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The article focuses on enhancing efficiency in modern transformer-based information retrieval models, addressing the limitations posed by the self-attention mechanism for long input, such as in document retrieval, by exploring bag-of-words document representations that encode documents using only a fraction of their characteristic terms. It mentions through experiments on MS MARCO and Robust04 datasets.

Transformer model architectures have garnered immense interest lately due to their effectiveness across a range of domains like language, vision, and reinforcement learning. In the field of natural language processing for example, Transformers have become an indispensable staple in themodern deep learning stack. Recently, a dizzying number of “X-former” models have been proposed—Reformer, Linformer, Performer, Longformer, to name a few—which improve upon the original Transformer architecture, many of which make improvements around computational and memory efficiency.With the aim of helping the avid researcher navigate this flurry, this article characterizes a large and thoughtful selection of recent efficiency-flavored “X-former” models, providing an organized and comprehensive overview of existing work and models across multiple domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of attachment injury resolution model (AIRM) and integrative couple therapy (ICT) on the trust of women injured marital infidelity by family counseling research core of Persian Gulf University. So doing, 30 women were selected and randomly assigned to AIRM, ICT, and control groups to undergo interventions consisting of eight therapy sessions. The administration of the Trust Scale developed by Rempel et al. showed that the two models of couple therapy significantly improved the participants' trust. But AIRM was however more effective at the end, and three months after the end of the treatments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family is foundational to Iranian culture and society and traditional families have been upheld by religious and political institutions since ancient times. However, the incidence of single‐parent families in Iran is increasing and literature on treating dysfunction in these families in therapy is lacking. This study examines the effectiveness of structural family therapy (SFT) in addressing problems in family functioning and children's behavior in single‐parent Iranian families using a single‐case, multiple baseline, ABA design. Participants included five single mothers and their children who received SFT for 8 weeks following a baseline phase. Participants were assessed during the baseline, therapy, and follow‐up phases using the Child Behavior Checklist and the Family Assessment Device. The data were analyzed visually and quantitatively. Results indicated that the treatment was effective in decreasing behavior problems and improving family functioning and that treatment effects were statistically significant and stable through the follow‐up period. Research and clinical implications and limitations are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: It seems that the time of performing cardiac rehabilitation is important in determining the risk of cardiac complications in patients with myocardial infarction (MI). The present study aimed to investigate the effects of a home-based cardiac rehabilitation program (HCRP) conducted in either the morning or evening on cardiometabolic risk factors in phase IV (maintenance) MI patients. METHODS: In this randomized controlled clinical trial, 80 patients with MI were divided into 2 groups of intervention and control (40 individuals per group). Patients in each group were categorized into morning and evening subgroups (20 individuals per subgroup). The therapeutic regimen in the intervention group included HCRP, routine medications, and exercise and walking programs for 8 weeks. Patients in the control group received routine treatments for 8 weeks. Cardiovascular risk factors comprising of cardiac troponin I (cTnI), mean platelet volume (MPV), C-reactive protein (CRP), and cardiometabolic indicators including cholesterol (Cho), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), triglyceride (TG), and the maximum rate of oxygen consumption (VO2 max) were measured for all patients before and after the intervention. RESULTS: Our results showed significant reductions in Cho, TG, HDL, LDL, VO2 max, CRP, and MPV (P < 0.05) in the group performing HCRP in the evening compared with the morning group. CONCLUSION: Performing HCRP in the evening, compared with morning, can be significantly more effective in improving the levels of cardiometabolic risk factors in patients with MI. Therefore, it is recommended that rehabilitation programs be implemented in these patients in evening shifts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The present study aimed at determining the effectiveness of emotionally-focused couple therapy, based on attachment injury resolution model (AIRM) on increasing trust among the injured women with marital infidelity. Method: The present study was a single case experiment of the multiple baseline design type. The population included all injured women with marital infidelity, referring to Bushehr family therapy clinics, among whom three women were selected and participated in the intervention through purposive sampling method, based on the