Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Latent Topic Text Representation Learning on Statistical Manifolds

The explosive growth of text data requires effective methods to represent and classify these texts. Many text learning methods have been proposed, like statistics-based methods, semantic similarity methods, and deep learning methods. The statistics-based methods focus on comparing the substructure of text, which ignores the semantic similarity between different words. Semantic similarity methods learn a text representation by training word embedding and representing text as the average vector of all words. However, these methods cannot capture the topic diversity of words and texts clearly. Recently, deep learning methods such as CNNs and RNNs have been studied. However, the vanishing gradient problem and time complexity for parameter selection limit their applications. In this paper, we propose a novel and efficient text learning framework, named Latent Topic Text Representation Learning. Our method aims to provide an effective text representation and text measurement with latent topics. With the assumption that words on the same topic follow a Gaussian distribution, texts are represented as a mixture of topics, i.e., a Gaussian mixture model. Our framework is able to effectively measure text distance to perform text categorization tasks by leveraging statistical manifolds. Experimental results on text representation and classification, and topic coherence demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Social Interventions to Prevent Heat-Related Mortality in the Older Adult in Rome, Italy: A Quasi-Experimental Study

This study focuses on the impact of a program aimed at reducing heat-related mortality among older adults residing in central Rome by counteracting social isolation. The mortality of citizens over the age of 75 living in three Urban Areas (UAs) located in central Rome is compared with that of the residents of four adjacent UAs during the summer of 2015. The data, broken down by UA, were provided by the Statistical Office of the Municipality of Rome, which gathers them on a routine basis. During the summer of 2015, 167 deaths were recorded in those UAs in which the Long Live the Elderly (LLE) program was active and 169 in those in which it was not, implying cumulative mortality rates of 25‰ (SD ± 1.4; Cl 95%: 23–29) and 29‰ (SD ± 6.7; Cl 95%: 17–43), respectively. Relative to the summer of 2014, the increase of deaths during the summer of 2015 was greater in UAs in which the LLE program had not been implemented (+97.3% vs. +48.8%). In conclusion, the paper shows the impact of a community-based active monitoring program, focused on strengthening individual relationship networks and the social capital of the community, on mortality in those over 75 during heat waves.
Morphological Features and Band Bending at Nonpolar Surfaces of ZnO

We employ hybrid density functional calculations to analyze the structure and stability of the (1010) and (1120) ZnO surfaces, confirming the relative stability of the two surfaces. We then examine morphological features, including steps, dimer vacancies, and grooves, at the main nonpolar ZnO surface using density functional methods. Calculations explain why steps are common on the (1010) surface even at room temperature, as seen in experiment. The surface structure established has been used to obtain the definitive ionization potential and electron affinity of ZnO in good agreement with experiment. The band bending across the surface is analyzed by the decomposition of the density of states for each atomic layer. The upward surface band bending at the (1010) surface affects mostly the valence band by 0.32 eV, which results in the surface band gap closing by 0.31 eV; at the (1120) surface, the valence band remains flat and the conduction band bends up by 0.18 eV opening the surface band gap by 0.12 eV.
Investigating Generative Adversarial Networks based Speech Dereverberation for Robust Speech Recognition

We investigate the use of generative adversarial networks (GANs) in speech dereverberation for robust speech recognition. GANs have been recently studied for speech enhancement to remove additive noises, but there still lacks of a work to examine their ability in speech dereverberation and the advantages of using GANs have not been fully established. In this paper, we provide deep investigations in the use of GAN-based dereverberation front-end in ASR. First, we study the effectiveness of different dereverberation networks (the generator in GAN) and find that LSTM leads a significant improvement as compared with feed-forward DNN and CNN in our dataset. Second, further adding residual connections in the deep LSTMs can boost the performance as well. Finally, we find that, for the success of GAN, it is important to update the generator and the discriminator using the same mini-batch data during training. Moreover, using reverberant spectrogram as a condition to discriminator, as suggested in previous studies, may degrade the performance. In summary, our GAN-based dereverberation front-end achieves 14%-19% relative CER reduction as compared to the baseline DNN dereverberation network when tested on a strong multi-condition training acoustic model.
Motor selection dynamics in FEF explain the reaction time variance of saccades to single targets

