Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust Logistic Regression and Classification

We consider logistic regression with arbitrary outliers in the covariate matrix. We propose a new robust logistic regression algorithm, called RoLR, that estimates the parameter through a simple linear programming procedure. We prove that RoLR is robust to a constant fraction of adversarial outliers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first result on estimating logistic regression model when the covariate matrix is corrupted with any performance guarantees. Besides regression, we apply RoLR to solving binary classification problems where a fraction of training samples are corrupted.
Frequency of Hypopigmented Mycosis Fungoides in Egyptian Patients Presenting With Hypopigmented Lesions of the Trunk

Abstract:Hypopigmented mycosis fungoides (HMF) is an uncommon variant of mycosis fungoides with an unknown exact frequency. We aimed to study the frequency of HMF in a cohort of Egyptian patients presenting to a tertiary care center in Cairo, Egypt, with hypopigmented lesions of the trunk. Hundred patients with hypopigmented lesions involving the trunk (with or without other sites involvement) were subjected to thorough clinical and histopathological examination. Immunohistochemical studies (S100, CD4, and CD8) were performed when indicated. Constellation of findings was used to reach a final diagnosis. Sixteen cases had HMF (16%). Other than HMF, our cohort included hypopigmented parapsoriasis en plaque (42 cases), postinflammatory hypopigmentation (28 cases), progressive macular hypomelanosis (12 cases), and pityriasis alba (2 cases). In comparison with other hypopigmented disorders, HMF was significantly associated with progressive disease course (P = 0.004), affection of distal upper limbs (P = 0.005), proximal lower limbs (P = 0.003), large-sized lesions (>5 cm) (P < 0.0001), well-defined margin (P < 0.0001), scaliness (P = 0.002), erythema (P < 0.0001), atrophy (P = 0.012), and mottled pigmentation (P < 0.0001). Awareness of HMF and its characteristic clinical features is mandatory to avoid underdiagnosis or overdiagnosis with subsequent morbidity or unnecessary aggressive therapy, respectively.
Almost lossless analog compression without phase information - complex case

We extend the recently proposed information-theoretic framework for phase retrieval [1] to the complex case. Specifically, we consider the problem of recovering an unknown random vector x ∈ ℂn up to an overall phase factor from ⌊Rn⌋ phaseless measurements with compression rate R and derive a general achievability bound for R. Although phase retrieval is known not to extend straightforwardly from the real to the complex case, our bound on the compression rate turns out to be conceptually similar to the one derived for real-valued signals [1]. For x being s-sparse our results imply that 2s phaseless measurements are sufficient to recover x up to an overall phase factor irrespectively of the specific distribution of x. The best known recovery threshold for deterministic complex-valued s-sparse vectors is 4s - 2 so far.
Peripheral artery disease, diabetes, and reduced lower extremity functioning.

OBJECTIVE To characterize lower extremity function and dysfunction in peripheral artery disease (PAD) patients with and without diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS In this cross-sectional study, 460 men and women with PAD (147 with diabetes) were recruited from three academic medical centers. Assessments included ankle brachial index (ABI), neuropathy score, 6-min walk distance, 4-m walking velocity, Walking Impairment Questionnaire (0-100 scale, 100 = best), and summary performance score (SPS) (0-12 scale, 12 = best). RESULTS The mean ABI was similar in PAD patients with and without diabetes. PAD patients with diabetes were younger, had a higher BMI, had a worse neuropathy score, and had a greater number of cardiovascular comorbidities compared with those without diabetes. Participants with diabetes were less likely to report classical symptoms of intermittent claudication and more likely to report exertional leg pain, which sometimes started at rest. After adjusting for age, those with diabetes had a shorter mean 6-min walk distance (1,040 vs. 1,168 feet, P < 0.001), slower fast-pace 4-m walk velocity (0.83 vs. 0.90 m/sec, P < 0.001), and a lower SPS (7.3 vs. 8.6, P < 0.001) than those without diabetes. Patients with diet-controlled diabetes performed better than those on diabetes medications. Differences in lower extremity functioning between patients with and without diabetes were largely attenuated but not abolished for SPS and fast-pace 4-m walk velocity after adjustment for type of exertional leg pain, neuropathy score, and number of cardiovascular comorbidities. CONCLUSIONS Subjects with PAD and diabetes have poorer lower extremity function than those with PAD alone. This difference in functioning appears to be largely explained by diabetes-associated neuropathy, differences in exertional leg symptoms, and greater cardiovascular disease in patients with diabetes.
Glucagon-like peptide-1: effect on pro-atrial natriuretic peptide in healthy males

