Expanding the Knowledge Base for More Effective Data Mining

Traditionally, data mining, as part of the knowledge discovery process, relies solely on the information contained in the database to generate patterns. Recently, there has been some recognition in the field that expanding the knowledge passed to the pattern generation phase by including other domain knowledge, may have beneficial effects of the interestingness and actionability of the resulting patterns. In this paper, we present a new knowledge discovery method that uses additional decision rules and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to conceptualize and structure the domain, thus capturing a broader notion of domain knowledge upon which data mining can be applied. Based on design science guidelines, we design, develop and implement our method within the domain of a brain trauma intensive care unit

Spatial and temporal variablity of nonmethane hydrocarbon mixing ratios and their relation to photochemical lifetime

The relationship between temporal and spatial variability of C2-C8 nonmethane hydrocarbon mixing ratios and their HO lifetimes (τ) is presented for samples collected during the 1993 North Atlantic Regional Experiment (NARE) and from other urban and remote sites. The C2-C4 alkanes, acetylene and benzene typically define a trend of the form slnx=Aτ-b where slnx is the standard deviation of the ln of the mixing ratio. The relationship extended over a wider range of hydrocarbons in winter. The exponent b ranged in value from 0.2±0.023 for winter urban data where C2-C8 hydrocarbons defined a strongly correlated trend, to 0.56±0.15 for C2-C4 hydrocarbons at a coastal site in Nova Scotia during NARE. The trends are significantly different from that given by the Junge relationship [Junge, 1974]. Data from the Azores do not display such a trend and were likely influenced by local emissions. Variance trends are a useful analytical tool for examining the validity of hydrocarbon measurements

Fine-scale time-lapse analysis of the biphasic, dynamic behaviour of the two Vibrio cholerae chromosomes

Using fluorescent repressor-operator systems in live cells, we investigated the dynamic behaviour of chromosomal origins in Vibrio cholerae, whose genome is divided between two chromosomes. We have developed a method of analysing fine-scale motion in the curved co-ordinate system of vibrioid bacteria. Using this method, we characterized two different modes of chromosome behaviour corresponding to periods between segregation events and periods of segregation. Between segregation events, the origin positions are not fixed but rather maintained within ellipsoidal caged domains, similar to eukaryotic interphase chromosome territories. These domains are approximately 0.4 µm wide and 0.6 µm long, reflecting greater restriction in the short axis of the cell. During segregation, movement is directionally biased, speed is comparable between origins, and cell growth can account for nearly 20% of the motion observed. Furthermore, the home domain of each origin is positioned by a different mechanism. Specifically, the oriCI domain is maintained at a constant actual distance from the pole regardless of cell length, while the oriCII domain is maintained at a constant relative position. Thus the actual position of oriCII varies with cell length. While the gross behaviours of the two origins are distinct, their fine-scale dynamics are remarkably similar, indicating that both experience similar microenvironments

Epidemiology of Acromegaly: Review of population studies

Acromegaly is a rare condition necessitating large population studies for the generation of reliable epidemiological data. In this review, we systematically analysed the epidemiological profile of this condition based on recently published population studies from various geographical areas. The total prevalence ranges between 2.8 and 13.7 cases per 100,000 people and the annual incidence rates range between 0.2 and 1.1 cases/100,000 people. The median age at diagnosis is in the fifth decade of life with a median diagnostic delay of 4.5–5 years. Acral enlargement and coarse facial features are the most commonly described clinical manifestations. At the time of detection, most of the tumors are macroadenomas possibly relating to diagnostic delays and posing challenges in the surgical management. Increased awareness of acromegaly amongst the medical community is of major importance aiming to reduce the adverse sequelae of late diagnosis and treatment, improve patient outcomes and, hopefully, reduce the burden on the health care system

Analisis Risiko Kesehatan Lingkungan Paparan Nitrogen Dioksida (No2) Pada Pedagang Kaki Lima Di Terminal Pulogadung Jakarta Timur

Pulogadung bus station is one terminal with a solid transport activity and potentially contribute a lot of air pollution. Motorized transport will produce a variety of gases including NO2 which can cause bad effect on health for example respiratory problems, throat irritation and eye irritation, especially for street vendors who almost 24 hours in the bus station.The purpose of this study was to analyze the risk of exposure to NO2 in Pulogadung Bus Station to transportation activities. The design study is an cross sectional approach of Environmental Health Risk Assessment (ARKL). The population of subject is140 street vendors in Pulogadung Bus Station and a population of object is ambient air in Pulogadung Bus Station. Sample subjects were 60 vendors in Pulogadung Terminal and sample objects the ambient air at four points around the Pulogadung Bus Station. Analysis of data using the steps in ARKL namely hazard identification, dose-response analysis, exposure analysis and risk characteristics.The results showed an average of NO2 concentration measurement results in Pulogadung Terminal in East Jakarta is 0.07141 mg / m3. While the average weight of street vendors in Pulogadung terminal in East Jakarta is 58.32 kg, with an average daily exposure time street vendors is 13 hours per day, the average frequency of exposure per year is 329 days per year and the average duration of exposure street vendors is 15 years old. The conclusion is the concentration of NO2 in Pulogadung Terminal is still below the quality standards established and the average exposure in real time and lifetime of street vendors in Pulogadung Bus Station is still under 1 and otherwise still safe. The calculation of risk estimates in Pulogadung Terminal vendors be at risk of non-cancer due to exposure to NO2 in the next 40 years. The suggestions in this study is street vendor should using PPE when working and reducing working hours