desired recall, By considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria and answering the trust scale. Data analysis was conducted by visual analysis, clinically meaningful (reliable change index and normative comparison) and percentage improvement formula. Results: The percentage obtained from the overall increase of trust among the injured women during the therapy was 38.76 and follow-up was 48.58. In addition, the reliable change index during the therapy and a follow-up was 2.77 and 3.49 in the first couple, 3.10 and 3.62 in the second couple, 2.66 and 3.67 in the third couple indicating that these values were significant and higher than z = 1.96 during the therapy and follow-up (p = 0.05). Conclusion: Based on the research results, the emotionally-focused couple therapy based on attachment injury resolution model can be used as an effective intervention in reducing the injuries by marital infidelity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high degree of topical diversity is often considered to be an important characteristic of interesting text documents. A recent proposal for measuring topical diversity identifies three distributions for assessing the diversity of documents: distributions of words within documents, words within topics, and topics within documents. Topic models play a central role in this approach and, hence, their quality is crucial to the efficacy of measuring topical diversity. The quality of topic models is affected by two causes: generality and impurity of topics. General topics only include common information of a background corpus and are assigned to most of the documents. Impure topics contain words that are not related to the topic. Impurity lowers the interpretability of topic models. Impure topics are likely to get assigned to documents erroneously. We propose a hierarchical re-estimation process aimed at removing generality and impurity. Our approach has three re-estimation components: (1) document re-estimation, which removes general words from the documents; (2) topic re-estimation, which re-estimates the distribution over words of each topic; and (3) topic assignment re-estimation, which re-estimates for each document its distributions over topics. For measuring topical diversity of text documents, our HiTR approach improves over the state-of-the-art measured on PubMed dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluid flow and forced convection heat transfer inside a plane diffuser with Cu–water nanofluid in the presence of magnetic field is numerically studied with the finite volume method. The steady nanofluid flow is assumed incompressible, laminar, and Newtonian. The cooling nanofluid with low temperature enters the diffuser with constant wall and higher temperature. The influence of Reynolds number (100 < Re < 500), Hartmann number (0 < Ha < 10), and volume fraction of nanoparticles (0 < < 0.05) on the local and average Nusselt numbers, skin friction coefficient, dimensionless velocity and temperature profiles, total entropy generation, static pressure variation, and pressure recovery coefficient are examined. The results show that increasing the volume fraction of nanoparticles, Reynolds, and Hartmann numbers would increase the total entropy generation and average Nusslet number. In contrast, the pressure recovery coefficient of diffuser decreases by increasing the Reynolds and Hartmann number. Furthermore, numerical results show that, for each Reynolds number there is a critical Hartmann number. So that, the effect of the nanoparticle addition on the pressure recovery coefficient in all Reynolds number is depended to the flow Hartmann number and its value relative to the critical Hartmann number. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehensive structural/molecular simulations have been undertaken to study the poly(benzimidazoles) (PBI) membrane combined with four different nano-oxide materials (ZnO, Al 2 O 3 , SiO 2 and TiO 2 ) for purification and production of hydrogen from natural gases. Composite membranes were built with different amounts of nano-oxide materials to investigate the influence of nano-oxide content on the PBI membrane performance. Several structural characterizations such as FFV, WAXD and also a thermal one (glass transition temperature) were done to study the structural properties of all simulated membrane cells. Moreover, MSD and adsorption isotherms tasks were used to estimate the diffusivity and solubility of hydrogen molecules through the latter mixed matrix membranes (MMMs), respectively. Permeability and permselectivity of H 2 penetrate molecules were also carefully calculated using the aforementioned penetrating factors (diffusivity and solubility). Results show a significant improvement in structural and transport properties by increasing the nanomaterials content, which could be due to the growth of penetration pathways through the membranes. Furthermore, membranes with SiO 2 yield the best results compared to other three nano-oxide fillers. H 2 gas yields the best results that help the storage and separation of this precious gas from other gas molecules, which present in natural gases. Compared to the previous studies and literature results, the current results are accurate and reliable to describe the structural and transport properties of PBI/nano-oxides composites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Molecular simulation has been undertaken to study the