Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Affective feedback: an investigation into the role of emotions in the information seeking process

User feedback is considered to be a critical element in the information seeking process. An important aspect of the feedback cycle is relevance assessment that has progressively become a popular practice in web searching activities and interactive information retrieval (IR). The value of relevance assessment lies in the disambiguation of the user's information need, which is achieved by applying various feedback techniques. Such techniques vary from explicit to implicit and help determine the relevance of the retrieved documents. The former type of feedback is usually obtained through the explicit and intended indication of documents as relevant (positive feedback) or irrelevant (negative feedback). Explicit feedback is a robust method for improving a system's overall retrieval performance and producing better query reformulations [1], at the expense of users' cognitive resources. On the other hand, implicit feedback techniques tend to collect information on search behavior in a more intelligent and unobtrusive manner. By doing so, they disengage the users from the cognitive burden of document rating and relevance judgments. Information-seeking activities such as reading time, saving, printing, selecting and referencing have been all treated as indicators of relevance, despite the lack of sufficient evidence to support their effectiveness [2]. Besides their apparent differences, both categories of feedback techniques determine document relevance with respect to the cognitive and situational levels of the interactive dialogue that occurs between the user and the retrieval system [5]. However, this approach does not account for the dynamic interplay and adaptation that takes place between the different dialogue levels, but most importantly it does not consider the affective dimension of interaction. Users interact with intentions, motivations and feelings apart from real-life problems and information objects, which are all critical aspects of cognition and decision-making [3][4]. By evaluating users' affective response towards an information object (e.g. a document), prior and post to their exposure to it, a more accurate understanding of the object's properties and degree of relevance to the current information need may be facilitated. Furthermore, systems that can detect and respond accordingly to user emotions could potentially improve the naturalness of human-computer interaction and progressively optimize their retrieval strategy. The current study investigates the role of emotions in the information seeking process, as the latter are communicated through multi-modal interaction, and reconsiders relevance feedback with respect to what occurs on the affective level of interaction as well.
Collective Moral Hazard , Maturity Mismatch and Systemic

The paper elicits a mechanism by which private leverage choices exhibit strategic complementarities through the reaction of monetary policy. When everyone engages in maturity transformation, authorities haver little choice but facilitating refinancing. In turn, refusing to adopt a risky balance sheet lowers the return on equity. The key ingredient is that monetary policy is non-targeted. The ex post benefits from a monetary bailout accrue in proportion to the number amount of leverage, while the distortion costs are to a large extent fixed. This insight has important consequences. First, banks choose to correlate their risk exposures. Second, private borrowers may deliberately choose to increase their interest-rate sensitivity following bad news about future needs for liquidity. Third, optimal monetary policy is time inconsistent. Fourth, macro-prudential supervision is called for. We characterize the optimal regulation, which takes the form of a minimum liquidity requirement coupled with monitoring of the quality of liquid assets. We establish the robustness of our insights when the set of bailout instruments is endogenous and characterize the structure of optimal bailouts.
3D video watermarking using DT-DWT to resist synthesis view attack

In this paper, a 3D video watermarking scheme is proposed for depth image based rendering (DIBR) based multi view video plus depth (MVD) encoding technique. To make the scheme invariant to view synthesis process in DIBR technique, watermark is inserted in a center view which is rendered from left and right views of a 3D video frame. A low pass center view, obtained from the motion compensated temporal filtering over all the frames of a GOP, is used for embedding to reduce the temporal flickering artifacts. To make the scheme invariant to the DIBR process, 2D DT-DWT block coefficients of low-pass center view are used for embedding by exploiting its shift invariance and directional property. A comprehensive set of experiments have been carried out to justify the robustness of the proposed scheme over existing schemes with respect to compression of the 3D-HEVC video codec and synthesis view attack.
ODSBR: An On-Demand Secure Byzantine Routing Protocol

