Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Planning Problems for Sophisticated Agents with Present Bias

Present bias, the tendency to weigh costs and benefits incurred in the present too heavily, is one of the most widespread human behavioral biases. It has also been the subject of extensive study in the behavioral economics literature. While the simplest models assume that decision-making agents are naive, reasoning about the future without taking their bias into account, there is considerable evidence that people often behave in ways that are sophisticated with respect to present bias, making plans based on the belief that they will be present-biased in the future. For example, committing to a course of action to reduce future opportunities for procrastination or overconsumption are instances of sophisticated behavior in everyday life. Models of sophisticated behavior have lacked an underlying formalism that allows one to reason over the full space of multi-step tasks that a sophisticated agent might face, and this has made it correspondingly difficult to make comparative or worst-case statements about the performance of sophisticated agents in arbitrary scenarios. In this paper, we incorporate the framework of sophistication into a graph-theoretic model that we used in recent work for modeling naive agents. This new synthesis of two formalisms --- sophistication and graph-theoretic planning --- uncovers a rich structure that wasn't apparent in the earlier behavioral economics work on this problem, including a range of findings that shed new light on sophisticated behavior. In particular, our graph-theoretic model makes two kinds of new results possible. First, we give tight worst-case bounds on the performance of sophisticated agents in arbitrary multi-step tasks relative to the optimal plan, along with worst-case bounds for related questions. Second, the flexibility of our formalism makes it possible to identify new phenomena about sophisticated agents that had not been seen in prior literature: these include a surprising non-monotonic property in the use of rewards to motivate sophisticated agents; a sharp distinction in the performance of agents who overestimate versus underestimate their level of present bias; and a framework for reasoning about commitment devices that shows how certain classes of commitments can produce large gains for arbitrary tasks.
Hiv/aids -research and Palliative Care Dovepress Magnitude of Cytopenias among Hiv-infected Children in Bahir Dar, Northwest Ethiopia: a Comparison of Haart-naïve and Haart-experienced Children

you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms Background: AIDS, caused by HIV, is a multisystem disease that affects hematopoiesis. The aim of this study was to assess cytopenias among HIV-infected children who had a follow-up at Felege Hiwot Referral Hospital, Bahir Dar, northwest Ethiopia. Methods: An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted between April and May 2013. Systematic random sampling method was used to select the study participants. Descriptive statistics, independent t-test as well as chi-square and logistic regression were used for analysis. A p-value <0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: A total of 224 children (112 highly active antiretroviral therapy [HAART]-naïve and 112 HAART-experienced) participated in the study. The magnitude of anemia, thrombocytopenia, neutropenia, leukopenia and pancytopenia among HAART-naïve HIV-infected children weretively. Cluster of differentiation-4 percentage and mean corpuscular volume were significantly different between HAART-experienced and HAART-naïve children. Being of younger age and severely immunosuppressed were risk factors of anemia. Conclusion: Anemia was the most common cytopenia, followed by neutropenia. Severe immu-nosuppression and younger age were significantly associated with anemia. Therefore, emphasis should be given for investigation and management of cytopenias in HIV-infected children, particularly for those who are immunosuppressed and of younger age.
Microbial community transcriptional networks are conserved in three domains at ocean basin scales

