Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Laparoscopic Versus Open Umbilical Hernia Repair

Background: The use of prosthetic material for open umbilical hernia repair has been reported to reduce recurrence rates. The aim of this study was to compare outcomes after laparoscopic versus open umbilical hernia repair. Methods: We reviewed all umbilical hernia repairs performed from November 1995 to October 2000. Demographic data, hernia characteristics, and outcomes were compared. Results: Of the 76 patients identified, 32 underwent laparoscopic repair (LR), 24 primary suture repairs (PSR), and 20 open repairs with mesh (ORWM). Preoperative characteristics were similar between groups. Hernia size was similar between LR and ORWM groups, and both were larger than that in the PSR group. ORWM compared with the other techniques resulted in longer operating time, more frequent use of drains, higher complication rates, and prolonged return to normal activities (RTNA). The length of stay (LOS) was longer in the ORWM than in the PSR group. When compared with ORWM, LR resulted in lower recurrence rates. LR resulted in fewer recurrences in patients with previous repairs and hernias larger than 3 cm than in both open techniques. Conclusions: LR results in faster RTNA, and lower complication and recurrence rates compared with those in ORWM. Patients with larger hernias and previous repairs benefit from LR.
Processing semi-structured data in object bases

We address the problem of null values and other forms of semi-structured data in object-oriented databases. Various aspects and issues concerning semi-structured data that are currently presented in the literature are discussed in the paper. We propose a new universal approach to semi-structured data based on the idea of absent objects. The idea covers null values and union types and can be smoothly combined with the idea of default values. We introduce a simple model of object store that is similar to the Tsimmis model. In contrast to the main stream of the research, our basic assumption is that semi-structured data are not only to be queried but also processed by an integrated query/programming language. To this end we discuss query language constructs that are relevant to query semistructured data and corresponding issues in programming languages. The idea follows the stack-based approach to integrated query/programming languages that we have implemented in the LOQIS system. Finally we briefly discuss a new approach to polymorphic typing of semi-structured data that is implemented in LOQIS.
PROGNOSTIC VARIABLES IN SCHIZOPHRENIA*

SUMMARY This study examined the relationship between measures of outcome and socio-demographic arid diagnostic variables in schizophrenia. Product moment co-efficient of correlation and stepwise multiple regression were the main statistical techniques of analyses. The results of the study indicate that DSM-III diagnosis of schizophrenia, duration of illness, and Present State Examination-PSE Syndrome of non-specific psychosis are important predictors of outcome. CATEGO and Research Diagnostic Criteria-RDC diagnosis of Schizophrenia, and Schneiderian First Rank Symptoms were found to be poor predictors of outcome. Socio-demographic and clinical variables like gender of the patient, place of origin, impersistence at work, poor premorbid work record, hospitalization at the time of admittance into the study, loss of interest, affective flattening and incoherent speech were found to have prognostic implications.
Adaptation of Velocity Encoding in Synaptically Coupled Neurons in the Fly Visual System

Although many adaptation-induced effects on neuronal response properties have been described, it is often unknown at what processing stages in the nervous system they are generated. We focused on fly visual motion-sensitive neurons to identify changes in response characteristics during prolonged visual motion stimulation. By simultaneous recordings of synaptically coupled neurons, we were able to directly compare adaptation-induced effects at two consecutive processing stages in the fly visual motion pathway. This allowed us to narrow the potential sites of adaptation effects within the visual system and to relate them to the properties of signal transfer between neurons. Motion adaptation was accompanied by a response reduction, which was somewhat stronger in postsynaptic than in presynaptic cells. We found that the linear representation of motion velocity degrades during adaptation to a white-noise velocity-modulated stimulus. This effect is caused by an increasingly nonlinear velocity representation rather than by an increase of noise and is similarly strong in presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons. In accordance with this similarity, the dynamics and the reliability of interneuronal signal transfer remained nearly constant. Thus, adaptation is mainly based on processes located in the presynaptic neuron or in more peripheral processing stages. In contrast, changes of transfer properties at the analyzed synapse or in postsynaptic spike generation contribute little to changes in velocity coding during motion adaptation.
Chern Classes of Logarithmic Vector Fields

Let $X$ be a nonsingular complex variety and $D$ a reduced effective divisor in $X$. In this paper we study the conditions under which the formula $c_{SM}(1_U)=c(\textup{Der}_X(-\log D))\cap [X]$ is true. We prove that this formula is equivalent to a Riemann-Roch type of formula. As a corollary, we show that over a surface, the formula is true if and only if the Milnor number equals the Tjurina number at each singularity of $D$. We also show the Rimann-Roch type of formula is true if the Jacobian scheme of $D$ is nonsingular or a complete intersection.
A statistical model for robust integration of narrowband cues in speech

