Expression of Main Toll-Like Receptors in Patients with Different Types of Colorectal Polyps and Their Relationship with Gut Microbiota

Abnormal activation of Toll-like receptor (TLRs) signaling can result in colon cancer development. The aim of this study was to investigate the expression of important TLRs in different histological types of colorectal polyps and evaluate their relationship with intestinal microbiota. The expression levels of TLR2, 3, 4, and 5 were analyzed in intestinal biopsy specimens of 21 hyperplastic polyp (HP), 16 sessile serrated adenoma (SSA), 29 tubular adenoma (TA), 21 villous/tubulovillous (VP/TVP) cases, and 31 normal controls. In addition, selected gut bacteria including Streptococcus bovis, Enterococcus faecalis, Enterotoxigenic Bacteroides fragilis (ETBF), Fusobacterium nucleatum, Porphyromonas spp., Lactobacillus spp., Roseburia spp., and Bifidobacterium spp. were quantified in fecal samples using absolute qRT PCR, and, finally, the association between TLRs and these gut microbiota- was evaluated by Spearman’s correlation coefficient. Higher expression of TLR2 and TLR4 in VP/TVP and TA, and lower expression levels of TLR3 and TLR5 in all type of polyps were observed. The differences in TLR expression patterns was not only dependent on the histology, location, size, and dysplasia grade of polyps but also related to the intestinal microbiota patterns. TLR2 and TLR4 expression was directly associated with the F. nucleatum, E. faecalis, S. bovis, Porphyromonas, and inversely to Bifidobacterium, Lactobacillus, and Roseburia quantity. Furthermore, TLR3 and TLR5 expression was directly associated with Bifidobacterium, Roseburia, and Lactobacillus quantity. Our results suggest a possible critical role of TLRs during colorectal polyp progression. An abnormal regulation of TLRs in relation to gut microbial quantity may contribute to carcinogenesis.     

Performance evaluation of a reservation random access scheme for packetized wireless systems with call control and hand-off loading

We consider a packet switched wireless network where each cell's communication channel is shared among packet voice sources. In this paper, we present a method for the design and analysis of wireless cells using a reservation random access (RRA) scheme for packet access control. This scheme is integrated with a call admission control procedure. We model the state process of a single cell as a vector Markov chain. We compute the steady state distribution of the Markov chain. This result is used to calculate the packet dropping probability and the call blocking probability. By setting limits on maximum permissible levels for the call blocking probability and the packet dropping probability, we obtain the Erlang capacity of a single cell, with and without hand-off traffic. For an illustrative RRA scheme, the Erlang capacity of a single cell is shown to be about twice that attained by a comparable fixed assigned TDMA scheme. We show that a cellular network using this RRA scheme and which applies can be no blocking of hand-off calls, exhibits similar call capacity levels.This work is supported by a University of California MICRO and Pacific-Bell Grant No. 94-107.     

An integrated fuzzy regression-data envelopment analysis algorithm for optimum oil consumption estimation with ambiguous data

This study introduces an integrated fuzzy regression (FR) data envelopment analysis (DEA) algorithm for oil consumption estimation and optimization with uncertain and ambiguous data. This is quite important as oil consumption estimations deals with several uncertainties due to social, economic factors. Furthermore, DEA is integrated with FR because there is no clear cut as to which FR approach is superior for oil consumption estimation. The standard indicators used in this paper are population, cost of crude oil, gross domestic production (GDP) and annual oil production. Fifteen popular and most cited FR models are considered in the algorithm. Each FR model has different approach and advantages. The input data is divided into train and test data. The FR models have been tuned for all their parameters according to the train data, and the best coefficients are identified. Center of Average Method for defuzzification output process is applied. For determining the rate of error of FR models estimations, the rate of defuzzified output of each model is compared with its actual rate consumption in test data. The efficiency of 15 FR models is examined by the output-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model without inputs by considering three types of relative error: RMSE, MAE and MAPE. The applicability and superiority of the proposed algorithm is shown for monthly oil consumption of Canada, United States, Japan and Australia from 1990 to 2005.     

A novel algorithm for layout optimization of injection process with random demands and sequence dependent setup times

Injection molding is an ideal manufacturing process for producing high volumes of products from both thermoplastic and thermo setting materials. Nevertheless, in some cases, this type of manufacturing process decelerates the production rate as a bottleneck. Thus, layout optimization plays a crucial role in this type of problem in terms of increasing the efficiency of the production line. In this regard, a novel computer simulation–stochastic data envelopment analysis (CS-SDEA) algorithm is proposed in this paper to deal with a single row job-shop layout problem in an injection molding process. First, the system is modeled with discrete-event-simulation as a powerful tool for analyzing complex stochastic systems. Then, due to lack of information about some operational parameters, theory of uncertainty is imported to the simulation model. Finally, an output-oriented stochastic DEA model is used for ranking the outputs of simulation model. The proposed CS-SDEA algorithm is capable of modeling and optimizing non-linear, stochastic, and uncertain injection process problems. The solution quality is illustrated by an actual case study in a refrigerator manufacturing company.     

