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The effects of different modes of vocalization and food consumption on the level of droplet transmission of bacteria

Wong et al. | May 10, 2021

The effects of different modes of vocalization and food consumption on the level of droplet transmission of bacteria

Microbial agents reposnsible for respiratory infections are often carried in spittle, which means they can be easily transmitted. Here, the authors investigate how likely certain activities are to spread microbes carried in spittle. They also investigate whether eating certain types of food might reduce the spread of spittle-borne bacteria too.

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The Impact of Age on Post-Concussive Symptoms: A Comparative Study of Symptoms Related and Not Related to the Default Mode Network

Wurscher et al. | Mar 05, 2017

The Impact of Age on Post-Concussive Symptoms: A Comparative Study of Symptoms Related and Not Related to the Default Mode Network

The Default Mode Network (DMN) is a network of connected brain regions that are active when the brain is not focused on external tasks. Minor brain injuries, such as concussions, can affect this network and manifest symptoms. In this study, the authors examined correlations between DMN age and post-concussion symptoms in previously concussed individuals and healthy controls.

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Validating DTAPs with large language models: A novel approach to drug repurposing

Curtis et al. | Mar 02, 2025

Validating DTAPs with large language models: A novel approach to drug repurposing
Image credit: Growtika

Here, the authors investigated the integration of large language models (LLMs) with drug target affinity predictors (DTAPs) to improve drug repurposing, demonstrating a significant increase in prediction accuracy, particularly with GPT-4, for psychotropic drugs and the sigma-1 receptor. This novel approach offers to potentially accelerate and reduce the cost of drug discovery by efficiently identifying new therapeutic uses for existing drugs.

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Analyzing market dynamics and optimizing sales performance with machine learning

Kamat et al. | May 31, 2025

Analyzing market dynamics and optimizing sales performance with machine learning

This study uses interpretable machine learning models, lasso and ridge regression with Shapley analysis, to identify key sales drivers for Corporación Favorita, Ecuador’s largest grocery chain. The results show that macroeconomic factors, especially labor force size, have the greatest impact on sales, though geographic and seasonal variables like city altitude and holiday proximity also play important roles. These insights can help businesses focus on the most influential market conditions to enhance competitiveness and profitability.

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Discovery of the Heart in Mathematics: Modeling the Chaotic Behaviors of Quantized Periods in the Mandelbrot Set

Golla et al. | Dec 14, 2020

Discovery of the Heart in Mathematics: Modeling the Chaotic Behaviors of Quantized Periods in the Mandelbrot Set

This study aimed to predict and explain chaotic behavior in the Mandelbrot Set, one of the world’s most popular models of fractals and exhibitors of Chaos Theory. The authors hypothesized that repeatedly iterating the Mandelbrot Set’s characteristic function would give rise to a more intricate layout of the fractal and elliptical models that predict and highlight “hotspots” of chaos through their overlaps. The positive and negative results from this study may provide a new perspective on fractals and their chaotic nature, helping to solve problems involving chaotic phenomena.

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Differential privacy in machine learning for traffic forecasting

Vinay et al. | Dec 21, 2022

Differential privacy in machine learning for traffic forecasting

In this paper, we measured the privacy budgets and utilities of different differentially private mechanisms combined with different machine learning models that forecast traffic congestion at future timestamps. We expected the ANNs combined with the Staircase mechanism to perform the best with every value in the privacy budget range, especially with the medium high values of the privacy budget. In this study, we used the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and neural network models to forecast and then added differentially private Laplacian, Gaussian, and Staircase noise to our datasets. We tested two real traffic congestion datasets, experimented with the different models, and examined their utility for different privacy budgets. We found that a favorable combination for this application was neural networks with the Staircase mechanism. Our findings identify the optimal models when dealing with tricky time series forecasting and can be used in non-traffic applications like disease tracking and population growth.

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Predicting the factors involved in orthopedic patient hospital stay

D’Souza et al. | Dec 13, 2023

Predicting the factors involved in orthopedic patient hospital stay
Image credit: Pixabay

Long hospital stays can be stressful for the patient for many reasons. We hypothesized that age would be the greatest predictor of hospital stay among patients who underwent orthopedic surgery. Through our models, we found that severity of illness was indeed the highest factor that contributed to determining patient length of stay. The other two factors that followed were the facility that the patient was staying in and the type of procedure that they underwent.

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Impact of Silverado Fire on soil carbon

Choi et al. | Feb 20, 2025

Impact of Silverado Fire on soil carbon

Soil stores three times more carbon than the atmosphere, making small changes in its storage and release crucial for carbon cycling and climate models. This study examined the impact of the 2020 California Silverado Fire on pyrogenic carbon (PyC) deposits using nitrogen and carbon isotopes as proxies. While the results showed significant variability in δ¹⁵N, δ¹³C, total carbon, and total nitrogen across sites, they did not support the hypothesis that wildfire increases δ¹⁵N while keeping δ¹³C constant, emphasizing the need for location-based controls when using δ¹⁵N to track PyC.

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