A common technique used by routing protocols for ad hoc wireless networks is to establish the routing paths on-demand, as opposed to continually maintaining a complete routing table. Since in an ad hoc network nodes not in direct range communicate via intermediate nodes, a significant concern is the ability to route in the presence of Byzantine failures which include nodes that drop, fabricate, modify, or mis-route packets in an attempt to disrupt the routing service. We propose the first on-demand routing protocol for ad hoc wireless networks that provides resilience to Byzantine failures caused by individual or colluding nodes. The protocol relies on an adaptive probing technique that detects a malicious link after log n faults have occurred, where n is the length of the path. Problematic links are avoided by using a weight-based mechanism that multiplicatively increases their weights and by using an on-demand route discovery protocol that finds a least weight path to the destination. Our protocol bounds the amount of damage that an attacker or a group of colluding attackers can cause to the network. C.2. 0 General: Security and protection. C.2. 1 Network Architecture and Design: Wireless communication C.2. 2 Network Protocols:Routing protocols Terms: Algorithms, Design, Reliability, Security, Theory ∗Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21218 USA. E-mail: {baruch, crix, dholmer, herb}@cs.jhu. edu . †Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, 250 N. University Street, West Lafayette, IN 47907. E-mail: crisn@cs.purdue. edu .
Entropy Search for Information-Efficient Global Optimization

Contemporary global optimization algorithms are based on local measures of utility, rather than a probability measure over location and value of the optimum. They thus attempt to collect low function values, not to learn about the optimum. The reason for the absence of probabilistic global optimizers is that the corresponding inference problem is intractable in several ways. This paper develops desiderata for probabilistic optimization algorithms, then presents a concrete algorithm which addresses each of the computational intractabilities with a sequence of approximations and explicitly addresses the decision problem of maximizing information gain from each evaluation.
A Representative Clinical Course of Progression, with Molecular Insights, of Hormone Receptor-Positive, HER2-Negative Bone Metastatic Breast Cancer

Despite treatment advances, breast cancer remains a leading cause of death of women in the United States, mostly due to metastatic disease. Bone is a preferential site for breast cancer metastasis, and most metastatic breast cancer patients experience bone involvement at the time of death. The majority of patients with bone metastatic breast cancer are first diagnosed with and treated for early-stage disease, and from development of early-stage breast cancer to the recurrence of cancer in the bones, up to 30 years may elapse. Throughout this timeframe, a typical patient undergoes many treatments that have effects on the bone microenvironment. Therefore, this review explores the clinical course of a representative patient with hormone receptor-positive bone metastatic breast cancer, examining key treatment options at each stage and their effects on preventing and treating bone metastases.
Photosynthesis and Inorganic Carbon Usage by the Marine Cyanobacterium, Synechococcus sp.

The marine cyanobacterium, Synechococcus sp. Nägeli (strain RRIMP N1) changes its affinity for external inorganic carbon used in photosynthesis, depending on the concentration of CO(2) provided during growth. The high affinity for CO(2) + HCO(3) (-) of air-grown cells (K((1/2)) < 80 nanomoles [pH 8.2]) would seem to be the result of the presence of an inducible mechanism which concentrates inorganic carbon (and thus CO(2)) within the cells. Silicone-oil centrifugation experiments indicate that the inorganic carbon concentration inside suitably induced cells may be in excess of 1,000-fold greater than that in the surrounding medium, and that this accumulation is dependent upon light energy. The quantum requirements for O(2) evolution appear to be some 2-fold greater for low CO(2)-grown cells, compared with high CO(2)-grown cells. This presumably is due to the diversion of greater amounts of light energy into inorganic carbon transport in these cells.A number of experimental approaches to the question of whether CO(2) or HCO(3) (-) is primarily utilized by the inorganic carbon transport system in these cells show that in fact both species are capable of acting as substrate. CO(2), however, is more readily taken up when provided at an equivalent concentration to HCO(3) (-). This discovery suggests that the mechanistic basis for the inorganic carbon concentrating system may not be a simple HCO(3) (-) pump as has been suggested. It is clear, however, that during steady-state photosynthesis in seawater equilibrated with air, HCO(3) (-) uptake into the cell is the primary source of internal inorganic carbon.
Effectiveness of combination use of intralesional steroid with 5-fluorouracil in the treatment of keloid patients