In studies of voluntary movement, a most elemental quantity is the reaction time (RT) between the onset of a visual stimulus and a saccade toward it. However, this RT demonstrates extremely high variability, which in spite of extensive research remains unexplained. It is well established that, when a visual target appears, oculomotor activity gradually builds up until a critical level is reached, at which point a saccade is triggered. Here, we further characterize the dynamics of this rise-to-threshold process based on computational work and single-neuron recordings from the frontal eye field (FEF) of behaving monkeys. We find that the baseline activity, build-up rate, and threshold level show strong, nonlinear co-dependencies that explain the distinct RT distributions observed experimentally. The results indicate that intrinsic randomness contributes little to saccade variance, which results mainly from an intricate, fundamentally deterministic mechanism of motor conflict resolution that has subtle yet highly characteristic manifestations.
Loughborough University Institutional Repository Negative psychological experiences and saliva secretory immunoglobulin a in field hockey players

26 Understanding psychological factors that affect immunity in sport might help to reduce 27 infection risk in athletes. The present study examined within-person changes and individual 28 differences in perceived coach control, intentions to drop-out, and saliva secretory 29 immunoglobulin A (SIgA). Thirty-two field hockey players completed questionnaires and 30 provided saliva samples over a two-month period. Within-person increases in individuals’ 31 perceptions of psychological control and intentions to drop out were positively associated 32 with SIgA concentration. Individual differences in control or drop out intentions were not 33 associated with SIgA. Interventions in athletes to prevent immune disturbances and reduce 34 infection should consider these psychological factors. 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49
Evaluation of the Impact of the Kuwait Diabetes Care Program on the Quality of Diabetes Care

