Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Representation Benefits of Deep Feedforward Networks

This note provides a family of classification problems, indexed by a positive integer $k$, where all shallow networks with fewer than exponentially (in $k$) many nodes exhibit error at least $1/6$, whereas a deep network with 2 nodes in each of $2k$ layers achieves zero error, as does a recurrent network with 3 distinct nodes iterated $k$ times. The proof is elementary, and the networks are standard feedforward networks with ReLU (Rectified Linear Unit) nonlinearities.
The Social Mission of Medical Education: Ranking the Schools

BACKGROUND The basic purpose of medical schools is to educate physicians to care for the national population. Fulfilling this goal requires an adequate number of primary care physicians, adequate distribution of physicians to underserved areas, and a sufficient number of minority physicians in the workforce. OBJECTIVE To develop a metric called the social mission score to evaluate medical school output in these 3 dimensions. DESIGN Secondary analysis of data from the American Medical Association (AMA) Physician Masterfile and of data on race and ethnicity in medical schools from the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Association of American Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. SETTING U.S. medical schools. PARTICIPANTS 60 043 physicians in active practice who graduated from medical school between 1999 and 2001. MEASUREMENTS The percentage of graduates who practice primary care, work in health professional shortage areas, and are underrepresented minorities, combined into a composite social mission score. RESULTS The contribution of medical schools to the social mission of medical education varied substantially. Three historically black colleges had the highest social mission rankings. Public and community-based medical schools had higher social mission scores than private and non-community-based schools. National Institutes of Health funding was inversely associated with social mission scores. Medical schools in the northeastern United States and in more urban areas were less likely to produce primary care physicians and physicians who practice in underserved areas. LIMITATIONS The AMA Physician Masterfile has limitations, including specialty self-designation by physicians, inconsistencies in reporting work addresses, and delays in information updates. The public good provided by medical schools may include contributions not reflected in the social mission score. The study was not designed to evaluate quality of care provided by medical school graduates. CONCLUSION Medical schools vary substantially in their contribution to the social mission of medical education. School rankings based on the social mission score differ from those that use research funding and subjective assessments of school reputation. These findings suggest that initiatives at the medical school level could increase the proportion of physicians who practice primary care, work in underserved areas, and are underrepresented minorities.
Vertical Movement and Posture of Blacklegged Tick (Acari: Ixodidae) Nymphs as a Function of Temperature and Relative Humidity in Laboratory Experiments

Abstract We measured three components of the behavioral activity of blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis Say) nymphs under controlled conditions of daylength, temperature, and relative humidity in the laboratory. Temperature and relative humidity were experimentally manipulated among replicated treatment groups in two experiments. Humidity treatment had a significant effect on mean questing height, which was greater at 100% RH than at any lower humidity (P < 0.01), but it had no effect on mean distance moved between observations or the mean percentage of time in questing posture. Temperature had no effect on mean questing height, but significantly affected mean distance moved (P < 0.01) and the percentage of time in questing posture (P < 0.001). Mean distance moved and percentage of time in questing posture were both greater at 25°C than at higher or lower temperatures. A mechanistic understanding of the factors affecting tick behavior is likely to be useful for interpreting field data, designing field studies, and predicting risk of exposure to tick-borne pathogens.
MinD and MinE Interact with Anionic Phospholipids and Regulate Division Plane Formation in Escherichia coli*