structural and transport properties of Poly (amide-6-b-ethylene oxide) (PEBA 1657)/Faujasite (FAU) mixed matrix membranes. Membranes were built with different amounts of FAU nanomaterials to investigate the influence of nanomaterial content on the membrane performances. Structural characterizations such as ractional free volume (FFV), radial distribution function (RDF), wide angle XRD (WAXD) and glass transition temperature were done on the simulated membrane cells to study their structural properties. Also, by using MSD and adsorption isotherms, diffusivity and selectivity of these membranes were measured, respectively. The two main transport factors (permeability and permselectivity) were examined using calculated diffusivity and solubility, and the membrane properties were investigated at two different operating temperatures (298 K, 318 K). Results show that by increasing the nanomaterials content, structural properties improve and transport properties increase which is due to the increase of the pathways for penetrant molecules to move through the membranes. Compared to the published results, the current simulation study is more accurate in describing the structural and transport properties of PEBA/FAU mixed matrix membranes. It was found that increasing the FAU content from 0 to 20 wt% increased the permeability of the membrane to CO 2 , as well as the permselectivity for CO 2 /NO 2 from 69.4 barrer to 89.23 barrer at 298 K. This change in FAU content also decreased the glass transition temperature from 212 K to 204.1 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, structural and transport mechanism and properties of two kinds of polyether block amide (PEBA 1657, PEBA 2533) membrane in presence of POSS-PEG functionalized nanoparticles were investigated by molecular dynamic simulation (MD). Monte Carlo technique was used to investigate transport properties of the simulated membranes. The wide-angle XRD (WAXD), mean square displacement (MSD), glass transition temperature (Tg) and sorption isotherm were studied to investigate the aforementioned mixed matrix membranes. Also, solubility, diffusivity, permeability and permselectivity of light gases (N2, CO2, CH4, O2, and H2) were investigated carefully by Materials Studio simulator. The results showed higher permeability for membranes with PEBA 2533 rather than the ones with PEBA 1657; this conclusion is also confirmed with the experimental results which are reported in the literature. But, for the permselectivity of membranes, the results were opposite of the permeability results. Tg for all membranes decreased by increasing the POSS-PEG nanoparticle content. Additionally, by comparing the results of the simulations with the results of literature, it is revealed that simulation results were in acceptable agreement by experiment results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this communication, structural-transport-properties of polyether block amide (PEBA)-MFI zeolite mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) have been investigated with molecular simulation (MS) and Monte Carlo (MC) technique. The density profile, RDF, FFV and XRD characterization have been calculated to investigate the aforementioned MMMs microstructure and also sorption and diffusion structural dependence of CO 2 –CH 4 and CO 2 –N 2 pairs. Sorption, diffusion, permeability and selectivity of natural gases including CO 2 , CH 4 and N 2 by PEBA polymeric membrane filled with nano-zeolite (MFI type) have been examined to study the influence of MFI nanomaterial and nanomaterial loading content on the performance of the MMMs. By increase of MFI loading from 10 to 20 wt.%, permeability for CO 2 , CH 4 and N 2 increases from 106.5 to 123.6, 4.75–4.74 and 1.28 to1.31, respectively. Structural analysis shows very good behavior for simulated membranes. Moreover, experiments show that simulation results for XRD and diffusivity are in good agreement with experiment results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the enormous volume of email data generated each day, email management has become a vital area of research. Among the email management tasks, automatic email categorization is one of the most interesting problems. However, the dynamic nature of email data makes the email categorization problem difficult to address for traditional machine learning approaches. In this paper, we propose Alecsa as an attentive learning approach for automatic email categorization. Alecsa aims to simulate the dynamic behavior of users while they attempt to categorize a new email. For this purpose, email categorization problem in Alecsa is cast to a decision-making problem, and an attention control framework is employed to dynamically choose a sequence of structural aspects of the email as the distinguishing factors for categorization. We have analytically evaluated the proposed approach on the Enron–Bekkerman datasets. The evaluation results indicate the unprecedented power of Alecsa toward modeling the dynamic essence of the email categorization problem in terms of effectiveness as well as efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Positive attitude leads to a more successfully implementation of a change. We investigated the effect of attitudes of stakeholders toward a program on their prioritization of the program components for selecting the key question of a theory-driven evaluation with concept mapping method. Materials and Methods: