Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Minimax Estimation of Functionals of Discrete Distributions

We propose a general methodology for the construction and analysis of essentially minimax estimators for a wide class of functionals of finite dimensional parameters, and elaborate on the case of discrete distributions, where the support size S is unknown and may be comparable with or even much larger than the number of observations n. We treat the respective regions where the functional is nonsmooth and smooth separately. In the nonsmooth regime, we apply an unbiased estimator for the best polynomial approximation of the functional whereas, in the smooth regime, we apply a bias-corrected version of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE). We illustrate the merit of this approach by thoroughly analyzing the performance of the resulting schemes for estimating two important information measures: 1) the entropy H(P) = Σ<sup>S</sup><sub>i=1</sub> -p<sub>i</sub> ln p<sub>i</sub> and 2) F<sub>α</sub>(P) = Σ<sup>S</sup><sub>i=1</sub> p<sup>α</sup><sub>i</sub>, α > 0. We obtain the minimax L<sub>2</sub> rates for estimating these functionals. In particular, we demonstrate that our estimator achieves the optimal sample complexity n × S/ln S for entropy estimation. We also demonstrate that the sample complexity for estimating F<sub>α</sub>(P), 0 <; α <; 1, is n×S<sup>1/α</sup>/ln S, which can be achieved by our estimator but not the MLE. For 1 <; α <; 3/2, we show the minimax L<sub>2</sub> rate for estimating F<sub>α</sub>(P) is (n ln n)<sup>-2(α-1)</sup> for infinite support size, while the maximum L<sub>2</sub> rate for the MLE is n<sup>-2(α-1)</sup>. For all the above cases, the behavior of the minimax rate-optimal estimators with n samples is essentially that of the MLE (plug-in rule) with n ln n samples, which we term “effective sample size enlargement. ” We highlight the practical advantages of our schemes for the estimation of entropy and mutual information. We compare our performance with various existing approaches, and demonstrate that our approach reduces running time and boosts the accuracy. Moreover, we show that the minimax rate-optimal mutual information estimator yielded by our framework leads to significant performance boosts over the Chow-Liu algorithm in learning graphical models. The wide use of information measure estimation suggests that the insights and estimators obtained in this paper could be broadly applicable.
Surface roughness and wettability of AISI 316L induced by surface mechanical attrition treatment with different milling ball diameter

Surface roughness and wettability determines the rate and quality of protein adsorption and cells adhesion on biomaterial. For this case, a rough- and hydrophilic-surface are preferable rather than a smooth- and hydrophobic-one. This paper discusses the effect of milling ball diameter used in surface mechanical attrition treatment (SMAT) on the roughness and wettability of AISI 316L. All samples were treated for 15 minutes with 250 balls whose diameter of 1/8”, 3/16”, and 1/4". The result shows enhanced surface roughness and reduced droplet contact angle of AISI 316L surface after SMAT. The ball's radius of curvature influences the pit geometry and the roughness of sample's surface. In addition, the performance of SMAT is still lacking to produce a hydrophilic surface.
Formulation and In Vitro Evaluation of Ofloxacin Tablets using Natural Gums as Binders

Natural gums are economical, easily available, and useful as tablet binders. In the present investigation, an attempt was made to formulate Ofloxacin tablets using three natural binders, namely Acacia arabica, Hibiscus esculentus, and xanthan gum. Such six batches of Ofloxacin tablets were prepared by using different types and amounts of the natural binders by the wet granulation method. The tablets were analyzed for their hardness, friability, and weight variation, and in vitro release was performed in a phosphate buffer at pH 6.8. The prepared tablets were also evaluated for their various release kinetics and similarity factors f2. The physical properties of the tablets containing the natural binders showed sufficient hardness, desirable disintegration time, and low friability. Their better percentage of drug release was observed as compared to the marketed formulation showing more than 85% drug release within 45 minutes. The in vitro release data was well-fitted into zero-order and the values of release exponent ‘n’ were between 0.303 and 0.514. The high similarity factor f2 of 64.50 was achieved with the best batch in comparison to the marketed tablets. The results obtained indicated that the gum Acacia arabica performed as well as gelatin compared to the other binders for the Ofloxacin tablet formulation.
An exploratory study on joint analysis of visual classification in narrow domains and the discriminative power of tags