Background: Understanding the bacterial division machinery is essential to decoding cellular physiology. Results: The cell division proteins MinD/MinE bind tightly to anionic lipids, which reduces ATPase activity. Conclusion: MinD and MinE interact preferably with anionic lipids that are positioned at the cell pole. Significance: These results provide insight into a mechanism that regulates bacterial cell division and may present a useful target for antimicrobial development. The Min proteins (MinC, MinD, and MinE) form a pole-to-pole oscillator that controls the spatial assembly of the division machinery in Escherichia coli cells. Previous studies identified that interactions of MinD with phospholipids positioned the Min machinery at the membrane. We extend these studies by measuring the affinity, kinetics, and ATPase activity of E. coli MinD, MinE, and MinDE binding to supported lipid bilayers containing varying compositions of anionic phospholipids. Using quartz crystal microbalance measurements, we found that the binding affinity (Kd) for the interaction of recombinant E. coli MinD and MinE with lipid bilayers increased with increasing concentration of the anionic phospholipids phosphatidylglycerol and cardiolipin. The Kd for MinD (1.8 μm) in the presence of ATP was smaller than for MinE (12.1 μm) binding to membranes consisting of 95:5 phosphatidylcholine/cardiolipin. The simultaneous binding of MinD and MinE to membranes revealed that increasing the concentration of anionic phospholipid stimulates the initial rate of adsorption (kon). The ATPase activity of MinD decreased in the presence of anionic phospholipids. These results indicate that anionic lipids, which are concentrated at the poles, increase the retention of MinD and MinE and explain its dwell time at this region of bacterial cells. These studies provide insight into interactions between MinD and MinE and between these proteins and membranes that are relevant to understanding the process of bacterial cell division, in which the interaction of proteins and membranes is essential.
Petuum: A New Platform for Distributed Machine Learning on Big Data

What is a systematic way to efficiently apply a wide spectrum of advanced ML programs to industrial scale problems, using Big Models (up to 100 s of billions of parameters) on Big Data (up to terabytes or petabytes)? Modern parallelization strategies employ fine-grained operations and scheduling beyond the classic bulk-synchronous processing paradigm popularized by MapReduce, or even specialized graph-based execution that relies on graph representations of ML programs. The variety of approaches tends to pull systems and algorithms design in different directions, and it remains difficult to find a universal platform applicable to a wide range of ML programs at scale. We propose a general-purpose framework, Petuum, that systematically addresses data- and model-parallel challenges in large-scale ML, by observing that many ML programs are fundamentally optimization-centric and admit error-tolerant, iterative-convergent algorithmic solutions. This presents unique opportunities for an integrative system design, such as bounded-error network synchronization and dynamic scheduling based on ML program structure. We demonstrate the efficacy of these system designs versus well-known implementations of modern ML algorithms, showing that Petuum allows ML programs to run in much less time and at considerably larger model sizes, even on modestly-sized compute clusters.
Sex differences in spatial cognition, computational fluency, and arithmetical reasoning.

Alternative explanations for the male advantage in arithmetical reasoning, as measured by the ability to solve complex word problems, include a male advantage in spatial cognition and a male advantage in computational fluency. The current study was designed to test these competing hypotheses. To this end, 113 male and 123 female undergraduates were administered arithmetical computations and arithmetical reasoning tests, along with an IQ test and a test of spatial cognition. There was no sex difference on the IQ test, but males showed significantly higher mean scores on the arithmetical computations, arithmetical reasoning, and spatial cognition measures. A series of structural equation models indicated that individual differences in arithmetical reasoning were related to individual differences in IQ, spatial abilities, and computational fluency. Moreover, the results suggested that the male advantage in arithmetical reasoning is mediated by the male advantages in both computational fluency and spatial cognition.
A comparison of smoking behaviours between patients treated with clozapine and depot neuroleptics

The high prevalence of smoking among individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia is well recognized and documented. Many explanations have been put forth to explain this phenomenon including the effects of antipsychotic medication. We sought to determine if there is a difference in smoking behaviour between patients treated with clozapine and depot neuroleptics. This cross-sectional study recruited patients with schizophrenia from the Forensic Psychiatric Institute of British Columbia. Eligibility for the study required that patients be on either clozapine or depot neuroleptic for at least 2 months. The patient's smoking behaviour was evaluated using expired carbon monoxide (CO) measurements, the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND), and a semi-structured interview. Our results showed that patients treated with clozapine had significantly lower expired CO values than patients treated with depot neuroleptics (11.8 ± 9.2 versus 21.2 ± 7.1 p.p.m., respectively, P < 0.01). This finding was further supported by the noted trend in which patients receiving clozapine self-reported smoking less than patients treated with depot neuroleptics (13.7 ± 11.3 versus 26.8 ± 18.3 cigarettes per day, respectively, P = 0.08). Thus, according to measurements of expired CO levels, patients treated with clozapine smoke less than patients treated with depot neuroleptics.
Contraception in adolescence: a review Biomedical aspects*

