Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical Characteristics of 582 Patients with Uveal Melanoma in China

Objective To assess clinical characteristics, treatment and survival of patients with uveal melanoma in China. Methods The retrospective study included all patients with malignant uveal melanoma who were consecutively examined in the study period from January 2005 and June 2015 in the Beijing Tongren hospital. Results The mean age of the 582 patients (295(50.7%) women) was 44.6±12.6 years (range:5–77 years). The tumors were located most often in the superior temporal region (in 117(21.5%) patients) and least common in the inferior region (in 31(5.7%) patients). In 548(94.2%) patients, the tumors were located in the choroid, in 33(5.7%) patients in the ciliary body, and in one (0.2%) patient in the iris. Treatment included episcleral brachytherapy (415(71.3%) patients), local tumor resection (48(8.2%) patients) and primary enucleation (119(20.4%) patients). In 53 individuals out of the 415 patients with primary brachytherapy, episcleral brachytherapy was followed by enucleation, due to an increasing tumor size or due to uncontrolled neovascular glaucoma. Median follow-up time was of 30 months (range: 1–124 months; mean: 34.8 ± 24.4 months). Overall survival rate at 5 and 10 years was of 92.7% and 85.1%. Younger age (P = 0.017), tumor location in the nasal meridian(P = 0.004), smaller tumor size (P<0.001), hemispheric tumor shape (P = 0.025), histological tumor cell type (spindle-cell type versus epitheloid cell type;P = 0.014), and type of treatment (episcleral brachytherapy versus local tumor resection and versus primary enucleation; P<0.001) were significantly associated with the overall survival in univariate analysis, while in multivariate analysis only smaller tumor size was significantly (P<0.001; RR: 4.75; 95% confidence interval:2.11,10.7) associated with better overall survival. Conclusions In this study on clinical characteristics of uveal melanoma of a larger group of patients from China, the onset age was considerably younger and survival rate better than in studies from Western countries. Tumor size was the most significant factor for survival.
A comparison of similarity measures for online social media Thai text classification

Social media is widely used as a channel of communication in general purposes, including the comment that are related to retail business. It is a highly effective communication tool for direct interacting with their customers. Growth rate of the users is rapidly increasing, because they use this channel to receive information and share something interesting. In this paper, we present a comparison experimental results on the similarity measurements on Thai social media text. We use the nearest neighbor classifier with the 10 distance functions to classify there data into 4 classes, which the classes were defined by the expert in retail business. The experiments were performed on two feature extractions with the well-known term weightings and compared the classification results with the experts. According to the experimental results, we found the feature extraction and the distance that can be employed with Thai social media text classification.
Spontaneous seroclearance of hepatitis B seromarkers and subsequent risk of hepatocellular carcinoma

Background and aims The associations between long-term risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and spontaneous seroclearance of HBV e antigen (HBeAg), HBV DNA and HBV surface antigen (HBsAg) have never been examined by a prospective study using serially measured seromarkers. This study aimed to assess the importance of spontaneous HBeAg, HBV DNA and HBsAg seroclearance in the prediction of HCC risk. Methods This study included 2946 HBsAg seropositive individuals who were seronegative for antibodies against HCV and free of liver cirrhosis. Serial serum samples collected at study entry and follow-up health examinations were tested for HBeAg, HBV DNA and HBsAg. Cox proportional hazards models were used to calculate the HRs of developing HCC after seroclearance of HBV markers. Results The HR (95% CI) of developing HCC after seroclearance of HBeAg, HBV DNA and HBsAg during follow-up was 0.63 (0.38 to 1.05), 0.24 (0.11 to 0.57) and 0.18 (0.09 to 0.38), respectively, after adjustment for age, gender and serum level of alanine aminotransferase at study entry. High HBV DNA levels at the seroclearance of HBeAg (mean±SD, 4.35±1.64 log10 IU/mL) may explain the non-significant association between HBeAg seroclearance and HCC risk. Among HBeAg seronegative participants with detectable serum HBV DNA at study entry, the lifetime (30–75-years-old) cumulative incidence of HCC was 4.0%, 6.6% and 14.2%, respectively, for those with seroclearance of both HBV DNA and HBsAg, seroclearance of HBV DNA only, and seroclearance of neither. Conclusions Spontaneous seroclearance of HBV DNA and HBsAg are important predictors of reduced HCC risk.
An Exploration of Women Academic Scientists’ Experiences with Gender in North Africa and the United States