Objectives: To evaluate the impact of the Kuwait Diabetes Care Program on the quality of care provided for diabetic patients in the Primary Health Care setting. Materials and Methods: The Kuwait Diabetes Care Program developed, published and disseminated clinical practice guidelines, conducted training courses, standards for diabetes care, and introduced a monitoring and evaluation system. Four audits (September 1999, October 2001, 2002 and 2003) were carried out at five diabetic clinics. September 1999 referred to in this study as first (baseline) audit was prior to the introduction of the clinical practice guidelines. The three other audits were performed to assess adherence with the guidelines in the administrative management of patients’ records and implementation of the standards. Two hundred and fifty patients were involved in the study. Results: The proportion of patients with organized, structured files increased significantly from 60.0 to 100.0% (p < 0.001), and recording of patients’ demographic data increased from 38.6 to 95.6% (p < 0.001). Use of structured visit sheets, proper fixation of the laboratory and prescription sheets had also improved significantly. The prevalence of smoking assessment, fundus examination, and foot examination increased significantly from 2.8 to 27.2% (p < 0.001); 2.4 to 31.6% (p < 0.001); 0.4 to 40.4% (p < 0.001), respectively. The prevalence of measuring urinary microalbumin, serum creatinine and HbA1c increased significantly from 4.4 to 26.4% (p < 0.001); 16.0 to 78.4% (p < 0.001), and 10.4 to 60.8% (p < 0.001), respectively. The prevalence of measuring serum total cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL-C, and LDL-C levels increased significantly from 16.4 to 80.0% (p < 0.001); 14.4 to 80.0% (p < 0.001); 2.4 to 32.8% (p < 0.001), and 2.4 to 24.0% (p < 0.001), respectively. Conclusion: This audit shows that a national diabetes program was associated with improved processes of diabetes care. Further, support from health authorities, provision of manpower resources, a continuing monitoring and evaluation system, and conduction of structured education programs may lead to further improvements in the quality of diabetes care.
Serum Exosomal Long Noncoding RNAs ENSG00000258332.1 and LINC00635 for the Diagnosis and Prognosis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Background: Increasing studies suggest that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are involved in carcinogenesis of human cancers and might be used as diagnostic biomarkers for cancers. Methods: A total of 301 participants were recruited in the first part of the study, including a hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) group (n = 60), liver cirrhosis (LC) group (n = 85), chronic hepatitis B (CHB) group (n = 96), and healthy subjects (n = 60). In the second part, we collected 55 HCC patients, 60 CHB patients, and 60 healthy subjects as an independent cohort to validate the ability of the experiential lncRNAs for identifying HCC from CHB. A commercial kit was used to isolate serum exosomes and total RNA. The relative levels of lnRNAs and GAPDH mRNA were measured with TaqMan PCR. Results: The results showed that the levels of ENSG00000258332.1 and LINC00635 in the HCC group were significantly higher than those in the other groups (all P < 0.05). A high ENSG00000258332.1 level in HCC was associated with portal vein tumor emboli, lymph node metastasis, TNM stage, and overall survival (OS; all P < 0.05), and a high LINC00635 level was related to lymph node metastasis, TNM stage, and OS (all P < 0.05). ENSG00000258332.1 discriminated HCC from CHB, gaining an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 0.719 (cutoff value of 1.345); LINC00635 gained an AUC of 0.750 (cutoff value of 1.690). Furthermore, the AUC for the combination of the 2 lncRNAs and serum AFP (cutoff value of 20 μg/L) was 0.894. The abilities of the 2 lncRNAs for identifying HCC from CHB were validated by an independent cohort. Conclusions: The results suggested that the combination of serum exosomal ENSG00000258332.1, LINC00635, and AFP may be a valuable assay in diagnosis and prognosis of HCC. Impact: Our data will shed light on exosomal lncRNAs as biomarkers for HCC. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 27(6); 710–6. ©2018 AACR.
[POSTER] Prevention of Visually Induced Motion Sickness Based on Dynamic Real-Time Content-Aware Non-salient Area Blurring

This paper proposes an innovative method for reducing the visually induced motion sickness (MS) occurred in a 3D immersive virtual environment (VE) by utilizing a flexible dynamic scene smoothing approach based on saliency analysis. A saliency model based on fully convolutional network (FCN) is first trained to establish the saliency map, then the probability maps representing the salient information and the non-salient information are combined to alter the field of view (FOV) by smoothing the non-salient area. An experiment is conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. The experimental data demonstrate that participants experiencing dynamic blurring VE reports a 50% reduction of the severity of MS symptom on average during the VR experience than the participants experiencing the control condition, which show that the proposed approach can be used to effectively prevent the visually induced MS in VR and support longer duration of users in VE.
Emerging Roles of Protein Deamidation in Innate Immune Signaling

ABSTRACT Protein deamidation has been considered a nonenzymatic process associated with protein functional decay or “aging. ” Recent studies implicate protein deamidation in regulating signal transduction in fundamental biological processes, such as innate immune responses. Work investigating gammaherpesviruses and bacterial pathogens indicates that microbial pathogens deploy deamidases or enzyme-deficient homologues (pseudoenzymes) to induce deamidation of key signaling components and evade host immune responses. Here, we review studies on protein deamidation in innate immune signaling and present several imminent questions concerning the roles of protein deamidation in infection and immunity.
Prevalence of Depression Among Adults Aged 20 and Over: United States, 2013-2016.

