Nielsen Holdings N.V.

About: Nielsen Holdings N.V. is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Signal & Transonic. The organization has 2679 authors who have published 2514 publications receiving 70489 citations.

Cost-effective outbreak detection in networks

Abstract: Given a water distribution network, where should we place sensors toquickly detect contaminants? Or, which blogs should we read to avoid missing important stories?.These seemingly different problems share common structure: Outbreak detection can be modeled as selecting nodes (sensor locations, blogs) in a network, in order to detect the spreading of a virus or information asquickly as possible. We present a general methodology for near optimal sensor placement in these and related problems. We demonstrate that many realistic outbreak detection objectives (e.g., detection likelihood, population affected) exhibit the property of "submodularity". We exploit submodularity to develop an efficient algorithm that scales to large problems, achieving near optimal placements, while being 700 times faster than a simple greedy algorithm. We also derive online bounds on the quality of the placements obtained by any algorithm. Our algorithms and bounds also handle cases where nodes (sensor locations, blogs) have different costs.We evaluate our approach on several large real-world problems,including a model of a water distribution network from the EPA, andreal blog data. The obtained sensor placements are provably near optimal, providing a constant fraction of the optimal solution. We show that the approach scales, achieving speedups and savings in storage of several orders of magnitude. We also show how the approach leads to deeper insights in both applications, answering multicriteria trade-off, cost-sensitivity and generalization questions.

Affordance, conventions, and design

Abstract: I was quietly lurking in the background of a CHI-Web discussion, when I lost all reason: I just couldn't take it anymore. " I put an affordance there, " a participant would say, " I wonder if the object affords clicking … " Affordances this, affordances that. And no data, just opinion. Yikes! What had I unleashed upon the world? " No! " I screamed, and out came this article. I don't know if it changed anyone's minds, but it brought the CHI-Web discussion to a halt (not what good list managers want to happen). But then, Steven Pemberton asked me to submit it here. Hope it doesn't stop the discussion again. Mind you, this is not the exact piece I dashed off to CHI-Web: it has been polished and refined: the requirements of print are more demanding than those of e-mail discussions.

Peptide nucleic acids

Abstract: A novel class of compounds, known as peptide nucleic acids, bind complementary ssDNA and RNA strands more strongly than a corresponding DNA. The peptide nucleic acids generally comprise ligands such as naturally occurring DNA bases attached to a peptide backbone through a suitable linker.

Tissue bonding system and method for controlling a tissue site during anastomosis

Abstract: A method and system for performing anastomosis uses an anvil to control and support a tissue site during an anastomosis procedure involving tissue bonding techniques such as tissue welding and adhesive tissue bonding. The anvil is particularly useful for supporting a wall of a coronary artery during attachment of a graft vessel in a coronary artery bypass graft procedure. The anvil is inserted into a pressurized or unpressurized target vessel and is pulled against an inner wall of the target vessel causing tenting of the thin tissue of the vessel wall. A graft vessel is then advanced to the anastomosis site and an end of the graft vessel is positioned adjacent an exterior of the target vessel. When tissue welding is used, a graft vessel fixture is positioned over the tissue surfaces to be welded in order to clamp the graft and target vessel tissue together. The tissue contacting surfaces of the anvil and/or graft vessel fixture are provided with one or more energy applying surfaces. Energy in the form of RF power, laser energy or ultrasonic energy is then applied to the compressed graft and target vessel tissue to weld the vessels together. When adhesive bonding is used, the adhesive may be applied to mating surfaces of the graft and/or target vessels either before or after the vessels are brought into contact. After tissue bonding is complete, an incision is formed in the wall of the target vessel to allow blood flow between the target vessel and the graft vessel. The incision may be made with an electro-cautery cutting device.