Active caching for recommender systems

Web users are often overwhelmed by the amount of information available while carrying out browsing and searching tasks. Recommender systems substantially reduce the information overload by suggesting a list of similar documents that users might find interesting. However, generating these ranked lists requires an enormous amount of resources that often results in access latency. Caching frequently accessed data has been a useful technique for reducing stress on limited resources and improving response time. Traditional passive caching techniques, where the focus is on answering queries based on temporal locality or popularity, achieve a very limited performance gain. In this dissertation, we are proposing an ‘active caching’ technique for recommender systems as an extension of the caching model. In this approach estimation is used to generate an answer for queries whose results are not explicitly cached, where the estimation makes use of the partial order lists cached for related queries. By answering non-cached queries along with cached queries, the active caching system acts as a form of query processor and offers substantial improvement over traditional caching methodologies. Test results for several data sets and recommendation techniques show substantial improvement in the cache hit rate, byte hit rate and CPU costs, while achieving reasonable recall rates. To ameliorate the performance of proposed active caching solution, a shared neighbor similarity measure is introduced which improves the recall rates by eliminating the dependence on monotinicity in the partial order lists. Finally, a greedy balancing cache selection policy is also proposed to select most appropriate data objects for the cache that help to improve the cache hit rate and recall further

Response of Callosobruchus chinensis L. to plant extracts and to the parasitoid Anisopteromalus calandrae: Poster

Present investigation was carried out to elucidate the extracts of botanicals i.e., Cichorium intybus, Glycyrrhiza glabra, Trachyspermum ammi and Terminalia chebula, for their possible toxic effect against C. chinensis population. The results revealed that mortality was highest (94.649%) in case of T. ammi treatment, followed by T. chebula with mortality value 56.929%. Mortality was 52.363% where application of C. intybus was carried out. Minimum mortality (34.500%) was observed in G. glabra treated grains. A natural ecto-parasitoid, Anisopteromalus calandrae was used to manage C. chinensis population. A. calandrae male and female adults (5, 10 and 15 pairs) were released to analyze the parasitism efficiency. A. calandrae was reared in the laboratory on C. chinensis larvae. Honey was offered as a suitable food to parasitoid. The parasitism data was recorded after the adult emergence of brunchid beetles. The experiment conducted under Completely Randomized Design and results statistically evaluated using statistical software at 5% level of significance. A. calandrae parasitized both larval and pupal stages of C. chinensis and preferred 4th instar larvae of C. chinensis. Large amount of A. calandrae may efficiently control the C. chinensis population. As compared to control (1558.7 host adult), the minimum host emergence (699.00 host adult) was observed with high population density of A. calandrae. It was also obvious from the results, that mortality was increased with the increase in concentration so, a direct dosemortality response was observed.Present investigation was carried out to elucidate the extracts of botanicals i.e., Cichorium intybus, Glycyrrhiza glabra, Trachyspermum ammi and Terminalia chebula, for their possible toxic effect against C. chinensis population. The results revealed that mortality was highest (94.649%) in case of T. ammi treatment, followed by T. chebula with mortality value 56.929%. Mortality was 52.363% where application of C. intybus was carried out. Minimum mortality (34.500%) was observed in G. glabra treated grains. A natural ecto-parasitoid, Anisopteromalus calandrae was used to manage C. chinensis population. A. calandrae male and female adults (5, 10 and 15 pairs) were released to analyze the parasitism efficiency. A. calandrae was reared in the laboratory on C. chinensis larvae. Honey was offered as a suitable food to parasitoid. The parasitism data was recorded after the adult emergence of brunchid beetles. The experiment conducted under Completely Randomized Design and results statistically evaluated using statistical software at 5% level of significance. A. calandrae parasitized both larval and pupal stages of C. chinensis and preferred 4th instar larvae of C. chinensis. Large amount of A. calandrae may efficiently control the C. chinensis population. As compared to control (1558.7 host adult), the minimum host emergence (699.00 host adult) was observed with high population density of A. calandrae. It was also obvious from the results, that mortality was increased with the increase in concentration so, a direct dosemortality response was observed

Malicious node detection using machine learning and distributed data storage using blockchain in WSNs

