Network-Based Approach and IVI Methodologies, a Combined Data Investigation Identified Probable Key Genes in Cardiovascular Disease and Chronic Kidney Disease

In fact, the risk of dying from CVD is significant when compared to the risk of developing end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Moreover, patients with severe CKD are often excluded from randomized controlled trials, making evidence-based therapy of comorbidities like CVD complicated. Thus, the goal of this study was to use an integrated bioinformatics approach to not only uncover Differentially Expressed Genes (DEGs), their associated functions, and pathways but also give a glimpse of how these two conditions are related at the molecular level. We started with GEO2R/R program (version 3.6.3, 64 bit) to get DEGs by comparing gene expression microarray data from CVD and CKD. Thereafter, the online STRING version 11.1 program was used to look for any correlations between all these common and/or overlapping DEGs, and the results were visualized using Cytoscape (version 3.8.0). Further, we used MCODE, a cytoscape plugin, and identified a total of 15 modules/clusters of the primary network. Interestingly, 10 of these modules contained our genes of interest (key genes). Out of these 10 modules that consist of 19 key genes (11 downregulated and 8 up-regulated), Module 1 (RPL13, RPLP0, RPS24, and RPS2) and module 5 (MYC, COX7B, and SOCS3) had the highest number of these genes. Then we used ClueGO to add a layer of GO terms with pathways to get a functionally ordered network. Finally, to identify the most influential nodes, we employed a novel technique called Integrated Value of Influence (IVI) by combining the network's most critical topological attributes. This method suggests that the nodes with many connections (calculated by hubness score) and high spreading potential (the spreader nodes are intended to have the most impact on the information flow in the network) are the most influential or essential nodes in a network. Thus, based on IVI values, hubness score, and spreading score, top 20 nodes were extracted, in which RPS27A non-seed gene and RPS2, a seed gene, came out to be the important node in the network.

DIRECTIONS OF PERSPECTIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE REGIONAL TOURIST COMPLEX OF KHMELNYTSKY REGION

The directions of perspective development of the territorial organization of the regional tourist complex of Khmelnytsky region are analyzed. As part of the regional tourist complex of Khmelnytsky region, we have identified point elements of the territorial structure: 2 bifunctional tourist nodes; 10 bifunctional tourist centers; 1 monofunctional tourist center; 17 bifunctional tourist points; 18 monofunctional tourist points. Four clusters are distinguished. The most complex territorial formations in the regional tourist complex of Khmelnytsky region are Khmelnytsky and Kamyanets-Podilsky bifunctional dispersed bushes. The main branch directions of perspective development of tourist activity of Khmelnytsky region are considered. As part of the improvement of the territorial organization of the regional tourist complex, it is necessary to pay attention first of all to the intensification of activities to complete the formation of existing tourist dispersed bushes. It is necessary to promote the establishment of Kamyanets-Podilsky as a tourist «superpoint» of the national level. It is advisable to form on the basis of this city a complex dispersed tourist bush, which should take a leading position in the development of tourism in the Khmelnytsky region. In order to reduce the polarization of the tourist regional complex, to promote the completion of the formation of tourist scattered bushes in other areas of the region. Of particular importance is its development on the basis of the regional center, which has the most favorable transport and geographical position in the region. It is expedient to build a primary network of tourist points and centers in the most promising 13 rural settlements, as well as to create two tourist clusters (Medzhibizh and Sataniv). Of particular importance is the development of a network of agricultural settlements, which will attract existing from the monuments of nature, history and culture. Thus, on the one hand, it is necessary to promote the establishment of Kamyanets-Podilsky as a tourist "superpoint" of the national level. It is advisable to form on the basis of this city a complex dispersed tourist bush, which should take a leading position in the development of tourism in the Khmelnytsky region. On the other hand, in order to reduce the polarization of the tourist regional complex, it is advisable to help complete the formation of tourist scattered bushes in other areas of the region. Of particular importance in this context is its development on the basis of the regional center, which has the most favorable transport and geographical position in the region. Also expedient, in our opinion, is the development of the primary network of tourist points and centers in the most promising 13 rural settlements, as well as the creation of two tourist clusters on the basis of the villages of Medzhibizh and Sataniv. Of particular importance in this context is the development of a network of agro-villages, which will involve in tourism activities of national importance monuments of nature, history, culture, as well as partially relevant monuments of local importance in the Khmelnytsky region. Key words: development, territorial organization, regional tourist complex, Khmelnytsky region.