The popularity of social media sharing sites such as Flickr has driven a significant amount of research on the analysis of information contained in the tags used to annotate images. Many of such tags are not useful to describe the contents of an image and are often labeled as not descriptive or even noisy. In this work we focus on the descriptiveness of a tag in an exploratory way, within a relatively narrow domain, and with the help of a visual classifier. Preliminary experimental results demonstrate the possibility to infer descriptiveness of tags from a joint analysis of tag entropy calculations and the results of an automated visual classifier with a limited number of classes without taking tag content or tag co-occurrence into account. We postulate that these experiments can be extended and improved toward a working solution that might answer the question: Given a semantic category, which tags would you use for searching an image from that category?
Backpropagation without weight transport

In backpropagation, connection weights are used to both compute node activations and error gradient for hidden units. Grossberg (1987) has argued that the dual use of the same synaptic connections (weight transport) constitutes a bidirectional flow of information through synapses, which is biologically implausable. In this paper we formally and empirically demonstrate the feasibility of an architecture equivalent to backpropagation, but without the assumption of weight transport. Through coordinated training with weight decay, a reciprocal layer of weights evolves into a copy of the forward connections and acts as the conduit for backward flowing corrective information. Examination of the networks trained with dual weights suggests that functional synchronization, and not weight synchronization, is crucial to the operation of backpropagation methods. <<ETX>>
A comparative study on the effect of high cholesterol diet on the hippocampal CA1 area of adult and aged rats

Dementia is one of the most important problems nowadays. Aging is associated with learning and memory impairments. Diet rich in cholesterol has been shown to be detrimental to cognitive performance. This work was carried out to compare the effect of high cholesterol diet on the hippocampus of adult and aged male albino rats. Twenty adult and twenty aged male rats were used in this study. According to age, the rats were randomly subdivided into balanced and high cholesterol diet fed groups. The diet was 15 g/rat/day for adult rats and 20 g/rat/day for aged rats for eight weeks. Serial coronal sections of hippocampus and blood samples were taken from each rat. For diet effect evaluation, Clinical, biochemical, histological, immunohistochemical, and morphometric assessments were done. In compare to a balanced diet fed rat, examination of Cornu Ammonis 1 (CA 1) area in the hippocampus of the high cholesterol diet adult rats showed degeneration, a significant decrease of the pyramidal cells, attenuation and/or thickening of small blood vessels, apparent increase of astrocytes and apparent decrease of Nissl's granules content. Moreover, the high cholesterol diet aged rats showed aggravation of senility changes of the hippocampus together with Alzheimer like pathological changes. In conclusion, the high cholesterol diet has a significant detrimental effect on the hippocampus and aging might pronounce this effect. So, we should direct our attention to limit cholesterol intake in our food to maintain a healthy life style for a successful aging.
Strings in extremal BTZ black holes

We study the spectrum of the worldsheet theory of the bosonic closed string in the massless and extremal rotating BTZ black holes. We use a hyperbolic Wakimoto representation of the SL(2,) currents to construct vertex operators for the string modes on these backgrounds. We argue that there are tachyons in the twisted sector, but these are not localised near the horizon. We study the relation to the null orbifold in the limit of vanishing cosmological constant. We also discuss the problem of extending this analysis to the supersymmetric case.
EEG Power Density during Nap Sleep: Reflection of an Hourglass Measuring the Duration of Prior Wakefulness