Background: Keloids are a common problem with significant recurrence rates despite intralesional steroid treatment and 5-fluorouracil in combination with triamcinolone may be superior to triamcinolone alone. Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of the combination use of intralesional steroids with 5-fluorouracil in the treatment of keloid. Methods: The study was a descriptive cross-sectional study and was conducted at the Department of Dermatology and Venereology, Khwaja Yunus Ali Medical College (KYAMC), Enayetpur, Sirajganj, from July 2020 to June 2021. A total of 100 patients with keloid were included in this study. These patients were subjected to history, clinical examination, and investigations. In all cases, informed written consent was taken from the Participants and a separate case record form was used during data collection. Collected data were analyzed by the statistical software IBM SPSS 25. Results: This study shows that the majority (68%) of patients belonged to the age group of 21-30 years. The mean age was 26.43±7.77 years. Regarding sex, 56% were females and 44% were males with a male-female ratio of 1.3:1. 52% of patients had a duration of lesion up to 1 year, 22% of patients had 1-2 years and 26% of patients had >2 years. The most common site of keloid was the chest (38%), then face (32%), upper extremity (16%), shoulder (6%), back (4%). The most common presenting symptoms were pruritis (56%), then 38% were cosmetic disfigurement, 32% were skin discoloration, 28% were pain and 18% were restriction of movement. Trauma was the commonest factor seen in 34% of the patients followed by ear piercing (22%) and infection (20%). Other causes were spontaneous (10%), acne (6%), burns (6%), and post-surgical keloid (2%). 16 had a positive family history of the keloid disease. The majority (70%) had good outcomes followed by excellent outcomes in 22% and 8% had average outcomes. It was observed that most patients (88%) did not have any adverse effects. Only 12% had adverse effects seen as skin ulceration (6%), skin atrophy (4%) and telangiectasia (2%). Conclusion: This study revealed that the combination use of intralesional steroids with 5-fluorouracil in the treatment of keloid seems to offer the balanced benefit of faster and more efficacious response with fewer adverse effects. Treatment has to be individualized and can be combined with one or more modalities to aim for better efficacy and safety. Mediscope 2024;11(1): 41-47
Impact of Clustered Demands on Performance of Replication Strategies in Data Grid Systems

This paper considers the impact of clustering demands on download performance of data grids. The performance metrics are hit ratios and average access latency. For a replication strategy, we build a mechanism by means of majorization theory to compare system performance for two clustering patterns. We employ proportional replication strategy as an example to illustrate the effectiveness of this mechanism. We find that clustering can increase local site hit ratio of proportional replication strategy. However, clustering does not always bring benefits to system. The inter grid hit ratio and average access latency will deteriorate for some cases. If the function of inter grid hit ratio is convex on the domain of file request rate, clustered demands will increase inter grid hit ratio compared with uniform demand. Simulation results validate the correctness of the trend deduced by this mechanism.
Socioeconomic circumstances, health behaviours and functional limitations in older persons in four Central and Eastern European populations

Objectives: to investigate functional limitations and their association with socioeconomic factors in four Central and Eastern European populations. Methods: a cross-sectional study of random population samples in Novosibirsk (Russia), Krakow (Poland), Kaunas (Lithuania) and six Czech towns participating in the HAPIEE study. Functional limitations (classified into tertiles of the SF-36 physical functioning subscale), socioeconomic circumstances and health behaviours were available for 34,431 subjects aged 45–69 years. Results: the proportion of subjects in the worst tertile of the functional limitations score (≤80% of the maximum score) ranged from 21% of the men in Kaunas to 48% in Krakow women. In multivariate ordered logistic regression, functional limitations were strongly inversely associated with education and positively with material deprivation and with being economically inactive. Functional limitations were more common in male smokers and less common in alcohol drinkers. Socioeconomic characteristics explained some of the differences in functional limitations between populations. Health behaviours explained some of the differences between social groups in both genders and between populations in women. Conclusion: unexpectedly, functional limitations were not most common in the sample from Russia, the country with the highest mortality rates. All socioeconomic measures were strongly associated with functional limitations and made some contribution towards explaining differences in limitations between populations.
Spatial and temporal features of superordinate semantic processing studied with fMRI and EEG

The relationships between the anatomical representation of semantic knowledge in the human brain and the timing of neurophysiological mechanisms involved in manipulating such information remain unclear. This is the case for superordinate semantic categorization—the extraction of general features shared by broad classes of exemplars (e.g., living vs. non-living semantic categories). We proposed that, because of the abstract nature of this information, input from diverse input modalities (visual or auditory, lexical or non-lexical) should converge and be processed in the same regions of the brain, at similar time scales during superordinate categorization—specifically in a network of heteromodal regions, and late in the course of the categorization process. In order to test this hypothesis, we utilized electroencephalography and event related potentials (EEG/ERP) with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to characterize subjects' responses as they made superordinate categorical decisions (living vs. non-living) about objects presented as visual pictures or auditory words. Our results reveal that, consistent with our hypothesis, during the course of superordinate categorization, information provided by these diverse inputs appears to converge in both time and space: fMRI showed that heteromodal areas of the parietal and temporal cortices are active during categorization of both classes of stimuli. The ERP results suggest that superordinate categorization is reflected as a late positive component (LPC) with a parietal distribution and long latencies for both stimulus types. Within the areas and times in which modality independent responses were identified, some differences between living and non-living categories were observed, with a more widespread spatial extent and longer latency responses for categorization of non-living items.
Liver X Receptor Activation Enhances Cholesterol Loss from the Brain, Decreases Neuroinflammation, and Increases Survival of the NPC1 Mouse