The antihypertensive actions of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP1) receptor agonists have been linked to the release of atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) in mice. Whether a GLP1–ANP axis exists in humans is unknown. In this study, we examined 12 healthy young males in a randomized, controlled, double-blinded, single-day, cross-over study to evaluate the effects of a 2-h native GLP1 infusion. Plasma proANP concentrations were measured by an automated mid-region-directed proANP immunoassay and N-terminal pro B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) on Roche Modular E170. Urine was collected for measurements of sodium excretion. Although GLP1 infusion increased the urinary sodium excretion markedly, there were no significant changes in either proANP or proBNP concentrations. When GLP1 infusion was stopped, sodium excretion declined rapidly. As proANP concentration reflects ANP secretion, our data could not confirm the existence of a GLP1–ANP axis in humans. Especially, the natriuretic effects of GLP1 seem unlikely to be mediated exclusively via ANP.
Tumor and Stem Cell Biology miRNA-128 Suppresses Prostate Cancer by Inhibiting BMI-1 to Inhibit Tumor-Initiating Cells

microRNA-128 (miR128) is reduced in prostate cancer relative to normal/benign prostate tissues, but causal roles are obscure. Here we show that exogenously introducedmiR128 suppresses tumor regeneration in multiple prostate cancer xenograft models. Cancer stem–like cell (CSC)–associated properties were blocked, including holoclone and sphere formation as well as clonogenic survival. Using a miR128 sensor to distinguish cells on the basis of miR128 expression, we found that miR128-lo cells possessed higher clonal, clonogenic, and tumorigenic activities than miR128-hi cells. miR128 targets the stem cell regulatory factors BMI-1, NANOG, and TGFBR1, the expression of which we found to vary inversely with miR128 expression in prostate cancer stem/progenitor cell populations. In particular, we defined BMI-1 as a direct and functionally relevant target of miR128 in prostate cancer cells, where these genes were reciprocally expressed and exhibited opposing biological functions. Our results define a tumor suppressor function for miR128 in prostate cancer by limiting CSC properties mediated by BMI-1 and other central stem cell regulators, with potential implications for prostate cancer gene therapy. Cancer Res; 74(15); 4183–95. 2014 AACR.
Exploring the energy-latency tradeoff of geographic random forwarding for ad hoc and sensor networks

In this paper, we consider a novel forwarding technique based on collision avoidance and on knowledge of the geographical location of the nodes involved. Selection of the relaying nodes is made randomly via contention among receivers. We consider a simplified performance analysis and provide analytical parameter optimization. Comparisons giving evidence of the accuracy of our approximate approach are also provided. The scheme is compared with STEM, and is shown to perform significantly better for sufficient node density.
Text-to-speech voice adaptation from sparse training data

Voice adaptation describes the process of converting the output of a text-to-speech synthesizer voice to sound like a different voice after a training process in which only a small amount of the desired target speaker’s speech is seen. We employ a locally linear conversion function based on Gaussian mixture models to map bark-scaled line spectral frequencies. We compare performance for three different estimation methods while varying the number of mixture components and the amount of data used for training. An objective evaluation revealed that all three methods yield similar test results. In perceptual tests, listeners judged the converted speech quality as acceptable and fairly successful in adapting to the target speaker.
Severe Maternal Anemia and Neonatal Outcome

Anemia is one of the most prevalent nutritional deficiency problems afflicting pregnant women. Anemia that complicates pregnancy threatens the life of both mother and fetus. Among pregnant women the prevalence of anemia was four fold higher in developing countries as compared to the developed countries. In India 40 – 90 % of the pregnant women are anemic. Most of the articles have reported an adverse pregnancy outcome related to anemia. Of late, reports are emerging suggesting anemia could be indeed beneficial. During the last two decades significant knowledge has been gained about the effects of iron deficiency anemia on work capacity, work performance, muscle function, resistance to infection. However, information on the effects of maternal anemia during pregnancy on the fetal outcome has been meager and conflicting. Hence we conducted a study to look into these aspects. Women were divided into cases and controls based on the hemoglobin levels. Those with Hb% level <7gm will be cases and those with >10g/dl will be controls. The mean birth weight and intra-uterine fetal demise in anemic and non anemic groups were compared using Student ‘t’ test. Proportions were compared using ‘chi square’ test. Perinatal outcomes included preterm delivery, low birth weight (LBW) at delivery,intrauterine growth restriction, perinatal mortality, APGAR score at 1 and 5 min, intrauterine foetal demise (IUD). The risk of preterm delivery and LBW among exposed group was 1.7 times and 2.8 times higheramong anaemic women, respectively. Risk of IUGR was 2 times higher compared to the nonanemic groups. Newborns of anaemic mothers had 1.6 times increased risk ofhaving an APGAR score of <5 at 1 min and the risk of IUD was 1.8 times higher for anaemic women. Low maternal haemoglobin levels are associated with increased risk of preterm delivery, LBW babies, APGAR score <5 at 1 min and IUD.
Boys' perceptions and experiences of their placement in a secondary school remedial program : An examination of self-esteem, attitude, motivation and reading achievement