The relation between the duration of prior wakefulness and EEG power density during sleep in humans was assessed by means of a study of naps. The duration of prior wakefulness was varied from 2 to 20 hr by scheduling naps at 1000 hr, 1200 hr, 1400 hr, 1600 hr, 1800 hr, 2000 hr, and 0400 hr. In contrast to sleep latencies, which exhibited a minimum in the afternoon, EEG power densities in the delta and theta frequencies were a monotonic function of the duration of prior wakefulness. The data support the hypothesis that EEG power density during non-rapid eye movement sleep is only determined by the prior history of sleep and wakefulness and is not determined by clock-like mechanisms.
Prevalence of HFE genotypes, C282Y and H63D, in patients with hematologic disorders.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Iron status has implications for normal erythrocyte and leukocyte function and for platelet count, size and activation. Increased storage of iron is considered a potential risk factor participating in the pathogenesis of malignant diseases. Since HFE gene mutations have recently been implicated in unbalanced iron homeostasis, we set out to examine the prevalence of these mutations in patients with hematologic disorders. DESIGN AND METHODS C282Y and H63D mutations were determined in 232 patients with various hematologic disorders treated at Oulu University Hospital between 1987 and 2000. DNA samples extracted from either the peripheral blood or bone marrow of these patients were amplified by a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method using sequence-specific primers, and the products were analyzed on agarose gels. RESULTS There was a slight tendency towards lower frequencies of the C282Y allele in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) (3.8%, n=53) and higher frequencies in those with essential thrombocythemia (ET) (16.2%, n=37). Contrary to some expectations, however, the frequency of the C282Y allele in acute lymphoblastic leukemia turned out to be normal (7.0%, n=43). Our data showed no significant deviations in H63D mutation frequency in any of the categories of patients. INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS Our results do not show any significant association between HFE gene mutations and hematologic malignancies. The divergent frequencies observed for the C282Y mutation in patients with AML and ET highlight the need for larger population studies of HFE mutations in patients with hematologic diseases.
Vitamin D status in pre-school children in rural Nepal

Abstract Objective Vitamin D plays a major role in Ca and bone metabolism, and its extraskeletal functions are being appraised. Although inadequate vitamin D concentrations have been reported in populations worldwide, too little is known about vitamin D status and its determinants among children in developing countries. We aimed to determine vitamin D status and its determinants in Nepalese children of pre-school age. Design A community-based, cross-sectional study. Setting Rural Nepal at latitude 27·39°N. Subjects Healthy children (n 280) aged 12–60 months, selected randomly from the records of a vitamin A supplementation programme. Blood samples were collected using the dried blood spot technique and analysed for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (s-25(OH)D) concentration using liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. Ca intake and background variables were assessed with a structured questionnaire. Results Hypovitaminosis D, defined as s-25(OH)D concentration less than 50 nmol/l, was found in 91·1 % of the children. S-25(OH)D concentration was not related to gender, socio-economic indicators, sun exposure or nutritional status. Currently breast-fed children had higher s-25(OH)D concentrations (36·4 (sd 13·2) nmol/l) than those who were not (28·6 (sd 9·8) nmol/l, P<0·001). Adjustment for sociodemographic factors did not alter the results. Conclusion There is widespread vitamin D deficiency among pre-school children in a rural area of Nepal. In our sample, sociodemographic factors did not affect the vitamin D status of children, but prolonged breast-feeding was associated with higher s-25(OH)D concentrations. Further research is required to investigate the health consequences of poor vitamin D status for this population.
Modelling regional variation of first-time births in Denmark 1980-1994 by an age-period-cohort model

Despite the small size of Denmark, there have traditionally been rather consistent regional differences in fertility rates. We apply the statistical age-period-cohort model to include the effect of these three time-related factors thereby concisely illuminating the regional differences of first-time births in Denmark. From the Fertility of Women and Couples Dataset we obtain data on number of births by nulliparous women by year (1980-1994), age (15-45) and county of residence. We show that the APC-model describes the fertility rates of nulliparous women satisfactorily. To catch the regional variation an interaction parameter between age and county is necessary, which provides a surprisingly good description suggesting that the county-specific age-distributions of first-time fertility rates differ. Our results are in general agreement with the 'moral geography' concepts of Tonboe (2001).
Replicates, Read Numbers, and Other Important Experimental Design Considerations for Microbial RNA-seq Identified Using Bacillus thuringiensis Datasets