This exploratory research was conducted in conjunction with a research collaboration workshop in Morocco in March, 2013 which gathered 28 women scientists from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and the United States. In-depth interviews, conducted with 14 North African and 8 American scientists, found that North African and American women scientists had very different experiences with gender in the workplace and at home. North African women reported better representation of women in their science departments and equity in terms of salary and resources, whereas most American women felt they had to “push” to get to equality in the workplace. North African women reported challenging relationships with their women colleagues, while American women reported seeking out women scientists for support. At home, North African women reported having close to full responsibility for child and home care, which many said resulted in less engagement in research than their male peers and reluctance to take on leadership roles. In contrast, American women reported something approximating an equal partnership in handling home and child responsibilities with their husbands, which they viewed as enabling their professional success. While there has been extensive research examining women scientists’ experiences in academia in the United States and Europe, there have been few examinations of women scientists experiences in developing countries, particularly in North Africa (Bilimoria, Joy, & Liang, 2008; De Welde & Laursen, n.d.; Rees, 2001; Stockard, Greene, Lewis, & Richmond, 2008) . This study explores Algerian, Moroccan, and Tunisian women scientists’ experiences with gender in the workplace and at home, and contrasts their experiences with that of US women scientists. The research was conducted in conjunction with a March 2013 research collaboration workshop in Casablanca, Morocco conducted by COACh, a US based grass-roots organization that works to improve career success for women scientists in academia. More information on COACh can be found at their website: http://coach.uoregon. edu/coach/.
The roles of direct and environmental transmission in stochastic avian flu epidemic recurrence

We present an analysis of an avian flu model that yields insight into the role of different transmission routes in the recurrence of avian influenza epidemics. Recent modelling work on avian influenza in wild bird populations takes into account demographic stochasticity and highlights the importance of environmental transmission in determining the outbreak periodicity, but only for a weak between-host transmission rate. We determine the relative contribution of environmental and direct transmission routes to the intensity of outbreaks. We use an approximation method to simulate noise sustained oscillations in a stochastic avian flu model with environmental and direct transmission routes. We see that the oscillations are governed by the product of a rotation and a slowly varying standard Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process (i.e., mean-reverting process). The intrinsic frequency of the damped deterministic version of the system predicts the dominant period of outbreaks. We show, using analytic computation of the intrinsic frequency and theoretical power spectral density, that the outbreak periodicity can be explained in terms of either or both types of transmission.The amplitude of outbreaks tends to be high when both types of transmission are strong.
The Newsletter of the Technical Committee on Cognitive and Developmental Systems Computational Modelling across Disciplines

Computational modelling of cognitive and developmental living systems bridges the diverse research areas and disciplines of the CDS scientific community. Computational models aim to be formal languages to articulate and compare theories and hypotheses, as well as to be used as experimental tools to investigate and help us understand complex dynamics in development. Also, because they are computational, they often find applications in building machines that can behave and adapt flexibly in the real world.
Neuroticism in Young Women with Fibromyalgia Links to Key Clinical Features