We investigate a statistical model for integrating narrowband cues in speech. The model is inspired by two ideas in human speech perception: (i) Fletcher? s hypothesis (1953) that independent detectors, working in narrow frequency bands, account for the robustness of auditory strategies, and (ii) Miller and Nicely? s analysis (1955) that perceptual confusions in noisy bandlimited speech are correlated with phonetic features. We apply the model to detecting the phonetic feature +/? sonorant] that distinguishes vowels, approximants, and nasals (sonorants) from stops, fricatives, and affricates (obstruents). The model is represented by a multilayer probabilistic network whose binary hidden variables indicate sonorant cues from different parts of the frequency spectrum. We derive the Expectation-Maximization algorithm for estimating the model? s parameters and evaluate its performance on clean and corrupted speech.
A Simple Risk Model to Predict Survival in Patients With Carcinoma of Unknown Primary Origin

AbstractCarcinoma of unknown primary origin (CUP) is characterized by diverse histological subtypes and clinical presentations, ranging from clinically indolent to frankly aggressive behaviors. This study aimed to identify prognostic factors of CUP and to develop a simple risk model to predict survival in a cohort of Asian patients.We retrospectively reviewed 190 patients diagnosed with CUP between 2007 and 2012 at a single medical center in Taiwan. The clinicopathological parameters and outcomes of our cohort were analyzed. A risk model was developed using multivariate logistic regression and a prognostic score was generated.The prognostic score was calculated based on 3 independent prognostic variables: the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) scale (0 points if the score was 1, 2 points if it was 2–4), visceral organ involvement (0 points if no involvement, 1 point if involved), and the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (0 points if ⩽3, 1 point if >3). Patients were stratified into good (score 0), intermediate (score 1–2), and poor (score 3–4) prognostic groups based on the risk model. The median survival (95% confidence interval) was 1086 days (500–1617, n = 42), 305 days (237–372, n = 75), and 64 days (44–84, n = 73) for the good, intermediate, and poor prognostic groups, respectively. The c-statistics using the risk model and ECOG scale for the outcome of 1-year mortality were 0.80 and 0.70 (P = 0.038), respectively.In this study, we developed a simple risk model that accurately predicted survival in patients with CUP. This scoring system may be used to help patients and clinicians determine appropriate treatments.
On non-differentiable time-varying optimization

We consider non-differentiable convex optimization problems that vary continuously in time and we propose algorithms that sample these problems at specific time instances and generate a sequence of converging near-optimal decision variables. This sequence converges up to a bounded error to the solution trajectory of the time-varying non-differentiable problems. We illustrate through analytical examples and a realistic numerical simulation the benefit of the algorithms in signal processing applications, e.g., for reconstructing time-varying sparse signals.
How difficult is it to recover from dangerous levels of global warming?

Climate models provide compelling evidence that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at present rates, then key global temperature thresholds (such as the European Union limit of two degrees of warming since pre-industrial times) are very likely to be crossed in the next few decades. However, there is relatively little attention paid to whether, should a dangerous temperature level be exceeded, it is feasible for the global temperature to then return to safer levels in a usefully short time. We focus on the timescales needed to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases and associated temperatures back below potentially dangerous thresholds, using a state-of-the-art general circulation model. This analysis is extended with a simple climate model to provide uncertainty bounds. We find that even for very large reductions in emissions, temperature reduction is likely to occur at a low rate. Policy-makers need to consider such very long recovery timescales implicit in the Earth system when formulating future emission pathways that have the potential to ‘overshoot’ particular atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and, more importantly, related temperature levels that might be considered dangerous.
Advances in Wikipedia-based Interaction with Robots

The paper describes advances in Wikipedia-based human-robot interaction. After reviewing the current capabilities of talking robots that use Wikipedia as an information source, the paper presents methods that support new capabilities. These include language-switching and multimodal behaviour-switching when using Wikipedias in many languages, robot initiatives to suggest new topics from Wikipedia based on semantic similarity to the current topic, and the capability of the robot to listen to the user talking and to recognize entities mentioned by the user that have Wikipedia links.
An Empirical Study into the Relationship Between Class Features and Test Smells

While a substantial body of prior research has investigated the form and nature of production code, comparatively little attention has examined characteristics of test code, and, in particular, test smells in that code. In this paper, we explore the relationship between production code properties (at the class level) and a set of test smells, in five open source systems. Specifically, we examine whether complexity properties of a production class can be used as predictors of the presence of test smells in the associated unit test. Our results, derived from the analysis of 975 production class-unit test pairs, show that the Cyclomatic Complexity (CC) and Weighted Methods per Class (WMC) of production classes are strong indicators of the presence of smells in their associated unit tests. The Lack of Cohesion of Methods in a production class (LCOM) also appears to be a good indicator of the presence of test smells. Perhaps more importantly, all three metrics appear to be good indicators of particular test smells, especially Eager Test and Duplicated Code. The Depth of the Inheritance Tree (DIT), on the other hand, was not found to be significantly related to the incidence of test smells. The results have important implications for large-scale software development, particularly in a context where organizations are increasingly using, adopting or adapting open source code as part of their development strategy and need to ensure that classes and methods are kept as simple as possible.
Very large graphs

