Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Choice-based preference elicitation for collaborative filtering recommender systems

We present an approach to interactive recommending that combines the advantages of algorithmic techniques with the benefits of user-controlled, interactive exploration in a novel manner. The method extracts latent factors from a matrix of user rating data as commonly used in Collaborative Filtering, and generates dialogs in which the user iteratively chooses between two sets of sample items. Samples are chosen by the system for low and high values of each latent factor considered. The method positions the user in the latent factor space with few interaction steps, and finally selects items near the user position as recommendations. In a user study, we compare the system with three alternative approaches including manual search and automatic recommending. The results show significant advantages of our approach over the three competing alternatives in 15 out of 24 possible parameter comparisons, in particular with respect to item fit, interaction effort and user control. The findings corroborate our assumption that the proposed method achieves a good trade-off between automated and interactive functions in recommender systems.
The Dangers of Failure Masking in Fault-Tolerant Software: Aspects of a Recent In-Flight Upset Event

On 1 August 2005, a Boeing Company 777-200 aircraft, operating on an international passenger flight from Australia to Malaysia, was involved in a significant upset event while flying on autopilot. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau's investigation into the event discovered that an anomaly existed in the component software hierarchy that allowed inputs from a known faulty accelerometer to be processed by the air data inertial reference unit (ADIRU) and used by the primary flight computer, autopilot and other aircraft systems. This anomaly had existed in original ADIRU software, and had not been detected in the testing and certification process for the unit. This paper describes the software aspects of the incident in detail, and suggests possible implications concerning complex, safety-critical, fault-tolerant software.
Analysis of VoIP over HSDPA Performance with Discontinuous Reception Cycles

The aim of this paper is to evaluate how Discontinuous Reception (DRX) cycles and related timers take effect to Voice over IP (VoIP) performance when High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) networks are in question. DRX cycles limit the scheduling freedom of users and increase battery saving opportunities in the User Equipment (UE) by allowing it to turn its receiver circuitry off for some periods of time. Prior work has concentrated mainly on optimizing the usage of radio resources when small bit rate delay critical services, like VoIP, are considered. However, the battery life of small handheld devices might become a limiting factor in providing satisfactory user experience. Thus, this paper evaluates the performance also from the battery life perspective when DRX cycles together with VoIP are considered. The performance is evaluated with a fully dynamic system level tool in which the mobility of the users, radio resource management functionalities and the interactions between them are explicitly taken into account. The study indicated that the longer the DRX cycle is the higher are the battery saving opportunities but at the same time VoIP over HSDPA capacity can be compromised. Capacity degeneration in pure VoIP traffic simulations was, however, possible to be mitigated by using an adequately long inactivity timer. In mixed traffic scenarios including both VoIP and Best Effort (BE) traffic, higher cell throughput was achieved by allowing more scheduling time for BE users with adequately long DRX cycle and a short inactivity timer.
Quantum phase slips in Josephson junction rings

We study quantum phase-slip (QPS) processes in a superconducting ring containing N Josephson junctions and threaded by an external static magnetic flux. In a such system, a QPS consists of a quantum tunneling event connecting two distinct classical states of the phases with different persistent currents [K. A. Matveev et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 096802 (2002)]. When the Josephson coupling energy EJ of the junctions is larger than the charging energy EC = e2/2C where C is the junction capacitance, the quantum amplitude for the QPS process is exponentially small in the ratio EJ/EC. At given magnetic flux each QPS can be described as the tunneling of the phase difference of a single junction of almost 2pi, accompanied by a small harmonic displacement of the phase difference of the other N-1 junctions. As a consequence the total QPS amplitude nu is a global property of the ring. Here we study the dependence of nu on the ring size N taking into account the effect of a finite capacitance C0 to ground which leads to the appearance of low-frequency dispersive modes. Josephson and charging effects compete and lead to a nonmonotonic dependence of the ring critical current on N. For N=infty, the system converges either towards a superconducting or an insulating state, depending on the ratio between the charging energy E0 = e2/2C0 and the Josephson coupling energy EJ.
Outcome After Leg Bypass Surgery for Critical Limb Ischemia Is Poor in Patients With Diabetes