Remedial English education has long focused on the development of students' reading and writing skills, but research suggests that greater emphasis may need to be placed on affective factors such as self-esteem, motivation, attitude and perception. The influence of such 'non-cognitive' factors on any adolescent student's literacy development is often underestimated. For students experiencing difficulties in literacy, the interaction between perceived ability or degree of success in literacy and the affective factors often impact negatively on self-esteem, attitude and motivation. The relationship between self-esteem, attitude, perception, motivation and literacy needs to be explored, especially when dealing with students with literacy difficulties. This study examines the perceptions of lower secondary school students who had been placed in a remedial English program. It examined not only their perceptions of the program, but also their self-concept as readers, the value they place on reading and their motivation to read. The research differs from much of the earlier research by focusing on student perceptions, attitudes, expectations and recommendations rather than on teacher evaluations of the effectiveness of remedial programs. The case study research was conducted on 24 boys from Years Eight to Ten in an Australian Catholic secondary school. The boys had been the placed in a 'Focus English Program' designed to improve the literacy competencies of students who had difficulties with reading and writing . The case study grew out of the researcher's concern over the negative effect that placement in the program was having on students in terms of self-esteem, attitude, motivation and achievement. The negative effect on students' achievement was noticeable particularly for those who had been in the program for an extended period of time. A comparison was needed of the perceptions and attitudes of Year Ten boys, who had been in the program for more than two years, with the perceptions of Year Eight and Year Nine students, who had been in the program for less than two years and who had also taken part in a Self­ Esteem Development Program.
Recognizing emotion in speech

The paper explores several statistical pattern recognition techniques to classify utterances according to their emotional content. The authors have recorded a corpus containing emotional speech with over a 1000 utterances from different speakers. They present a new method of extracting prosodic features from speech, based on a smoothing spline approximation of the pitch contour. To make maximal use of the limited amount of training data available, they introduce a novel pattern recognition technique: majority voting of subspace specialists. Using this technique, they obtain classification performance that is close to human performance on the task.
Total Ionizing Dose Effects on a Radiation-Hardened CMOS Image Sensor Demonstrator for ITER Remote Handling

Total ionizing dose effects are studied on a radiation hardened by design (RHBD) <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$256\times 256$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-pixel CMOS image sensor (CIS) demonstrator developed for ITER remote handling by using X- and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\gamma $ </tex-math></inline-formula>-ray irradiations. The (color) imaging capabilities of the RHBD CIS are demonstrated up to 10 MGy (SiO<sub>2</sub>), 1 Grad (SiO<sub>2</sub>), validating the radiation hardness of most of the designed integrated circuit. No significant sensitivity (i.e., responsivity and color filter transmittance) or readout noise degradation is observed. The proposed readout chain architecture allows achieving a maximum output voltage swing larger than 1 V at 10 MGy (SiO<sub>2</sub>). The influence of several pixel layout (the gate oxide thickness, the gate overlap distance, and the use of an in-pixel P+ ring) and manufacturing process parameters (photodiode doping profile and process variation) on the radiation-induced dark current increase is studied. The nature of the dark current draining mechanism used to cancel most of the radiation-induced degradation is also discussed and clarified.
Mood-Dependent Memory in English/Spanish Bilinguals

Past research examining the effects of emotion on memory has documented that individuals find material more memorable when the emotional valence of the information is consistent with their mood state. While these mood-congruency effects have been applied to different contexts, one situation that has not been investigated is the effects of language on mood-congruency in bilinguals. This study explored mood-congruency effects in English and Spanish bilinguals by inducing a happy or sad mood and examining between-language and within-language memory for positive, neutral, or negative information. I investigated whether mood effects are consistent across languages or if the switch from one language to another reduces the mood-congruency effect. 110 bilingual undergraduate students listened to a happy or sad song in either English or Spanish and then completed a mood state questionnaire. Next, they heard a story that contained happy, neutral, and sad events in either the same or the opposite language and tried to recall the story details. I hypothesized that mood would impact the recall of emotional information when the languages of the song and story were consistent, but not in the cross-language conditions. Although mood congruency effects did not emerge in any of the conditions, results instead suggested that the effect of emotion on memory is language dependent. Participants who heard the Spanish story remembered positive and negative details better than neutral details while those who heard the story in English remembered sad details better than happy and neutral ones. Taken together, these results are consistent with the idea that, as proficiency in a second language increases, its representations in the brain gradually overlap with first language representations. However, my findings suggest that these language stores maintain separate connections to emotional structures, leading to different emotional memory effects in the two languages.
Development and testing of the health care system distrust scale