Significance Microbes drive biogeochemical cycles across the globe, collectively playing a central role in shaping the biosphere. Despite their immense importance, the in situ activities of communities of microbes, in particular uncultivated lineages of “microbial dark matter,” remain poorly elucidated. In this study, we report that common temporal and ecological dynamics underpin disparate marine microbial communities, providing the first evidence that trans-Pacific diurnal transcriptional patterns in these communities may regulate ecological and biogeochemical processes across the ocean. In total, our findings indicate a remarkable regularity in the timing of community-wide activity in the ocean, and suggest that global patterns of a variety of biogeochemical transformations may be temporally predictable and governed by structured ecological determinants. Planktonic microbial communities in the ocean are typically dominated by several cosmopolitan clades of Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya characterized by their ribosomal RNA gene phylogenies and genomic features. Although the environments these communities inhabit range from coastal to open ocean waters, how the biological dynamics vary between such disparate habitats is not well known. To gain insight into the differential activities of microbial populations inhabiting different oceanic provinces we compared the daily metatranscriptome profiles of related microbial populations inhabiting surface waters of both a coastal California upwelling region (CC) as well as the oligotrophic North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG). Transcriptional networks revealed that the dominant photoautotrophic microbes in each environment (Ostreococcus in CC, Prochlorococcus in NPSG) were central determinants of overall community transcriptome dynamics. Furthermore, heterotrophic bacterial clades common to both ecosystems (SAR11, SAR116, SAR86, SAR406, and Roseobacter) displayed conserved, genome-wide inter- and intrataxon transcriptional patterns and diel cycles. Populations of SAR11 and SAR86 clades in particular exhibited tightly coordinated transcriptional patterns in both coastal and pelagic ecosystems, suggesting that specific biological interactions between these groups are widespread in nature. Our results identify common diurnally oscillating behaviors among diverse planktonic microbial species regardless of habitat, suggesting that highly conserved temporally phased biotic interactions are ubiquitous among planktonic microbial communities worldwide.
Sequential Double-Guidewire Technique and Transpancreatic Precut Sphincterotomy for Difficult Biliary Cannulation

Background/Aims: The double-guidewire technique (DGT) and transpancreatic precut sphincterotomy (TPS) are introduced as alternative biliary cannulation techniques for difficult biliary cannulation. This study aimed to evaluate the sequential use of DGT and TPS compared with a needle-knife precut papillotomy (NK). Patients and Methods: Six hundred and thirty-five consecutive patients with naοve papilla and who underwent endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) for biliary cannulation from March 2010 to April 2014 in a single institute were analyzed. When standard techniques were unsuccessful, DGT or NK was performed. TPS was sequentially performed if DGT failed. Results: DGT and NK were attempted in 65 and 58 patients, respectively. A sequential DGT-TPS was performed in 38 patients after a failed DGT. Biliary cannulations were successful in 42%, 74%, and 66% of the DGT, sequential DGT-TPS, and NK patients, respectively (P = 0.002). The cannulation rate was higher in the DGT ± TPS patients (85%) than in the NK patients (P = 0.014). Post-ERCP pancreatitis (PEP) developed in 26% of the successful DGT patients, 37% of the sequential DGT-TPS patients, and 10% of the NK patients (P = 0.008). Of the sequential DGT-TPS patients, the incidence of PEP was significantly reduced in patients with a pancreatic duct (PD) stent compared with patients without a PD stent (24% vs. 62%, P = 0.023). Conclusions: Sequential DGT-TPS is a useful alternative method compared with NK for patients in whom biliary cannulation is difficult. In the sequential DGT-TPS patients, the incidence of PEP was significantly reduced with the use of a PD stent.
MR imaging findings of enteroviral encephaloymelitis: an outbreak in Taiwan.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE An outbreak of enterovirus infection occurred in Taiwan from late spring to early fall of 1998. Most of the pediatric infections presented as hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) and herpangina. A small portion of patients had symptoms of polio-like encephalitis and paralysis. The purpose of this study was to review the MR imaging findings in CNS involvement of enterovirus infection. METHODS Twenty patients who had HFMD and clinical encephalitis were examined with MR imaging. T1-weighted and T2-weighted MR images were obtained. From the rectum, throat, CSF, and peripheral blood, the presence of enterovirus 71 (EV 71) was determined by virus culture, immunofluorescent microscopy, immunologic dot blotting, and reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction. RESULTS MR imaging studies of 20 patients showed hyperintensity in the brain stem and spinal cord in 15 patients, as seen on T2-weighted images. The major CNS lesions were in the medulla oblongata, pons, midbrain, and the dentate nuclei of the cerebellum. In some cases, the lesions involved the spinal cord (three cases) as well as the thalamus (two cases) and putamina (one case). Five patients had normal MR imaging results. After the appropriate management for tachycardia and tachypnea, 18 patients recovered within 1 to 2 weeks. In the follow-up MR imaging examination of five patients, the lesions completely disappeared within 2 weeks to 2 months. In two patients who were still respirator-dependent, MR imaging showed the tissue destruction in the posterior portions of the medulla, pons, and the ventral horns of cervical spinal cord. In one patient, most of midbrain was damaged. The presence of EV 71 was detected in specimens from 18 patients. CONCLUSION Because EV 71 was identified in 18 patients, and no other virus was detected, EV 71 was determined to be the major causative agent of this encephalomyelitis. Brain stem and cervical spinal cord involvement are characteristic findings of enteroviral encephalomyelitis.
A feature-based technique for joint, linear estimation of high-order image-to-mosaic transformations: application to mosaicing the curved human retina