Although none of the currently available methods of contraception can be considered as idealfor use by adolescents, many come reasonably close. The present article reviews the relative benefits and risks associated with each method. Oral contraceptives appear to bearfew specific risks for adolescents. Pills containing 30-50 g of ethinylestradiol and 0.5-1.0 mg ofnorethisterone, or equivalents, offer a high degree of protection and are well tolerated. There is no evidence that the pill interferes with either pubertal growth or the achievement of regular ovulation. Risks of cardiovascular complications are lower for adolescents thanfor any other age group; however, changes in lipid profiles, which are thought to contribute to increased atherogenesis, may restrict total lifetime use of oral contraceptives.
An Allele of IKZF1 (Ikaros) Conferring Susceptibility to Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Protects Against Type 1 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE IKZF1 encoding Ikaros, an essential regulator of lymphopoiesis and immune homeostasis, has been implicated in the development of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (C-ALL). Because recent genome-wide association (GWA) studies have linked a region of the 3′-UTR of IKZF1 with C-ALL susceptibility, we tested whether IKZF1 is associated with the autoimmune disease type 1 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS rs10272724 (T>C) near IKZF1 at 7p12 was genotyped in 8,333 individuals with type 1 diabetes, 9,947 control subjects, and 3,997 families of European ancestry. Association was tested using logistic regression in the case-control data and by the transmission disequilibrium test in the families. Expression data for IKZF1 by rs10272724 genotype were obtained using quantitative PCR of mRNA/cDNA generated from peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 88 individuals, whereas expression data for five other neighboring genes were obtained from the online Genevar dataset. RESULTS The minor allele of rs10272724 (C) was found to be protective from type 1 diabetes (odds ratio 0.87 [95% CI 0.83–0.91]; P = 1.1 × 10−11). rs10272724 was not correlated with levels of two transcripts of IKZF1 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells. CONCLUSIONS The major susceptibility genotype for C-ALL confers protection from type 1 diabetes. Our finding strengthens the link between autoimmunity and lymphoid cancers. Further investigation is warranted for the genetic effect marked by rs10272724, its impact on IKZF1, and the role of Ikaros and other family members, Ailios (IKZF3) and Eos (IKZF4), in autoimmunity.
Bacterial attachment in vivo to epithelial cells of the nasopharynx during otitis media with effusion

Abstract Epithelial cells were obtained by swabbing the posterior wall of the nasopharynx (NPH) of 15 patients (age one to 6 8/12; years; eight males, seven females) undergoing ENT-surgery under general anaesthesia for otitis media with effusion (OME). Individually matched, ear healthy children served as controls. Bacteria attached to the non-ciliated cells were calculated according to a method described. Furthermore, quantitative and qualitative bacteriological analyses were performed on samples obtained from mucoid middle ear effusion material as well as from the NPH. All patients and controls harboured middle ear pathogens (S. pneumoniae, H. influenzae, B. catarrhalis, or S. aureus) in the NPH. Only 33 per cent of the patients harboured middle ear pathogens in the middle ear effusion and the same pathogen was invariably found in the corresponding NPH Attachment of bacteria to the non-ciliated cells of the NPH diminished significantly with growing age in the ear healthy control group but not in the OME group. OME is closely correlated tothe presence of middle ear pathogens in the NPH and to attachment of bacteria to the epithelial cells in the NPH.
Using a Permutation Test for Attribute Selection in Decision Trees