In the last decade it became apparent that a large number of the most interesting structures and phenomena of the world can be described by networks: separable elements, with connections (or interactions) between certain pairs of them. These huge networks pose exciting challenges for the mathematician. Graph Theory (the mathematical theory of networks) faces novel, unconventional problems: these very large networks (like the Internet) are never completely known, in most cases they are not even well defined. Data about them can be collected only by indirect means like random local sampling. Dense networks (in which a node is adjacent to a positive percent of others nodes) and sparse networks (in which a node has a bounded number of neighbors) show very different behavior. From a practical point of view, sparse networks are more important, but at present we have more complete theoretical results for dense networks. The paper surveys relations with probability, algebra, extrema graph theory, and analysis.
Auditor Conservatism and Audit Quality: Evidence from IPO Earnings Forecasts

We examine the relation between the accuracy and bias of earnings forecasts provided in Australian initial public offering (IPO) prospectuses and a proxy for differential audit quality. For the period we examine, most Australian IPO prospectuses include an earnings forecast, with which the auditor must be satisfied prior to signing off on the prospectus. Our evidence suggests that forecasts associated with Big 6 auditors are more accurate than those for which a Non-Big 6 auditor is used, although this result is not robust across alternative measures of forecast accuracy. We also find significantly less optimistic bias for forecasts associated with Big 6 auditors, but this result is robust to alternative measures of forecast bias. Although the distribution of forecast errors is strongly suggestive of earnings management to avoid reporting earnings below the forecast figure, the distribution of forecast errors for Non-Big 6 clients indicates a substantially greater proportion of large, optimistic forecast errors than for Big 6 clients. This supports our conclusion that Big 6 auditors are more conservative than their Non-Big 6 counterparts.
A comparative study of stemming algorithms for use with the Uzbek language

Stemming is one of the pipeline feature of Information Retrieval and commonly used in natural language processing and text mining. The main purpose of a stemming process is to reduce the inflectional or derivational word into its root form. The difficulties on developing stemming algorithm is to identify and remove affixes since each language in the world has unique characteristics and grammatical rules. This paper compares related study on existing stemmers to be used in Uzbek language. We discuss the type of stemming algorithms, an overview of available popular English stemmers and comparison between discussed stemmers as well as their evaluation and analysis of available stemmers on Uzbek language experiment. Based on the comparative study and experiment, we proposal our model of the Uzbek stemmer that enhances some of the features in Lovins stemmer to suit the requirements for the Uzbek language.
Layer-Specific Touch-Dependent Facilitation and Depression in the Somatosensory Cortex during Active Whisking

Brains adapt to new situations by retuning their neurons. The most common form of neuronal adaptation, typically observed with repetitive stimulations of passive sensory organs, is depression (responses gradually decrease until stabilized). We studied cortical adaptation when stimuli are acquired by active movements of the sensory organ. In anesthetized rats, artificial whisking was induced at 5 Hz, and activity of individual neurons in layers 2–5 was recorded during whisking in air (Whisking condition) and whisking against an object (Touch condition). Response strengths were assessed by spike counts. Input-layer responses (layers 4 and 5a) usually facilitated during the whisking train, whereas superficial responses (layer 2/3) usually depressed. In layers 2/3 and 4, but not 5a, responses were usually stronger during touch trials than during whisking in air. Facilitations were specific to the protraction phase; during retraction, responses depressed in all layers and conditions. These dynamic processes were accompanied by a slow positive wave of activity progressing from superficial to deeper layers and lasting for ∼1 s, during the transient phase of response. Our results indicate that, in the cortex, adaptation does not depend only on the level of activity or the frequency of its repetition but rather on the nature of the sensory information that is conveyed by that activity and on the processing layer. The input and laminar specificities observed here are consistent with the hypothesis that the paralemniscal layer 5a is involved in the processing of whisker motion, whereas the lemniscal barrels in layer 4 are involved in the processing of object identity.
Deriving safety requirements using scenarios

