Using the ACS Approach to Solve Continuous Mathematical Problems in Engineering

Ant colony system (ACS) has been widely applied for solving discrete domain problems in recent years. In particular, they are efficient and effective in finding nearly optimal solutions to discrete search spaces. Because of the restriction of ant-based algorithms, when the solution space of a problem to be solved is continuous, it is not so appropriate to use the original ACS to solve it. However, engineering mathematics in the real applications are always applied in the continuous domain. This paper thus proposes an extended ACS approach based on binary-coding to provide a standard process for solving problems with continuous variables. It first encodes solution space for continuous domain into a discrete binary-coding space (searching map), and a modified ACS can be applied to find the solution. Each selected edge in a complete path represents a part of a candidate solution. Different from the previous ant-based algorithms for continuous domain, the proposed binary coding ACS (BCACS) could retain the original operators and keep the benefits and characteristics of the traditional ACS. Besides, the proposed approach is easy to implement and could be applied in different kinds of problems in addition to mathematical problems. Several constrained functions are also evaluated to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm

An X-Ray Diffraction Study of Atomic Ordering in Platinum-Rich Copper-Platinum Alloys(Physics)

Atomic ordering in the copper-platinum alloy system has been studied by X-ray diffraction using single crystals with compositions of Cu-48, 54, 61, 66 and 70 at% Pt. At the composition near the equiatomic one, an ordered structure CuPt, first found by Johansson and Linde, has been confirmed. A negative result has been obtained for the existence of an ordered structure Cu_3Pt_5, which was proposed by Linde. An ordered structure formed at the composition near CuPt_3 has been shown to be consistent with the structure model of Tang rather than that of Schneider and Esch

Increased Risk for Invasive Breast Cancer Associated with Hormonal Therapy: A Nation-Wide Random Sample of 65,723 Women Followed from 1997 to 2008

BACKGROUND: Hormonal therapy (HT) either estrogen alone (E-alone) or estrogen plus progesterone (E+P) appears to increase the risk for breast cancer in Western countries. However, limited information is available on the association between HT and breast cancer in Asian women characterized mainly by dietary phytoestrogens intake and low prevalence of contraceptive pills prescription. METHODOLOGY: A total of 65,723 women (20-79 years of age) without cancer or the use of Chinese herbal products were recruited from a nation-wide one-million representative sample of the National Health Insurance of Taiwan and followed from 1997 to 2008. Seven hundred and eighty incidents of invasive breast cancer were diagnosed. Using a reference group that comprised 40,052 women who had never received a hormone prescription, Cox proportional hazard models were constructed to determine the hazard ratios for receiving different types of HT and the occurrence of breast cancer. CONCLUSIONS: 5,156 (20%) women ever used E+P, 2,798 (10.8%) ever used E-alone, and 17,717 (69%) ever used other preparation types. The Cox model revealed adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) of 2.05 (95% CI 1.37-3.07) for current users of E-alone and 8.65 (95% CI 5.45-13.70) for current users of E+P. Using women who had ceased to take hormonal medication for 6 years or more as the reference group, the adjusted HRs were significantly elevated and greater than current users and women who had discontinued hormonal medication for less than 6 years. Current users of either E-alone or E+P have an increased risk for invasive breast cancer in Taiwan, and precautions should be taken when such agents are prescribed

Ganho de produtividade e complexo de proteína‑polissacarídeos em Agaricus blazei

The objective of this work was to assess the productivity and polysaccharide‑protein complex content of Agaricus blazei on rice straw medium, in comparison to conventional sawdust, using four casing soils. The A. blazei strain used was BCRC36814T, purchased from the Food Industry Research and Development Institute, Hsin‑Chu, Taiwan. The two media were evaluated as to A. blazei productivity, harvesting time, and production costs. The experimental design used was a randomized complete block, with four replicates. Three local casing soils – Typic Paleudult (CCe), Typic Udorthent (Tq) and Oxyaquic Paleudult (TSp) – were compared to imported peat soil (PS, Saprists, Histosols), used as the control. The productivity of A. blazei using Tq and TSp soil was significantly higher. The TSp casing treatment resulted in earlier harvest by at least14 to 27 days, when compared to the other treatments. The polysaccharide content in CCe (13.2%) and Tqsoils (13.2%) did not differ significantly from the PS (13.4%) and TSp (10.6%) treatments. Local casing soilsdecreased the production costs of A. blazei cultivation. Composted rice straw can substitute sawdust as the culture medium for A. blazei production with increased yield.O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar a produtividade e o conteúdo do complexo proteínapolissacarídeosde Agaricus blazei em meio de palha de arroz, em comparação ao de serragem, tendo-se utilizado quatro tipos de solo como camadas de cobertura. Utilizou-se a linhagem BCRC36814T de A. blazei, procedente do Food Industry Research and Development Institute, Hsin‑Chu, Taiwan. Os dois meios foram avaliados quanto à produtividade, ao tempo de colheita e aos custos de produção de A. blazei. Utilizou-se o delineamento de blocos ao acaso, com quatro repetições. As camadas de cobertura foram compostas por três solos locais – Argissolo Vermelho‑Amarelo distrófico (CCe), Neossolo Litólico distrófico (Tq) e Oxyaquic Paleudult (TSp) –, comparados a solo turfoso importado (PS, Saprists, Organossolos Háplicos), utilizado como controle. A produtividade de A. blazei com Tq e TSp foi significativamente maior. O tratamento com TSp resultou em colheita antecipada de 14 a 27 dias, em comparação aos outros tratamentos. O conteúdo de polissacarídeos em CCe (13,2%) e Tq (13,2%) não diferiu significativamente do em PS (13,4%) e TSp (10,6%). Os custos de produção foram reduzidos com uso das camadas de cobertura locais. O composto de palha de arroz pode substituir a serragem como meio para o cultivo de A. blazei, com aumento de produtividade

