5,711 research outputs found
Economic Small-World Behavior in Weighted Networks
The small-world phenomenon has been already the subject of a huge variety of
papers, showing its appeareance in a variety of systems. However, some big
holes still remain to be filled, as the commonly adopted mathematical
formulation suffers from a variety of limitations, that make it unsuitable to
provide a general tool of analysis for real networks, and not just for
mathematical (topological) abstractions. In this paper we show where the major
problems arise, and how there is therefore the need for a new reformulation of
the small-world concept. Together with an analysis of the variables involved,
we then propose a new theory of small-world networks based on two leading
concepts: efficiency and cost. Efficiency measures how well information
propagates over the network, and cost measures how expensive it is to build a
network. The combination of these factors leads us to introduce the concept of
{\em economic small worlds}, that formalizes the idea of networks that are
"cheap" to build, and nevertheless efficient in propagating information, both
at global and local scale. This new concept is shown to overcome all the
limitations proper of the so-far commonly adopted formulation, and to provide
an adequate tool to quantitatively analyze the behaviour of complex networks in
the real world. Various complex systems are analyzed, ranging from the realm of
neural networks, to social sciences, to communication and transportation
networks. In each case, economic small worlds are found. Moreover, using the
economic small-world framework, the construction principles of these networks
can be quantitatively analyzed and compared, giving good insights on how
efficiency and economy principles combine up to shape all these systems.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, 4 table
Characteristics of US Adults Who Have Positive and Negative Perceptions of Doctors of Chiropractic and Chiropractic Care
AbstractObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to compare characteristics, likelihood to use, and actual use of chiropractic care for US survey respondents with positive and negative perceptions of doctors of chiropractic (DCs) and chiropractic care.MethodsFrom a 2015 nationally representative survey of 5422 adults (response rate, 29%), we used respondents' answers to identify those with positive and negative perceptions of DCs or chiropractic care. We used the χ2 test to compare other survey responses for these groups.ResultsPositive perceptions of DCs were more common than those for chiropractic care, whereas negative perceptions of chiropractic care were more common than those for DCs. Respondents with negative perceptions of DCs or chiropractic care were less likely to know whether chiropractic care was covered by their insurance, more likely to want to see a medical doctor first if they were experiencing neck or back pain, less likely to indicate that they would see a DC for neck or back pain, and less likely to have ever seen a DC as a patient, particularly in the recent past. Positive perceptions of chiropractic care and negative perceptions of DCs appear to have greater influence on DC utilization rates than their converses.ConclusionWe found that US adults generally perceive DCs in a positive manner but that a relatively high proportion has negative perceptions of chiropractic care, particularly the costs and number of visits required by such care. Characteristics of respondents with positive and negative perceptions were similar, but those with positive perceptions were more likely to plan to use—and to have already received—chiropractic care
Efficient Behavior of Small-World Networks
We introduce the concept of efficiency of a network, measuring how
efficiently it exchanges information. By using this simple measure small-world
networks are seen as systems that are both globally and locally efficient. This
allows to give a clear physical meaning to the concept of small-world, and also
to perform a precise quantitative a nalysis of both weighted and unweighted
networks. We study neural networks and man-made communication and
transportation systems and we show that the underlying general principle of
their construction is in fact a small-world principle of high efficiency.Comment: 1 figure, 2 tables. Revised version. Accepted for publication in
Phys. Rev. Let
Transfer Learning for Domain Adaptation in MRI: Application in Brain Lesion Segmentation
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is widely used in routine clinical diagnosis
and treatment. However, variations in MRI acquisition protocols result in
different appearances of normal and diseased tissue in the images.
Convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which have shown to be successful in many
medical image analysis tasks, are typically sensitive to the variations in
imaging protocols. Therefore, in many cases, networks trained on data acquired
with one MRI protocol, do not perform satisfactorily on data acquired with
different protocols. This limits the use of models trained with large annotated
legacy datasets on a new dataset with a different domain which is often a
recurring situation in clinical settings. In this study, we aim to answer the
following central questions regarding domain adaptation in medical image
analysis: Given a fitted legacy model, 1) How much data from the new domain is
required for a decent adaptation of the original network?; and, 2) What portion
of the pre-trained model parameters should be retrained given a certain number
of the new domain training samples? To address these questions, we conducted
extensive experiments in white matter hyperintensity segmentation task. We
trained a CNN on legacy MR images of brain and evaluated the performance of the
domain-adapted network on the same task with images from a different domain. We
then compared the performance of the model to the surrogate scenarios where
either the same trained network is used or a new network is trained from
scratch on the new dataset.The domain-adapted network tuned only by two
training examples achieved a Dice score of 0.63 substantially outperforming a
similar network trained on the same set of examples from scratch.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure
Electromagnetic filaments and edge modifications induced by electrode biasing in the RFX-mod tokamak
Geração de indicadores para periódicos cientÃficos: um estudo na AtoZ
It presents the results from a proposal funded by an Institucional Notice. The funds received from the Federal University of Paraná were used to create a database that could generate some indicators for the academic online journal "AtoZ: new practices in information and knowledge". Based on a BibTeX set and the metadata extracted from the Open Journal System plataform, the results allowed an earnest data analysis that can support the decision-making process, as well as the potential use of the methodological procedures proposed for other journals
Geração de indicadores para periódicos cientÃficos: um estudo na AtoZ
It presents the results from a proposal funded by an Institucional Notice. The funds received from the Federal University of Paraná were used to create a database that could generate some indicators for the academic online journal "AtoZ: new practices in information and knowledge". Based on a BibTeX set and the metadata extracted from the Open Journal System plataform, the results allowed an earnest data analysis that can support the decision-making process, as well as the potential use of the methodological procedures proposed for other journals
Data-Driven Structural Health Monitoring in Laminated Composite Structures: Characterisation of Impact Damage
There is a high level of uncertainty for detecting damage, such as barely visible impact damage, hidden manufacturing defects, and subsurface cracks in laminated composites, which is a main limiting factor in wider use of these materials. This highlights the necessity of developing innovative structural health monitoring (SHM) strategies to meet the safety and reliability of current composite structures. In this research, a wide range of laminated composite specimens were designed, manufactured and tested under drop-weight impact with several impact energies to generate visual evidence of such impact events. The dataset was then used to train a user developed artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithm to identify and predict damaged areas. The results showed that the developed algorithm could well identify the impact damage on both front and back faces of the specimens. The results obtained from the new AI-based platform were in good agreement with visual observations. The research highlights the importance of a high quality dataset in training the AI-based algorithms for visual SHM
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