Objective. We examined personality traits in young women with FM, in order to seek associations with key psychological processes and clinical symptoms. Methods. Twenty-seven women with FM and 29 age-matched female healthy controls [HC] completed a series of questionnaires examining FM symptoms, personality and psychological variables. Results. Significant differences between characteristic FM symptoms (sleep, pain, fatigue, and confusion) as well as for the psychological variables of depression, anxiety, and stress were found between FM and HC (P < 0.001). Neuroticism was the only subscale of the Big Five Inventory that showed a significant difference between the FM group and HC group [P < 0.05]. Within the FM group, there was a significant association between the level of the neuroticism and each of pain, sleep, fatigue, and confusion, depression, anxiety, and stress (P < 0.05–0.01). The association between the level of neuroticism and the level of stress was the strongest of all variables tested (P < 0.001). Conclusion. The personality trait of neuroticism significantly associates with the key FM characteristics of pain, sleep, fatigue and confusion as well as the common co-morbidities of depression, anxiety and stress. Personality appears to be an important modulator of FM clinical symptoms.
Electromagnetic Feature Extraction of Complex Targets from Measured High Resolution SAR Imagery

Abstract. Electromagnetic feature is the inherent characteristic of SAR imagery, which is of great importance for SAR image interpretation and target recognition. Scattering centre is the essential characteristic of radar target electromagnetic scattering in high frequency region and high resolution SAR image interpretation. Attributed scattering centre model is based on both physical optics theory and geometry theory of diffraction. Compared with classical Prony model, it is more accurate when it comes to modeling the electromagnetic scattering characteristic of high resolution SAR target. However, because of its high dimensionality and complex scattering mechanism of real targets, methods to extract the relevant electromagnetic feature become more complicated as well. On the basis of previous studies, the paper makes a deep study on the methods to extract the electromagnetic feature of complex targets from measured high resolution SAR imagery. It proposes a method of extracting attributed scattering centre feature of complex targets from measured high resolution (0.3-0.1m) SAR imagery. The method has been validated by the results of measured MSTAR (0.3m) and MiniSAR (0.1m) imagery.
Climate response to the increase in tropospheric ozone since preindustrial times : An examination of the signature of ozone forcing

The reliance on global mean radiative forcing as an index of climate change is questionable for highly inhomogeneous forcing agents such as tropospheric ozone or aerosols. Using a general circulation model, we have carried out a pair of equilibrium climate simulations with previously calculated present-day and preindustrial ozone distributions. We show that the radiative forcing of 0.49 W m-2 due to the increase in tropospheric ozone since preindustrial times corresponds to an increase in global mean surface temperature of 0.28 o C. The increase is nearly 0.4 o C in the Northern Hemisphere and about 0.2 o C in the Southern Hemisphere. The largest increases are in northern midlatitudes downwind of Europe and Asia (major ozone source continents). In the lower stratosphere, global mean temperatures decrease by about 0.2 o C due to the diminished upward flux of radiation at 9.6 µm. The largest stratospheric cooling, up to 1.0 o C, occurs over high northern latitudes in winter, with possibly important implications for the formation of polar stratospheric clouds. To identify the characteristics of climate forcing unique to tropospheric ozone, we have conducted two additional climate equilibrium simulations: one in which preindustrial tropospheric ozone concentrations were increased everywhere by 18 ppb, producing the same global radiative forcing as present-day ozone but without the heterogeneity; and one in which CO 2 was decreased by 25 ppm relative to present-day, with ozone at present-day values, to again produce the same global radiative forcing but with the spectral signature of CO 2 rather than ozone. In the first simulation (uniform increase of ozone), the global mean surface temperature increases by 0.25 o C, with an interhemispheric difference of only 0.03 o C, as compared to nearly 0.2 o C for the heterogeneous ozone increase. In the second simulation (equivalent CO 2), the global mean surface temperature increases by 0.36 o C, 30% higher than the increase from tropospheric ozone. The stronger surface warming from CO 2 is in part because CO 2 forcing (obscured by water vapor) is shifted relatively poleward where the positive ice-albedo feedback amplifies the climate response, and in part because the magnitude of the CO 2 forcing in the mid-troposphere is double that of ozone. However, we find that CO 2 is far less effective than tropospheric ozone in driving stratospheric cooling.
The Wisdom of the Few? "Supertaggers" in Collaborative Tagging Systems

