Demand forecasting with high dimensional data: The case of SKU retail sales forecasting with intra- and inter-category promotional information

In marketing analytics applications in OR, the modeler often faces the problem of selecting key variables from a large number of possibilities. For example, SKU level retail store sales are affected by inter and intra category effects which potentially need to be considered when deciding on promotional strategy and producing operational forecasts. But no research has yet put this well accepted concept into forecasting practice: an obvious obstacle is the ultra-high dimensionality of the variable space. This paper develops a four steps methodological framework to overcome the problem. It is illustrated by investigating the value of both intra- and inter-category SKU level promotional information in improving forecast accuracy. The method consists of the identification of potentially influential categories, the building of the explanatory variable space, variable selection and model estimation by a multistage LASSO regression, and the use of a rolling scheme to generate forecasts. The success of this new method for dealing with high dimensionality is demonstrated by improvements in forecasting accuracy compared to alternative methods of simplifying the variable space. The empirical results show that models integrating more information perform significantly better than the baseline model when using the proposed methodology framework. In general, we can improve the forecasting accuracy by 12.6 percent over the model using only the SKU's own predictors. But of the improvements achieved, 95 percent of it comes from the intra-category information, and only 5 percent from the inter-category information. The substantive marketing results also have implications for promotional category management

Identification and characterization of the expression profile of microRNAs in Anopheles anthropophagus

BACKGROUND: Anopheles anthropophagus, one of the most important mosquito-borne disease vectors in Asia, mainly takes blood meals from humans and transmits both malaria and filariae. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs, and play a critical role in many cellular processes, including development, differentiation, apoptosis and innate immunity. METHODS: We investigated the global miRNA expression profile of male and female adults of A. anthropophagus using illumina Hiseq2000 sequencing combined with Northern blot. RESULTS: By using the miRNAs of the closely-related species Anopheles gambiae and Aedes aegypti as reference, we obtained 102 miRNAs candidates out of 12.43 million raw sequencing reads for male and 16.51 million reads for female, with 81 of them found as known miRNAs in An. gambiae and/or Ae. aegypti, and the remaining 21 miRNAs were considered as novel. By analyzing the revised read count of miRNAs in male and female, 29 known miRNAs show sexual difference expression: >2-fold in the read count of the same miRNAs in male and female. Especially for miR-989, which is highly expressed in the female mosquitoes, but shows almost no detected expression in male mosquitoes, indicating that miR-989 may be involved in the physiological activity of female mosquito adults. The expression of four miRNAs in different growth stages of mosquito were further identified by Northern blot. Several miRNAs show the stage-specific expression, of which miR-2943 only expressed in the egg stage, suggesting that miR-2943 may be associated with the development of mosquito eggs. CONCLUSIONS: The present study represents the first global characterization of An. anthropophagus miRNAs in sexual differences and stage-specific functions. A better understanding of the functions of these miRNAs will offer new insights in mosquito biology and has implications for the effective control of mosquito-borne infectious diseases

Electro-acupuncture at Jianshi (PC5) and Neiguan (PC6) alters heart rate variability (HRV) in frightened volunteers

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Fabrication of small aspheric moulds using single point inclined axis grinding

Single point inclined axis grinding techniques, including the wheel setting, wheel-workpiece interference, error source determination and compensation approaches, were studied to fabricate small aspheric moulds of high profile accuracy. The interference of a cylindrical grinding wheel with the workpiece was analysed and the criteria for selection of wheel geometry for avoiding the interference was proposed. The grinding process was performed with compensation focused on two major error sources, wheel setting error and wheel wear. The grinding results showed that the compensation approach was efficient and the developed grinding process was capable to generate small aspheric concave surfaces on tungsten carbide material with a profile error of smaller than 200. nm in PV value after two to three compensation cycles

Hesperidin Protects against Acute Alcoholic Injury through Improving Lipid Metabolism and Cell Damage in Zebrafish Larvae

Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is a series of abnormalities of liver function, including alcoholic steatosis, steatohepatitis, and cirrhosis. Hesperidin, the major constituent of flavanone in grapefruit, is proved to play a role in antioxidation, anti-inflammation, and reducing multiple organs damage in various animal experiments. However, the underlying mechanism of resistance to alcoholic liver injury is still unclear. Thus, we aimed to investigate the protective effects of hesperidin against ALD and its molecular mechanism in this study. We established an ALD zebrafish larvae model induced by 350 mM ethanol for 32 hours, using wild-type and transgenic line with liver-specific eGFP expression Tg (lfabp10α:eGFP) zebrafish larvae (4 dpf). The results revealed that hesperidin dramatically reduced the hepatic morphological damage and the expressions of alcohol and lipid metabolism related genes, including cyp2y3, cyp3a65, hmgcra, hmgcrb, fasn, and fads2 compared with ALD model. Moreover, the findings demonstrated that hesperidin alleviated hepatic damage as well, which is reflected by the expressions of endoplasmic reticulum stress and DNA damage related genes (chop, gadd45αa, and edem1). In conclusion, this study revealed that hesperidin can inhibit alcoholic damage to liver of zebrafish larvae by reducing endoplasmic reticulum stress and DNA damage, regulating alcohol and lipid metabolism

ANPL: Compiling Natural Programs with Interactive Decomposition

The advents of Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown promise in augmenting programming using natural interactions. However, while LLMs are proficient in compiling common usage patterns into a programming language, e.g., Python, it remains a challenge how to edit and debug an LLM-generated program. We introduce ANPL, a programming system that allows users to decompose user-specific tasks. In an ANPL program, a user can directly manipulate sketch, which specifies the data flow of the generated program. The user annotates the modules, or hole with natural language descriptions offloading the expensive task of generating functionalities to the LLM. Given an ANPL program, the ANPL compiler generates a cohesive Python program that implements the functionalities in hole, while respecting the dataflows specified in sketch. We deploy ANPL on the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC), a set of unique tasks that are challenging for state-of-the-art AI systems, showing it outperforms baseline programming systems that (a) without the ability to decompose tasks interactively and (b) without the guarantee that the modules can be correctly composed together. We obtain a dataset consisting of 300/400 ARC tasks that were successfully decomposed and grounded in Python, providing valuable insights into how humans decompose programmatic tasks. See the dataset at https://iprc-dip.github.io/DARC