Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparative analysis of cascade measures for novelty and diversity

Traditional editorial effectiveness measures, such as nDCG, remain standard for Web search evaluation. Unfortunately, these traditional measures can inappropriately reward redundant information and can fail to reflect the broad range of user needs that can underlie a Web query. To address these deficiencies, several researchers have recently proposed effectiveness measures for novelty and diversity. Many of these measures are based on simple cascade models of user behavior, which operate by considering the relationship between successive elements of a result list. The properties of these measures are still poorly understood, and it is not clear from prior research that they work as intended. In this paper we examine the properties and performance of cascade measures with the goal of validating them as tools for measuring effectiveness. We explore their commonalities and differences, placing them in a unified framework; we discuss their theoretical difficulties and limitations, and compare the measures experimentally, contrasting them against traditional measures and against other approaches to measuring novelty. Data collected by the TREC 2009 Web Track is used as the basis for our experimental comparison. Our results indicate that these measures reward systems that achieve an balance between novelty and overall precision in their result lists, as intended. Nonetheless, other measures provide insights not captured by the cascade measures, and we suggest that future evaluation efforts continue to report a variety of measures.
Segregation of PIP2 and PIP3 into distinct nanoscale regions within the plasma membrane

Summary PIP2 and PIP3 are implicated in a wide variety of cellular signaling pathways at the plasma membrane. We have used STORM imaging to localize clusters of PIP2 and PIP3 to distinct nanoscale regions within the plasma membrane of PC12 cells. With anti-phospholipid antibodies directly conjugated with AlexaFluor 647, we found that PIP2 clusters in membrane domains of 64.5±27.558 nm, while PIP3 clusters had a size of 125.6±22.408 nm. With two color direct STORM imaging we show that >99% of phospholipid clusters have only one or other phospholipid present. These results indicate that lipid nano-domains can be readily identified using super-resolution imaging techniques, and that the lipid composition and size of clusters is tightly regulated.
Knowledge and Adherence to Medications among Palestinian Geriatrics Living with Chronic Diseases in the West Bank and East Jerusalem

Background Adequate patient knowledge about medications is essential for appropriate drug taking behavior and patient adherence. This study aims to assess and quantify the level of knowledge and adherence to medications among Palestinian geriatrics living with chronic diseases and to investigate possible associated socio-demographic characteristics. Methods and Findings We conducted a cross-sectional study during June 2013 and January 2014 among Palestinian geriatrics ≥60 years old living with chronic disease in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. A stratified random sample was selected and a questionnaire-assisted interview was applied for data collection. T-test was applied for bivariate analyzing and one-way ANOVA test was applied for multivariate analyses. Results A total of 1192 Palestinian geriatrics were studied. The average age was 70.3 (SD=8.58) years and ranged from 60-110 years. The sample comprised 659 (55.3%) females and 533 (44.7%) males. The global knowledge and global adherence scores were (67.57%) and (89.29%), respectively. Adequate levels of knowledge were 71.4%, and of adherence 75%, which were recorded for 705 (59.1%) and 1088 (91.3%) participants, respectively. Significant higher levels of global knowledge and global adherence were recorded for males, and for participants who hold a Bachelor’s degree, those who live on their own, and did physical activity for more than 40 hours/week (p-value <0.05). Furthermore, workers, participants with a higher monthly income, and non-smokers have a higher knowledge level with (p-value <0.05). We found positive correlation between participants’ global adherence and global knowledge (r=0.487 and p-value <0.001). Negative correlation was found between participants’ global knowledge and adherence with age (r= -0.236, p-value <0.001 and r= -0.211 and p-value <0.001, respectively. Negative correlation between global knowledge and the number of drugs taken (r= -0.130, p-value <0.001) was predicted. Conclusion We concluded that patients with a higher level of knowledge are more adherent to their medications and that better understanding of socio-demographic factors has a clear influence on the level of knowledge and adherence to medications and thus contributes to the development of guidelines for treatment and may consequently lead to favourable clinical outcomes and savings of health care costs.
Forecasting Malaria Cases Using Climatic Factors in Delhi, India: A Time Series Analysis