Recognition of post-learning alteration of hippocampal ripples by convolutional neural network differs in the wild-type and AD mice

Evidence indicates that sharp-wave ripples (SWRs) are primary network events supporting memory processes. However, some studies demonstrate that even after disruption of awake SWRs the animal can still learn spatial task or that SWRs may be not necessary to establish a cognitive map of the environment. Moreover, we have found recently that despite a deficit of sleep SWRs the APP/PS1 mice, a model of Alzheimer’s disease, show undisturbed spatial reference memory. Searching for a learning-related alteration of SWRs that could account for the efficiency of memory in these mice we use convolutional neural networks (CNN) to discriminate pre- and post-learning 256 ms samples of LFP signals, containing individual SWRs. We found that the fraction of samples that were correctly recognized by CNN in majority of discrimination sessions was equal to ~ 50% in the wild-type (WT) and only 14% in APP/PS1 mice. Moreover, removing signals generated in a close vicinity of SWRs significantly diminished the number of such highly recognizable samples in the WT but not in APP/PS1 group. These results indicate that in WT animals a large subset of SWRs and signals generated in their proximity may contain learning-related information whereas such information seem to be limited in the AD mice.

Dual-Path Attention Compensation U-Net for Stroke Lesion Segmentation

For the segmentation task of stroke lesions, using the attention U-Net model based on the self-attention mechanism can suppress irrelevant regions in an input image while highlighting salient features useful for specific tasks. However, when the lesion is small and the lesion contour is blurred, attention U-Net may generate wrong attention coefficient maps, leading to incorrect segmentation results. To cope with this issue, we propose a dual-path attention compensation U-Net (DPAC-UNet) network, which consists of a primary network and auxiliary path network. Both networks are attention U-Net models and identical in structure. The primary path network is the core network that performs accurate lesion segmentation and outputting of the final segmentation result. The auxiliary path network generates auxiliary attention compensation coefficients and sends them to the primary path network to compensate for and correct possible attention coefficient errors. To realize the compensation mechanism of DPAC-UNet, we propose a weighted binary cross-entropy Tversky (WBCE-Tversky) loss to train the primary path network to achieve accurate segmentation and propose another compound loss function called tolerance loss to train the auxiliary path network to generate auxiliary compensation attention coefficient maps with expanded coverage area to perform compensate operations. We conducted segmentation experiments using the 239 MRI scans of the anatomical tracings of lesions after stroke (ATLAS) dataset to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of our method. The experimental results show that the DSC score of the proposed DPAC-UNet network is 6% higher than the single-path attention U-Net. It is also higher than the existing segmentation methods of the related literature. Therefore, our method demonstrates powerful abilities in the application of stroke lesion segmentation.

Fuel Improvement Measures for Particulate Matter Emission Reduction during Corn Cob Combustion

Fuel-related measures and modernization of small-scale combustion units has become the focus of attention in the renewable heat generation sector, as a means to promote local biomass utilization and fuel-flexibility while meeting strict environmental legislative requirements. With the aim to mitigate total particulate matter emissions and ash-associated problems characteristic of crop residue combustion, (1) corn cob pellets (with and without kaolin and binder) as well as (2) fuel blends with wood pellets were combusted in a pellet oven under full load. Results show that additivation or fuel blending (e.g., 50 wt. % wood and 50 wt. % corn cob pellets) reduce total particulate and CO-emissions by 48 to 60 wt. % and 64 to 89 wt. %, respectively, in comparison to baseline emissions from non-additivized corn cob pellets. Kaolin prevented sintering of corn cob ash. However, considerable grate ash entrainment was observed. TPM consists of a “primary network”—polyhedral and spherical particles approximately 1 μm in diameter (mainly KCl), and a “secondary network” built on top of the primary network, consisting of square-prism-shaped particles of approximately 200 nm in diameter. KCl and K2SO4 are main compounds in particles from corn cob and wood pellet combustion, respectively. Effective measures demonstrated within this study should be complemented with low-cost coarse ash removal systems.