During a brainstorming session, stated statements defined the program components. Then they were sorted and rated regarding the importance and feasibility of them. In addition, the attitudes of participants were assessed by a 30 items questionnaire extracted from a pool named as "50 reasons not to change." We determined and compared the consensus points of participants both with and without of considering their attitudes toward the program. Results: The participants were divided into two groups of high (45% - above the mean) and low (55% - below the mean) attitude. Brainstorming discussions generated a pool of almost 120 statements which were subsequently refined to 44 statements. Matching the rating scores between two attitude groups yielded a consensus at a higher priority than the other method. Conclusion: In the concept mapping procedure, it is crucial to reach the consensus with respect to the participants' attitude, rather than the similarity of mean scores of feasibility and importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cellulose nanofibril (CNF) is regarded as one of the world's advanced biomaterials. However, its production consumes high energy, making it unappealing for many applications. The life cycle assessment studies conducted on CNF indicate that a high environmental impact is mainly due to its novel nature and unexplored future directions. This study aims to analyze the cradle to gate life cycle assessment of a CNF film via four flexible production routes (two-spray deposition and two vacuum filtration processes) for small-scale production. The baseline and high impact scenarios for these films were also used to perform a sensitivity analysis. The results indicate that refined, homogenized and vacuum filtered CNF film (2 g) having a basis weight of 100 g/m2 showed the highest embodied energy (0.426 MJ), global warming potential (0.034 kg CO 2 equiv.) and water usage values (1.033 L), while refined and spray deposited film has the least life cycle impacts (0.241 MJ, 0.018 kg CO2 equiv. & 0.264 L). Although, these films showed approximately 15%–20% higher environmental impacts as compared with the conventional plastic films such as polyethylene terephthalate, however, the expected impact could be much lower if "cradle to grave" or "cradle to cradle" cycles are considered instead and the scale of production is increased. [Display omitted] ➢ Life cycle impacts of cellulose nanofibril films are assessed for small scale production ➢ Spray deposition using refined fibres route showed the least life cycle impacts ➢ Important categories influencing the life cycle impacts are evaluated in sensitivity analysis ➢ The viable options to reduce the life cycle impacts of these films are also discussed [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students with learning disabilities face more educational and even adult life difficulties than their counterparts without such disabilities, because of their poorer executive functioning. This study explored the effects of a disclosure program for expressive writing about emotions on the 3 executive functions of working memory, planning/organizing, and cognitive flexibility in an Iranian context. In so doing, 40 third to fifth graders with learning disabilities were recruited and assigned to either experimental or control groups through certain recognition tests and interviews. The effects of the treatment on executive functions were stable after 2 months. It was concluded that such disclosure programs can reduce executive functioning impairments of students with learning disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An email conversation thread is defined as a topic-centric discussion unit that is composed of exchanged emails among the same group of people by reply or forwarding. Detecting conversation threads contained in email corpora can be beneficial for both humans to digest the content of discussions and automatic methods to extract useful information from the conversations. This research explores two new feature-enriched learning approaches, LExLinC and LExTreC, to reconstruct linear structure and tree structure of conversation threads in email data. In this work, some simplifying assumptions considered in previous methods for extracting conversation threads are relaxed, which makes the proposed methods more powerful in detecting real conversations. Additionally, the supervised nature of the proposed methods makes them adaptable to new environments by automatically adjusting the features and their weights. Experimental results show that the proposed methods are highly effective in detecting conversation threads and outperform the existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: In a formative evaluation, we were supposed to find whether an innovative program has some merits to be continued or not. We also determined the critical points of the program. The evaluated program was a clinical pre-clerkship curriculum launched for departing to a less stressful medical clerkship. Materials and Methods: We analyzed the information contained in the students' logbooks. Using Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure standardized questionnaire, we also assessed the students' perception of learning environment within six clinical departments. Results: Totally, 64% of expected patient contacts, and teaching of more than 71% of required skills at 4 departments were carried out and students