Background. Malaria still remains a public health problem in developing countries and changing environmental and climatic factors pose the biggest challenge in fighting against the scourge of malaria. Therefore, the study was designed to forecast malaria cases using climatic factors as predictors in Delhi, India. Methods. The total number of monthly cases of malaria slide positives occurring from January 2006 to December 2013 was taken from the register maintained at the malaria clinic at Rural Health Training Centre (RHTC), Najafgarh, Delhi. Climatic data of monthly mean rainfall, relative humidity, and mean maximum temperature were taken from Regional Meteorological Centre, Delhi. Expert modeler of SPSS ver. 21 was used for analyzing the time series data. Results. Autoregressive integrated moving average, ARIMA (0,1,1) (0,1,0)12, was the best fit model and it could explain 72.5% variability in the time series data. Rainfall (P value = 0.004) and relative humidity (P value = 0.001) were found to be significant predictors for malaria transmission in the study area. Seasonal adjusted factor (SAF) for malaria cases shows peak during the months of August and September. Conclusion. ARIMA models of time series analysis is a simple and reliable tool for producing reliable forecasts for malaria in Delhi, India.
A Water Balance Budget for Bung Boraphet—A Flood Plain Wetland-Reservoir Complex in Thailand

A water balance model was developed for Bung Boraphet reservoir, a large flood plain lake in Thailand, from daily measurements over three inflow outflow cycles between 2003 and 2006. Measurement error was 10% (as one standard deviation) of the total measured volume. The specific yield from the Bung Boraphet catchment was 3.9 m 3 /ha/yr and surface water inflow from the local catchment was the largest gain term and evaporation was the largest loss term in the water budget. Irrigation was the second largest loss term and dry season demand exceeded the storage supply. Uncontrolled extraction of water for irrigation is regarded as a threat to the reservoir fishery, although the increasing drawdown range may benefit wetland biodiversity. Sustainable management of the Bung Boraphet wetland will depend on careful management based on an informed understanding of the eco- hydrological requirements of all wetland uses. Water balance models like this one are recommended as a tool to allocate water equitably and in ways which can be integrated across the Chao Phraya basin.
Comparison of Pathogen DNA Isolation Methods from Large Volumes of Whole Blood to Improve Molecular Diagnosis of Bloodstream Infections

For patients suffering from bloodstream infections (BSI) molecular diagnostics from whole blood holds promise to provide fast and adequate treatment. However, this approach is hampered by the need of large blood volumes. Three methods for pathogen DNA isolation from whole blood were compared, i.e. an enzymatic method (MolYsis, 1–5 ml), the novel non-enzymatic procedure (Polaris, 1–5 ml), and a method that does not entail removal of human DNA (Triton-Tris-EDTA EasyMAG, 200 µl). These methods were evaluated by processing blood spiked with 0–1000 CFU/ml of Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Candida albicans. Downstream detection was performed with real-time PCR assays. Polaris and MolYsis processing followed by real-time PCRs enabled pathogen detection at clinically relevant concentrations of 1–10 CFU/ml blood. By increasing sample volumes, concurrent lower cycle threshold (Ct) values were obtained at clinically relevant pathogen concentrations, demonstrating the benefit of using larger blood volumes. A 100% detection rate at a concentration of 10 CFU/ml for all tested pathogens was obtained with the Polaris enrichment, whereas comparatively lower detection rates were measured for MolYsis (50–67%) and EasyMAG (58–79%). For the samples with a concentration of 1 CFU/ml Polaris resulted in most optimal detection rates of 70–75% (MolYsis 17–50% and TTE-EasyMAG 20–36%). The Polaris method was more reproducible, less labour intensive, and faster (45 minutes (including Qiagen DNA extraction) vs. 2 hours (MolYsis)). In conclusion, Polaris and MolYsis enrichment followed by DNA isolation and real-time PCR enables reliable and sensitive detection of bacteria and fungi from 5 ml blood. With Polaris results are available within 3 hours, showing potential for improved BSI diagnostics.
Robust Estimation of Timing Yield With Partial Statistical Information on Process Variations

