Recipe: Writer turns to Fanny Singer's "Always Home" for comfort chicken during family's Seder.

2020-04-09 -

strataconf: Read our initial findings of @amplab's open source benchmark for tracking large-scale Query Engines http://t.co/rGgOVeTHQ8 #strataconf

Mitsunori Fukuda
Jun 1, 2008; 7:1031-1042
Research

Startups moving to the scale-up phase will naturally experience growing pains, here's how to manage your team through that period with as little disruption as possible

Moacir Aloisio, Silas L. Carvalho and César R. de Oliveira
Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 148 (2020), 2509-2523.
Abstract, references and article information

Qingbo Shu
Apr 1, 2020; 19:672-689
Research

The value of interim ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (iPET) guided treatment decisions in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) has been the subject of much debate. This investigation focuses on a comparison of the Deauville score and the deltaSUV_max (SUV_max) approach – two methods to assess early metabolic response to standard chemotherapy in DLBCL. Methods: Of 609 DLBCL patients participating in the Positron Emission Tomography-guided Therapy of Aggressive non-Hodgkin Lymphomas (PETAL) trial, iPET scans of 596 patients originally evaluated using the SUV_max method were available for post-hoc assessment of the Deauville score. A commonly used definition of an unfavorable iPET result according to the Deauville score is an uptake greater than that of the liver, whereas an unfavorable iPET scan with regard to the SUV_max approach is characterized as a relative reduction of the maximum standardized uptake value between baseline and iPET staging of less than or equal to 66%. We investigated the two methods’ correlation and concordance by Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient and the agreement in classification, respectively. We further used Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox regression to assess differences in survival between patient subgroups defined by the pre-specified cut-offs. Time-dependent receiver operating curve analysis provided information on the methods’ respective discrimination performance. Results: Deauville score and SUV_max approach differed in their iPET-based prognosis. The SUV_max approach outperformed the Deauville score in terms of discrimination performance – most likely due to a high number of false-positive decisions by the Deauville score. Cut-off-independent discrimination performance remained low for both methods, but cut-off-related analyses showed promising results. Both favored the SUV_max approach, e.g. for the segregation by iPET response, where the event-free survival hazard ratio was 3.14 (95% confidence interval (CI): 2.22 – 4.46) for SUV_max and 1.70 (95% CI: 1.29 – 2.24) for the Deauville score. Conclusion: When considering treatment intensification, the currently used Deauville score cut-off of an uptake above that of the liver seems to be inappropriate and associated with potential harm for DLBCL patients. The SUV_max criterion of a relative reduction of the maximum standardized uptake value of less than or equal to 66% should be considered as an alternative.

Large-scale identification of N-linked intact glycopeptides by liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) in human serum is challenging because of the wide dynamic range of serum protein abundances, the lack of a complete serum N-glycan database and the existence of proteoforms. In this regard, a spectral library search method was presented for the identification of N-linked intact glycopeptides from N-linked glycoproteins in human serum with target-decoy and motif-specific false discovery rate (FDR) control. Serum proteins were firstly separated into low-abundance and high-abundance proteins by acetonitrile (ACN) precipitation. After digestion, the N-linked intact glycopeptides were enriched by hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) and a portion of the enriched N-linked intact glycopeptides were processed by Peptide-N-Glycosidase F (PNGase F) to generate N-linked deglycopeptides. Both N-linked intact glycopeptides and deglycopeptides were analyzed by LC-MS/MS. From N-linked deglycopeptides data sets, 764 N-linked glycoproteins, 1699 N-linked glycosites and 3328 unique N-linked deglycopeptides were identified. Four types of N-linked glycosylation motifs (NXS/T/C/V, X=P) were used to recognize the N-linked deglycopeptides. The spectra of these N-linked deglycopeptides were utilized for N-linked deglycopeptides library construction and identification of N-linked intact glycopeptides. A database containing 739 N-glycan masses was constructed and utilized during spectral library search for the identification of N-linked intact glycopeptides. In total, 526 N-linked glycoproteins, 1036 N-linked glycosites, 22,677 N-linked intact glycopeptides and 738 N-glycan masses were identified under 1% FDR, representing the most in-depth serum N-glycoproteome identified by LC-MS/MS at N-linked intact glycopeptide level.

W. Timothy Garvey
May 1, 2020; 43:1085-1093
Emerging Therapies: Drugs and Regimens

OBJECTIVE

To assess the costs and project the potential lifetime cost-effectiveness of the ongoing Autoimmunity Screening for Kids (ASK) program, a large-scale, presymptomatic type 1 diabetes screening program for children and adolescents in the metropolitan Denver region.