A folksonomy is ostensibly an information structure built up by the "wisdom of the crowd", but is the "crowd" really doing the work? Tagging is in fact a sharply skewed process in which a small minority of "supertagger" users generate an overwhelming majority of the annotations. Using data from three large-scale social tagging platforms, we explore (a) how to best quantify the imbalance in tagging behavior and formally define a supertagger, (b) how supertaggers differ from other users in their tagging patterns, and (c) if effects of motivation and expertise inform our understanding of what makes a supertagger. Our results indicate that such prolific users not only tag more than their counterparts, but in quantifiably different ways. Specifically, we find that supertaggers are more likely to label content in the long tail of less popular items, that they show differences in patterns of content tagged and terms utilized, and are measurably different with respect to tagging expertise and motivation. These findings suggest we should question the extent to which folksonomies achieve crowdsourced classification via the "wisdom of the crowd", especially for broad folksonomies like Last.fm as opposed to narrow folksonomies like Flickr.
Reduced angiogenesis and tumor progression in gelatinase A-deficient mice.

Matrix proteolysis is thought to play a crucial role in several stages of tumor progression, including angiogenesis, and the invasion and metastasis of tumor cells. We investigated the specific role of gelatinase A (matrix metalloproteinase 2) on these events using gelatinase A-deficient mice. In these mice, tumor-induced angiogenesis was suppressed according to dorsal air sac assay. When B16-BL6 melanoma cells or Lewis lung carcinoma cells were implanted intradermally, the tumor volumes at 3 weeks after implantation in the gelatinase A-deficient mice decreased by 39% for B16-BL6 melanoma and by 24% for Lewis lung carcinoma (P < 0.03 for each tumor). The number of lung colonies of i.v. injections fell by 54% for B16-BL6 melanoma and 77% for Lewis lung carcinoma (P < 0.014 and P < 0.0015, respectively). These results indicated that host-derived gelatinase A plays an important role in angiogenesis and tumor progression, suggesting the usefulness of gelatinase A inhibitors for anticancer chemotherapy.
Supporting a Robust Decision Space

A decision space is defined by the range of options at the decision maker’s disposal. For each option there is a distribution of possible consequences. Each distribution is a function of the uncertainty of elements in the decision situation (how big is the fire) and uncertainty regarding executing the course of actions defined in the decision option (what percent of fire trucks will get to the scene and when). To aid decision-makers, we can use computer models to visualize this decision space – explicitly representing the distribution of consequences for each decision option. Because decisions for dynamic domains like emergency response need to be made in seconds or minutes, the underlying (possibly complex) simulation models will need to frequently recalculate the myriad plausible consequences of each possible decision choice. This raises the question of the essential precision and fidelity of such simulations that are needed to support such decision spaces. If we can avoid needless fidelity that does not substantially change the decision space, then we can save development cost and computational time, which in turn will support more tactical decision-making. This work explored the trade space of necessary precision/fidelity of simulation models that feed data to decision-support tools. We performed sensitivity analyses to determine breakpoints where simulations become too imprecise to provide decision-quality data. The eventual goal of this work is to provide general principles or a methodology for determining the boundary conditions of needed
An Eyring-Kramers law for the stochastic Allen-Cahn equation in dimension two

We study spectral Galerkin approximations of an Allen--Cahn equation over the two-dimensional torus perturbed by weak space-time white noise of strength $\sqrt{\varepsilon}$. We introduce a Wick renormalisation of the equation in order to have a system that is well-defined as the regularisation is removed. We show sharp upper and lower bounds on the transition times from a neighbourhood of the stable configuration $-1$ to the stable configuration $1$ in the asymptotic regime $\varepsilon \to 0$. These estimates are uniform in the discretisation parameter $N$, suggesting an Eyring-Kramers formula for the limiting renormalised stochastic PDE. The effect of the "infinite renormalisation" is to modify the prefactor and to replace the ratio of determinants in the finite-dimensional Eyring-Kramers law by a renormalised Carleman-Fredholm determinant.
Family social networks and mental health service use among Vietnamese-Americans in multigenerational families