Methods are presented for increasing the coverage and accuracy of image mosaics constructed from multiple, uncalibrated, weak-perspective views of the human retina. Extending our previous algorithm for registering pairs of images using a non-invertible, 12-parameter, quadratic image transformation model and a hierarchical, robust estimation technique, two important innovations are presented. The first is a linear, non-iterative method for jointly estimating the transformations of all images onto the mosaic. This employs constraints derived from pairwise matching between the non-mosaic image frames. It allows the transformations to be estimated for images that do not overlap the mosaic anchor frame, and results in mutually consistent transformations for all images. This means the mosaics can cover a much broader area of the retinal surface, even though the transformation model is not closed under composition. This capability is particularly valuable for mosaicing the retinal periphery in the context of diseases such as AIDS/CMV. The second innovation is a method to improve the accuracy of the pairwise matches as well as the joint estimation by refining the feature locations and by adding new features based on the transformation estimates themselves. For matching image frames of size 1024/spl times/1024, this cuts the registration error from the range of 1 to 3 pixels to about 0.55 pixels. The overall transformation error in final mosaic construction is 0.80 pixels based on experiments over a large set of eyes.
Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses of Delirium Symptoms in a Sample of Nursing Home Residents

Objective: This study examined the latent constructs of delirium symptoms among nursing home (NH) residents in the United States. Method: Cross-sectional NH assessment data (Minimum Data Set 2.0) from the 2009 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey were used. Data from two independent, randomly selected subsamples of residents ≥65 years were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Results: There were 367 and 366 individuals in the EFA and CFA, respectively. Assessment of multiple model fit statistics in CFA indicated that the two-factor structure provided better fit for the data than a one-factor solution. The two factors represented cognitive and behavioral latent constructs as suggested by the related literature. A correlation of . 72 between these constructs suggested moderate discriminant validity. Conclusion: This finding emphasizes the importance of health care providers to be attentive to both cognitive and behavioral symptoms when diagnosing, treating, and managing delirium.
Electors Voting for Fast Automatic Shape Correspondence

This paper challenges the difficult problem of automatic semantic correspondence between two given shapes which are semantically similar but possibly geometrically very different (e.g., a dog and an elephant). We argue that the challenging part is the establishment of a sparse correspondence and show that it can be efficiently solved by considering the underlying skeletons augmented with intrinsic surface information. To avoid potentially costly direct search for the best combinatorial match between two sets of skeletal feature nodes, we introduce a statistical correspondence algorithm based on a novel voting scheme, which we call electors voting. The electors are a rather large set of correspondences which then vote to synthesize the final correspondence. The electors are selected via a combinatorial search with pruning tests designed to quickly filter out a vast majority of bad correspondence. This voting scheme is both efficient and insensitive to parameter and threshold settings. The effectiveness of the method is validated by precision‐recall statistics with respect to manually defined ground truth. We show that high quality correspondences can be instantaneously established for a wide variety of model pairs, which may have different poses, surface details, and only partial semantic correspondence.
A TDMA Based Cooperative Communication MAC Protocol for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