had more positive than negative perspective of their learning environments. Conclusion: The evaluand is a worthwhile program to be continued, though it needs some considerations for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dairy products may affect hypertension (HTN) risk. The aim of this study was to examine the association between fermented and nonfermented dairy foods and HTN in a sample of premature coronary artery disease (PCAD) subjects. This cross‐sectional study was performed on 1854 PCAD patients. A 110‐item food frequency questionnaire was used to assess dietary intakes. HTN was considered if systolic blood pressure was 140 mmHg and higher and/or diastolic blood pressure was 90 mmHg and higher. The odds ratio of HTN across the quartiles of different types of dairy products was evaluated by binary logistic regression. The mean (SD) of dairy products consumption was 339.8 (223.5) g/day, of which 285.4 g/day was fermented dairy products. In the crude model, participants in the fourth quartile of fermented dairy products had lesser risk of HTN compared to the bottom quartile (OR = 0.70, 95% CI: 0.52, 0.96; p for trend =.058). However, after considering the possible confounders, the significance disappeared. Subjects in the top quartile of high‐fat fermented dairy products had 34% lower risk for HTN compared to the bottom quartile (95% CI: 0.49, 0.88; p for trend <.001). Adjustment for potential risk factors weakened the association but remained significant (OR = 0.73, 95% CI: 0.53, 1.01; p for trend =.001). Nonsignificant relation was detected between low‐fat fermented, low‐fat nonfermented, and high‐fat nonfermented dairy products and HTN. Moderate consumption of high‐fat fermented dairy products, in a population with low consumption of dairy foods, might relate to reduced likelihood of HTN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Some explanations and additional results are reported that address the issues mentioned in the letter by Kojabad et al. [ 1 ]. • Some extra information, which can clarify and sort out similar issues in three previously published papers [ 2–4 ], is reported. • The error is found much low by re-doing all the simulations, which can be considered negligible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The cardioprotective effects of nuts are well established. However, the positive impacts of nuts in preventing CVD at a younger age, a condition known as premature coronary artery disease (PCAD), is still debated. Therefore, we aim to determine the association between nuts and PCAD occurrence and its severity in different Iranian ethnicities. Design: This case–control study was conducted within the framework of the Iran-premature coronary artery disease (I-PAD) study, an ongoing multi-centric study on Iranian patients of different ethnicities. Setting: This multi-centric case–control study was conducted in among 3253 persons under the age of 70 years in women and 60 years in men from different ethnicities in Iran. Participants: Information on nut consumption was collected using a validated FFQ. Subjects were selected from among the candidates for angiography. Cases were those whose coronary angiography showed stenosis of more than 75 % in at least one vessel or more than 50 % of the left main artery, while the control group participants had normal angiography results. Results: In the crude model, compared to the first quartile, the highest quartile of nut consumption was significantly associated with a lower risk of PCAD (OR = 0·26, 95 % CI (0·21, 0·32); P for trend = 0·001). In the top quartile of nut intake, a substantial decrease in PCAD was observed after controlling for putative confounders (OR = 0·32; 95 % CI (0·24, 0·43); P for trend = 0·001). Additionally, a 75 % decrease in the risk of severe PCAD was observed in the participants in the highest quartile of nut intake. Conclusion: A significant inverse association was observed between nut intake and the risk and severity of PCAD in the Iranian population. Large-scale clinical trials are required to confirm these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The expertise of human experts can be formally extracted from their written documents, research projects, and everyday activities. The process whereby experts are recognized according to their activities is called expert finding. In this paper, we propose an approach to identify the experts in a given field according to the content of 3 easily accessible sources of information: (a) “Publications,” (b) “Social interactions,” and (c) “Scientometric information.” We employed the Dempster‐Shafer theory to combine the results obtained from individual sources to find a final unified ranking. In Digital Bibliography & Library Project standard data, it is shown that the Dempster‐Shafer combination creates a desired synergy between 2 bodies of knowledge, which improves the precision of the top‐ranked results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations techniques were employed as well as artificial intelligence knowledge of ANFIS and GP to investigate water–acetic acid pervaporation (PV) separation through poly vinylalcohol (PVA)‑silicone based membranes under a wide range of experimental conditions. For the first time, three new optimization algorithms, namely ant colony optimization for continuous domains (ACO R ), differential evolution (DE) and genetic algorithm (GA) were employed for improving ANFIS