vi LIST OF TABLES . xiii LIST OF FIGURES . xiv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION . 1 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW . 5 Vietnamese-American Population At Risk . 5 Mental Health Service Use Among Vietnamese-Americans . 6 Cultural Factors . 11 The Vietnamese Refugee Experience . 13 Vietnamese Social Support . 14 Summary . 15 CHAPTER 3: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK . 17 The Network-Episode Model (NEM) . 18 Use of NEM in NLAAS Analysis . 19 Use of NEM in Qualitative Study . 19 Social Network Orientation Theory . 21 Conceptual Framework . 22
Fungal Presence in Selected Tree Nuts and Dried Fruits

Sixty-four tree nut samples (almonds, pecans, pine nuts, and walnuts) and 50 dried fruit samples (apricots, cranberries, papaya, pineapple, and raisins) were purchased from local supermarkets and analyzed for fungal contamination using conventional culture as well as molecular methods. The results of our study showed that the highest yeast and mold (YM) counts (5.34 log10 CFU g-1) were found in walnuts and the lowest in pecans. The most common mold in nuts was Aspergillus niger, relatively low numbers of A. flavus were found across the board, while Penicillium spp. were very common in pine nuts and walnuts. Low levels (2.00–2.84 log10 CFU g-1) of yeasts were recovered from only two pine nut samples. Fungal contamination in dried fruits was minimal (ranging from <2.00 to 3.86 log10 CFU g-1). The highest fungal levels were present in raisins. All papaya samples and the majority of cranberry, pineapple, and apricot samples were free of live fungi. The most common mold in dried fruits was A. niger followed by Penicillium spp. One apricot sample also contained low levels (2.00 log10 CFU g-1) of yeasts.
Economic Consequences of Public Pension Accounting Rules

A growing stream of accounting research suggests that managers use the data reported in a company’s financial reports to make real investment decisions. We extend this idea to the public sector, investigating whether the employment decisions made by governmental entities are influenced by the reporting rules for public pensions and the discretion pension managers use in implementing these rules. In this paper, we begin by investigating the extent to which states understate their pension deficits. We find that the total reported pension deficit for state governments averages $350 billion per year over our sample period, and that this deficit grows to $2 trillion when we use the FASB’s approach and estimate the pension liabilities using Treasury yields. Approximately $500 billion of this increase is due to the use of discretion. The remainder is due to the methodology inherent in the GASB pension rule which, unlike the FASB rule, does not provide an accurate reflection of the resources needed to extinguish the pension deficit. We then provide evidence that the larger the pension deficit understatement the more likely the state government is to incur larger payrolls, hire more workers, and grant more generous retirement packages in future periods. Importantly, these results are driven both by the use of discretion and by the implementation of the GASB’s rules. Thus, even in the absence of discretion, our results highlight how the GASB’s rules can lead to an over-investment in employees, potentially exacerbating future fiscal problems. These findings should be of interest to both accounting academics and policymakers.
Effects of Immediate Feedback Using Bug-in-Ear With Paraeducators Working With Students With Autism

In today’s autistic-support classrooms, paraeducators are tasked with working with our neediest students yet report that they are unprepared for their roles despite attempts at training. The special education teachers who are tasked with coaching and supervising several paraeducators at a time in their classrooms report that they too are unprepared to work with paraeducators in this capacity. In this study, the authors examine the effects of the special education teacher providing immediate feedback via bug-in-ear to the paraeducator on increasing a specific teaching behavior, providing contingent specific praise. Two special education teachers and four paraeducators working in two separate autistic-support classrooms participated in the multiple-baseline across participants study. When immediate feedback from the teacher was introduced in the intervention condition, percentage of occurrences of contingent specific praise increased for all paraeducators and continued at high levels even when the intervention was faded. Rate of occurrences also increased. In addition, the special education teachers and paraeducators all rated the intervention as a beneficial technique they liked using and found motivating and helpful. Implications for classroom use are discussed.