Clustering Customer Shopping Trips With Network Structure

Moving objects can be tracked with sensors such as RFID tags or GPS devices. Their movement can be represented as sequences of time-stamped locations. Studying such spatio-temporal movement sequences to discover spatial sequential patterns holds promises in many real-world settings. A few interesting applications are customer shopping traverse pattern discovery, vehicle traveling pattern discovery, and route prediction. Traditional spatial data mining algorithms suitable for the Euclidean space are not directly applicable in these settings. We propose a new algorithm to cluster movement paths such as shopping trips for pattern discovery. In our work, we represent the spatio-temporal series as sequences of discrete locations following a pre-defined network. We incorporate a modified version of the Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) algorithm with the network structure to measure the similarity of movement paths. With such spatial networks we implicitly address the existence of spatial obstructs as well. Experiments were performed on both hand-collected real-life trips and simulated trips in grocery shopping. The initial evaluation results show that our proposed approach, called Net-LCSS, can be used to support effective and efficient clustering for shopping trip pattern discovery

Comparison between intravitreal Ranibizumab and Tramicinolone acetonide for macular edema secondary to central retinal vein occlusion

AIM:To compare the efficacy and safety of intravitreal ranibizumab to those of triamcinolone acetonide(TA)injection for the treatment of macular edema secondary to central retinal vein occlusion(CRVO).<p>METHODS:This retrospective study included 40 eyes of 40 patients with macular edema associated with CRVO. Twenty patients 20 eyes were treated with intravitreal injection of triamcinolone acetonide(1mg, 0.1mL), the other 20 patients 20 eyes accepted intravitreal ranibizumab(0.5mg, 0.05mL). The change of best corrected visual acuity(BCVA), central macular thickness(CMT), and intraocular pressure(IOP)before treatment and at 1, 2wk, 1, 2,3,6mo post-injection in the two groups were observed. <p>RESULTS:BCVA was improved at 1, 2wk, 1, 2,3,6mo post-injection in the TA group(<i>P</i><0.05)and ranibizumab group(<i>P</i><0.05). No significant difference was found between the two groups(<i>P</i>>0.05). CMT decreased significantly within each group(<i>P</i><0.05), and no significant difference between groups was found(<i>P</i>>0.05). In the TA group, the IOP was significantly higher at 2wk and 4wk than before treatment(<i>P</i><0.05). In the ranibizumab group, no elevated IOP was observed at 1, 2wk, 1, 2,3,6mo(<i>P</i>>0.05). However, the IOP at 1mo was significantly higher in the TA group than that in the ranibizumb group(<i>P</i><0.05). <p>CONCLUSION:Intravitreal ranibizumab is an effective and safe treatment method for macular edema secondary to CRVO. It can effectively improve BCVA and reduce CMT without ocular and systemic complications compared with intravitreal TA

Low compressible noble metal carbides with rock-salt structure: ab initio total energy calculations of the elastic stability

We have systematically studied the mechanical stability of all noble metal carbides with the rock-salt structure by calculating their elastic constants within the density function theory scheme. It was found that only four carbides (RuC, PdC, AgC and PtC) are mechanically stable. In particular, we have shown that RuC, PdC, and PtC have very high bulk modulus, which has been remarkably observed by the most recent experiment for the case of PtC. From the calculated density of states, we can conclude that these compounds are metallic, like the conventional group IV and group V transition metal carbides.Comment: Appl. Phys. Lett. 89, 071913 (2006

Increased nucleotide polymorphic changes in the 5'-untranslated region of δ-catenin (CTNND2) gene in prostate cancer

Cancer pathogenesis involves multiple genetic and epigenetic alterations, which result in oncogenic changes in gene expression. δ-Catenin (CTNND2) is overexpressed in cancer although the mechanisms of its upregulation are highly variable. Here we report that in prostate cancer the methylation of CpG islands in δ-catenin promoter was not a primary regulatory event. There was also no δ-catenin gene amplification. However, using Single-Strand onformation Polymorphism analysis, we observed the increased nucleotide changes in the 5'-untranslated region of δ-catenin gene in human prostate cancer. At least one such change (-9 G>A) is a true somatic point mutation associated with a high Gleason score, poorly differentiated prostatic adenocarcinoma. Laser capture microdissection coupled with PCR analyses detected the mutation only in cancerous but not in the adjacent benign prostatic tissues. Using chimeric genes encoding the luciferase reporter, we found that this mutation, but not a random mutation or a mutation that disrupts an upstream open reading frame, resulted in a remarkably higher expression and enzyme activity. This mutation did not affect transcriptional efficiency, suggesting that it promotes δ-catenin translation. This is the first report of δ-catenin gene mutation in cancer and supports the notion that multiple mechanisms contribute to its increased expression in carcinogenesis. Originally published ncogene, Vol. 28, No. 4, Jan 200

Research on the Experimental Teaching Method of Vibration Damping Fastener for Undergraduates Majoring in Rail Transit

Experiment is an important teaching link in talent training. Aiming at the current situation and problems of the experimental teaching of rail transit major, taking the experimental teaching of vibration damping fastener drop weight for railway engineering major of Central South University as an example, the specific methods of the new experimental teaching mode for undergraduates majoring in rail transit are expounded: Improve the subject experimental system, build an open experimental platform, and improve the school-enterprise resource sharing system, etc. This model is conducive to the reform and development of the experimental teaching model for rail transit majors and related science and engineering majors

Beyond Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access: New Role of Constructive Interference

In this paper, we introduce a novel framework of constructive non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) transmission, which provides the merit of interference utilization and breaks through the constructive interference (CI)’s limitation on multiuser (MU) access capability. With dedicated synthetic successive coding and hybrid MU access designs, a novel constructive NOMA (CNOMA) precoder is proposed, which is particularly suitable for the scenario where users have heterogeneous throughput requirements. Explicitly, it makes the composite interference always beneficial to the users having high throughput requirement, while accommodating another sets of users under their subscribed reception-quality requirement. Finally, a number of fundamental properties of the CNOMA design is revealed, such as the tradeoff between utilization of MU interference and improvement of MU access capability. Simulation demonstrates that the proposed CNOMA precoder significantly outperforms the classic CI and minimum-mean-square-error precoders in throughput performance, and meanwhile obtains high access capability close to classic NOMA designs