This paper illustrates the application of a novel theory, namely, the distributional robustness theory (DRT), to compute the worst-case timing yield of a circuit. The assumption is that the probability distributions of the process variables are unknown, and only their intervals and their ldquoclassrdquo of distributions are available. This paper considers practical classes to describe potential distributions which match with partial statistical information that might be available. Some classes are suitable for independent distributions that have symmetrical or asymmetrical shapes, while others can account for correlations. These classes have high flexibility to include various shapes of the distributions of the process variations. At a higher level, they can also capture the case when uncertainty in their correlation coefficients exists. The contributions of this paper are on formulating the DRT for different cases of variations and in deriving conditions (e.g., acceptable bounds on timing constraint, acceptable intervals of variations) that allow applying the results of the DRT. Compared with other recent works, the presented approach can include correlations among process variations and does not require knowledge of the exact function form of their joint distribution function. The presented approach is also applicable to other types of parametric yield.
Remanufacturing as a Marketing Strategy

The profitability of remanufacturing systems for different cost, technology, and logistics structures has been extensively investigated in the literature. We provide an alternative and somewhat complementary approach that considers demand-related issues, such as the existence of green segments, original equipment manufacturer competition, and product life-cycle effects. The profitability of a remanufacturing system strongly depends on these issues as well as on their interactions. For a monopolist, we show that there exist thresholds on the remanufacturing cost savings, the green segment size, market growth rate, and consumer valuations for the remanufactured products, above which remanufacturing is profitable. More important, we show that under competition remanufacturing can become an effective marketing strategy, which allows the manufacturer to defend its market share via price discrimination.
Sudden Death of Entanglement

A new development in the dynamical behavior of elementary quantum systems is the surprising discovery that correlation between two quantum units of information called qubits can be degraded by environmental noise in a way not seen previously in studies of dissipation. This new route for dissipation attacks quantum entanglement, the essential resource for quantum information as well as the central feature in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen so-called paradox and in discussions of the fate of Schrödinger's cat. The effect has been labeled ESD, which stands for early-stage disentanglement or, more frequently, entanglement sudden death. We review recent progress in studies focused on this phenomenon.
Financial Sector Competition in West African Economic and Monetary Union

This paper investigates the degree of competition in the WAEMU financial industry over the period 2002-2007 using firm-level data (591 year-firm observations). Market structure analysis, the Panzar-Rosse model and conjectural variation are applied to assess the level of competition. The results show that the prevailing market structure in the WAEMU financial industry is concentrated and financial intermediaries operate under imperfect competition. Although competition was fierce during the mid-2000s, the level of competition has remained limited. Moreover, apart from Benin and Mali, the structural and non-structural approaches are closely related, contrary to previous findings, which have some implications for the empirical studies. Finally, a common regulatory framework does not imply similar level of competition. The presence of non-legal barriers is the most plausible explanation of these large differences between WAEMU members.
Editorial and Commentary Coverage of Foreign News Issues in Malaysian Newspapers: Variation and Consistency

This is a comparative framing analysis of editorial and commentary pieces on foreign news issues in three major Malaysian newspapers—in Malay, Chinese and English languages. The multicultural and multiethnic mix of Malaysian society and its media as well as the long-standing connection between the mainstream media and the ruling coalition government in Malaysia provides a valuable context for such a study. The results reveal significant variation in the framing of foreign news issues across the three newspapers, corresponding to their respective target audiences, while a consistency in alignment with the government policy is also evident in all three. The study challenges the idea of a ‘national’ media and identity in international and foreign news studies (i.e. the idea that there is such a thing as a single, e.g. ‘Malaysian’ media or associated world view). It demonstrates how an analysis of foreign news coverage in a country such as Malaysia needs to account for the multifaceted ethnic, linguistic, political and cultural demographic influences on its newspapers.
Error exponents in multiple hypothesis testing for arbitrarily varying sources