Major depression is a common and treatable mental disorder characterized by changes in mood, and cognitive and physical symptoms over a 2-week period (1). It is associated with high societal costs (2) and greater functional impairment than many other chronic diseases, including diabetes and arthritis (3). Depression rates differ by age, sex, income, and health behaviors (4). This report provides the most recent national estimates of depression among adults. Prevalence of depression is based on scores from the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), a symptom-screening questionnaire that allows for criteria-based diagnoses of depressive disorders (5). Estimates for non-Hispanic Asian persons are presented for the first time.
Cascaded Multi-scale and Multi-dimension Convolutional Neural Network for Stereo Matching

Convolutional neural networks (CNN) have been shown to perform better than the conventional stereo algorithms for stereo estimation. Numerous CNN algorithms focus on the pixel-wise matching cost computation, which is the important building block for many state-of-the-art algorithms. However, these architectures are limited to small and single scale receptive fields and use traditional methods for cost aggregation or even ignore cost aggregation. In this paper, we propose a novel architecture called cascaded multi-scale and multi-dimension network (MSMD) to take them both into consideration. Firstly, we propose a new multi-scale matching cost computation sub-network, in which two different sizes of receptive fields are implemented parallelly. In this way, the network can make the best use of both variants to balance the trade-off between the increase of receptive field and the loss of details. Furthermore, we show that our multi-dimension aggregation sub-network which contains 2D convolution and 3D convolution operations can provide rich context and semantic information for estimating an accurate initial disparity. Finally, experiments on challenging stereo benchmark KITTI demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve competitive results even without any additional post-processing.
Understanding N timing in corn yield and fertilizer N recovery: An insight from an isotopic labeled-N determination

Early fertilizer nitrogen (N) application on cover crops or their residues during the off-season is a practice adopted in Brazil subtropical conditions under no-tillage corn (Zea mays L.) systems. However, the effect of early N application on yield, plant N content, and N recovery efficiency (NRE) for corn is not yet well documented. Five fertilizer N timings in an oat-corn system were evaluated in two studies utilizing an isotopic-labeled N determination, 15N isotope. The N fertilization timings were: (i) oat tillering, (ii) 15 days before corn planting time, over the oat residues, (iii) at corn planting time, (iv) in-season at the three-leaf growth stage (V3), and (v) in-season split application at V3 and six-leaf (V6) growth stages. Based on the statistical analysis, the N fertilization timings were separated into three groups: 1) N-OATS, designated to N applied at oat; 2) N-PLANT, referred to pre-plant and planting N applications; and 3) N-CORN, designated to in-season corn N applications. Corn yield was not affected by the N fertilization timing. However, the N-CORN N fertilization timings enhanced NRE by 17% and 35% and final N recovery system (plant plus soil) by 16% and 24% all relative to N-OATS and N-PLANT groups, respectively. Overall, N-OATS resulted in the largest N derived from fertilizer (NDFF) amount in the deeper soil layer, in overall a delta of 10 kg N ha-1 relative to the rest of the groups. Notwithstanding corn yield was not affected, early N fertilization under subtropical conditions is not a viable option since NRE was diminished and the non-recovery N increased relative to the in-season N applications.
Variation in the prevalence of urinary catheters: a profile of National Health Service patients in England

Introduction Harm from catheter-associated urinary tract infections is a common, potentially avoidable, healthcare complication. Variation in catheter prevalence may exist and provide opportunity for reducing harm, yet to date is poorly understood. This study aimed to determine variation in the prevalence of urinary catheters between patient groups, settings, specialities and over time. Methods A prospective study (July 2012 to April 2016) of National Health Service (NHS) patients surveyed by healthcare professionals, following a standardised protocol to determine the presence of a urinary catheter and duration of use, on 1 day per month using the NHS Safety Thermometer. Results 1314 organisations (253 NHS trusts) and 9 266 284 patients were included. Overall, 12.9% of patients were catheterised, but utilisation varied. There was higher utilisation of catheters in males (15.7% vs 10.7% p<0.001) and younger people (18–70 year 14.0% vs >70 year 12.8% p<0.001), utilisation was highest in hospital settings (18.6% p<0.001), particularly in critical care (76.6% p<0.001). Most catheters had been in situ <28 days (72.9% p<0.001). No clinically significant changes were seen over time in any setting or specialty. Conclusion Catheter prevalence in patients receiving NHS-funded care varies according to gender, age, setting and specialty, being most prevalent in males, younger people, hospitals and critical care. Utilisation has changed only marginally over 46 months, and further guidance is indicated to provide clarity for clinicians on the insertion and removal of catheters to supplement the existing guidance on care.
Restoration of Kv7 Channel-Mediated Inhibition Reduces Cued-Reinstatement of Cocaine Seeking