In the proposed work, blockchain is implemented on the Base Stations (BSs) and Cluster Heads (CHs) to register the nodes using their credentials and also to tackle various security issues. Moreover, a Machine Learning (ML) classifier, termed as Histogram Gradient Boost (HGB), is employed on the BSs to classify the nodes as malicious or legitimate. In case, the node is found to be malicious, its registration is revoked from the network. Whereas, if a node is found to be legitimate, then its data is stored in an Interplanetary File System (IPFS). IPFS stores the data in the form of chunks and generates hash for the data, which is then stored in blockchain. In addition, Verifiable Byzantine Fault Tolerance (VBFT) is used instead of Proof of Work (PoW) to perform consensus and validate transactions. Also, extensive simulations are performed using the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) dataset, referred as WSN-DS. The proposed model is evaluated both on the original dataset and the balanced dataset. Furthermore, HGB is compared with other existing classifiers, Adaptive Boost (AdaBoost), Gradient Boost (GB), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Extreme Gradient Boost (XGB) and ridge, using different performance metrics like accuracy, precision, recall, micro-F1 score and macro-F1 score. The performance evaluation of HGB shows that it outperforms GB, AdaBoost, LDA, XGB and Ridge by 2-4%, 8-10%, 12-14%, 3-5% and 14-16%, respectively. Moreover, the results with balanced dataset are better than those with original dataset. Also, VBFT performs 20-30% better than PoW. Overall, the proposed model performs efficiently in terms of malicious node detection and secure data storage. © 2013 IEEE

Inferior Alveolar Nerve Injury Caused by Coronectomy or Conventional Method in Third Molar Extractions

To compare the frequency of injury to the inferior alveolar nerve as a result of coronectomy and removal of mandibular third molars having nerve approximation.Methods: In this comparative study 110 patients with inferior alveolar nerve approximation were selected and randomly allocated into Group-A and Group-B. Group-A patients underwent coronectomy and Group-B patients underwent traditional removal. Inferior alveolar nerve damage was assessed one week post operatively, then further assessed after 01, 03 and 06 months.Results: Out of total 110 patients included in the study, 9 (8.2%) patients were having nerve damage. In traditional removal group, 9 (16.4%) patients were found to have nerve damage. Seven patients with nerve injury recovered within 06 months whereas 2 patients had permanent nerve damage. In coronectomy group none of the patients had nerve damage.Conclusion: Coronectomy is an effective procedure in significantly reducing the incidence of inferior alveolar nerve injury when compared with traditional removal of wisdom teeth

Absorbed Dose Calculation In Irregular Blocked Radiation Fields: Evaluation of Clarkson’s Sector Integration Method for Radiation Fields Commonly Used in Conventional Radiotherapy

Introduction: Irregular/blocked fields are routinely used in radiotherapy. The doses of these fields are usually calculated by means of equivalent square method that is inherently prone to uncertainty. On the other hand, Clarkson’s sector integration method is a dose calculation method which offers far better accuracy in dose calculation of irregular fields. The Scatter Air Ratio (SAR) of an individual sector, in which whole field has been divided, is calculated and averaged over all sectors to find total SAR for the whole field. Percentage depth dose (PDD) and tissue-maximum ratio (TMR) for irregularly shaped beams can be calculated by the SAR values using the standard relationships of these measurement quantities. Material and Methods: The present study was conducted on 40 actual patient treatment fields. The PDD values for depths up to 15 cm were calculated using both Clarkson’s sector integration method and conventional methods, and their results were compared with the measured PDDs for all patients. Results: Maximum deviation for Clarkson’s calculation was under 2.7% for any field size, shape, and depth. However for conventional methods, this value exceeded ±5.5% for some field shapes, specifically at larger depths. Conclusion: Better results of sector integration are more prominent for field shapes with a large field size and a shielded area of regular shape. For the treatment fields with a very large degree of approximation for assessing reduced field size, Clarkson’s method is the most accurate technique for the calculation of absorbed dose

PHYTOCHEMICAL AND ANTIOXIDANT SCREENING OF CASSIA ANGUSTIFOLIA,CURCUMA ZEDOARIA, EMBELIA RIBES, PIPER NIGRUM, ROSA DAMASCENA,TERMINALIA BELERICA, TERMINALIA CHEBULA, ZINGIBER OFFICINALE AND THEIR EFFECT ON STOMACH AND LIVER