A game attention model for efficient bit rate allocation in cloud gaming

The widespread availability of broadband internet access and the growth in server-based processing have provided an opportunity to run games away from the player into the cloud and offer a new promising service known as cloud gaming. The concept of cloud gaming is to render a game in the cloud and stream the resulting game scenes to the player as a video sequence over a broadband connection. To meet the stringent network bandwidth requirements of cloud gaming and support more players, efficient bit rate reduction techniques are needed. In this paper, we introduce the concept of game attention model (GAM), which is basically a game context-based visual attention model, as a means for reducing the bit rate of the streaming video more efficiently. GAM estimates the importance of each macro-block in a game frame from the player’s perspective and allows encoding the less important macro-blocks with lower bit rate. We have evaluated nine game video sequences, covering a wide range of game genre and a spectrum of scene content in terms of details, motion and brightness. Our subjective assessment shows that by integrating this model into the cloud gaming framework, it is possible to decrease the required bit rate by nearly 25 % on average, while maintaining a relatively high user quality of experience. This clearly enables players with limited communication resources to benefit from cloud gaming with acceptable quality.     

Survey of multipath routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks

This survey investigates multipath routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). The main objectives of multipath routing protocols are to provide reliable communication and to ensure load balancing as well as to improve quality of service (QoS) of MANETs. These multipath protocols are broadly classified into five categories based on their major goals. The goals are to improve delay, provide reliability, reduce overhead, maximize network life and support hybrid routing. Multipath routing protocols address issues such as multiple paths discovery and maintaining these paths. Issues, objectives, performances, advantages and disadvantages of these protocols are investigated and summarized. A checklist is provided as a guideline so that a network designer can choose an appropriate multipath routing protocol to meet the network's application objectives.     

Pose-invariant face recognition by matching on multi-resolution MRFs linked by supercoupling transform

Recognition of faces in arbitrary pose is addressed in this paper. For this task, an MRF-based classification approach is proposed which employs the energy of the established match between a pair of images as a criterion of goodness-of-match. By incorporating an image matching method as part of the recognition process, the system is made robust to moderate global spatial transformations. The approach draws on a method [1] which has the potential to cope with pose changes but a direct application of which suffers from several shortcomings. In order to overcome these problems, a number of enhancements are proposed. First, by adopting a multi-scale relaxation scheme based on super coupling transform, the inference using sequential tree re-weighted message passing approach [2] is accelerated. Next, by taking advantage of a statistical shape prior for the matching, the results are regularized and constrained, making the system robust to spurious structures and outliers. For classification, both textural and structural similarities of the facial images are taken into account. The method is evaluated on two databases and promising results are obtained.     

Effect of Side Retainers on Seismic Response of Bridges with Elastomeric Bearings

Often, to restrain the lateral displacement of elastomeric bearings in slab-girder bridges, two retainers in the form of angles or welded plates are placed on each side of the bearings, with a slight clearance to allow for longitudinal movement of the elastomer. The existence of the gap introduces nonlinearity into the seismic analysis of the structure, which is commonly ignored. In addition, by considering the gap, the elastomer’s stiffness in the transverse direction contributes to the overall stiffness of the system. This paper investigates the behavior of these retainers under earthquake forces. The retainers’ stiffness, the gap distance, and the period of the bridge are used as variable parameters. It is shown that the seismic demand on retainers is nonlinear in nature and depends on the frequency content of the input motion. It is also proved that ignoring the gap in the seismic analysis model can lead to lower seismic demands on the retainers and substructure. Design recommendations are given for bridges with such retainers.     

Integrated Fuzzy DEA-ANFIS to Measure the Success Effect of Human Resource Spirituality

Workplace spirituality has gained attention as it is proven to be a contributor to organizational performance improvement. This paper aims to assess the impact of human resource spirituality on the success of organizational strategic change projects. The success of the projects is measured by the well-known criterion of deviation from the planned budget cost. Data collection is based on a questionnaire survey of 252 personnel in 36 large and medium-scale organizational change projects in power industry. The paper proposes an integrated algorithm of fuzzy data envelopment analysis (FDEA) and adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for measuring the pure effect of human resource spirituality on the success of organizational change projects in the power industry. It also achieves a verified tool capable of addressing complexity, nonlinearity, ambiguity, and fuzziness for measuring spirituality of human resources in the projects. Results show that spirituality of the project team has a significant effect on project success.     

A non-contact method for part-based process performance monitoring in end milling operations

Surface response to excitation (SuRE) method was originally developed for structural health monitoring (SHM) applications. SuRE was used to evaluate the performance of completed milling operations. The method generates surface waves on the plate and studies the spectrum changes at selected points to detect defects and change of compressive forces. In this study, the length, depth, and width of a slot were changed step by step. The surface of the aluminum plate was excited in the 20–400 kHz range with a piezoelectric element. A laser scanning vibrometer was used to monitor the vibrations at the predetermined grid points after the dimensions of the slot were changed methodically. The frequency spectrums of measured vibrations were calculated by using the Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT). The sums of the squares of the differences (SSD) of the spectrums were calculated to evaluate the change of the spectrums. The SuRE method was able to determine if the dimensions were changed in each case at all the selected points. The scanning laser vibrometer is not feasible to be used at the shop floor. However, the study demonstrated that a piezoelectric element attached to any of the grid points would be able to evaluate the completed machining process.