Analisis Risiko Kesehatan Lingkungan Paparan Sulfur Dioksida (So2) Udara Ambien Pada Pedagang Kaki Lima Di Terminal Bus Pulogadung, Jakarta Timur

The contribution of air pollution in urban areas around 87% comes from transportation activities. Pulogadung Bus Station in East Jakarta is one of the potential sites in pollution emissions of SO2 gas. Street vendors are the population most at risk for contamination of vehicle exhaust gases. The purpose of this research was analyze the level of non-carcinogenic health risks of exposure to SO2 against street vendors at Pulogadung Bus Station due to transportation activities. This research used observational research with approach Environmental Health Risk Assessment. The population in this research was 140 street vendors at Pulogadung Bus Station with a sample of 60 street vendors. SO2 measurements performed by pararosanilin method using a spectrophotometer. The results showed the average concentration of SO2 at Pulogadung Bus Station was 133,78 ug/m3 which means it is still well below the standards set by the Governor Decree No. 551 of 2001. The average weight of respondents 58 kg, the average daily exposure time 13 hours/day, the average frequency of exposure 329 days/year and the average duration of exposure for 15 years. The average intake of SO2 real time is 0.01461 mg/kg/day and intake life time is 0.02412 mg/kg/day. The average RQ in real time exposure is 0.5619 mg/kg/day and the life time of exposure is 0.9278 mg/kg/day. Characteristics of non-carcinogenic health risks of exposure to SO2 on street vendors at Pulogadung Bus Station in East Jakarta indicate that as many as 13 street vendors (21.67%) exposure in real time and 19 street vendors (31.67%) in the life time risk exposure resulting from exposure to SO2. The conclusion of this study is street vendors in Pulogadung Bus Station have categories yet non carcinogenic health risk by exposure to SO2

Probing Electron Tunneling Pathways: Electrochemical Study of Rat Heart Cytochromecand Its Mutant on Pyridine-Terminated SAMs

The electron-transfer rates between gold electrodes and adsorbed cytochromes are compared for native cytochrome c and its mutant (K13A) using two different immobilization strategies. A recent study by Niki (Niki, K.; Hardy, W. R.; Hill, M. G.; Li, H.; Sprinkle, J. R.; Margoliash, E.; Fujita, K.; Tanimura, R.; Nakamura, N.; Ohno, H.; Richards, J. H.; Gray, H. B. J. Phys. Chem. B 2003, 107, 9947) showed that the electron-transfer rate for a particular mutant cytochrome c (K13A) is orders of magnitude slower than the native form when electrostatically adsorbed on SAM-coated gold electrodes. The current study directly “links” the protein's heme unit to the SAM, thereby “short circuiting” the electron tunneling pathway. These findings demonstrate that the immobilization strategy can modify the electron-transfer rate by changing the tunneling pathway

Stabilizing the cold plasma-stimulated medium by regulating medium’s composition

Over past several years, the cold plasma-stimulated medium (PSM) has shown its remarkable anti-cancer capacity in par with the direct cold plasma irradiation on cancer cells or tumor tissues. Independent of the cold plasma device, PSM has noticeable advantage of being a flexible platform in cancer treatment. Currently, the largest disadvantage of PSM is its degradation during the storage over a wide temperature range. So far, to stabilize PSM, it must be remained frozen at −80 °C. In this study, we first reveal that the degradation of PSM is mainly due to the reaction between the reactive species and specific amino acids; mainly cysteine and methionine in medium. Based on this finding, both H2O2 in PSM and the anti-cancer capacity of PSM can be significantly stabilized during the storage at 8 °C and −25 °C for at least 3 days by using phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) and cysteine/methionine-free Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM). In addition, we demonstrate that adding a tyrosine derivative, 3-Nitro-L-tyrosine, into DMEM can mitigate the degradation of PSM at 8 °C during 3 days of storage. This study provides a solid foundation for the future anti-cancer application of PSM

Learning object bounding boxes for 3D instance segmentation on point clouds

We propose a novel, conceptually simple and general framework for instance seg-mentation on 3D point clouds. Our method, called3D-BoNet, follows the simpledesign philosophy of per-point multilayer perceptrons (MLPs). The frameworkdirectly regresses 3Dboundingboxes for all instances in a point cloud, whilesimultaneously predicting a point-level mask for each instance. It consists of abackbone network followed by two parallel network branches for 1) bounding boxregression and 2) point mask prediction. 3D-BoNet is single-stage, anchor-freeand end-to-end trainable. Moreover, it is remarkably computationally efficientas, unlike existing approaches, it does not require any post-processing steps suchas non-maximum suppression, feature sampling, clustering or voting. Extensiveexperiments show that our approach surpasses existing work on both ScanNet andS3DIS datasets while being approximately10×more computationally efficient.Comprehensive ablation studies demonstrate the effectiveness of our design