OBJECTIVE—Our aim was to assess the risk of major amputation or death after leg bypass surgery for critical limb ischemia in patients with diabetes versus those without. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—We did a population-based cohort study by linking nationwide databases in Sweden. We identified 1,840 patients in the Swedish Vascular Registry who had their first leg bypass procedure for critical lower-limb ischemia between 1 January 2001 and 31 December 2003—742 with and 1,098 without diabetes. Our primary end point was first major amputation of the limb on which bypass was done or death. Individuals were followed up until 31 December 2005 through the National Hospital Patient Registry and the Cause-of-Death Registry. RESULTS—Incidence of ipsilateral amputation or death was higher in patients with diabetes than in patients without (30.2 vs. 22 events/100 person-years; crude hazard ratio [HR] 1.32 [95% CI 1.17–1.50]). Similarly, individuals with diabetes had a shorter amputation-free survival period than individuals without (2.3 years, range 1.9–2.8 vs. 3.4 years, range 3.1–3.7). Adjustment for demographic characteristics, comorbidities, and risk factors for amputation or death did not substantially affect the risk (HR 1.46 [95% CI 1.26–1.69]). The effect was more pronounced in male (1.75 [1.47–2.08]) than in female (1.35 [1.11–1.64]) patients after adjustment for age. CONCLUSIONS—Diabetes is associated with lower amputation–free survival after leg bypass for critical limb ischemia. Patients with diabetes and limb ischemia need intensified treatment of diabetes-related risk factors to improve outcome.
Surgical Treatment of Dyskinesia in Parkinson’s Disease

One of the main indications for stereotactic surgery in Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the control of levodopa-induced dyskinesia. This can be achieved by pallidotomy and globus pallidus internus (GPi) deep brain stimulation (DBS) or by subthalamotomy and subthalamic nucleus (STN) DBS, which usually allow for a cut down in the dosage of levodopa. DBS has assumed a pivotal role in stereotactic surgical treatment of PD and, in fact, ablative procedures are currently considered surrogates, particularly when bilateral procedures are required, as DBS does not produce a brain lesion and the stimulator can be programed to induce better therapeutic effects while minimizing adverse effects. Interventions in either the STN and the GPi seem to be similar in controlling most of the other motor aspects of PD, nonetheless, GPi surgery seems to induce a more particular and direct effect on dyskinesia, while the anti-dyskinetic effect of STN interventions is mostly dependent on a reduction of dopaminergic drug dosages. Hence, the si ne qua non-condition for a reduction of dyskinesia when STN interventions are intended is their ability to allow for a reduction of levodopa dosage. Pallidal surgery is indicated when dyskinesia is a dose-limiting factor for maintaining or introducing higher adequate levels of dopaminergic therapy. Also medications used for the treatment of PD may be useful for the improvement of several non-motor aspects of the disease, including sleep, psychiatric, and cognitive domains, therefore, dose reduction of medication withdrawal are not always a fruitful objective.
Power, Emotion, and Judgmental Accuracy in Social Conflict: Motivating the Cognitive Miser

This investigation examined whether ideological opponents' emotion and relative power in a conflict would influence the accuracy with which they judge their own side's and their opponents' attitudes. Based on accounts linking power and emotion to perceptual vigilance, we proposed that opposing partisans will be prone to stereotype their opponents as extremists, as the result of a heuristic, effort-saving strategy, unless motivated by lower relative power or increased emotion to make more accurate judgments. We predicted that members of powerful groups would judge the views of other groups inaccurately, that all groups would have inaccurate views of less powerful groups, and that high levels of negative emotion with regard to the conflict would be associated with more accurate judgments. Two studies yielded certain findings consistent with these predictions. In Study 1, powerful majority partisans were less accurate judges but more accurately judged than less powerful minority partisans across two social i.
Generalization of rigid foldable quadrilateral mesh origami

In general, a quadrilateral mesh surface does not enable a continuous rigid motion because an overconstrained system, in which the number of constraints around degree-4 vertices (three for each vertex) exceeds the number of variables (the number of hinges), is constructed. However, it is known that the developable double corrugation surface, called Miura-ori, produces a rigid deployment mechanism. The rigid-foldability of Miura-ori is due to the singularity in its pattern, where a single vertex is repeated. We generalize the geometric condition for enabling rigid motion in general quadrilateral mesh origami without the trivial repeating symmetry. To ensure the existence of a finite motion, we derive the identity of functions from the formula for degree-4 single-vertex origami. This yields a variety of unexplored generalized shapes of quadrilateral mesh origami that preserve finite rigid-foldability in addition to developability and flat-foldability.
Medical Waste Management in the second largest City of Iran (Mashhad) with Three-Million Inhabitants

Introduction: One of the first and important steps to improve medical waste management is awareness and monitoring of the quality and quantity of medical waste. The aim of this study was to determine the present status of waste generation and the process of waste management in hospitals. Materials and Methods:This cross sectional study was performed in ten university hospitals in Mashhad. A standard questionnaire was prepared according to the National Health instructions and completed by the project team members who were environmental health experts. Results: The total waste which was generated in the studied hospitals was 7683 kg/day. The study showed total waste generation in selected hospitals as (61.85%) general medical waste, (34.90%) infectious waste and (3.25%) sharp waste. The average generation rate for total, general, infectious and sharp waste was (2.6, 1.5, 1.01) and (0.08) kg/bed/day, respectively. Mean scores of the different steps of waste management process with respect to National Health instructions were as follows: waste segregation (64%), waste storage (67%), waste transportation (76 %) and waste treatment 63%. There was no significant difference between the average rate of waste generation per bed in public and specialized hospitals (P=0.34). Conclusion: High rate of infectious waste shows the need for establishing executive rules and standards for medical waste management. Medical managers should update their knowledge and further educating their staff; implying careful and constant monitoring of waste management.
The Question Answering System of DCUMT in NTCIR-11 QALab