WASHINGTON – Even as governments in Latin America and the Caribbean have taken generous and innovative steps to address forced displacement from Venezuela and more recently Nicaragua, the warm welcome has cooled in places amid the vast scale of the inflows, strains on public services and growing public concern.

AdvancED, the national accreditation company, has for the last two years operated Wyoming's entire accreditation process but the state will now do the work on its own.

Edinburgh : J. Dunn, 1826.

We propose a novel estimation procedure for scale-by-scale lead-lag relationships of financial assets observed at high-frequency in a non-synchronous manner. The proposed estimation procedure does not require any interpolation processing of original datasets and is applicable to those with highest time resolution available. Consistency of the proposed estimators is shown under the continuous-time framework that has been developed in our previous work Hayashi and Koike (2018). An empirical application to a quote dataset of the NASDAQ-100 assets identifies two types of lead-lag relationships at different time scales.

As an important type of reinforcement learning algorithms, actor-critic (AC) and natural actor-critic (NAC) algorithms are often executed in two ways for finding optimal policies. In the first nested-loop design, actor's one update of policy is followed by an entire loop of critic's updates of the value function, and the finite-sample analysis of such AC and NAC algorithms have been recently well established. The second two time-scale design, in which actor and critic update simultaneously but with different learning rates, has much fewer tuning parameters than the nested-loop design and is hence substantially easier to implement. Although two time-scale AC and NAC have been shown to converge in the literature, the finite-sample convergence rate has not been established. In this paper, we provide the first such non-asymptotic convergence rate for two time-scale AC and NAC under Markovian sampling and with actor having general policy class approximation. We show that two time-scale AC requires the overall sample complexity at the order of $mathcal{O}(epsilon^{-2.5}log^3(epsilon^{-1}))$ to attain an $epsilon$-accurate stationary point, and two time-scale NAC requires the overall sample complexity at the order of $mathcal{O}(epsilon^{-4}log^2(epsilon^{-1}))$ to attain an $epsilon$-accurate global optimal point. We develop novel techniques for bounding the bias error of the actor due to dynamically changing Markovian sampling and for analyzing the convergence rate of the linear critic with dynamically changing base functions and transition kernel.

Didier Chételat, Martin T. Wells.

Source: The Annals of Statistics, Volume 47, Number 5, 2639--2670.

Abstract:
We study the behavior of a real $p$-dimensional Wishart random matrix with $n$ degrees of freedom when $n,p ightarrowinfty$ but $p/n ightarrow0$. We establish the existence of phase transitions when $p$ grows at the order $n^{(K+1)/(K+3)}$ for every $Kinmathbb{N}$, and derive expressions for approximating densities between every two phase transitions. To do this, we make use of a novel tool we call the $mathcal{F}$-conjugate of an absolutely continuous distribution, which is obtained from the Fourier transform of the square root of its density. In the case of the normalized Wishart distribution, this represents an extension of the $t$-distribution to the space of real symmetric matrices.

Mohamad Elmasri, Maxwell J. Farrell, T. Jonathan Davies, David A. Stephens.

Source: The Annals of Applied Statistics, Volume 14, Number 1, 221--240.

Abstract:
Identifying undocumented or potential future interactions among species is a challenge facing modern ecologists. Recent link prediction methods rely on trait data; however, large species interaction databases are typically sparse and covariates are limited to only a fraction of species. On the other hand, evolutionary relationships, encoded as phylogenetic trees, can act as proxies for underlying traits and historical patterns of parasite sharing among hosts. We show that, using a network-based conditional model, phylogenetic information provides strong predictive power in a recently published global database of host-parasite interactions. By scaling the phylogeny using an evolutionary model, our method allows for biological interpretation often missing from latent variable models. To further improve on the phylogeny-only model, we combine a hierarchical Bayesian latent score framework for bipartite graphs that accounts for the number of interactions per species with host dependence informed by phylogeny. Combining the two information sources yields significant improvement in predictive accuracy over each of the submodels alone. As many interaction networks are constructed from presence-only data, we extend the model by integrating a correction mechanism for missing interactions which proves valuable in reducing uncertainty in unobserved interactions.

