A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Pharmacogenetic Studies in Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is an important global public health problem due to its high prevalence and morbidity. Although the treatment of nephrology patients has changed considerably, ineffectiveness and side effects of medications represent a major issue. In an effort to elucidate the contribution of genetic variants located in several genes in the response to treatment of patients with CKD, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of all available pharmacogenetics studies. The association between genotype distribution and response to medication was examined using the dominant, recessive, and additive inheritance models. Subgroup analysis based on ethnicity was also performed. In total, 29 studies were included in the meta-analysis, which examined the association of 11 genes (16 polymorphisms) with the response to treatment regarding CKD. Among the 29 studies, 18 studies included patients with renal transplantation, 8 involved patients with nephrotic syndrome, and 3 studies included patients with lupus nephritis. The present meta-analysis provides strong evidence for the contribution of variants harbored in the ABCB1, IL-10, ITPA, MIF, and TNF genes that creates some genetic predisposition that reduces effectiveness or is associated with adverse events of medications used in CKD.     

The structural variability of quarters and residential areas in the historical texture of the city of Yazd based on Islamic rules and jurisprudence: a case study of Golchinan quarter

According to many researchers and scholars, religious beliefs can be considered as the most influential factor in forming Muslim urban spaces and their architectural elements. In fact, historical cities reflect the culture and beliefs of their residences. Among all historical places in Iranian cities, the historical texture of the city of Yazd, especially the quarters since the age of Qajar dynasty, are well preserved. The present study aims at identifying the Islamic principles and values influencing the formation of architectural spaces and the extent of their applications in one of the historical quarters known as Golchinan. The results of the conformation of the theoretical findings with the data acquired from field studies revealed that almost 90% of the urban and architectural spaces (e.g. residential areas, mosques, bazaars, and pathways) in Yazd are directly influenced by Islamic principles. In other words, there is a strong conformity between the accepted Islamic values of the society and what actually was applied to urban constructions during Qajar dynasty.     

Examining the role of regional culture and geographical distances on the representation of unfamiliar foods in a continental-size country

This study provides an experimental-exploratory investigation about the role of regional culture and Euclidean distances on the consumers’ representation of edible insects in Brazil, a country with an extensive geographical surface. Seven hundred and eighty participants were recruited on the streets of eight cities from different Brazilian states: Manaus in Amazonas; Porto Velho in Rondônia; Macapá in Amapá; Cuiabá in Mato Grosso; Aracaju in Sergipe; Rio de Janeiro in Rio de Janeiro; Campinas in São Paulo; and Santa Maria in Rio Grande do Sul. These participating cities were considered from their cultural identity differences and geographical distances. Through a continual restricted word association task, participants were instructed to promptly verbalize the first five terms that came to their minds when stimulated with the expression “food made with edible insects”. Following, they had to score the valence of each term they produced. The dictionaries produced in each city were compared and classified into groups using the Ellegård’s index. Each group presented distinct ways of expression and attitude with respect to the inductive expression. Basically, Brazil was divided into two main groups according to their representation of edible insects: one consisted by the cities situated near the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, which present a cultural formation influenced by the European immigrants; and the other comprised the cities from the continental region that have strong cultural influence from the Amerindians. Thus, the cultural formation was more decisive to explain the similar representations among the cities than their geographical proximity. Given that, to effectively introduce a novel food in a country with varied regional culture, the marketing strategy should be focused on the values and beliefs of their culture subgroups instead of a single strategy for the whole country.     

Title加TextRank抽取关键句的情感分类研究

考虑到不同句子对判断文档情感倾向的重要程度不同，因而区分文档的关键句和细节句将有助于提高情感分类的性能。同时，考虑到Title和上下文信息，提出了一种基于Title和加权TextRank抽取关键句的情感分析方法SKTT，实现了高效的情感分析。根据文档Title的情感权重计算Title贡献度，考虑到标点和语义规则对情感倾向的影响；根据加权TextRank算法思想，在文档正文中构建了一个情感句有向图来提取关键句；计算所有关键句的情感倾向进行情感分类。在4个领域上进行实验，实验结果表明，该SKTT方法性能明显优于Baseline，具有高效性。     

基于改进蚁群算法的三维路径规划

针对移动机器人在海水环境中的三维路径规划问题容易陷入局部最优和收敛慢等瑕疵，根据三维环境全局信息来改进蚁群算法以提高实时性和收敛速度。改进蚁群算法的启发函数，采用局部信息和全局信息结合动态地改进信息素更新方式，以及根据三维空间中路径的平坦程度和光滑度二阶微分分别增加了一阶微分和二阶微分来再次修改信息素更新规则。仿真对比实验结果显示改进后的蚁群算法克服了收敛速度慢、容易陷入局部最优的缺点。     

Discovery of path-attribute dependency in manufacturing environments: A process mining approach

The more knowledge industrial practitioners detain of their production processes, the more they are capable of performing process improvements. Nonetheless, there may exist process characteristics and dependencies that are not easily extractable from business models, such as routing dependent attributes. This paper introduces an algorithm-driven framework to establish whether process path decisions influence the attributes in non-direct sequences, e.g., deploying machine A instead of machine B affects the % of rejected parts on the process, 4 stages down the line. This problem is shown to bears similarities with sequential pattern mining problems. The basis of the solution framework relies on process mining and data mining techniques. The approach proposed is applied on a real industrial log, unveiling deficiencies in the system and providing further improvement recommendations.     