Most techniques for attribute selection in decision trees are biased towards attributes with many values, and several ad hoc solutions to this problem have appeared in the machine learning literature. Statistical tests for the existence of an association with a prespecified significance level provide a wellfounded basis for addressing the problem. However, many statistical tests are computed from a chi-squared distribution, which is only a valid approximation to the actual distribution in the large-sample case—and this patently does not hold near the leaves of a decision tree. An exception is the class of permutation tests. We describe how permutation tests can be applied to this problem. We choose one such test for further exploration, and give a novel two-stage method for applying it to select attributes in a decision tree. Results on practical datasets compare favorably with other methods that also adopt a pre-pruning strategy.
Bayesian Policy Search for Multi-Agent Role Discovery

Bayesian inference is an appealing approach for leveraging prior knowledge in reinforcement learning (RL). In this paper we describe an algorithm for discovering different classes of roles for agents via Bayesian inference. In particular, we develop a Bayesian policy search approach for Multi-Agent RL (MARL), which is model-free and allows for priors on policy parameters. We present a novel optimization algorithm based on hybrid MCMC, which leverages both the prior and gradient information estimated from trajectories. Our experiments in a complex real-time strategy game demonstrate the effective discovery of roles from supervised trajectories, the use of discovered roles for successful transfer to similar tasks, and the discovery of roles through reinforcement learning.
Retrospective Study of PhotoPatch Testing in a Chinese Population During a 7-Year Period

BackgroundPhotoallergic contact dermatitis (PACD) is of importance in a proportion of photodermatoses and can be evaluated through photopatch testing (PPT). ObjectivesThe objectives of this study were to evaluate the results of PPT and investigate the prevalence of PACD reactions to different photoallergens in Chinese patients at the Department of Dermatology of Huashan Hospital Fudan University during a 7-year period. MethodsA retrospective PPT study was conducted. During the 7 years, 4957 patients attending for investigation of suspected photodermatoses were tested according to the European consensus methodology with up to 14 allergens prepared according to Chinese National Standards. The reactions were scored using the International Contact Dermatitis Research Group visual scoring system. ResultsA total of 3472 PACD reactions in 2454 subjects (49.5%) were recorded. The most common agents were chlorpromazine (44.3%), followed by para-aminobenzoic acid (14.7%), thimerosal (8.9%), and sulfanilamide (6.9%). Allergic contact dermatitis reactions comprised 409 reactions in 399 subjects (8%). Photoinhibition and photoaugmentation of allergic contact dermatitis compromised 3810 reactions in 2412 subjects and 11 reactions in 11 subjects, respectively. Irritant reactions (1928 reactions) were seen in 1140 subjects. ConclusionsThe most predominant photoallergens in our region were chlorpromazine, para-aminobenzoic acid, thimerosal, and sulfanilamide, which likely reflected the particular exposures of this Chinese population.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF A FRACTURED RESERVOIR MODEL FOR THE PALM VALLEY GAS FIELD

A fractured reservoir model has been developed for the Palm Valley gas field, located WSW of Alice Springs, in the Amadeus Basin, NT. Definition of this complex, naturally fractured, Ordovician gas reservoir has required an integrated approach involving multiple studies to develop the geological model that has formed the basis for reservoir simulation and the rationale for the location of new wells. In addition, new seismic data provided fundamental input to the structure/fracture model of the field. Results suggest a primary, northsouth compression for the origin of structures in the basin and that Palm Valley resulted from a single, balanced folding phase. The seismic data show that Palm Valley is not an arcuate anticline as previously mapped, but is an elongate WSW to ENE trending, doubly plunging anticline with an offset crest and minor reverse faults at reservoir level. Investigations have shown that the majority of fractures in the reservoir outcrop are extremely ordered and there is definite structural control of the fracture spacing in the brittle reservoir rocks. Fracture trajectory and fracture intensity maps have been constructed, the latter providing the mechanism for distribution of fracture parameters around the field. The orientation of fractures measured at depth in the reservoir match exactly the fractures predicted from the structure/fracture model. This is the first time a fractured reservoir model that has been developed for Palm Valley, and it will form the basis for the further study and future development of the field.
Treatment of hyperhidrosis