In a VANET (Vehicular Ad Hoc Network), the collisions caused by vehicles' mobility lead to poor network performance, especially in high-density network. In order to increase the flexibility of communication, this paper presents a communication protocol with dynamic choosing relay node and automatic cooperative communication called VC-TDMA (Vehicular Cooperative TDMA). The nodes can choose the multi-hop relay nodes rationally and other idle nodes can provide cooperative communication automatically. Considering batch arrival data traffic, the buffer queue state of nodes in the network is numerical analyzed by Markov Chain. The simulation results show that VC-TDMA can improve the throughput of the network compared with the conventional TDMA protocol.
Acceptance of pervasive healthcare systems: A comparison of different implementation concepts

While pervasive healthcare systems bear the potential to provide patients with a new quality of medical homecare, the complexity of such systems raises fundamental questions of behavior, communication and technology acceptance. This is especially important, as users of future healthcare systems will be increasingly characterized by diversity. Relying only on highly experienced and technology-prone user groups, which might have been typical users in the last decades, is not sufficient anymore. Rather, elderly users, users with a completely different upbringing and domain knowledge, and ill or handicapped people will have to use the systems. Today, the understanding, in which way physical, emotional and cognitive abilities, caused by individual learning histories and health states, may impact the usage and acceptance of pervasive healthcare technologies, is restricted. This research contributes to this topic by investigating the acceptance motives of aged users with different health states regarding three different implementation concepts for medical technologies: medical technology implemented in mobile devices, smart environments and smart clothing. Using the questionnaire method, a total of 82 users between 40 and 92 years of age were examined regarding their usage motives and barriers with respect to the different technology concepts. Overall, it was revealed that acceptance issues and users' needs and wants should be considered in order to successfully design new medical technologies.
Epstein-Barr virus nuclear protein EBNA3C residues critical for maintaining lymphoblastoid cell growth

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) nuclear antigen 3C (EBNA3C) is essential for efficient conversion of primary human B lymphocytes to lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) and for continued LCL growth. We used a transcomplementation assay in the context of LCLs transformed by an EBV with a conditional EBNA3C to identify the EBNA3C amino acids (aa) necessary for maintaining LCL growth. Surprisingly, we found that most EBNA3C aa were essential for continued LCL growth. Only EBNA3C mutants deleted for residues within aa 507–515, 516–620, 637–675, or 676–727 maintained full LCL growth, and EBNA3C mutants deleted for residues within aa 728–732 or 910–992 maintained slow LCL growth. In contrast, EBNA3C lacking aa 180–231, which mediate RBP-Jκ association and are necessary for EBNA3C abrogation of EBNA2-induced transcription through RBP-Jκ, could not support LCL growth. Furthermore, 2 EBNA3C alanine substitution mutants within aa 180–231, which were wild-type (wt) in abrogating EBNA2-mediated transcription through RBP-Jκ, maintained LCL growth, and 2 alanine substitution mutants within aa 180–231, which were null in abrogating EBNA2-mediated transcription through RBP-Jκ, did not maintain LCL growth. This indicates that EBNA3C regulation of transcription through RBP-Jκ is critical to maintaining LCL growth. Several other EBNA3C functions also are critical for LCL growth, because EBNA3C mutants deleted for residues within aa 130–159, 251–506, or 733–909 were wt in abrogating transcription through RBP-Jκ and expression level, but did not maintain LCL growth.
Post-Adoption Behavior of Digital Media: The Merge of U&G Theory and Affect Event Theory

We incorporate two streams of IS research: 1) the quality of the systems in determining systems success and 2) the effects of online incidents including online waiting interruptions and service failures on consumer behaviors, to understand three post-adoption behaviors in the use of digital media; continuance intention, recommendation, and complaint. We investigate digital media use from the perspectives of affective events theory and U & G motivations. The results of PLS analysis with 415 responses from an online survey suggest that usage behaviors are determined by perceived site quality and cognitive appraisal of incidents handling (CAIH) and satisfaction mediated the effect of positive and negative affects to post-adoption behaviors. Information and Entertainment motivations are two salient motivations of digital media use. However, interactivity shows no effect to satisfaction of digital media use. CFA and path analysis attest the dimensionality of constructs and the structure relationships of the integrated model.
Modeling and Simulating the Efficiency of Gearboxes and of Planetary Gearboxes

