Predicting Production of Crude Palm Oil Based on Weather Attributes

In hydrological cycle, water is the important source for rainfall forecasting. Hence,rainfall forecasting becomes a critical issue in equatorial country like Malaysia. Rainfall can affect environment and plantation activities and agriculture in Malaysia.In Malaysia,Meteorological Department collects weather information for each state in Malaysia.Rainfall prediction is important because it can produces the useful information to the palm oil production and recommending appropriate prevention climate change such as floods warning advise as well as managing water resource operations. For instances,Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) has given a lot of information about the palm oil production and its effect due to the climate changes. In this study, the analysis on weather data from the year 1996-2005 for five states such as Kedah, Kelantan, Malacca, Penang and Perak was carried out. In the initial study, regression analysis has been conducted to determine the relationship of the weather attributes and palm oil variable such as Fresh Fruit Bunches, Oil Extraction Rate and Crude Palm Oil production. However, the results were not so encouraging, therefore CBR approach has been attempted to solve the current problem then reuse the information and knowledge based that have been stored in the cases. The similarity measurement can be determined effectively between cases.Therefore, similarity measurement between cases in the rainfall and palm oil case base is the important element in CBR. The performance of each similarity measure is evaluated based on attribute’s weight, and classification accuracy, In general, the similarity values achieved at most is 99.33%

Functional annotation of proteomic data from chicken heterophils and macrophages induced by carbon nanotube exposure

With the expanding applications of carbon nanotubes (CNT) in biomedicine and agriculture, questions about the toxicity and biocompatibility of CNT in humans and domestic animals are becoming matters of serious concern. This study used proteomic methods to profile gene expression in chicken macrophages and heterophils in response to CNT exposure. Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis identified 12 proteins in macrophages and 15 in heterophils, with differential expression patterns in response to CNT co-incubation (0, 1, 10, and 100 µg/mL of CNT for 6 h) (p < 0.05). Gene ontology analysis showed that most of the differentially expressed proteins are associated with protein interactions, cellular metabolic processes, and cell mobility, suggesting activation of innate immune functions. Western blot analysis with heat shock protein 70, high mobility group protein, and peptidylprolyl isomerase A confirmed the alterations of the profiled proteins. The functional annotations were further confirmed by effective cell migration, promoted interleukin-1β secretion, and more cell death in both macrophages and heterophils exposed to CNT (p < 0.05). In conclusion, results of this study suggest that CNT exposure affects protein expression, leading to activation of macrophages and heterophils, resulting in altered cytoskeleton remodeling, cell migration, and cytokine production, and thereby mediates tissue immune responses

Conversations with Documents. An Exploration of Document-Centered Assistance

The role of conversational assistants has become more prevalent in helping people increase their productivity. Document-centered assistance, for example to help an individual quickly review a document, has seen less significant progress, even though it has the potential to tremendously increase a user's productivity. This type of document-centered assistance is the focus of this paper. Our contributions are three-fold: (1) We first present a survey to understand the space of document-centered assistance and the capabilities people expect in this scenario. (2) We investigate the types of queries that users will pose while seeking assistance with documents, and show that document-centered questions form the majority of these queries. (3) We present a set of initial machine learned models that show that (a) we can accurately detect document-centered questions, and (b) we can build reasonably accurate models for answering such questions. These positive results are encouraging, and suggest that even greater results may be attained with continued study of this interesting and novel problem space. Our findings have implications for the design of intelligent systems to support task completion via natural interactions with documents.Comment: Accepted as full paper at CHIIR 2020; 9 pages + Appendi

The Gierer-Meinhardt system on a compact two-dimensional Riemannian Manifold: Interaction of Gaussian curvature and Green's function

In this paper, we rigorously prove the existence and stability of single-peaked patterns for the singularly perturbed Gierer-Meinhardt system on a compact two-dimensional Riemannian manifold without boundary which are far from spatial homogeneity. Throughout the paper we assume that the activator diffusivity is small enough. We show that for a threshold ratio of the activator diffusivity and the inhibitor diffusivity, the Gaussian curvature and the Green's function interact. A convex combination of the Gaussian curvature and the Green's function together with their derivatives are linked to the peak locations and the o(1) eigenvalues. A nonlocal eigenvalue problem (NLEP) determines the O(1) eigenvalues which all have negative part in this case.RGC of Hong Kon

Band-gap-tailored random laser

A band-gap-tailored random laser with a wide tunable range and low threshold through infrared radiation is demonstrated. When fluorescent dyes are doped into the liquid crystal and heavily doped chiral agent system, we demonstrate a wavelength tuning random laser instead of a side-band laser, which is caused by the combined effect of multi-scattering of liquid crystal (LC) and band-gap control. Through rotating the infrared absorbing material on the side of the LC cell, an adjustable range for random lasing of 80 nm by infrared light irradiation was observed