The problem of multiple hypothesis testing (HT) for arbitrarily varying sources (AVS) is considered. The achievable error probability exponents (reliabilities) region is derived, optimal decision schemes are described. The result extends the known ones by Fu and Shen and by Tuncel. The Chernoff bounds for AVS binary and M-ary HT are specified via indication of a Sanov theorem for those sources.
The roles of dispositional flow, dispositional mindfulness, and self-compassion in the Objectification Theory Framework

Women are at greater risk than men for experiencing eating disorders, depression, and sexual dysfunction (American Psychological Association, 2007; Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) was proposed to explain one process through which sexist social experiences affect women’s mental health outcomes. Objectification theory posits that women are frequently treated as objects in Western society, and that they internalize this treatment such that they view themselves as objects. This selfobjectification affects their experience of themselves in the world, heightening body-related shame and appearanceand safety-related anxiety. It also makes it more difficult for women to feel connected with their bodies and to experience flow, a pleasant sensation of feeling absorbed in the present moment. Flow has a rich body of research dating back to at least
Testing for Indeterminacy : An Application to U . S . Monetary Policy : Comment

The equilibrium of a rational expectations model is determinate if it is locally unique; it is indeterminate if many other equilibria are arbitrarily close to the first equilibrium. If equilibria are indeterminate, nonfundamental shocks may contribute to the variance of economic fluctuations and, if agents are risk averse, these fluctuations will reduce welfare. Hence, it is of some importance to a policymaker to ensure that his actions do not induce indeterminacy. In an influential article, Richard Clarida, Jordi Galı́, and Mark Gertler (2000) have argued that US monetary policy led to an indeterminate equilibrium in the period from 1950 through 1979 and to a determinate equilibrium in the period since 1980. Their work has been criticized by Thomas Lubik and Frank Schorfheide (2004) who point out that determinacy is a property of a system that cannot be established using single-equation methods. Lubik and Schorfheide write down a fully specified rational expectations model based on a representative agent economy. Using a Bayesian approach, they specify a prior probability distribution over parameters that places equal weight on determinate and indeterminate regions of the parameter space. Using data for the US economy on the output gap, the interest rate and the inflation rate, they compute posterior odds ratios for these regions and are able to strongly confirm Clarida, Galı́, and Gertler’s (2000) findings. In this note we point out, by means of a simple example, that it is not possible to decide whether real world data are generated by a determinate or an indeterminate process without making untestable assumptions about the dynamic structure of the underlying model. We construct two models that generate the same likelihood function and, hence, are observationally equivalent. Model 1 displays an indeterminate equilibrium driven purely by nonfundamental (sunspot) shocks. Model 2 displays a determinate equilibrium driven purely by fundamental shocks.
When the Brain Takes a Break: A Model-Based Analysis of Mind Wandering

Mind wandering is an ubiquitous phenomenon in everyday life. In the cognitive neurosciences, mind wandering has been associated with several distinct neural processes, most notably increased activity in the default mode network (DMN), suppressed activity within the anti-correlated (task-positive) network (ACN), and changes in neuromodulation. By using an integrative multimodal approach combining machine-learning techniques with modeling of latent cognitive processes, we show that mind wandering in humans is characterized by inefficiencies in executive control (task-monitoring) processes. This failure is predicted by a single-trial signature of (co)activations in the DMN, ACN, and neuromodulation, and accompanied by a decreased rate of evidence accumulation and response thresholds in the cognitive model.
Population Synthesis Models for Late Buildup of the Red Sequence