was heavy contamination by Ps aeruginosa. Likewise, if the buckets were left moist Ps aeruginosa was frequently isolated. The easily detachable mopheads and the buckets can be disinfected in the subatmospheric steam autoclave. Other equipment used for cleaning in the theatre-for example, vacuum suction hoses and the tanks and brushes of scrubbing machines-also showed heavy contamination by Ps aeruginosa if not kept clean and dry between use. Damp floor cloths were contaminated with Ps aeruginosa, but with our new mop system these are no longer used. The periodic disinfection of vacuum suction hoses and the brushes of scrubbing machines in the subatmospheric steam autoclave is recommended. Following the introduction of the new cleaning equipment our monthly wound infection records for Ps aeruginosa appeared to show a downward trend. We feel that the hygiene of theatre cleaning equipment is of great importance. Often the cleaning of theatres is left to operating theatre staff with no domestic training or supervision and without an awareness of the infection hazards of neglected equipment. A RICHARDSON P J HEMSLEY B VINCENT Public Health and Hospital Microbiology Laboratory, General Hospital, Poole, Dorset
The mouse antibody response to infection with Cryptococcus neoformans: VH and VL usage in polysaccharide binding antibodies

Cryptococcus neoformans is a ubiquitous fungus that can cause serious infections in humans. The fungus has a polysaccharide (C. neoformans capsular polysaccharide; CNPS) capsule that contributes to its pathogenicity and can elicit an antibody response. Nevertheless, only 4 of 60 BALB/c mice chronically infected with C. neoformans had a detectable increase in serum anti-CNPS. The sera of three responder mice contained both IgM and IgG anti-CNPS antibody, and the titers of lambda and kappa anti-CNPS antibody were approximately equal. Eight IgM and one IgG3 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) were generated from the spleen of one responder mouse, and one IgA was generated from the spleen of another mouse. Seven of the IgMs, the IgG3, and the IgA mAb had lambda light chains and were specific for serotype D CNPS. Molecular analysis confirmed that this was a highly restricted antibody response. All of the D-specific antibodies used VH441, JH3, and either V lambda 2/J lambda 2 or V lambda 1/J lambda 1, and all had the same heavy chain CDR3 amino acid sequence, even though there were differences in the nucleotide sequence of the N/D segment. One IgM mAb reacted with both serotype A and D CNPS, and this mAb used different VH and JH genetic elements and had kappa light chains. All the anti-CNPS mAbs used J proximal VH gene elements that have previously been shown to bind dextran and other polysaccharides. Sequence and Southern blot analysis indicate that the serotype-D CNPS-specific mAbs arose from only a few precursor B cells.
Plant Community Mediated Responses of Alpine Ecosystems to Anthropogenic Nitrogen Deposition

Human alteration of the nitrogen (N) cycle has resulted in an increase in availability of biologically active N. Alpine ecosystems are particularly susceptible to increased inputs of N due to shallow soils and a short growing season, and they are exposed to higher rates of N deposition than surrounding lower elevation areas making them a good indicator system for ecosystem responses to N deposition. I examined variation among sites receiving a range of ambient N deposition in alpine moist meadow communities (3.3 to 6.2 kg N ha -1 yr -1 ), and determined whether differences in plant and ecosystem metrics were correlated with N deposition. I found that a number of ecosystem metrics were correlated with ambient N deposition, including the tissue N concentration of two dominant plant species at peak biomass and the abundance of a nitrophilic dominant grass species. These species are known to have an influence on N processing in soil, and are therefore important potential plant-soil feedback mechanisms facilitating future ecosystem responses to environmental changes. Additionally, I found that there were significant differences in species composition among sites receiving different levels of N deposition, although there was only a weak negative correlation between diversity and N deposition. I found a significant positive correlation between nitrate concentration in soil solution and N deposition during two years of sampling, while all other soil metrics showed no changes with N deposition. These findings suggest that moist meadows in the southern Rocky Mountain alpine are being affected by N deposition with minimal soil biogeochemical changes but substantial biotic impacts.