Although cholesterol is a major component of the CNS, there is little information on how or whether a change in sterol flux across the blood–brain barrier might alter neurodegeneration. In Niemann-Pick type C (NPC) disease, a mutation in NPC1 protein causes unesterified cholesterol to accumulate in the lysosomal compartment of every cell, including neurons and glia. Using the murine model of this disease, we used genetic and pharmacologic approaches in an attempt to alter cholesterol homeostasis across the CNS. Genetic deletion of the sterol transporters ATP-binding cassette transporter A1 (ABCA1) and low-density lipoprotein receptor in the NPC1 mouse did not affect sterol balance or longevity. However, deletion of the nuclear receptor, liver X receptor β (LXRβ), had an adverse effect on progression of the disease. We therefore tested the effects of increasing LXR activity by oral administration of a synthetic ligand for this transcription factor. Treatment with this LXR agonist increased cholesterol excretion out of brain from 17 to 49 μg per day, slowed neurodegeneration, and prolonged life. This agonist did not alter synthesis of cholesterol or expression of genes associated with the formation of 24(S)-hydroxycholesterol or neurosteroids such as CYP46A1, 3αHSD, and CYP11A1. However, levels of the sterol transporters ABCA1 and ATP-binding cassette transporter G1 were increased. Concomitantly, markers of neuroinflammation, CD14, MAC1, CD11c, and inducible nitric oxide synthase, were reduced, and microglia reverted from their amoeboid, active form to a ramified, resting configuration. Thus, LXR activation resulted in increased cholesterol excretion from the brain, decreased neuroinflammation, and deactivation of microglia to slow neurodegeneration and extend the lifespan of the NPC1 mouse.
Airborne emissivity data to map the urban materials to be checked for maintenance: The asphalt paving and asbestos cement roofing case studies

This paper describes the suitability of airborne emissivity data to locate those materials noteworthy in an urban context. Among them, the test cases of asphalt roads and asbestos cement roofs were analyzed to individuate those where a maintenance intervention is required. To this aim, we first identify and select using a segmentation procedure the roads' asphalt pavements and the asbestos cement roofs of an urban area in Italy covered by Multispectral Infrared Visible Imaging Spectrometer (MIVIS) imagery. Next, since both the asphalt pavement and the asbestos cement surface defects are strictly related to the decrease of their matrix, which causes an increase of the abundance of surfacing minerals showing diagnostic absorption emissivity peaks, these peculiar features were used for retrieving from MIVIS emissivities the sectors exhibiting defects on the material surfaces. The results showed that MIVIS data allow establishing a threshold that points out those asphalt road and asbestos cement roof sites that requires a maintenance intervention. Therefore, the proposed method can supply local government authorities an efficient, rapid and repeatable mapping procedure providing the location of the paving and roofing materials to be checked.
Effectiveness and safety of endobronchial ultrasound–transbronchial needle aspiration: a systematic review

The aim of the present systematic review was to assess the effectiveness and safety of real time endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS–TBNA) in patients with suspected or known bronchopulmonary carcinoma, as well as in other clinical indications presented by lymphatic adenopathies. A systematic review was carried out in November 2007 and updated in April 2008 using the main databases. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied to the papers retrieved. A total of 20 publications were included. Of these, 14 were original studies that investigated the clinical usefulness of the technique in visualising and staging lymph nodes in patients with suspected or established lung cancer. Sensitivity ranged 85–100% and negative predictive value ranged 11–97.4%. Three studies assessed the clinical usefulness of the technique in the diagnosis of sarcoidosis. EBUS–TBNA was diagnostic in 88–93% of patients. One retrospective study evaluated the use of EBUS–TBNA in the diagnosis of lymphoma. None of the studies included in the present review reported important complications. Endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration is a safe and highly accurate procedure for the examination and staging of mediastinal and hilar lymph nodes in patients with known or suspected lung malignancy. The evidence is promising for sarcoidosis but is not sufficient for lymphoma.