We present population synthesis models designed to represent the star formation histories of L* red sequence galaxies (RSGs). Earlier work has shown that single-burst stellar populations (SSPs) are unable to match Balmer line strengths simultaneously at high and low redshift. We therefore consider alternative star formation histories in which RSGs contain intermediate-aged stars even at late epochs. The models are compared to Balmer HδF absorption strengths, U - B color data, and the number density of red sequence galaxies from z = 1 to z = 0. We find that quenched models, models of constant star formation histories truncated at regularly spaced intervals, average to an RSG population that matches the data well, showing slow evolution in color and Balmer line strength and a rise in number density by a factor of a few after z = 1. The data are best fit by a turn-on of quenching at redshifts z = 1.5-2.
G-Band Spectral Synthesis in Solar Magnetic Concentrations

Narrowband imaging in the G band is commonly used to trace the small magnetic field concentrations of the Sun, although the mechanism that makes them bright has remained unclear. We carry out LTE syntheses of the G band in an assorted set of semiempirical model magnetic concentrations. The syntheses include all CH lines as well as the main atomic lines within the bandpass. The model atmospheres produce bright G-band spectra having many properties in common with the observed G-band bright points. In particular, the contrast referring to the quiet Sun is about twice the contrast in continuum wavelengths. The agreement with observations does not depend on the specificities of the model atmosphere; rather, it holds from single flux tubes to microstructured magnetic atmospheres. However, the agreement requires that the real G-band bright points are not spatially resolved, even in the best observations. Since the predicted G-band intensities exceed by far the observed values, we foresee a notable increase of contrast of the G-band images upon improvement of the angular resolution. According to the LTE modeling, the G-band spectrum emerges from the deep photosphere that produces the continuum. Our syntheses also predict solar magnetic concentrations showing up in continuum images but not in the G band. Finally, we have examined the importance of the CH photodissociation in setting the amount of G-band absorption. It turns out to play a minor role.
Outbreaks of Short-Incubation Ocular and Respiratory Illness Following Exposure to Indoor Swimming Pools

Objectives Chlorination destroys pathogens in swimming pool water, but by-products of chlorination can cause human illness. We investigated outbreaks of ocular and respiratory symptoms associated with chlorinated indoor swimming pools at two hotels. Measurements We interviewed registered guests and companions who stayed at hotels X and Y within 2 days of outbreak onset. We performed bivariate and stratified analyses, calculated relative risks (RR), and conducted environmental investigations of indoor pool areas. Results Of 77 guests at hotel X, 47 (61%) completed questionnaires. Among persons exposed to the indoor pool area, 22 (71%) of 31 developed ocular symptoms [RR = 24; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.5–370], and 14 (45%) developed respiratory symptoms (RR = 6.8; 95% CI, 1.0–47) with a median duration of 10 hr (0.25–24 hr). We interviewed 30 (39%) of 77 registered persons and 59 unregistered companions at hotel Y. Among persons exposed to the indoor pool area, 41 (59%) of 69 developed ocular symptoms (RR = 24; 95% CI, 1.5–370), and 28 (41%) developed respiratory symptoms (RR = 17; 95% CI, 1.1–260) with a median duration of 2.5 hr (2 min–14 days). Four persons sought medical care. During the outbreak, the hotel X’s ventilation system malfunctioned. Appropriate water and air samples were not available for laboratory analysis. Conclusions and relevance to professional practice Indoor pool areas were associated with illness in these outbreaks. A large proportion of bathers were affected; symptoms were consistent with chloramine exposure and were sometimes severe. Improved staff training, pool maintenance, and pool area ventilation could prevent future outbreaks.
Modified projected Landweber method for Compressive-Sensing reconstruction of images with non-orthogonal matrices

Compressive Sensing (CS) reconstruction of images using the smoothed projected Landweber (SPL) method is known to achieve excellent performance. However, the complexity of SPL increases for a non-orthogonal measurement matrix. In this paper, we propose a variant of SPL for non-orthogonal matrices without increasing the complexity. In addition, we propose a uniform quantization method for compression of images so as to reduce the communication cost. The performance of the proposed method is comparable to the existing methods for lower measurement rates. This method works particularly well with non-orthogonal random matrices composed of only −1s and +1s.