UPANets: Learning from the Universal Pixel Attention Networks

Among image classification, skip and densely-connection-based networks have dominated most leaderboards. Recently, from the successful development of multi-head attention in natural language processing, it is sure that now is a time of either using a Transformer-like model or hybrid CNNs with attention. However, the former need a tremendous resource to train, and the latter is in the perfect balance in this direction. In this work, to make CNNs handle global and local information, we proposed UPANets, which equips channel-wise attention with a hybrid skip-densely-connection structure. Also, the extreme-connection structure makes UPANets robust with a smoother loss landscape. In experiments, UPANets surpassed most well-known and widely-used SOTAs with an accuracy of 96.47% in Cifar-10, 80.29% in Cifar-100, and 67.67% in Tiny Imagenet. Most importantly, these performances have high parameters efficiency and only trained in one customer-based GPU. We share implementing code of UPANets in https://github.com/hanktseng131415go/UPANets

Novel Application of Immunomodulatory Mushroom Polysaccharide (β-Glucan) and Triterpenes for Diabetic Wound Care

β-Glucan and triterpenes are two important derivative compounds from traditional medicinal mushroom, such as Ganoderma lucidum and Antrodia cinnamomea. β-glucan and triterpenes are considered to have immunoregulatory properties in disease treatment for long years. The immunoregulatory effects are usually activated through some transcription of pro-inflammatory genes and possess immunomodulatory activity. Difficulty in healing wound now is a common condition that occurred in diabetic patients, and the physiological hyperglycemic status of diabetic patients resulting in the wounds continue to produce an inflammatory response. Thus, we hope to use β-glucan and triterpenes for difficult wound healing that possess immunomodulatory activity on the wound micro-environment and stimulate the positive effects on healing. In this chapter, these two important derivative compounds from traditional medicinal mushroom were examined by diabetic mammal’s wound healing models. In these models, the skin wounds’ microenvironment is expected close to diabetic foot, suffering in hyperglycemic and inflammatory status. The results are clearly presented, with the immunomodulatory effects from mushroom β-glucan and triterpenes that involved in modulating the cell-mediated immune system to cause cellular proliferation and further to introduce healing performance of the chronic inflammation wounds

Pretreatment with a Heat-Killed Probiotic Modulates the NLRP3 Inflammasome and Attenuates Colitis-Associated Colorectal Cancer in Mice.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common malignancies worldwide. Inflammation contributes to cancer development and inflammatory bowel disease is an important risk factor for CRC. The aim of this study is to assess whether a widely used probiotic Enterococcus faecalis can modulate the NLRP3 inflammasome and protect against colitis and colitis-associated CRC. We studied the effect of heat-killed cells of E. faecalis on NLRP3 inflammasome activation in THP-1-derived macrophages. Pretreatment of E. faecalis or NLRP3 siRNA can inhibit NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages in response to fecal content or commensal microbes, P. mirabilis or E. coli, according to the reduction of caspase-1 activation and IL-1β maturation. Mechanistically, E. faecalis attenuates the phagocytosis that is required for the full activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome. In in vivo mouse experiments, E. faecalis can ameliorate the severity of intestinal inflammation and thereby protect mice from dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced colitis and the formation of CRC in wild type mice. On the other hand, E. faecalis cannot prevent DSS-induced colitis in NLRP3 knockout mice. Our findings indicate that application of the inactivated probiotic, E. faecalis, may be a useful and safe strategy for attenuation of NLRP3-mediated colitis and inflammation-associated colon carcinogenesis