Many real-world analytics problems involve two significant challenges: prediction and optimization. Due to the typically complex nature of each challenge, the standard paradigm is to predict, then optimize. By and large, machine learning tools are intended to minimize prediction error and do not account for how the predictions will be used in a downstream optimization problem. In contrast, we p...

CA) reveal that DNA is synthesized when it is least likely to be hit with oxidative damage. Damaging oxidizing agents are produced by respiration. In yeast, respiration is periodic—it alternates in ‫ف‬ 40-min cycles with a stage of non-respiration called the reductive phase. This oscillation was detected decades ago, but it was never thought to be connected to cell cycle progression. Now, Kleve...

DEVELOPING a softwareintensive system is like raising a child. As Will PleasantRyan observed, both babies and code have smells, you get used to changing requirements, you have to take the long view, you can’t do it alone, and eventually you have to let go.1 I would add to Will’s most excellent simile that, although you might think you know everything up front, you certainly don’t, and therefore...

"Slime" played a brief and spectacular role in the 19th century founded by the theory of primordial slime by Ernst Haeckel. However, that substance was never found and eventually abandoned. Further scientific attention slowly began in the 1930s referring to slime as a microbial product and then was inspired by "How bacteria stick" by Costerton et al. in 1978, and the matrix material was conside...

Aiming at the target recognition problem of multi-sensor with multiple characteristic indexes, a new fusion method is proposed. The method firstly substitutes the distance of confidence for the ordinary attribute values, and the weights of attributes are derived by solving the optimal programming of maximizing the total square deviation of the confidence distance for all attributes. Then accord...

This interaction profile discusses and evaluates the evidence for joint toxic action among lead, manganese, zinc, and copper. The interaction profile recommends how to incorporate concerns about possible interactions or additivity into public health assessments of hazardous waste sites where people might be exposed to mixtures of these chemicals. The profile recommends using endpoint-specific h...