modeling. The GP creates a mathematical function or model for the estimation of pervaporation separation index (PSI) as a function of the input variables. ACO R -ANFIS and GA-ANFIS and GP had high accuracy (R 2  = 0.9831, 0.9792 and 0.9722, respectively) but DE-ANFIS had a lower accuracy (R 2  = 0.9610) as compared to other models. On the other hand, molecular simulation methods were used and the results of all simulation models were compared fairly to each other and to the experimental results of the literature. Also, some characterizations were taking place to investigate the characteristics of the simulated membranes with MS such as WAXD, and FFV and glass transition temperature was used to estimate the thermal properties of the simulated membranes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper numerically investigates a three-dimensional channel's thermal and hydrodynamic performance with a convergent-divergent section. The convergent-divergent part of the channel is exposed to constant heat flux, and the other walls of the channel are insulated. In particular, the effect of using the nanofluid and magnetic field on Nusselt values, coefficient of friction, and entropy have been investigated. To improve Nusselt, pressure drop, and dimensionless entropy production rate, the Taguchi and ANFIS techniques have been utilized to optimize Reynolds, Hartmann numbers, nanofluid volume fraction, and geometric parameters of the channel. The sensitivity analysis results depict that Reynolds, Hartmann dimensionless numbers, and nanofluid volume fraction play more significant roles in improving the thermal and hydrodynamic performance of the channel than geometric parameters. The results show that the increase in the nanofluid volume fraction causes the most significant increase in the Nusselt number. In this case, the pressure drop inside the channel has increased slightly, but in total, the entropy production rate decreases due to irreversibility. Compared to the base case with the Reynolds number of 100, and in the absence of a magnetic field (Hartman 0), increasing the nanofluid volume fraction to 7% causes an 80% increase in the Nusselt number and a 65% decrease in the dimensionless entropy production rate. Similarly, by increasing the Reynolds number to 500 compared to the base case, the Nusselt number increases by 60% and the dimensionless entropy production rate decreases by 60%. Also, increasing the Hartmann number to 10 compared to the base case causes a 30% increase in the dimensionless Nusselt number and a 45% decrease in the dimensionless entropy production rate. • Heat transfer of a three-dimensional channel with a convergent-divergent section was analyzed. • The impacts of efective parameters on Nusselt, pressure drop, and dimensionless entropy production rate was investigated. • The Taguchi algorithm and ANFIS technique were exploited to optimize the thermal and hydrodynamic performance of the channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simultaneous heat and mass transfer model in air gap membrane distillation has been developed and validated with experimental data using MATLAB, in order to enhance its performance in desalination of Persian Gulf and to get more flux. The effect of operating parameters including feed temperature, concentration and velocity, condensate fluid temperature and velocity, thickness of air gap of permeate side, heat transfer coefficient (HTC) on permeate flux has been considered. The influence of some membrane characteristics including its thickness, tortuosity, porosity, and pore size distribution on permeate flux has also been studied. The results revealed that increase of feed temperature and velocity, HTC, membrane porosity and pore size distribution has improved the permeate flux. In contrast, the permeate flux decreased with feed concentration and air gap distance as operation parameters, and thickness and tortuosity as membrane characteristics. The temperature polarization coefficient decreased with feed temperature and reduced while thermal conductivity of the membrane material decreased. At elevated temperatures, increasing of HTC affects more strongly on permeate flux; i.e. a 25% increase in flux at 70 °C reduced to 14% at 50 °C. Comprising to experimental data, just about 6% average deviation was observed for this ultra-simple model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chromosome analysis is essential for diagnosing genetic disorders. For hematologic malignancies, identification of somatic clonal aberrations by karyotype analysis remains the standard of care, with the advantage to identify global genomic aberrations at a single-cell basis. However, karyotyping is costly and time-consuming because of the largely manual process and the expertise required in identifying and annotating aberrations. Efforts to automate karyotype analysis to date fell short in aberration detection. Using a training set of ∼10k patient specimens and ∼50k karyograms from over 5 years from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, we created a labeled set of images representing individual chromosomes. These individual chromosomes were used to train and assess deep learning models for classifying the 24 human chromosomes and identifying chromosomal aberrations. The top-accuracy models for both chromosome identification and aberration detection task utilized the recently introduced Topological Vision Transformers (TopViTs) with 