Mining open datasets for transparency in taxi transport in metropolitan environments.

Uber has recently been introducing novel practices in urban taxi transport. Journey prices can change dynamically in almost real time and also vary geographically from one area to another in a city, a strategy known as surge pricing. In this paper, we explore the power of the new generation of open datasets towards understanding the impact of the new disruption technologies that emerge in the area of public transport. With our primary goal being a more transparent economic landscape for urban commuters, we provide a direct price comparison between Uber and the Yellow Cab company in New York. We discover that Uber, despite its lower standard pricing rates, effectively charges higher fares on average, especially during short in length, but frequent in occurrence, taxi journeys. Building on this insight, we develop a smartphone application, OpenStreetCab, that offers a personalized consultation to mobile users on which taxi provider is cheaper for their journey. Almost five months after its launch, the app has attracted more than three thousand users in a single city. Their journey queries have provided additional insights on the potential savings similar technologies can have for urban commuters, with a highlight being that on average, a user in New York saves 6 U.S. Dollars per taxi journey if they pick the cheapest taxi provider. We run extensive experiments to show how Uber's surge pricing is the driving factor of higher journey prices and therefore higher potential savings for our application's users. Finally, motivated by the observation that Uber's surge pricing is occurring more frequently that intuitively expected, we formulate a prediction task where the aim becomes to predict a geographic area's tendency to surge. Using exogenous to Uber data, in particular Yellow Cab and Foursquare data, we show how it is possible to estimate customer demand within an area, and by extension surge pricing, with high accuracy.This is the final version of the article. It was first available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-015-0060-

Developing and Deploying a Taxi Price Comparison Mobile App in the Wild: Insights and Challenges.

As modern transportation systems become more complex, there is need for mobile applications that allow travelers to navigate efficiently in cities. In taxi transport the recent proliferation of Uber has introduced new norms including a flexible pricing scheme where journey costs can change rapidly depending on passenger demand and driver supply. To make informed choices on the most appropriate provider for their journeys, travelers need access to knowledge about provider pricing in real time. To this end, we developed OpenStreetcab a mobile application that offers advice on taxi transport comparing provider prices. We describe its development and deployment in two cities, London and New York, and analyse thousands of user journey queries to compare the price patterns of Uber against major local taxi providers. We have observed large heterogeneity across the taxi transport markets in the two cities. This motivated us to perform a price validation and measurement experiment on the ground comparing Uber and Black Cabs in London. The experimental results reveal interesting insights: not only they confirm feedback on pricing and service quality received by professional drivers users, but also they reveal the tradeoffs between prices and journey times between taxi providers. With respect to journey times in particular, we show how experienced taxi drivers, in the majority of the cases, are able to navigate faster to a destination compared to drivers who rely on modern navigation systems. We provide evidence that this advantage becomes stronger in the centre of a city where urban density is high

Late diagnosis of celiac disease in an asymptomatic infant with growth failure

The clinical spectrum for celiac disease (CD) is broad and includes cases with either typical (intestinal) or atypical (extraintestinal) features, often making the diagnosis of CD very difficult. We describe the case of a girl presenting with stunted growth and malnourishment. She was evaluated at 14 months for decreased growth rate without any signs of gastrointestinal, renal or endocrine disorders. She was evaluated for CD, but resulted negative for anti-tTG antibodies. At the age of 4.1 years, she exhibited basal dental enamel hypoplasia, iron deficiency anaemia despite repeated iron supplementation, with persistent reduced height (-2.79 SDS), BMI (-0.76 SDS), growth velocity (-1.79 SDS) and delayed bone age (1.5 year). The CD screening was repeated and very high anti-tTG-IgA (128 IU/ml, normal values 40 IELs/100 epithelial cells) confirming the diagnosis of CD. A gluten-free diet was started and after only four months, her growth velocity increased from 4.83 cm/year (-1.79 SDS) to 6.53 cm/year (-0.15 SDS). In conclusion, we report the development of a positive serology for CD in an asymptomatic child with growth retardation, who previously was investigated for CD and resulted negative. Therefore, when faced with retarded growth in young patients, after excluding other malabsorption conditions and even when CD serological markers are negative, the paediatric endocrinologist should request HLA genotyping, before the intestinal biopsy, in order to check for the presence of risk alleles

Photocatalytic degradation of methyl-red by immobilised nanoparticles of TiO2 and ZnO

none6noIn this work, we report on the degradation of methyl-red (2-(4-Dimethylamino-phenylazo)-benzoic acid - C.I. 13020) under UV irradiation in the presence of nanosized ZnO and TiO2. Oxide nanocrystals with controlled size were synthesised by using non-hydrolytic approaches and tested for the photocatalysed degradation. The performances of the immobilised nanoparticles were compared with their commercial counterparts after immobilization onto a solid support. The influence of some experimental conditions, namely pH and dye concentration, were investigated by monitoring the dye decoloration spectrophotometrically. Several intermediate by-products were identified by HPLC-MS, showing that two different mechanisms were operative during the photocatalytic oxidationsee at: http://www.iwaponline.com/wst/04904/wst049040183.htmopenR. COMPARELLI; P. D. COZZOLI; M. L. CURRI; A. AGOSTIANO; G. MASCOLO; G. LOVECCHIOR., Comparelli; Cozzoli, Pantaleo Davide; M. L., Curri; A., Agostiano; G., Mascolo; G., Lovecchi

The Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey: SZ effect Verification with the Atacama Compact Array -- Localization and Cluster Analysis

The Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey (MaDCoWS) provides a catalog of high-redshift ($0.7\lesssim z\lesssim 1.5$) infrared-selected galaxy clusters. However, the verification of the ionized intracluster medium, indicative of a collapsed and nearly virialized system, is made challenging by the high redshifts of the sample members. The main goal of this work is to test the capabilities of the Atacama Compact Array (ACA; also known as the Morita Array) Band 3 observations, centered at about 97.5 GHz, to provide robust validation of cluster detections via the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect. Using a pilot sample that comprises ten MaDCoWS galaxy clusters, accessible to ACA and representative of the median sample richness, we infer the masses of the selected galaxy clusters and respective detection significance by means of a Bayesian analysis of the interferometric data. Our test of the "Verification with the ACA - Localization and Cluster Analysis" (VACA LoCA) program demonstrates that the ACA can robustly confirm the presence of the virialized intracluster medium in galaxy clusters previously identified in full-sky surveys. In particular, we obtain a significant detection of the SZ effect for seven out of the ten VACA LoCA clusters. We note that this result is independent of the assumed pressure profile. However, the limited angular dynamic range of the ACA in Band 3 alone, short observational integration times, and possible contamination from unresolved sources limit the detailed characterization of the cluster properties and the inference of the cluster masses within scales appropriate for the robust calibration of mass-richness scaling relations.Comment: 19 pages (including appendices), 14 figures, and 4 tables; accepted for publication in A&

Nanocrystalline TiO2 based films onto fibers for photocatalytic degradation of organic dye in aqueous solution

Nanocrystalline titania (TiO2) synthesized via sol–gel, by using an alkoxide precursor were deposited onto commercially available silica and alumina fibers, namely E-Glass and Nextel 650, respectively. Different processing conditions and material preparation parameters, such as amount of TiO2, film composition and annealing temperature were tested in order to obtain nanocrystalline TiO2 with different morphological and structural characteristics. The materials were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and the Brunauer, Emmett, and Teller (BET) surface area measurements. The photocatalytic activity of the obtained coated fibers was investigated by monitoring the degradation of a model molecule, an azo dye (Methyl Red), under UV irradiation in aqueous solution. The detected photocatalytic performance of the sol–gel derived nanocrystalline TiO2 was explained on the basis of mechanism associated to the photocatalytic decomposition of organic molecules using semiconductor oxides and accounted for the structural and morphological characteristics of the TiO2 based coating. The materials with the most suited characteristics for photocatalysis were used to scale up the deposition onto a larger sample of fiber and then tested in a photocatalytic reactor. A commercially available TiO2 standard material (TiO2 P25 Degussa) was used as reference, in order to ultimately assess the viability of the coating process for real application

Prognostic factors in Krukenberg tumor

BACKGROUND: Krukenberg tumor (KT) is a rare secondary ovarian tumor. Little is known about clinicopathologic factors affecting prognosis in KT. OBJECTIVE: To assess the prognostic value of clinicopathologic factors in KT through a systematic review and meta-analysis. METHODS: Electronic databases were searched from their inception to February 2019 for studies assessing the association of clinicopathologic factors with overall survival in KT. Pooled hazard ratio (HR) was calculated for each factor; a p value < 0.05 was considered significant. RESULTS: Twenty-three studies with 1743 patients were included. A decreased overall survival was significantly associated with peritoneal involvement (HR 1.944; p = 0.003), ascites (HR 2.055; p = 0.034), synchronous presentation (HR 1.679; p = 0.034) and increased serum CEA levels (HR 1.380; p = 0.010), but not with age > 50 (HR 0.946; p = 0.743), menopausal status (HR 1.565; p = 0.204), gastric origin (HR 1.600; p = 0.201), size > 5 cm (HR 1.292; p = 0.119), size > 10 cm (HR 0.925; p = 0.714), bilateral ovarian involvement (HR 1.113; p = 0.347), non-peritoneal extaovarian metastases (HR 1.648; p = 0.237), liver metastases (HR 1.118, p = 0.555), predominant signet ring cell morphology (HR 1.322; p = 0.208) and levels of CA125 (HR 0.933; p = 0.828) and CA19.9 (HR 0.996; p = 0.992). CONCLUSION: Peritoneal involvement, synchronous presentation, ascites and increased serum CEA levels appear as unfavorable prognostic factors in KT and might affect the patient management