Herbal medicinal natural plants and species are mostly used for wide purposes in Pakistan in current situation. There are diverse variety of phytochemical constituents which are present in plants and act as secondary metabolites that are formed from the normal metabolism likewise alkaloids, flavonoids, glycoside, phenols, steroids and other specific pigments. Therefore, the botanist concentrations are increasingly changing to ethnobotanical practices due to availability at lower price, wide safety and efficacy margin and less side effects of plants. The medicinal benefits of the special phytochemical of the plants cannot be ignored. Some of the herbal plants have been expressed for their significance to take care of the different ailments of mankind particularly correlated to liver, GIT, stomach and colon

Modeling induction and routing to monitor hospitalized patients in multi-hop mobility-aware body area sensor networks

In wireless body area sensor networks (WBASNs), energy efficiency is an area of extreme significance. At first, we present a mathematical model for a non-invasive inductive link which is used to recharge the battery of an implanted biomedical device (pacemaker). Afterwards, we propose a distance-aware relaying energy-efficient (DARE) and mutual information-based DARE (MI-DARE) routing protocols for multihop mobility-aware body area sensor networks (MM-BASNs). Both the routing protocols and the non-invasive inductive link model are tested with the consideration of eight patients in a hospital unit under different topologies, where the vital signs of each patient are monitored through seven on-body sensors and an implanted pacemaker. To reduce energy consumption of the network, the sensors communicate with a sink via an on-body relay which is fixed on the chest of each patient. The behavior (static/mobile) and position of the sink are changed in each topology, and the impact of mobility due to postural changes of the patient(s) arms, legs, and head is also investigated. The MI-DARE protocol further prolongs the network lifetime by minimizing the number of transmissions. Simulation results show that the proposed techniques outperform contemporary schemes in terms of the selected performance metrics. © 2016, Javaid et al

PHYTOCHEMICAL AND ANTIOXIDANT SCREENING OF ANACYLUS PYRETHRUM, APIUM GRAVEOLENS, BOERHAAVIA DIFFUSA, CINNAMOMUM CASSIA BLUME, CUSCUMIS MELO LINN, CUSCUMIS SATIVUS LINN, DAUCUS SATIVUS, FOENICULUM VULGARE, TRACHYSPERMUM AMMII AND THEIT EFFECT ON VARIOUS HUMAN AILMENTS

Herbal medicinal plants are commonly intended for the cure and prevention of countless diseases for the reason that of low price, more effectiveness and no side effects. The medicinal plants consist of several types of phytochemical constituents as alkaloids, saponin, flavonoids, phenols, tannins and carbohydrates that are used for various human ailments. Such types of constituents not only have biochemical compounds but also have antioxidant, antimicrobial, antifungal activity and intended for the treatment of diabetes, kidney, liver and stomach ailments. The use of herbal natural plants is more economic and reliable for these types of diseases. These medicinal plants have been second-hand for different human disorders with no side effects of reoccurrence

Proteome level analysis of drug-resistant Prevotella melaninogenica for the identification of novel therapeutic candidates

The management of infectious diseases has become more critical due to the development of novel pathogenic strains with enhanced resistance. Prevotella melaninogenica, a gram-negative bacterium, was found to be involved in various infections of the respiratory tract, aerodigestive tract, and gastrointestinal tract. The need to explore novel drug and vaccine targets against this pathogen was triggered by the emergence of antimicrobial resistance against reported antibiotics to combat P. melaninogenica infections. The study involves core genes acquired from 14 complete P. melaninogenica strain genome sequences, where promiscuous drug and vaccine candidates were explored by state-of-the-art subtractive proteomics and reverse vaccinology approaches. A stringent bioinformatics analysis enlisted 18 targets as novel, essential, and non-homologous to humans and having druggability potential. Moreover, the extracellular and outer membrane proteins were subjected to antigenicity, allergenicity, and physicochemical analysis for the identification of the candidate proteins to design multi-epitope vaccines. Two candidate proteins (ADK95685.1 and ADK97014.1) were selected as the best target for the designing of a vaccine construct. Lead B- and T-cell overlapped epitopes were joined to generate potential chimeric vaccine constructs in combination with adjuvants and linkers. Finally, a prioritized vaccine construct was found to have stable interactions with the human immune cell receptors as confirmed by molecular docking and MD simulation studies. The vaccine construct was found to have cloning and expression ability in the bacterial cloning system. Immune simulation ensured the elicitation of significant immune responses against the designed vaccine. In conclusion, our study reported novel drug and vaccine targets and designed a multi-epitope vaccine against the P. melaninogenica infection. Further experimental validation will help open new avenues in the treatment of this multi-drug-resistant pathogen