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and post-GWAS analyses for technological traits in Assaf and Churra dairy breeds

This study aimed to perform a GWAS to identify genomic regions associated with milk and cheese-making traits in Assaf and Churra dairy sheep breeds; second, it aimed to identify possible positional and functional candidate genes and their interactions through post-GWAS studies. For 2,020 dairy ewes from 2 breeds (1,039 Spanish Assaf and 981 Churra), milk samples were collected and analyzed to determine 6 milk production and composition traits and 6 traits related to milk coagulation properties and cheese yield. The genetic profiles of the ewes were obtained using a genotyping chip array that included 50,934 SNP markers. For both milk and cheese-making traits, separate single-breed GWAS were performed using GCTA software. The set of positional candidate genes identified via GWAS was subjected to guilt-by-association-based prioritization analysis with ToppGene software. Totals of 84 and 139 chromosome-wise significant associations for the 6 milk traits and the 6 cheese-making traits were identified in this study. No significant SNPs were found in common between the 2 studied breeds, possibly due to their genetic heterogeneity of the phenotypes under study. Additionally, 63 and 176 positional candidate genes were located in the genomic intervals defined as confidence regions in relation to the significant SNPs identified for the analyzed traits for Assaf and Churra breeds. After the functional prioritization analysis, 71 genes were identified as promising positional and functional candidate genes and proposed as targets of future research to identify putative causative variants in relation to the traits under examination. In addition, this multitrait study allowed us to identify variants that have a pleiotropic effect on both milk production and cheese-related traits. The incorporation of variants among the proposed functional and positional candidate genes into genomic selection strategies represent an interesting approach for achieving rapid genetic gains, specifically for those traits difficult to measure, such as cheese-making traits.     

Investigation of Copper Recovery from a New Copper Deposit (Nussir) in Northern Norway

ABSTRACT

Norway has seen an upsurge of interest in exploiting its mineral deposits during the last decade. One of the major areas of interest is a huge copper deposit, operated by Nussir ASA located in the Repparfjord tectonic window in the Caledonides of west Finnmark. Nussir ASA is evaluating the Nussir and Ulveryggen mineral resources that contain copper sulfides with a small amount of gold and silver bearing minerals. The performance of flotation operations is generally evaluated on the basis of degree of liberation of minerals or the surface interactions between the collector and mineral. Firstly, size-by-size mineralogical characterization of the flotation feed and cumulative final product using Zeiss automated mineralogy techniques (Mineralogic) revealed that mineral liberation heavily influenced the flotation behavior of the ore. Furthermore, in order to assess the role of pH, collector concentration and flotation time, bench scale flotation experiments were performed. The metallurgical results were maximum between pH 6 and 8 and at collector concentration 6 × 10^?5 M. A correlation is established using the zeta potential and Hallimond flotation tests to assess the role of operating parameters in flotation. The distinctive role of process mineralogy and flotation chemical influence for copper mineral flotation of Nussir ore is presented in this article.     

Two‐sided matching framework for optimal user association in 5G multi‐RAT UDNs

Recently, academic and industrial research communities are paying more explicit attention to the 5G multiple radio access technology ultra‐dense networks (5G multi‐RAT UDNs) for boosting network capacity, especially in UD urban zones. To this aim, in this paper, we intend to tackle the user association problem in 5G multi‐RAT UDNs. By considering the decoupled uplink/downlink access (DUDA), we divide our user association problem into two distinct subproblems representing, respectively, the uplink and the downlink channels. Next, we formulated each one as a nonlinear optimization problem with binary variables. Then, to solve them, we were restricted by the hard complexity, as well as the hard feasibility of centralized user association schemes. Thus, to resolve our user association problem in a reasonable time and distributed manner, we formulated each subproblem as a many‐to‐one matching game based on matching theory. Next, we provide two fully distributed association algorithms to compute the uplink and downlink stable matching among user equipments (UEs) and base stations (BSs). Simulation results corroborate our theoretical model and show the effectiveness and improvement of our achieved results in terms of the overall network performance, quality of service (QoS), and energy efficiency (EE) of UEs.     

水产品及养殖水中丁香酚类化合物风险研究

目的 检测水产品及养殖水中丁香酚类化合物。方法 应用食品补充检验方法BJS 201908《水产品及水中丁香酚类化合物的测定》，以海水鱼、淡水鱼、海水虾、淡水虾及养殖水作为基质，测定6种丁香酚类化合物的含量。结果 通过对实际样品测定后发现，在水产品中检出了丁香酚类化合物，主要为丁香酚，检出率为28.9%，其中海水鱼相对突出。结论 本研究为丁香酚作为渔用麻醉剂提供了方法论，为丁香酚类化合物在水产运输的合理使用提供理论依据。