This paper describes the question answering system developed at Dublin City University for participation in the QA Lab shared task in NTCIR-11 [20]. We participated in three tasks: center exam (multiple choice) tasks in Phases 1 and 2, and secondary exam task (written) in Phase 2. We built a QA system in which we use the specialized-purpose parser KBarse to acquire meaning representation which is called case frame graphs from history textbooks using commonsense knowledge. We used distributed representation for Out-Of-Vocaburary (OOV) words and missing assertions. We added prototype functionality for handling implicit arguments/relations, causality analysis, time analysis, and temporal order analysis by heuristics. Our results for center exam task in Phase 1 was 77.0 which was the first among seven submissions, for center exam task in Phase 2 was 72.0 which was the first among nine submissions, and for secondary exam task in Phase 2 in terms of precision were 71.4 (UTokyo), 62.5 (KyotoU), 71.8 (Hokkaido), 62.7 (Waseda), and 80.0 (Chuo) which were the first among two submissions.
Kernel collaborative representation for face recognition

Recently, sparse representation based classification (SRC) and collaborative representation based classification (CRC) have achieved superior performance in pattern classification. Collaborative representation based classification with regularized least square (CRC_RLS) which uses l2 -norm is a very simple yet much more efficient scheme for face recognition (FR). Motivated by the fact that kernel representation is a powerful tool in discovering nonlinear structure of complex data, which may reduce the feature quantization error and boost the recognition performance, we propose Kernel Collaborative Representation based Classification (KCRC) which extends the CRC_RLS scheme to the kernel space. Compared with SRC and CRC_RLS, KCRC can greatly reduce the feature reconstruction error and learn more discriminative sparse codes for face recognition. Extensive experimental results show that the performance of KCRC outperforms the performance of support vector machine and CRC_RLS, and achieves superior performance for face recognition on several benchmark datasets.
Trade integration of the new EU member states and selected South-East European countries: lessons from a gravity model

The rapid integration of the transition countries of Central and South Eastern Europe with the euro area is one of the most striking developments that affected trade flows in Europe over the past decade. The aim of this paper is to analyse the factors behind this quick integration and to gauge whether this pattern is likely to continue or to slow down in the coming years. For that purpose, we estimate a large gravity model. Furthermore, the issues related to the interpretation of fixed effects are discussed. Overall, the gravity model successfully explains the trade patterns observed in the past ten years. Although our results require a cautious interpretation, they suggest that trade integration between the largest Central and Eastern European countries and the euro area is already relatively advanced, while these countries still have scope to strengthen their trade links with countries in many other parts of the world. Thus, we conclude that market shares of these countries in the euro area are likely to stabilise soon. For the South Eastern European countries, by contrast, there is still ample scope to integrate more into the world economy. * We have benefited from comments by Stelios Makrydakis and Doris Ritzberger-Grünwald. The views expressed in this contribution are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of the European Central Bank or the Oesterreichische Nationalbank. a European Central Bank.
Estrogen Receptor-Dependent Regulation of Dendritic Cell Development and Function

Autoimmunity, infectious diseases and cancer affect women and men differently. Because they tend to develop more vigorous adaptive immune responses than men, women are less susceptible to some infectious diseases but also at higher risk of autoimmunity. The regulation of immune responses by sex-dependent factors probably involves several non-redundant mechanisms. A privileged area of study, however, concerns the role of sex steroid hormones in the biology of innate immune cells, especially dendritic cells (DCs). In recent years, our understanding of the lineage origin of DC populations has expanded, and the lineage-committing transcription factors shaping peripheral DC subsets have been identified. Both progenitor cells and mature DC subsets express estrogen receptors (ERs), which are ligand-dependent transcription factors. This suggests that estrogens may contribute to the reported sex differences in immunity by regulating DC biology. Here, we review the recent literature and highlight evidence that estrogen-dependent activation of ERα regulates the development or the functional responses of particular DC subsets. The in vitro model of GM-CSF-induced DC differentiation shows that CD11c+ CD11bint Ly6cneg cells depend on ERα activation by estrogen for their development, and for the acquisition of competence to activate naive CD4+ T lymphocytes and mount a robust pro-inflammatory cytokine response to CD40 stimulation. In this model, estrogen signaling in conjunction with GM-CSF is necessary to promote early interferon regulatory factor (Irf)-4 expression in macrophage-DC progenitors and their subsequent differentiation into IRF-4hi CD11c+ CD11bint Ly6cneg cells, closely related to the cDC2 subset. The Flt3L-induced model of DC differentiation in turn shows that ERα signaling promotes the development of conventional DC (cDC) and plasmacytoid DC (pDC) with higher capability of pro-inflammatory cytokine production in response to TLR stimulation. Likewise, cell-intrinsic ER signaling positively regulates the TLR-driven production of type I interferons (IFNs) in mouse pDCs in vivo. This effect of estrogens likely contributes to the greater proficiency of women’s pDCs than men’s as regards the production of type I IFNs elicited by TLR7 ligands. In summary, evidence is emerging in support of the notion that estrogen signaling regulates important aspects of cDC and pDC development and/or effector functions, in both mice and humans.
The Effect of Information Quality on Liquidity Risk

