Degree correlation effect of bipartite network on personalized recommendation

In this paper, by introducing a new user similarity index base on the diffusion process, we propose a modified collaborative filtering (MCF) algorithm, which has remarkably higher accuracy than the standard collaborative filtering. In the proposed algorithm, the degree correlation between users and objects is taken into account and embedded into the similarity index by a tunable parameter. The numerical simulation on a benchmark data set shows that the algorithmic accuracy of the MCF, measured by the average ranking score, is further improved by 18.19% in the optimal case. In addition, two significant criteria of algorithmic performance, diversity and popularity, are also taken into account. Numerical results show that the presented algorithm can provide more diverse and less popular recommendations, for example, when the recommendation list contains 10 objects, the diversity, measured by the hamming distance, is improved by 21.90%.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

New Optimal Weight Combination Model for Forecasting Precipitation

In order to overcome the inaccuracy of the forecast of a single model, a new optimal weight combination model is established to increase accuracies in precipitation forecasting, in which three forecast submodels based on rank set pair analysis (R-SPA) model, radical basis function (RBF) model and autoregressive model (AR) and one weight optimization model based on improved real-code genetic algorithm (IRGA) are introduced. The new model for forecasting precipitation time series is tested using the annual precipitation data of Beijing, China, from 1978 to 2008. Results indicate the optimal weights were obtained by using genetic algorithm in the new optimal weight combination model. Compared with the results of R-SPA, RBF, and AR models, the new model can improve the forecast accuracy of precipitation in terms of the error sum of squares. The amount of improved precision is 22.6%, 47.4%, 40.6%, respectively. This new forecast method is an extension to the combination prediction method

A qualitative exploration of perceptions and experiences of contraceptive use, abortion and post-abortion family planning services (PAFP) in three provinces in China

Background: The INPAC project aims to evaluate the effectiveness of integrated post-abortion family planning (PAFP) services into existing hospital based abortion services in China. A qualitative study was conducted in three provinces to contribute to developing effective PAFP services through understanding influences on contraceptive use, experiences of abortion and existing PAFP, and their effect on future contraceptive practices from the perspective of users, in the context of social and institutional change. Methods: Twenty-nine in-depth interviews (IDIs) were undertaken with women who had experienced abortion between 1 and 6 months prior to interview, recruited from three urban and two rural facilities in each province. Thirteen IDIs were also conducted with male partners. Six focus group discussions (FGDs) were carried out with community members from different social groups, including unmarried and married women and men, urban residents and rural-to-urban migrants. Results: Social networks and norms are important in shaping attitudes and behaviour towards abortion and contraception. Widespread concerns were expressed about side-effects, reliability and effects on future fertility of some modern contraceptives. The combination of limited information and choices and a lack of person-centred counselling in PAFP with anxieties about side effects underlies the widespread use of unreliable methods. Gendered power relations significantly influence contraceptive (non) use, with several examples illustrating women's relative lack of power to decide on a method, particularly in the case of condoms. Although the availability of contraceptive information from respected providers can offer impetus for individual behaviour change, social distance from providers reduces opportunities for clients to discuss their difficulties regarding contraceptive use; particularly, but not exclusively for young, unmarried clients. Conclusions: Increased access to non-commercial, reliable information on contraceptive methods is needed. PAFP services must go beyond simple information provision to ensure that providers take a more personcentred approach, which considers the most appropriate method for individual clients and probes for the underlying influences on contraceptive (non) use. More sensitive reflection on gender norms and relationships is required during counselling and, where women choose this, efforts should be made to include their male partners. Specific attention to provider positionality and skills for counselling young, unmarried clients is needed

Combined Treatment with MEK and mTOR Inhibitors is Effective in In Vitro and In Vivo Models of Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common primary liver cancer histotype, characterized by high biological aggressiveness and scarce treatment options. Recently, we have established a clinically relevant murine HCC model by co-expressing activated forms of v-akt murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog (AKT) and oncogene c-mesenchymal-epithelial transition (c-Met) proto-oncogenes in the mouse liver via hydrodynamic tail vein injection (AKT/c-MET mice). Tumor cells from these mice demonstrated high activity of the AKT/ mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and Ras/ Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling cascades, two pathways frequently co-induced in human HCC. Methods: Here, we investigated the therapeutic efficacy of sorafenib, regorafenib, the MEK inhibitor PD901 as well as the pan-mTOR inhibitor MLN0128 in the AKT/c-Met preclinical HCC model. Results: In these mice, neither sorafenib nor regorafenib demonstrated any efficacy. In contrast, administration of PD901 inhibited cell cycle progression of HCC cells in vitro. Combined PD901 and MLN0128 administration resulted in a pronounced growth constraint of HCC cell lines. In vivo, treatment with PD901 or MLN0128 alone moderately slowed HCC growth in AKT/c-MET mice. Importantly, the simultaneous administration of the two drugs led to a stable disease with limited tumor progression in mice. Mechanistically, combined mitogen-activated extracellular signal-regulated kinase (MEK) and mTOR inhibition resulted in a stronger cell cycle inhibition and growth arrest both in vitro and in vivo. Conclusions: Our study indicates that combination of MEK and mTOR inhibitors might represent an effective therapeutic approach against human HCC

Scalable Traffic Engineering for Higher Throughput in Heavily-loaded Software Defined Networks

Existing traffic engineering (TE) solutions performs well for software defined network (SDN) in average cases. However, during peak hours, bursty traffic spikes are challenging to handle, because it is difficult to react in time and guarantee high performance even after failures with limited flow entries. Instead of leaving some capacity empty to guarantee no congestion happens due to traffic rerouting after failures or path updating after demand or topology changes, we decide to make full use of the network capacity to satisfy the demands for heavily-loaded peak hours. The TE system also needs to react to failures quickly and utilize the priority queue to guarantee the transmission of loss and delay sensitive traffic. We propose TED, a scalable TE system that can guarantee high throughput in peak hours. TED can quickly compute a group of maximum number of edge-disjoint paths for each ingress-egress switch pair. We design two methods to select paths under the flow entry limit. We then input the selected paths to our TE to minimize the maximum link utilization. In case of large traffic matrix making the maximum link utilization larger than 1, we input the utilization and the traffic matrix to the optimization of maximizing overall throughput under a new constrain. Thus we obtain a realistic traffic matrix, which has the maximum overall throughput and guarantees no traffic starvation for each switch pair. Experiments show that TED has much better performance for heavily-loaded SDN and has 10% higher probability to satisfy all (> 99.99%) the traffic after a single link failure for G-Scale topology than Smore under the same flow entry limit.Comment: The 8 pages double column version of the paper is submitted to NOMS 2020 technical sessio