AbstractBACKGROUND: Distrust of the health care system may be a significant barrier to seeking medical care, adhering to preventive health care and treatment regimens, and participating in medical research. OBJECTIVE: To describe the development and psychometric testing of an instrument (the Health Care System Distrust Scale) to measure distrust of the health care system. METHODS: Scale development involved 2 phases. In Phase 1, a pilot instrument was developed based on a conceptual model of health care-related distrust. Draft items were created using focus group sessions with members of the general public, literature review, and expert opinion. Draft items were pilot tested with 55 individuals waiting to be assigned to jury duty at the Municipal Court of Philadelphia. A priori, candidate items for elimination or revision included those with >5% missing data, extremely low or high interitem or item-total correlations, or those having a negative effect on the scale’s internal consistency. In Phase 2, we conducted a survey of 400 prospective jurors to assess the reliability and validity of the final scale scores. RESULTS: In Phase 1, a 10-item scale was constructed that included 4 items measuring honesty, 2 items measuring confidentiality, 2 items measuring competence, and 2 items measuring fidelity. The participants in Phase 2 had a mean age of 41 years. Forty-three percent were African-American, 45% white, and 4% Hispanic. Scores on the Health Care System Distrust scale ranged from 12 to 46 with a possible range from 10 to 50. The mean score was 29.4 with a standard deviation of 6.33. No item had over 5% missing data. Internal consistency (Cronbach’s α) was 0.75. Item-total correlations ranged from 0.27 to 0.57. Principal components analysis revealed 1 general component accounting for 32% of the variance. Nine of the variables had loadings higher than 0.40. As predicted, distrust of the health care system was higher among African Americans than whites and was inversely correlated with trust in personal physicians. CONCLUSIONS: Initial testing suggests that we developed an instrument with valid and reliable scores in order to measure distrust of the health care system. Future research is needed to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Health Care System Distrust scale among diverse populations. This instrument can facilitate the investigation of the prevalence, causes, and effects of health care system distrust in the United States.
On motherhood.

In working with mothers' responses to the total or partial loss of their child, it becomes evident that, at one level, they experience such a loss as an injury to the integrity of their body ego, which includes the child. Their capacity to invest the child as a bodily part of themselves as well as to release him and transfer bodily ownership to him in the course of personality growth necessitates flexible body boundaries. This characteristic of the female body ego is both gratifying and threatening to the mother as well as to others. It also has a profound impact on the growing boy's and girl's attempts to differentiate themselves from the mother bodily and to delineate their own sex-specific body ego. The nature and outcome of this difficult process has a significant effect on women's and men's attitudes to motherhood. These attitudes contain many defensive measures against the primitive anxieties of this early level, contributing perhaps also to the frequent neglect of motherhood in theories of female psychology.
Completeness and concordance of TB and HIV surveillance systems for TB-HIV co-infected patients in South Africa.

SETTING South Africa currently maintains separate surveillance systems for tuberculosis (TB) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). There are future plans for integration of these systems; however, the consistency of information across the existing systems has not previously been assessed. OBJECTIVE To determine the completeness and concordance of data in the TB and HIV surveillance systems for TB-HIV co-infected patients. DESIGN In a retrospective cohort evaluation of the records of TB-HIV co-infected patients in the Eden District of the Western Cape, data were abstracted from paper-based and electronic TB and HIV surveillance sources. Concordance was measured using Fleiss' kappa coefficient. RESULTS Demographic variables had high completeness and concordance across the TB and HIV systems. Completeness and concordance for clinical variables was somewhat lower, particularly for TB variables in the HIV systems and HIV variables in the TB systems. CONCLUSION Varying levels of completeness and concordance of surveillance data for TB-HIV co-infected patients highlight challenges in the current TB and HIV surveillance systems. Future integration of TB and HIV programs in this region will need to support more accurate data collection at all levels.
Availability and Popularity Measurements of Peer-to-Peer File Systems

Although peer-to-peer networking applications continue t o increase in popularity, there have been few measurement studi e of their performance. We present the first study of the popularity of files stored and transferred among peers in Napste r and Gnutella over month-long periods. Our analysis indicat es that the popularity of files is skewed in all four cases and fits well to a log-quadratic distribution. This predicts that ca ches of the most popular songs would increase performance of the sys tem. We also took baseline measurements of file types and size s for comparison over time with future studies. Not surprisin gly, audio files are most popular, however a significant fraction o f stored data is occupied by videos. Finally, we measured the distribution of time peers in Gnutella were available for do wnloading. We found that node availability is strongly influen c d by time-of-day effects, and that most user’s tend to be avail ble for only very short contiguous lengths of time.