Elicitation of requirements for safety critical aero-engine control systems is dependent on the capture of core design intent and the systematic derivation of requirements addressing hazardous deviations from that intent. Derivation of these requirements is inextricably linked to the safety assessment process. Conventional civil aerospace practice (as advocated by guidelines such as ARP4754 and ARP4671) promotes the application of Functional Hazard Assessment (FHA) to sets of statements of functional intent. Systematic hazard analysis of scenario-based requirements representations is less well understood. This paper discusses the principles and problems of hazard analysis and proposes an approach to conducting hazard analysis on use case requirements representations. Using the approach, it is possible to justifiably derive hazard-mitigation use cases as first class requirements from systematic hazard analysis of core design intent scenarios. An industrial example is used to illustrate the technique.
Differential regulation of the alpha/beta interferon-stimulated Jak/Stat pathway by the SH2 domain-containing tyrosine phosphatase SHPTP1

Interferons (IFNs) induce early-response genes by stimulating Janus family (Jak) tyrosine kinases, leading to tyrosine phosphorylation of Stat transcription factors. Previous studies implicated protein-tyrosine phosphatase (PTP) activity in the control of IFN-regulated Jak/Stat signaling, but the specific PTPs responsible remained unidentified. We have found that SH2 domain-containing PTP1 (SHPTP1; also called PTP1C, HCP, or SHP) reversibly associates with the IFN-alpha receptor complex upon IFN addition. Compared with macrophages from normal littermate controls, macrophages from motheaten mice, which lack SHPTP1, show dramatically increased Jak1 and Stat1 alpha tyrosine phosphorylation, whereas Tyk2 and Stat2 activation is largely unaffected. These findings correlate with selectively increased complex formation on a gamma response element, but not an IFN-stimulated response element, in motheaten macrophages. Our results establish that SHPTP1 selectively regulates distinct components of Jak/Stat signal transduction pathways in vivo.
The adoring audience : fan culture and popular media

Part I: Introduction Lewis Defining Fandom Warped or Crazy: Dominant Approaches to Fandom, Jenson The Ideological Role of Stars for Fans, Dyer/Stacey Cultural Politics and the Everyday Lives of Fans Understanding Fandom Beatlemania: Girls Just want to have fun, Ehrenreich, et al Are Female Fans the Same as Groupies? (Give the Right Answer or Die), Bitch Fan Stories on Film, Lewis Part II: Introduction, Lewis Fans and Industry The Frustration Machine: Pop Culture and the Production of Fans, Vermorels Fan Mail and Hollywood Film Promotion: The Case of Betty Gable, Gaines Whose Programme is it Anyway? The firing of a soap opera star, Hobson Institutionalized Fan Activism: Viewers for Quality Television, Brower Production by Fans The Producerly' Fan, Fiske Star Trek, Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching Hispanic Fanziness and Cross-cultural Media, Rabinovitz & Easley
Financial Stability from a Network Perspective

This PhD dissertation consists of six chapters related to applications of network analysis’ methods for financial stability. The first chapter introduces the network perspective as a new mapping technique for studying and understanding financial markets’ architecture. The second chapter breaks down the Colombian sovereign securities market into different layers of interaction corresponding to distinct trading and registering platforms. The third chapter addresses an overlooked issue: How to measure the importance of financial market infrastructures within their corresponding network. The fourth chapter studies the connective and hierarchical structure of the Colombian non-collateralized money market, and uses an information retrieval algorithm for identifying those financial institutions that simultaneously excel at borrowing and lending central bank’s liquidity (i.e. super-spreaders). The fifth chapter addresses – for the first time – the question regarding the presence of a modular hierarchy in financial networks, and discusses the main implications for financial stability. The sixth chapter explicitly models the role of financial market infrastructures as financial markets’ “plumbing”, and recognizes that traditional analysis of financial institutions networks is of a virtual or logical nature. The third chapter is published in the Journal of Financial Market Infrastructures (Vol.2 (3), 2014), whereas the fifth chapter is published in the Journal of Financial Stability (Vol.15, 2014).
Thai Fruits Exhibit Antioxidant Activity and Induction of Antioxidant Enzymes in HEK-293 Cells

The cellular antioxidant enzymes play the important role of protecting the cells and organisms from the oxidative damage. Natural antioxidants contained in fruits have attracted considerable interest because of their presumed safety and potential nutritional value. Even though antioxidant activities of many fruits have been reported, the effects of phytochemicals contained in fruits on the induction of antioxidant enzymes in the cells have not been fully defined. In this study, we showed that extracts from Antidesma ghaesembilla, Averrhoa bilimbi, Malpighia glabra, Mangifera indica, Sandoricum koetjape, Syzygium malaccense, and Ziziphus jujuba inhibited H2O2-induced intracellular reactive oxygen species production in HEK-293 cells. Additionally, these Thai fruit extracts increased the mRNA and protein expressions of antioxidant enzymes, catalase, glutathione peroxidase-1, and manganese superoxide dismutase. The consumption of Thai fruits rich in phenolic compounds may reduce the risk of oxidative stress.