2-level-block-Toeplitz masking, to incorporate structural inductive bias. On the baseline task of chromosome identification, our transformer-based models outperformed CNN (Inception) models with >99.3% accuracy. When applied to disease aberration detection, these high-performing architectures exhibited accuracies >99% for most aberrations). Notably, we were able to show high-quality performance even in 'few shot' learning scenarios, with limited examples of true aberrations. Incorporating the definition of clonality substantially improved both precision and recall (sensitivity). When applied to 'zero shot' scenarios, the model captured aberrations without training, with perfect precision at >50% recall. Together these results show that modern deep learning models can approach expert-level performance for chromosome aberration [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, novel chitosan/silica mixed matrix membranes were prepared by 10 wt% loading of TEOS and APTEOS into chitosan matrix and simultaneously results were simulated by molecular simulation methods to investigate the reliability of the experiment results. The fabricated membranes were structurally characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and operationally evaluated by ethanol dehydration permeation tests. SEM analysis showed a uniform distribution of silica nanoparticles in the polymer matrix. FTIR analysis indicated that, compared to the neat membrane, the presence of APTEOS and TEOS initiators caused formation of stronger bonds of hydroxyl (OH) and amino (NH) groups. The XRD test was also done by molecular simulation to investigate the crystallinity of the simulated membranes. Results revealed that membrane containing APTEOS was more amorphous than membrane containing TEOS. Also, the glass transition temperatures the membranes containing APTEOS and TEOS was calculated to be 162 and 160.8 °C, respectively. Permeation test results indicated that for both membranes the permeation flux increased and separation factor decreased with temperature. The maximum flux and best separation factor for CS/APTEOS and CS/TEOS were obtained at 70 °C and 30 °C, respectively. Chitosan/TEOS membrane showed the best separation factor of 450 in 30 °C, while for Chitosan/APTEOS membrane this value was less than 400. CS/APTEOS membrane showed better pervaporation separation index (PSI); however, the results showed that separation index of both membranes, which was initially more than 320 in 30 °C, decreased with temperature and reached to less than 130 in 70 °C. Also, the simulation results were in good agreement with experiment results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Spray deposited CMC/NC films are produced with significantly reduced drying time. • CMC/NC films have moisture barrier properties comparable with plastic packaging. • The environmental impact of CMC/NC films was lower than conventional packaging. Nanocellulose (NC) films are considered as a prospective alternative to non-sustainable packaging materials, however, their higher embodied energy and limited moisture barrier properties are regarded as a huge constraint regarding their commercialization. This study aims to produce films with relatively low environmental impact and improved barrier performance. For this purpose, carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and NC were combined, and this resulted in multidimensional advantages. The mass production of films could be achieved in only 2 h (requiring at least 24 h under ambient conditions) when dried in an oven at 75 °C with enhanced mechanical properties and without compromising their dimensional stability. The moisture barrier properties of the NC/CMC films were improved up to 92 % compared with the NC films alone and the results achieved are comparable with packaging materials such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polycarbonates (PC) etc. Finally, the NC/CMC (1:1) films have low environmental impact compared with PET films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) simulations have been used to study the PEBA 1074-PEG 400 blended membranes. By blending the membranes and TiO 2 nanomaterials, separation of CO 2 gas from CH 4 (which represents the natural gas) has been investigated. Structural analysis including WAXD, XRD, FFV and glass transition temperature has been studied to check thermal and structural properties of total simulated membranes. In addition, the adsorption and MSD isotherms have been used to measure solubility and diffusivity through these mixed matrix membranes (MMMs), respectively. Finally, based on the solubility and diffusivity coefficients, permselectivity and permeability of these gas molecules were measured. By increasing the PEG 400 and nanomaterials content, remarkable advance was observed in the transport properties of membranes, i.e. membranes permeability after addition of 40 wt% of PEG 400 and 8 wt% of TiO 2 became 47 barrer and 143 barrer, respectively. Also, the PEBA 1074/40 wt% PEG/8 wt% TiO 2 composite was selected as the optimum membrane in this study. Unlabelled Image • The molecular dynamics and Grand Canonical Monte Carlo study have been used for the PEBA 1074-PEG 400,TiO 2 membranes. • CO 2 separation from CH 4 using the PEBA 1074-PEG 400, TiO 2 membranes has been studied. • FFV, XRD, WAXD and glass transition temperature analyzes have been done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]