ASSESSMENT OF THE STATE OF THE ORGANIZATION OF CIRCULATION AND THE AVAILABILITY OF MEDICINES FOR DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF PATIENTS AT THE LEVEL OF OBSTETRIC UNITS

Introduction. In the context of the coronavirus infection pandemic, the relevance of increasing the level of availability of medicines for various categories of patients in primary care is becoming crucial. The aim of the work was to process the state of the organization of circulation and the availability of medicines for various clinical and pharmacological groups of patients at the level of obstetric points. Materials and methods. To assess the organization of circulation and the availability of medicines of various clinical-pharmacological, nomenclature-legal and classification-legal groups, a conditional indicator was used – the conditional availability of medicines, calculated using content analysis. To conduct a content analysis, the organization of the regional primary network of medical care was studied; a list of obstetric points was compiled according to a quantitative indicator by grouping using the Sturges formula, followed by the construction of discrete series of variations and a distribution polygon. Results and discussion. Noted that obstetric centers perform socially oriented tasks to increase the level of organization of circulation and the availability of medicines for all contingents of the population on the principles of medical and pharmaceutical law, as the basis of state policy to minimize risks in the organization of pharmaceutical business. According to our own developed methods using content analysis, the structuring of the primary health care with a network of obstetric points at the regional level was carried out and it was established for the overwhelming majority of districts a low, above low and medium level of conditional availability of drugs for patients. Conclusions. The organization of circulation and the availability of drugs for various contingents of the population in the studied regional primary health care network is at the following level: unsatisfactory (for three districts); low (for five districts); higher than low (twelve districts); medium (for five districts); above average (for one district) satisfactory (for one district). Based on the results obtained, it can be concluded that the insufficient number of obstetric points in the regional primary health care unit is an obstacle to the timely provision of the population with high quality, effective and affordable drugs.

Systematic arrangement of intersections on the primary road network in Banja Luka

The City of Banja Luka experienced construction of eleven roundabout intersections of different type and functional level in the recent period. Previously adopted planning documents and conclusions of the City’s Expert Team provided a stronghold for these activities, while positive experiences influenced the commitment to continue with similar activities in the future. In order to answer this question in a quality way, it is necessary to lay down strategic foundations for the systemic arrangement of intersections on the primary network of the City. The paper presents initial research regarding the definition of potential locations for the application of this type of intersections in the Banja Luka urban area as a basis for a strategic development document, i.e. an urban plan.

Performance Enhancement for Multihop Cognitive DF and AF Relaying Protocols under Joint Impact of Interference and Hardware Noises: NOMA for Primary Network and Best-Path Selection for Secondary Network

In this paper, we propose and evaluate performance of multihop multipath underlay cognitive radio networks. In a primary network, an uplink nonorthogonal multiple access method is employed to allow primary transmitters to simultaneously transmit their data to a primary receiver. Using an underlay spectrum-sharing method, secondary source and secondary relays must adjust their transmit power to guarantee quality of service of the primary network. Under the limited transmit power, cochannel interference from the primary transmitters, and hardware noises caused by impairments, we propose best-path selection methods to improve the end-to-end performance for the secondary network. Moreover, both multihop decode-and-forward and amplify-and-forward relaying protocols are considered in this paper. We derive expressions of outage probability for the primary and secondary networks and propose an efficient method to calculate the transmit power of the secondary transmitters. Then, computer simulations employing the Monte-Carlo approach are realized to validate the derivations.

Rainfall estimates from opportunistic sensors in Germany across spatio-temporal scales – Geostatistical interpolation framework

<p>Precipitation - highly variable in space and time - is the most important input for many hydrological models. As these models become more and more detailed in space and time, high-resolution input data are required. Especially for modeling and prediction in fast reacting catchments, such as urban catchment areas, a higher space-time resolution is needed than the current ground measurement networks operated by national weather services usually provide. With the increasing number and availability of opportunistic sensors such as commercial microwave links (CMLs) and personal weather stations (PWS) in recent years, new opportunities for measuring meteorological data are emerging.</p><p>We developed a geostatistical interpolation framework which allows a combination of different opportunistic sensors and their specific features and geometric properties, e.g. point and line information. In this framework, a combined kriging approach is introduced, taking into account not only the point information of a reliable primary network, e.g., from national weather services, but also the higher uncertainty of the PWS- and CML-based precipitation. The path-averaged information of the CMLs is included through a block kriging-type approach.</p><p>The methodology was applied for two 7-months periods in Germany using an hourly temporal and a 1x1 km spatial resolution. By incorporating CMLs and PWS, the Pearson correlation could be increased from 0.56 to 0.73 compared to using only primary network for interpolation. The resulting precipitation maps also provided good agreement compared to gauge adjusted radar products.</p>