Persistent alterations in neuronal activity elicit homeostatic plastic changes in synaptic transmission and/or intrinsic excitability. However, it is unknown whether these homeostatic processes operate in concert or at different temporal scales to maintain network activity around a set-point value. Here we show that chronic neuronal hyperactivity, induced by M-channel inhibition, triggered intrinsic and synaptic homeostatic plasticity at different timescales in cultured hippocampal pyramidal neurons from mice of either sex. Homeostatic changes of intrinsic excitability occurred at a fast timescale (1–4 h) and depended on ongoing spiking activity. This fast intrinsic adaptation included plastic changes in the threshold current and a distal relocation of FGF14, a protein physically bridging Na_v1.6 and K_v7.2 channels along the axon initial segment. In contrast, synaptic adaptations occurred at a slower timescale (~2 d) and involved decreases in miniature EPSC amplitude. To examine how these temporally distinct homeostatic responses influenced hippocampal network activity, we quantified the rate of spontaneous spiking measured by multielectrode arrays at extended timescales. M-Channel blockade triggered slow homeostatic renormalization of the mean firing rate (MFR), concomitantly accompanied by a slow synaptic adaptation. Thus, the fast intrinsic adaptation of excitatory neurons is not sufficient to account for the homeostatic normalization of the MFR. In striking contrast, homeostatic adaptations of intrinsic excitability and spontaneous MFR failed in hippocampal GABAergic inhibitory neurons, which remained hyperexcitable following chronic M-channel blockage. Our results indicate that a single perturbation such as M-channel inhibition triggers multiple homeostatic mechanisms that operate at different timescales to maintain network mean firing rate.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Persistent alterations in synaptic input elicit homeostatic plastic changes in neuronal activity. Here we show that chronic neuronal hyperexcitability, induced by M-type potassium channel inhibition, triggered intrinsic and synaptic homeostatic plasticity at different timescales in hippocampal excitatory neurons. The data indicate that the fast adaptation of intrinsic excitability depends on ongoing spiking activity but is not sufficient to provide homeostasis of the mean firing rate. Our results show that a single perturbation such as M-channel inhibition can trigger multiple homeostatic processes that operate at different timescales to maintain network mean firing rate.

British product designer Lucy Hughes has invented a biodegradable plastic made from fish offcuts

The post SOLIDWORKS Apps for Kids How-To: Duplicate, Scale, Rotate, and Delete Items in Capture It appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Education Blog.

Penn State is implementing a new opt-in grading system for the spring 2020 semester that will give students flexibility, help preserve GPAs and minimize impacts to students’ transcripts during the academic challenges presented by the novel coronavirus public health crisis.

What have we done? That’s what Hawick housewife Carol Martin said when she realised her lottery ticket had scooped £33 million.

Evaluating dehydration severity is a challenging task. Clinical dehydration scores that combine multiple clinical findings are promising. One clinical dehydration scale score has been developed and subsequently evaluated; however, few participants in the derivation and validation studies were significantly dehydrated.

In children requiring intravenous rehydration, the dehydration scale displayed moderate reliability and weak associations with objective measures. Thus, although the scale can assist in assessing dehydration, it should not be used in isolation to dictate interventions (eg, intravenous rehydration, hospitalization). (Read the full article)

Assessing for adequacy of supervision in the clinical setting is challenging and may result in significant variability in care. Clinicians must quickly decide if a child and family necessitate direct counseling, further intervention, or require reporting to state agencies.

This study identified the most important characteristics for the evaluation of the adequacy of supervision of a young child. A standardized scale using these characteristics may result in an efficient means to reduce variability in care. (Read the full article)

Early detection for children with autism leads to better outcomes; early screening is critical. The Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT) is a widely used instrument for early autism screening and is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

This large study provides empirical support for population screening for autism spectrum disorders and the use of the M-CHAT in primary care settings. This study provides updated results to facilitate use and scoring of the M-CHAT by clinical providers. (Read the full article)

The Faces Pain Scale–Revised and Color Analog Scale are self-report pain scales that are commonly used for children in the clinical and research settings.

The Faces Pain Scale–Revised and Color Analog Scale overall demonstrate strong psychometric properties in children 4 to 17 years of age, including within subgroups of age, sex, and ethnicity. Convergent validity, however, is questionable in children <7 years old. (Read the full article)

There is concern that the Bayley-III overestimates developmental functioning in preterm populations. The ability of the Bayley-III Cognitive and Language scales to predict later functioning in very preterm children has not been examined.

The norms on the Bayley-III Cognitive and Language scales at 24 months had low sensitivity for impairment across general cognitive, verbal and nonverbal reasoning domains at 4 years, which was better detected using cut-points based on local term-born reference data. (Read the full article)

Maureen Hack
Aug 1, 2005; 116:333-341
ARTICLES

Former Vice President Joe Biden has approved a series of new hires that will significantly expand his campaign ahead of the general election fight with President Trump.

The Eufy smart scale normally costs $44.99, but Amazon is offering a 40 percent off coupon, which lowers the price to just $26.99.