RNA-seq is being used increasingly for gene expression studies and it is revolutionizing the fields of genomics and transcriptomics. However, the field of RNA-seq analysis is still evolving. Therefore, we specifically designed this study to contain large numbers of reads and four biological replicates per condition so we could alter these parameters and assess their impact on differential expression results. Bacillus thuringiensis strains ATCC10792 and CT43 were grown in two Luria broth medium lots on four dates and transcriptomics data were generated using one lane of sequence output from an Illumina HiSeq2000 instrument for each of the 32 samples, which were then analyzed using DESeq2. Genome coverages across samples ranged from 87 to 465X with medium lots and culture dates identified as major variation sources. Significantly differentially expressed genes (5% FDR, two-fold change) were detected for cultures grown using different medium lots and between different dates. The highly differentially expressed iron acquisition and metabolism genes, were a likely consequence of differing amounts of iron in the two media lots. Indeed, in this study RNA-seq was a tool for predictive biology since we hypothesized and confirmed the two LB medium lots had different iron contents (~two-fold difference). This study shows that the noise in data can be controlled and minimized with appropriate experimental design and by having the appropriate number of replicates and reads for the system being studied. We outline parameters for an efficient and cost effective microbial transcriptomics study.
Context identification of sentences in research articles: Towards developing intelligent tools for the research community

Abstract Scientific literature is an important medium for disseminating scientific knowledge. However, in recent times, a dramatic increase in research output has resulted in challenges for the research community. An increasing need is felt for tools that exploit the full content of an article and provide insightful services with value beyond quantitative measures such as impact factors and citation counts. However, the intricacies of language and thought, and the unstructured format of research articles present challenges in providing such services. The identification of sentence contexts that encode the role of specific sentences in advancing an article's scientific argument can facilitate in developing intelligent tools for the research community. This paper describes our research work in this direction. First, we investigate the possibility of identifying contexts associated with sentences and propose a scheme of thirteen context type definitions for sentences, based on the generic rhetorical pattern found in scientific articles. We then present the results of our experiments using sequential classifiers – conditional random fields – for achieving automatic context identification. We also describe our Semantic Web application developed for providing citation context based information services for the research community. Finally, we present a comparison and analysis of our results with similar studies and explain the distinct features of our application.
Stability Results for Random Sampling of Sparse Trigonometric Polynomials

Recently, it has been observed that a sparse trigonometric polynomial, i.e., having only a small number of nonzero coefficients, can be reconstructed exactly from a small number of random samples using basis pursuit (BP) or orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP). In this paper, it is shown that recovery by a BP variant is stable under perturbation of the samples values by noise. A similar partial result for OMP is provided. For BP, in addition, the stability result is extended to (nonsparse) trigonometric polynomials that can be well approximated by sparse ones. The theoretical findings are illustrated by numerical experiments.
Efficacy and Safety of a New Botulinum Toxin Type A Free of Complexing Proteins

MT10107 is botulinum neurotoxin type A derived drug which utilizes the 150 kDa portion without complexing proteins and human serum albumin contents. To evaluate the efficacy and the safety of MT10107, it was compared with onabotulinumtoxinA in this double-blind, randomized controlled trial. Twenty-five healthy males received a randomly selected dose of MT10107 into the extensor digitorum brevis (EDB) muscle of one foot, and an equivalent dose of onabotulinumtoxinA (BOTOX) was injected into the contralateral EDB muscle. While efficacy of the administered substance was determined by measuring paretic effects on the EDB, the local spread of toxin effects was evaluated by the paretic effects on the nearby abductor hallucis (AH) and abductor digiti quinti (ADQ) muscles. Paretic effects were defined as the percentage of reduction of the compound muscle action potential (CMAP) amplitudes, measured at 14, 30, 90 days after the injection, compared to the baseline value. Intergroup (MT10107 and onabotulinumtoxinA) differences were not significant in the percentage reduction of the amplitudes in the EDB muscles. In this study, there was no significant difference in efficacy and safety between the two test drugs. MT10107 may be effective and safe as much as onabotulinumtoxinA to produce the desired paretic effect.
Isometries of cross products of sequence spaces