It is shown how to model and simulate frictional effects present in gearboxes and in planetary gearboxes. This includes modeling of gear wheel stucking and sliding due to Coulomb friction between the gear teeth leading to load torque dependent losses. This allows reliable simulation of, e.g., stick-slip effects in servo drives or gear shifts in automatic gearboxes. It is also discussed how the friction characteristics can be measured in a useful way. The presented models are implemented in Modelica and demonstrated at hand of the simulation of an automatic gearbox.
The role of organic osmolytes in the cerebral cell volume regulatory response to acute and chronic renal failure.

Brain cells respond to increased osmolality of the extracellular fluid by accumulating inorganic electrolytes and nonperturbing organic osmolytes to limit the extent of brain cell shrinkage. It is unclear whether urea is an effective osmole that triggers this adaptive response. Therefore, the amount of brain water and the cerebral content of organic osmolytes in rats with acute renal failure induced by bilateral ureteral ligation and in animals with chronic renal failure for 6 weeks created by a 75% reduction in renal mass were measured. Eight hours after the onset of acute renal failure, the BUN concentration and serum osmolality were 61 +/- 4 mg/dL and 314 +/- 2 mosmol/kg, respectively, compared with 13 +/- 1 mg/dL and 288 +/- 1 mosmol/kg, respectively, in sham-operated rats. This hyperosmolal state reduced brain water from 79.7 +/- 0.1% in controls to 79.2 +/- 0.1% in uremic animals (P < 0.01). During acute renal failure lasting 48 h, the BUN concentration and serum osmolality rose to 251 +/- 10 mg/dL and 370 +/- 4 mosmol/kg versus 18 +/- 1 mg/dL and 286 +/- 4 mosmol/kg, respectively, in sham-operated control rats. The percentage of brain water content was unchanged in rats with azotemia for 48 h--79.6 +/- 0.1 compared with 79.5 +/- 0.2% in controls. Stabilization of brain volume was associated with a 19% increment in total organic osmolyte content in brain cells from 123 +/- 6 to 146 +/- 2 mmol/kg dry wt (P < 0.05). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Migraine and risk of cardiovascular disease in men.

BACKGROUND The vascular component of the migraine-specific physiologic profile and the observed adverse cardiovascular risk profile in migraineurs suggest an association between migraine and cardiovascular disease (CVD). In women, migraine has been associated with increased risk of CVD, including coronary events. Compatible data in men are lacking. METHODS Prospective cohort study of 20 084 men aged 40 to 84 years participating in the Physicians' Health Study. In yearly questionnaires, men were asked for information on migraine, risk factors, and the occurrence of study end points. We classified men as having migraine if they indicated migraine during the first 5 years, after which time follow-up began. Information on aura was not available. All the men were free of CVD at the start of follow-up. During a mean of 15.7 years, we followed up participants for the occurrence of a first major CVD event (nonfatal ischemic stroke, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or death from ischemic CVD). We also evaluated the individual end points, coronary revascularization, and angina. RESULTS A total of 1449 men (7.2%) reported migraine, and during follow-up, 2236 major CVD events occurred. Compared with nonmigraineurs, men who reported migraine had multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals) of 1.24 (1.06-1.46; P = .008) for major CVD, 1.12 (0.84-1.50; P = .43) for ischemic stroke, 1.42 (1.15-1.77; P<.001) for myocardial infarction, 1.05 (0.89-1.24; P = .54) for coronary revascularization, 1.15 (0.99-1.33; P = .068) for angina, and 1.07 (0.80-1.43; P = .65) for ischemic cardiovascular death. CONCLUSION In this large prospective cohort of apparently healthy men, migraine was associated with increased risk of major CVD, which was driven by increased risk of myocardial infarction.