Alireza Mansouri and Fattaneh Taghiyareh: Human interactions and opinion exchanges lead to social opinion dynamics, which is well described by opinion formation models. In these models, a random parameter is usually considered as the system noise, indicating the individual's inexplicable opinion changes. This noise could be an indicator of any other influential factors, such as public media, affects, and emotions. We study phase transitions, changes from one social phase to another, for various noise levels in a discrete opinion formation model based on the social impact theory with a scale-free random network as its interaction network topology. We also generate another similar model using the concept of social power based on the agents' node degrees in the interaction network as an estimation for their persuasiveness and supportiveness strengths and compare both models from phase transition viewpoint. We show by agent-based simulation and analytical considerations how opinion phases, including majority and non-majority, are formed in terms of the initial population of agents in opinion groups and noise levels. Two factors affect the system phase in equilibrium when the noise level increases: breaking up more segregated groups and dominance of stochastic behavior of the agents on their deterministic behavior. In the high enough noise levels, the system reaches a non-majority phase in equilibrium, regardless of the initial combination of opinion groups. In relatively low noise levels, the original model and the model whose agents' strengths are proportional to their centrality have different behaviors. The presence of a few high-connected influential leaders in the latter model consequences a different behavior in reaching equilibrium phase and different thresholds of noise levels for phase transitions.

A wildfire crew led by the Delaware Forest Service is near completion of a two-week assignment on the Fork Complex Fire, a 28,736-acre blaze near Hayfork, California in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. Almost 2,400 personnel are battling the fire that is currently 26 percent contained. The Fork Complex is one of several large wildfires in Northern California that together cover more than 223,000 acres, one of the major factors that prompted the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) to increase its National Preparedness Level today to the maximum of 5 on a 5-point scale.

The testing capacity for COVID-19 has been scaled up to around 95,000 tests per day and a total of 15,25,631 tests have been conducted so far across 332 government and 121 private laboratories, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Saturday.

Freescale was a successful Incisive® simulation CPF low-power user when they decided to step up their game. In November 2013, at CDNLive India, they presented a paper explaining how they improved their ability to find power-related bugs using a more sophisticated verification flow.  We were able to catch up with Abhinav Nawal just after his presentation to capture this video explaining the key points in his paper.

Abhinav had already established a low-power simulation process using directed tests for a design with power intent captured in CPF. While that is a sound approach, it tends to focus on the states associated with each power control module and at least some of the critical power mode changes.  Since the full system can potentially exercise unforeseen combinations of power states, the directed test approach may be insufficient. Abhinav built a more complete low-power verification approach rooted in a low-power verification plan captured in Cadence® Incisive Enterprise Manager.  He still used Incisive Enterprise Simulator and the SimVision debugger to execute and debug his design, but he also added Incisive Metric Center to analyze coverage from his low-power tests and connect that data back to the low-power verification plan.  As a result, he was able to find many critical system-level corner case issues, which, left undetected, would have been catastrophic for his SoC.  In the paper, Abhinav presents some of the key problems this approach was able to find.

You can achieve results similar to Abhinav. Incisive Enterprise Simulator can generate a low-power verification plan from the power format, power-aware assertions, and it can collect power-aware knowledge.  To get started, you can use the Incisive Low-Power Simulation Rapid Adoption Kit (RAK) for CPF available on Cadence Online Support.

Just another happy Cadence low-power verification user!

Regards,

Adam "The Jouler" Sherer  

The Clean Energy Regulator of Australia has approved enough capacity to guarantee that the large-scale Renewable Energy Target of 33,000 GWh of additional renewable energy will be met in 2020.

BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager, is boosting its bet on clean energy.

Renewables firm Pangea Energy and vanadium battery producer CellCube have signed on to build a 50MW storage system alongside a solar farm in South Australia.

The Clean Energy Regulator of Australia has approved enough capacity to guarantee that the large-scale Renewable Energy Target of 33,000 GWh of additional renewable energy will be met in 2020.

As part of its acquisition of Maximum Solar, Ameresco said, it will further develop in-house services to operate and maintain solar facilities. Maximum Solar currently manages about 150 MW of solar throughout the northeastern U.S.

Engineering firm Lahmeyer International GmbH and sub-consultant Manitoba Hydro International have been awarded a contract by Tanahu Hydropower Ltd. to provide a number of services associated with the development of the 140-MW Tanahu pumped-storage project in Nepal.

The Crown Estate, one of the largest property owners in the United Kingdom, has launched a program of offshore leasing for small-scale marine hydrokinetic (MHK) testing and demonstration projects less than 3 MW. 

On Nov. 11, Germany-based Aquila Capital announced it has signed an agreement with four Norwegian utility companies -- Statkraft AS, Agder Energi, BKK and Skagerak Energi -- to acquire all shares of Smakraft AS, Norway's largest small-hydro company.  

BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager, is boosting its bet on clean energy.