Let $X_0, X_1, . , X_k$ with $k \in \IN\cup\{\infty\}$ be sequence spaces $($finite or infinite dimensional$)$ over $\IC$ or $\IR$ with absolute norms $N_i$ for $i = 0, . , k$, $($i.e., with 1-unconditional bases$)$ such that $\dim X_0 = k$. Define an absolute norm on the cross product space $($also known as the $X_0$ 1-unconditional sum$)$ $X_1 \times . \times X_k$ by $$ N(x_1, ., x_k) = N_0(N_1(x_1), . , N_k(x_k)) \quad \hbox{for all} \quad (x_1, ., x_k) \in X_1 \times . \times X_k. $$ We show that every sequence space with an absolute norm has an intrinsic cross product structure of this form. The result is used to prove a characterization of isometries of complex cross product spaces that covers all the existing results. We demonstrate by examples and the theory of finite reflection groups that it is impossible to extend the complex result to the real case. Nevertheless, some new isometry theorems are obtained for real cross product spaces.
Basic Investigation on a Robust and Practical Plant Diagnostic System

Accurate plant diagnosis requires experts' knowledge but is usually expensive and time consuming. Therefore, it has become necessary to design an accurate, easy, and low-cost automated diagnostic system for plant diseases. In this paper, we propose a new practical plant-disease detection system. We use 7,520 cucumber leaf images comprising images of healthy leaves and those infected by almost all types of viral diseases. The leaves were photographed on site under only one requirement, that is, each image must contain a leaf roughly at its center, thus providing them with a large variety of appearances (i.e., parameters including distance, angle, background, and lighting condition were not uniform). Although half of the images used in this experiment were taken in bad conditions, our classification system based on convolutional neural networks attained an average of 82.3% accuracy under the 4-fold cross validation strategy.
Adherence to evidence-based drug therapies after myocardial infarction: is geographic variation related to hospital of discharge or primary care providers? A cross-classified multilevel design

Objectives To measure the adherence to polytherapy after myocardial infarction (MI), to compare the proportions of variation attributable to hospitals of discharge and to primary care providers, and to identify determinants of adherence to medications. Setting This is a population-based study. Data were obtained from the Information Systems of the Lazio Region, Italy (5 million inhabitants). Participants Patients hospitalised with incident MI in 2007–2010. Outcome measure The outcome was chronic polytherapy after MI. Adherence was defined as a medication possession ratio ≥0.75 for at least three of the following drugs: antiplatelets, β-blockers, ACEI angiotensin receptor blockers, statins. Design and analysis A 2-year cohort study was performed. Cross-classified multilevel models were applied to analyse geographic variation and compare proportions of variability attributable to hospitals of discharge and primary care providers. The variance components were expressed as median ORs MORs. If the MOR is 1.00, there is no variation between clusters. If there is considerable between-cluster variation, the MOR will be large. Results A total of 9606 patients were enrolled. About 63% were adherent to chronic polytherapy. Adherence was higher for patients discharged from cardiology wards (OR=1.56 vs other wards, p<0.001) and for patients with general practitioners working in group practice (OR=1.14 vs single-handed, p=0.042). A relevant variation in adherence was detected between local health districts (MOR=1.24, p<0.001). When introducing the hospital of discharge as a cross-classified level, the variation between local health districts decreased (MOR=1.13, p=0.020) and the variability attributable to hospitals of discharge was significantly higher (MOR=1.37, p<0.001). Conclusions Secondary prevention pharmacotherapy after MI is not consistent with clinical guidelines. The relevant geographic variation raises equity issues in access to optimal care. Adherence was influenced more by the hospital that discharged the patient than by the primary care providers. Cross-classified models proved to be a useful tool for defining priority areas for more targeted interventions.