Cocaine addicts display increased sensitivity to drug-associated cues, due in part to changes in the prelimbic prefrontal cortex (PL-PFC). The cellular mechanisms underlying cue-induced reinstatement of cocaine seeking remain unknown. Reinforcement learning for addictive drugs may produce persistent maladaptations in intrinsic excitability within sparse subsets of PFC pyramidal neurons. Using a model of relapse in male rats, we sampled >600 neurons to examine spike frequency adaptation (SFA) and afterhyperpolarizations (AHPs), two systems that attenuate low-frequency inputs to regulate neuronal synchronization. We observed that training to self-administer cocaine or nondrug (sucrose) reinforcers decreased SFA and AHPs in a subpopulation of PL-PFC neurons. Only with cocaine did the resulting hyperexcitability persist through extinction training and increase during reinstatement. In neurons with intact SFA, dopamine enhanced excitability by inhibiting Kv7 potassium channels that mediate SFA. However, dopamine effects were occluded in neurons from cocaine-experienced rats, where SFA and AHPs were reduced. Pharmacological stabilization of Kv7 channels with retigabine restored SFA and Kv7 channel function in neuroadapted cells. When microinjected bilaterally into the PL-PFC 10 min before reinstatement testing, retigabine reduced cue-induced reinstatement of cocaine seeking. Last, using cFos-GFP transgenic rats, we found that the loss of SFA correlated with the expression of cFos-GFP following both extinction and re-exposure to drug-associated cues. Together, these data suggest that cocaine self-administration desensitizes inhibitory Kv7 channels in a subpopulation of PL-PFC neurons. This subpopulation of neurons may represent a persistent neural ensemble responsible for driving drug seeking in response to cues. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Long after the cessation of drug use, cues associated with cocaine still elicit drug-seeking behavior, in part by activation of the prelimbic prefrontal cortex (PL-PFC). The underlying cellular mechanisms governing these activated neurons remain unclear. Using a rat model of relapse to cocaine seeking, we identified a population of PL-PFC neurons that become hyperexcitable following chronic cocaine self-administration. These neurons show persistent loss of spike frequency adaptation, reduced afterhyperpolarizations, decreased sensitivity to dopamine, and reduced Kv7 channel-mediated inhibition. Stabilization of Kv7 channel function with retigabine normalized neuronal excitability, restored Kv7 channel currents, and reduced drug-seeking behavior when administered into the PL-PFC before reinstatement. These data highlight a persistent adaptation in a subset of PL-PFC neurons that may contribute to relapse vulnerability.
Study on E-Commerce Adoption in SMEs Under the Institutional Perspective: The Case of Saudi Arabia

This article investigates and discusses the institutional factors influencing decisions of e-commerce adoption in Saudi small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from the temporal view. This article has been conducted in two phases: a full survey in 2013 and the follow-up targeted interviews in 2016. The analysis results demonstrated that there is a clear difference between initial e-commerce adoption and institutionalization in SMEs in terms of institutional predictors. When e-commerce was at its infant stage, governmental support and well-defined legal and regulations system were instrumental and served as mainly institutional forces to encourage firms to adopt e-commerce. As time went on and e-commerce became more business-driven, these effects become less important, even insignificant; instead of these, perceived market forces and perceived social awareness of e-commerce emerges as critical contributions to push SMEs to engage in e-commerce more sophisticatedly.