I investigate whether information quality affects the cost of equity capital through liquidity risk. Liquidity risk is the sensitivity of stock returns to unexpected changes in market liquidity; recent asset pricing literature has emphasized the importance of this systematic risk. I find that higher information quality is associated with lower liquidity risk and that the reduction in cost of capital due to this association is economically significant. I also find that the negative association between information quality and liquidity risk is stronger in times of large shocks to market liquidity.
An optical determination of the series resistance in Loligo

The resistance in series with the membrane capacitance in the giant axon of the squid Loligo pealei was measured using potentiometric probes that exhibit absorbance changes proportional to the voltage across the plasma membrane proper. The method relies upon the fact that a voltage drop across the series resistance produces a deviation in the true transmembrane voltage from that imposed by a voltage clamp. Optical measurement of the true transmembrane potential, together with electrical measurement of the ionic current, permits the immediate determination of the series resistance by Ohm's law. An alternative method monitored the amount of electronic series resistance compensation required to force the optical signal to match the shape of the reference potential. The value of the series resistance measured in artificial seawater was 3.78 +/- 0.95 omega X cm2. The estimated value of the contribution of the Schwann cell layer to the series resistance was 2.57 +/- 0.89 omega X cm2.
Cadmium Exposure and Hypertension in the 1999–2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)

Introduction Cadmium induces hypertension in animal models. Epidemiologic studies of cadmium exposure and hypertension, however, have been inconsistent. Objective We aimed to investigate the association of blood and urine cadmium with blood pressure levels and with the prevalence of hypertension in U.S. adults who participated in the 1999–2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Methods We studied participants ≥ 20 years of age with determinations of cadmium in blood (n = 10,991) and urine (n = 3,496). Blood and urine cadmium were measured by atomic absorption spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry, respectively. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels were measured using a standardized protocol. Results The geometric means of blood and urine cadmium were 3.77 nmol/L and 2.46 nmol/L, respectively. After multivariable adjustment, the average differences in systolic and diastolic blood pressure comparing participants in the 90th vs. 10th percentile of the blood cadmium distribution were 1.36 mmHg [95% confidence interval (CI), −0.28 to 3.00] and 1.68 mmHg (95% CI, 0.57–2.78), respectively. The corresponding differences were 2.35 mmHg and 3.27 mmHg among never smokers, 1.69 mmHg and 1.55 mmHg among former smokers, and 0.02 mmHg and 0.69 mmHg among current smokers. No association was observed for urine cadmium with blood pressure levels, or for blood and urine cadmium with the prevalence of hypertension. Conclusions Cadmium levels in blood, but not in urine, were associated with a modest elevation in blood pressure levels. The association was stronger among never smokers, intermediate among former smokers, and small or null among current smokers. Our findings add to the concern of renal and cardiovascular cadmium toxicity at chronic low levels of exposure in the general population.
Low Complexity Damped Gauss-Newton Algorithms for CANDECOMP/PARAFAC

The damped Gauss--Newton (dGN) algorithm for CANDECOMP/PARAFAC (CP) decomposition can handle the challenges of collinearity of factors and different magnitudes of factors; nevertheless, for factorization of an order-$N$ tensor of size $I_1\times\cdots\times I_N$ with rank $R$, the algorithm is computationally demanding due to construction of a large approximate Hessian of size $(RT \times RT)$ and its inversion where $T = \sum_n I_n$. In this paper, we propose a fast implementation of the dGN algorithm which is based on novel expressions of the inverse approximate Hessian in block form. The new implementation has lower computational complexity, besides computation of the gradient (this part is common to both methods), requiring the inversion of a matrix of size $NR^2\times NR^2$, which is much smaller than the whole approximate Hessian, if $T \gg NR$. In addition, the implementation has lower memory requirements, because neither the Hessian nor its inverse never needs to be stored in its entirety. A varia.