Learning from the past: uncovering design process models using an enriched process mining

Design documents and design project footprints accumulated by corporate IT systems have increasingly become valuable sources of evidence for design information and knowledge management. Identification and extraction of such embedded information and knowledge into a clear and usable format will greatly accelerate continuous learning from past design efforts for competitive product innovation and efficient design process management in future design projects. Different from existing systems, this paper proposes a methodology of learning and extracting useful knowledge using past design project documents from design process perspective based on process mining techniques. A new process mining approach that is able to directly handle textual data is proposed at the first stage of the proposed methodology. The outcome is a hierarchical process model that reveals the actual design process hidden behind a large amount of design documents and enables the connection of various design information from different perspectives. At the second stage, the discovered process model is further refined to learn multi-faceted knowledge patterns by applying a number of statistical analysis methods. The outcomes range from task dependency study from workflow analysis, identification of irregular task execution from performance analysis, cooperation pattern discovery from social net analysis, to evaluation of personal contribution based on role analysis. Relying on the knowledge patterns extracted, lessons and best practices can be uncovered which offer great support to decision makers in managing any future design initiatives. The proposed methodology was tested using an email dataset from a university-hosted multi-year multidisciplinary design project

A Fast and Provable Algorithm for Sparse Phase Retrieval

We study the sparse phase retrieval problem, which aims to recover a sparse signal from a limited number of phaseless measurements. Existing algorithms for sparse phase retrieval primarily rely on first-order methods with linear convergence rate. In this paper, we propose an efficient second-order algorithm based on Newton projection, which maintains the same per-iteration computational complexity as popular first-order methods. The proposed algorithm is theoretically guaranteed to converge to the ground truth (up to a global sign) at a quadratic convergence rate after at most $O\big(\log (\Vert \mathbf{x}^{\natural} \, \Vert /x_{\min}^{\natural})\big)$ iterations, provided a sample complexity of $O(s^2\log n)$, where $\mathbf{x}^{\natural} \in \mathbb{R}^n$ represents an $s$-sparse ground truth signal. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our algorithm not only outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of achieving a significantly faster convergence rate, but also excels in attaining a higher success rate for exact signal recovery from noise-free measurements and providing enhanced signal reconstruction in noisy scenarios

Immunomodulatory activity of carboxymethyl pachymaran on immunosuppressed mice induced by cyclophosphamide

The effects of immunomodulatory activity of two types of carboxymethyl pachymaran (CMP-1 and CMP-2) on cyclophosphamide (CTX)-induced mice were investigated. Both CMP-1 and CMP-2 were found to restore the splenomegaly and alleviate the spleen lesions and the mRNA ex-pressions of TLR4, MyD88, p65 and NF-κB in spleen were also increased. CMP-1 and CMP-2 could enhance the immunity by increasing the levels of TNF-α, IL-2, IL-6, IFN-γ, Ig-A and Ig-G in serum. In addition, CMP-1 could increase the relative abundance of Bacteroidetes and reduce the relative richness of Firmicutes at the phylum level. CMP-1 and CMP-2 could reduce the relative abundance Erysipelatoclostridum at the genus level. CMP-1 and CMP-2 might enhance the immune function of immunosuppression mice by regulating the gene expression in the TLR4/NF-κB signaling pathway and changing the composition and abundance of the intestinal microbiota. The results suggested that CMP-1 and CMP-2 would be as potential immunomodulatory agents in functional foods

B\to X_s\gamma, X_s l^+ l^- decays and constraints on the mass insertion parameters in the MSSM

In this paper, we study the upper bounds on the mass insertion parameters $(\delta^{q}_{AB})_{ij}$ in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). We found that the information from the measured branching ratio of $B \to X_s l^+ l^-$ decay can help us to improve the upper bounds on the mass insertions parameters \left (\delta^{u,d}_{AB})_{3j,i3}. Some regions allowed by the data of $Br(B \to X_s \gamma)$ are excluded by the requirement of a SM-like $C_{7\gamma}(m_b)$ imposed by the data of $Br(B \to X_s l^+ l^-)$.Comment: 16 pages, 5 eps figure files, typos remove

Composition and characteristics of Libyan flora

The composition, life forms and the distribution of plants in Libya were studied. The results show that in Libya there are 2103 species that belong to 856 genera and 155 families. The distribution among Libyan seed plants was characterized by a high proportion of herbs (annual to perennial), unlike the low number of woody (tree and shrub) species; these have an important influence on the structure of floral composition. The geographic element of the flora was predominantly tropical and Mediterranean. The local plants belong to representative tropical desert flora. The presence and distribution characteristics of flora in Libya show that climate, environmental condition, ecological amplitude and adaptive capacity of the plants have a determinative influence on the floristic stock in the area studies

Bioconversion of rice straw agro-residues by \u3cem\u3eLentinula edodes\u3c/em\u3e and evaluation of non-volatile taste compounds in mushrooms

Rice straw was substituted for sawdust at five different ratios of 0, 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% (Control, RS20, RS40, RS60 and RS80, respectively) to obtain five kinds of Lentinula edodes. The effects of adding cropped rice straw to substrate formulas on the proximate composition and non-volatile taste compounds in mushrooms were investigated. The control group had the highest level of MY and BE among the five formulations. The protein levels in mushrooms decreased with the addition of rice straw and the ash levels increased. We found that trehalose, mannitol, and arabitol were the main soluble sugars in the five kinds of mushrooms. The contents of total free amino acids varied from 16.29 to 24.59 mg/g and the highest level of free amino acids was found in mushrooms cultivated from RS20 and RS40. Moreover, the addition of rice straw improved the contents of monosodium glutamate (MSG)-like amino acids in mushrooms. The 5′-Nucleotide levels ranged from 1.66 to 4.48 mg/g and equivalent umami concentration (EUC) value increased with the addition of rice straw. Our results suggest that rice straw is a potential substitute for sawdust to cultivate L. edodes with more non-volatile taste compounds

An efficient multi-locus mixed model framework for the detection of small and linked QTLs in F2

In the genetic system that regulates complex traits, metabolites, gene expression levels, RNA editing levels and DNA methylation, a series of small and linked genes exist. To date, however, little is known about how to design an efficient framework for the detection of these kinds of genes. In this article, we propose a genome-wide composite interval mapping (GCIM) in F2. First, controlling polygenic background via selecting markers in the genome scanning of linkage analysis was replaced by estimating polygenic variance in a genome-wide association study. This can control large, middle and minor polygenic backgrounds in genome scanning. Then, additive and dominant effects for each putative quantitative trait locus (QTL) were separately scanned so that a negative logarithm P-value curve against genome position could be separately obtained for each kind of effect. In each curve, all the peaks were identified as potential QTLs. Thus, almost all the small-effect and linked QTLs are included in a multi-locus model. Finally, adaptive least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (adaptive lasso) was used to estimate all the effects in the multi-locus model, and all the nonzero effects were further identified by likelihood ratio test for true QTL identification. This method was used to reanalyze four rice traits. Among 25 known genes detected in this study, 16 small-effect genes were identified only by GCIM. To further demonstrate GCIM, a series of Monte Carlo simulation experiments was performed. As a result, GCIM is demonstrated to be more powerful than the widely used methods for the detection of closely linked and small-effect QTLs