Sound-transparent anisotropic media for backscattering-immune wave manipulation

The scattering behavior of the anisotropic acoustic medium is analyzed to reveal the possibility of routing acoustic signals through the anisotropic layers with no backscattering loss. The sound-transparent effect of such medium is achieved by independently modulating the anisotropic effective acoustic parameters in a specific order, and experimentally observed in a bending waveguide by arranging the subwavelength structures in the bending part according to transformation acoustics. With the properly designed filling structures, the original distorted acoustic field in the bending waveguide is restored as if the wave travels along a straight path. The transmitted acoustic signal is maintained nearly the same as the incident modulated Gaussian pulse. The proposed schemes and the supporting results could be instructive for further acoustic manipulations such as wave steering, cloaking and beam splitting.

A Mixed Statistical and Machine Learning Approach for the Analysis of Multimodal Trail Making Test Data

Eye-tracking can offer a novel clinical practice and a non-invasive tool to detect neuropathological syndromes. In this paper, we show some analysis on data obtained from the visual sequential search test. Indeed, such a test can be used to evaluate the capacity of looking at objects in a specific order, and its successful execution requires the optimization of the perceptual resources of foveal and extrafoveal vision. The main objective of this work is to detect if some patterns can be found within the data, to discern among people with chronic pain, extrapyramidal patients and healthy controls. We employed statistical tests to evaluate differences among groups, considering three novel indicators: blinking rate, average blinking duration and maximum pupil size variation. Additionally, to divide the three patient groups based on scan-path images—which appear very noisy and all similar to each other—we applied deep learning techniques to embed them into a larger transformed space. We then applied a clustering approach to correctly detect and classify the three cohorts. Preliminary experiments show promising results.

Dataset-adaptive minimizer order reduces memory usage in k-mer counting

The rapid, continuous growth of deep sequencing experiments requires development and improvement of many bioinformatics applications for analysis of large sequencing datasets, including k-mer counting and assembly. Several applications reduce RAM usage by binning sequences. Binning is done by employing minimizer schemes, which rely on a specific order of the minimizers. It has been demonstrated that the choice of the order has a major impact on the performance of the applications. Here we introduce a method for tailoring the order to the dataset. Our method repeatedly samples the dataset and modifies the order so as to flatten the k-mer load distribution across minimizers. We integrated our method into Gerbil, a state-of-the-art memory efficient k-mer counter, and were able to reduce its memory footprint by 50% or more for large k, with only minor increase in runtime. Our tests also showed that the orders produced by our method produced superior results when transferred across datasets from the same species, with little or no order change. This enables memory reduction with essentially no increase in runtime.

Fine-Tuning Word Embeddings for Hierarchical Representation of Data Using a Corpus and a Knowledge Base for Various Machine Learning Applications

Word embedding models have recently shown some capability to encode hierarchical information that exists in textual data. However, such models do not explicitly encode the hierarchical structure that exists among words. In this work, we propose a method to learn hierarchical word embeddings (HWEs) in a specific order to encode the hierarchical information of a knowledge base (KB) in a vector space. To learn the word embeddings, our proposed method considers not only the hypernym relations that exist between words in a KB but also contextual information in a text corpus. The experimental results on various applications, such as supervised and unsupervised hypernymy detection, graded lexical entailment prediction, hierarchical path prediction, and word reconstruction tasks, show the ability of the proposed method to encode the hierarchy. Moreover, the proposed method outperforms previously proposed methods for learning nonspecialised, hypernym-specific, and hierarchical word embeddings on multiple benchmarks.

Drug Utilization Evaluation of Vancomycin among Patients in Jafar Ibn Auf Pediatric Hospital, 2018

Background: Vancomycin is an antibiotic of growing importance in the treatment of hospital-acquired infections; with a particular emphasis on its value in the fight against Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Increasing reports of Vancomycin resistance have raised concerns about the effectiveness of this drug. Drug utilization evaluation has an important role in controlling rational use of antibiotics to prevent the emergence of resistance. Methods: We conducted a retrospective 6-months study at Jafar Ibn Auf pediatric hospital. Data including patient's demographics, diagnosis, Dosage regimen, and treatment duration were reviewed. The concordance of practice with the Hospital Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) guidelines and principles of antibiotic therapy was assessed. Results: 127 medical records were reviewed in this study. Sepsis (29%) and Pneumonia (19.6%) were the most common indications. Culture test was requested in 20.5% of patients. Monitoring of serum creatinine was carried in 81.1% of patients. Based on HICPAC guidelines vancomycin was administered appropriately in 67.7% percent of cases. Considering the infusion rate, most of patients with specific order were received vancomycin in 1 hour. Conclusions: The results showed that vancomycin was used empirically without subsequent adjustment of the antimicrobial agent according to culture and sensitivity data and lack of paying enough attention to the infusion rate and serum creatinine monitoring.

