous Ca2+ activity on the other side is essential for our understanding of normal brain development, and for insights into the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders. In the present study, forebrain neurons were derived from human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells (hESC-H9 and iPSC-15; 22q11.2 deletion) over a period of 21 days in vitro (DIV). Every 1–2 days, multisite optical imaging technique was applied to detect populations of cells with spontaneous Ca2+ transients. The expression levels of 14 genes of interest were analyzed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) on the same biological samples where physiological recordings were performed. The genes analyzed include: the schizophrenia candidate gene ERBB4, connexin (Cx) genes Cx26, Cx36, Cx43, Cx45, Cx47, pannexin-1 (PNX1), neuronal markers PAX6, vGLUT1, GAD1, TUBB3, glial lineage markers BLBP, GFAP, and housekeeping gene ACTB. We found that Ca2+ signals decrease in amplitude, decrease in duration, and increase in frequency during the first 21 days of human neurodifferentiation. The expression levels of ERBB4, PAX6, GAD1, vGLUT1, BLBP, Cx36, Cx45, and PNX1 were found to be strongly positively correlated with the percentage of cells exhibiting spontaneous Ca2+ transients (“Active Cells”). While expression of BLBP, Cx45, ERBB4, GAD1, PAX6, PNX1, and vGLUT1 were correlated with short-duration and long-amplitude Ca2+ transients, Cx43, TUBB3, and Cx47 were better correlated with long-duration and short-amplitude transients. The expression dynamics of Cx26 was unrelated to any aspect of spontaneous Ca2+ activity. Four genes showed an exponential time course with a distinct onset on a given DIV. The onset of PNX1, ERBB4, and vGLUT1 occurred before, while the onset of Cx36 occurred after the first action potentials were detected in early differentiating human neurons