Development and evaluation of new anchors for ratings of driving workload

Older drivers stop driving for several reasons, including being overwhelmed by the workload of the primary driving task. Unfortunately, most driving studies (including those measuring driver distraction and overload) describe workload qualitatively, not quantitatively. A simple way to quantify workload is to ask drivers to rate it while showing them anchor clips (e.g. this scene is 2, that scene is 6) to aid repeatability. To validate new anchor clips of road scenes for workload ratings, 16 subjects (8 age 18-30, 8 age >65) drove simulated expressway scenarios and rated the workload of 28 scenarios relative to the new anchor clips, and for 10 of them that duplicated video clips from real expressways, rated the video clips as well. Mean workload ratings from the 2 presentation methods were highly correlated (r=0.84). Workload ratings were correlated with the logarithm of the distance to the lead vehicle (r=-0.75), the number of vehicles visible (r=0.72), the distance to the side vehicles (r=-0.35), and lateral lane position (r=0.74). Workload can be estimated as 8.53-3.18*Log(Gap) + 0.28*MeanTrafficCount + 4.70*MinimumLanePosition - 0.10*StandardDeviationOfSideVehicleGap, with the R2 of 0.89. To refine the anchor clips, 18 subjects (6 age 18-30, 6 age 35-50, 6 age >65) were shown static scenes in which the field of view (120, 150, 180 degrees), and the rear scene (nothing, 3 mirrors, panoramic mirror) varied. Subjects recalled where vehicles were shown (2-11) and ranked scenes from most to least preferred. Scenes with 120- or 180-degree fields of view showing a rear scene are recommended for the anchors. Researchers are encouraged to quantify workload using the anchored rating method and the associated equations given their repeatability and ease of use.M-CASTL – Michigan Center for Advancing Safe Transportation throughout the Lifespanhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/92352/1/102885.pd

The Worldvolume Action of Kink Solitons in AdS Spacetime

A formalism is presented for computing the higher-order corrections to the worldvolume action of co-dimension one solitons. By modifying its potential, an explicit "kink" solution of a real scalar field in AdS spacetime is found. The formalism is then applied to explicitly compute the kink worldvolume action to quadratic order in two expansion parameters--associated with the hypersurface fluctuation length and the radius of AdS spacetime respectively. Two alternative methods are given for doing this. The results are expressed in terms of the trace of the extrinsic curvature and the intrinsic scalar curvature. In addition to conformal Galileon interactions, we find a non-Galileon term which is never sub-dominant. This method can be extended to any conformally flat bulk spacetime.Comment: 32 pages, 3 figures, typos corrected and additional comments adde

Pumped double quantum dot with spin-orbit coupling

We study driven by an external electric field quantum orbital and spin dynamics of electron in a one-dimensional double quantum dot with spin-orbit coupling. Two types of external perturbation are considered: a periodic field at the Zeeman frequency and a single half-period pulse. Spin-orbit coupling leads to a nontrivial evolution in the spin and orbital channels and to a strongly spin- dependent probability density distribution. Both the interdot tunneling and the driven motion contribute into the spin evolution. These results can be important for the design of the spin manipulation schemes in semiconductor nanostructures

Pleiotropic functions of the tumor- and metastasis-suppressing Matrix Metalloproteinase-8 in mammary cancer in MMTV-PyMT transgenic mice

Matrix metalloproteinase-8 (MMP-8; neutrophil collagenase) is an important regulator of innate immunity which has onco-suppressive actions in numerous tumor types

Candidate gene resequencing to identify rare, pedigree-specific variants influencing healthy aging phenotypes in the long life family study

Background: The Long Life Family Study (LLFS) is an international study to identify the genetic components of various healthy aging phenotypes. We hypothesized that pedigree-specific rare variants at longevity-associated genes could have a similar functional impact on healthy phenotypes. Methods: We performed custom hybridization capture sequencing to identify the functional variants in 464 candidate genes for longevity or the major diseases of aging in 615 pedigrees (4,953 individuals) from the LLFS, using a multiplexed, custom hybridization capture. Variants were analyzed individually or as a group across an entire gene for association to aging phenotypes using family based tests. Results: We found significant associations to three genes and nine single variants. Most notably, we found a novel variant significantly associated with exceptional survival in the 3' UTR OBFC1 in 13 individuals from six pedigrees. OBFC1 (chromosome 10) is involved in telomere maintenance, and falls within a linkage peak recently reported from an analysis of telomere length in LLFS families. Two different algorithms for single gene associations identified three genes with an enrichment of variation that was significantly associated with three phenotypes (GSK3B with the Healthy Aging Index, NOTCH1 with diastolic blood pressure and TP53 with serum HDL). Conclusions: Sequencing analysis of family-based associations for age-related phenotypes can identify rare or novel variants