RZYMIANIE I ICH PRAWO. INSTYTUCJE SPOŁECZEŃSTWA NIEEGALITARNEGO

Roman authors demonstrated this hierarchy-oriented approach already when talking about the very establishment of Rome by Romulus, who divided then the foundational community into social orders of patricians and plebeians. Rome begins not with the individuals entering into a kind of social contract but with the pre-existing community. This community is granted with new identity with establishment of a specific order, that allowed addressing all the needs of the community and provided it with significant potential for expansion. Both social orders were burdened with the duties of mutual care and the specific duties towards Roman community itself. Therefore, the social relationships were understood in terms of duties and not rights. In order to provide for proper functioning of this social system, special institutions were established. Among others, that were described, particular attention was paid to Censors being in charge of supervising appropriate moral conduct of the citizens. The Censors exercised control over the way in which the citizens performed their moral duties, i.e. whether they have been observing mores (socially accepted patterns of conduct) in social life. Requirements stemming from the mores depended on the social position, and the higher the social position was, the greater were the requirements towards a given citizen. Censors could punish a citizen who had violated mores, with a censor’s note (nota censoria). The effect of the censor’s note were diverse and could entail severe consequences ending with exclusion from the community which resulted in deprivation of citizenship (capitis deminutio media).

Using the Invasive Weed algorthim for solving Network Analysis problems: استخدام خوارزمية الأعشاب الضارة في حل مسائل شبكة الأعمال

Any project consists of a set of interconnected and interrelated activities in a specific order that are carried out at a specific time. The size of the projects, their high costs, and the complexity of their activities made it necessary to make a careful and prior planning. From here came the idea of ​​business networks, where scientific analysis was adopted for project planning, scheduling and reviewing by representing these projects with a network that shows the sequence of their activities at appropriate costs and times. Since such networks need time and effort to implement, the researcher used one of the smart techniques (the weed algorithm) and applied it to some business network issues that require great time and effort that increase as the size of the project increases. By applying the algorithm to some of these issues, it succeeded in achieving the required results in a record time (a few minutes) and according to the size of the issue, and hardly a little effort, in the first issue, the results (the expected time for each activity, determining the critical path, calculating the time needed to complete the critical path) achieved results in approximately one minute, and the second issue took less than two minutes. As for the third issue, the results were given in approximately two and a half minutes. Thus this smart technology has achieved the desired results in the least possible time and effort. Such a technique can be used and implemented on problems in different fields due to its accuracy, efficiency and speed in solving problems.

The Hypocrisy of Dutch Actions in Indonesia

At the end of World War 2 the Netherlands, through its own military tribunals, tried and convicted several members of the Japanese and German militaries for their participation in the war crime of extra judicial executions in Indonesia and the Netherlands. Several of the convicted men were executed by the Netherlands while others sentenced to lengthy prison terms. From 1946-1949 the Netherlands, primarily through commando Raymond Westerling, engaged in the same actions they accused the Japanese of having committed. While no specific order was ever revealed showing that Westerling’s actions were ordered by the military, the Netherlands tacitly approved his actions by failing to control him and his men and by their unwillingness to take responsibility for his actions before or after the Netherlands withdrew its forces from Indonesia in 1949. This research paper explores the extrajudicial executions conducted by Westerling, his men, other Dutch military and the Dutch government in order to provide a better and more thorough understanding of these events and the lack of national or international action against war crimes committed after World War 2. It concludes that the Netherlands has failed to try or even accuse Westerling and others of war crimes or take actions to discipline them, and in fact has covered up his actions and failed to make public those war crimes. Further that the reason for this continued hypocritical refusal is a concern for the reputation of the Netherlands in the world and a belief that high levels of government would be found complicit.

RNA Origami: Packaging a Segmented Genome in Orbivirus Assembly and Replication

Understanding how viruses with multi-segmented genomes incorporate one copy of each segment into their capsids remains an intriguing question. Here, we review our recent progress and describe the advancements made in understanding the genome packaging mechanism of a model nonenveloped virus, Bluetongue virus (BTV), with a 10-segment (S1–S10) double-strand RNA (dsRNA) genome. BTV (multiple serotypes), a member of the Orbivirus genus in the Reoviridae family, is a notable pathogen for livestock and is responsible for significant economic losses worldwide. This has enabled the creation of an extensive set of reagents and assays, including reverse genetics, cell-free RNA packaging, and bespoke bioinformatics approaches, which can be directed to address the packaging question. Our studies have shown that (i) UTRs enable the conformation of each segment necessary for the next level of RNA–RNA interaction; (ii) a specific order of intersegment interactions leads to a complex RNA network containing all the active components in sorting and packaging; (iii) networked segments are recruited into nascent assembling capsids; and (iv) select capsid proteins might be involved in the packaging process. The key features of genome packaging mechanisms for BTV and related dsRNA viruses are novel and open up new avenues of potential intervention.