Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Beneath the valley of the noncommutative arithmetic-geometric mean inequality: conjectures, case-studies, and consequences

Randomized algorithms that base iteration-level decisions on samples from some pool are ubiquitous in machine learning and optimization. Examples include stochastic gradient descent and randomized coordinate descent. This paper makes progress at theoretically evaluating the difference in performance between sampling with- and without-replacement in such algorithms. Focusing on least means squares optimization, we formulate a noncommutative arithmetic-geometric mean inequality that would prove that the expected convergence rate of without-replacement sampling is faster than that of with-replacement sampling. We demonstrate that this inequality holds for many classes of random matrices and for some pathological examples as well. We provide a deterministic worst-case bound on the gap between the discrepancy between the two sampling models, and explore some of the impediments to proving this inequality in full generality. We detail the consequences of this inequality for stochastic gradient descent and the randomized Kaczmarz algorithm for solving linear systems.
Epidemiology of alcohol and other drug use among American college students.

OBJECTIVE This article provides information on the extent of alcohol use and other drug use among American college students. METHOD Five different sources of data are examined for estimating recent levels of alcohol (and other drug) use among college students: Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study (CAS), the Core Institute (CORE), Monitoring the Future (MTF), National College Health Risk Behavior Survey (NCHRBS) and National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA). RESULTS Alcohol use rates are very high among college students. Approximately two of five American college students were heavy drinkers, defined as having had five or more drinks in a row in the past 2 weeks. Alcohol use is higher among male than female students. White students are highest in heavy drinking, black students are lowest and Hispanic students are intermediate. Use of alcohol--but not cigarettes, marijuana and cocaine--is higher among college students than among noncollege age-mates. Longitudinal data show that, while in high school, students who go on to attend college have lower rates of heavy drinking than do those who will not attend college. Both groups increase their heavy drinking after high school graduation, but the college students increase distinctly more and actually surpass their nonstudent age-mates. Trend data from 1980 to 1999 show some slight improvement in recent years. CONCLUSIONS Despite improvements in the past 20 years, colleges need to do more to reduce heavy alcohol use among students.
Human herpesvirus 6 in cerebrospinal fluid of patients infected with HIV: frequency and clinical significance

The objective was to evaluate the frequency of human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) DNA detection in the CSF of patients infected with HIV and its relation to brain disease and systemic HHV-6 infection. Nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to analyse CSF samples from 365 consecutive HIV infected patients with neurological symptoms. When available, plasma and brain tissues from patients whose CSF was HHV-6 positive were also studied. HHV-6 was found in the CSF of eight of the 365 patients (2.2%): two had type A and four type B; the HHV-6 variant could not be defined in the remaining two. All eight patients had neurological symptoms and signs related to concomitant opportunistic brain diseases, including cytomegalovirus (CMV) encephalitis in five patients whose CSF was also positive for CMV-DNA. Opportunistic infections but no other unexplained lesions were also found in the brain of all of the four patients who underwent neuropathological examination. Both HHV-6 and CMV were also detected in the plasma of respectively five and seven of seven patients whose CSF was HHV-6 positive. In conclusion, HHV-6 type A or B DNA was infrequently found in the CSF of HIV infected patients, in association with both CMV brain infection and systemic HHV-6 replication. However, no certain relation between HHV-6 and brain disease was found.
Using the strength-energy model and self-determination theory to examine drinking-related self-control failure among university students

Researchers adopting the strength-energy model of self-control (Baumeister et al., 1998) have suggested that taxing situations (i.e., self-control demands) exhaust a limited self-control resource and leave individuals in a state of self-regulatory fatigue known as “ego-depletion. ” Following the onset of ego-depletion, numerous studies have shown that individuals are more susceptible to lapses in self-control, including failure to resist alcohol consumption. Selfdetermination theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2000) researchers have contributed to this body of research in at least two major ways. First, they have suggested that psychological need satisfaction may hold a restorative function and buffer against the ego-depleting effects of selfcontrol demands during the day (Ryan & Deci, 2008). Second, they have empirically demonstrated that self-control resources may only be needed to execute responses involving greater controlled (CR) than autonomous (AR) regulation (Moller et al., 2006). Drawing upon each of these perspectives, the current study investigated: a) whether students reporting greater self-control demands during the day would be protected from higher levels of ego-depletion during the evening if they perceived greater psychological need satisfaction during the day, and b) whether students reporting higher levels of ego-depletion during the evening would be at greater risk of alcohol-related self-control failure at night if they reported relatively greater controlled than autonomous regulation for limiting their nighttime drinking. Two independent samples of university students were recruited during the Fall 2015 (Sample 1; n = 175) and Spring 2016 (Sample 2; n = 204) semesters. Across three (Sample 1) and four (Sample 2) week periods, students were prompted to complete measures of self-control demands and psychological need satisfaction during the day, and ego-depletion, alcohol-related self-control failure, and self-regulation for limiting alcohol consumption during the night. Using multilevel
A Comparison Study between Data Mining Tools over some Classification Methods

Nowadays, huge amount of data and information are available for everyone, Data can now be stored in many different kinds of databases and information repositories, besides being available on the Internet or in printed form. With such amount of data, there is a need for powerful techniques for better interpretation of these data that exceeds the human's ability for comprehension and making decision in a better way. In order to reveal the best tools for dealing with the classification task that helps in decision making, this paper has conducted a comparative study between a number of some of the free available data mining and knowledge discovery tools and software packages. Results have showed that the performance of the tools for the classification task is affected by the kind of dataset used and by the way the classification algorithms were implemented within the toolkits. For the applicability issue, the WEKA toolkit has achieved the highest applicability followed by Orange, Tanagra, and KNIME respectively. Finally; WEKA toolkit has achieved the highest improvement in classification performance; when moving from the percentage split test mode to the Cross Validation test mode, followed by Orange, KNIME and finally Tanagra respectively.
Life Expectancy with and without Cognitive Impairment in Seven Latin American and Caribbean Countries

Background The rising prevalence of cognitive impairment is an increasing challenge with the ageing of our populations but little is known about the burden in low- and middle- income Latin American and Caribbean countries (LAC) that are aging more rapidly than their developed counterparts. We examined life expectancies with cognitive impairment (CILE) and free of cognitive impairment (CIFLE) in seven developing LAC countries. Methods Data from The Survey on Health, Well-being and Ageing in LAC (N = 10,597) was utilised and cognitive status was assessed by the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). The Sullivan Method was applied to estimate CILE and CIFLE. Logistic regression was used to determine the effect of age, gender and education on cognitive outcome. Meta-regression models were fitted for all 7 countries together to investigate the relationship between CIFLE and education in men and women at age 60. Results The prevalence of CI increased with age in all countries except Uruguay and with a significant gender effect observed only in Mexico where men had lower odds of CI compared to women [OR = 0.464 95% CInt (0.268 – 0.806)]. Low education was associated with increased prevalence of CI in Brazil [OR = 4.848 (1.173–20.044)], Chile [OR = 3.107 (1.098–8.793), Cuba [OR = 2.295 (1.247–4.225)] and Mexico [OR = 3.838 (1.368–10.765). For males, total life expectancy (TLE) at age 60 was highest in Cuba (19.7 years) and lowest in Brazil and Uruguay (17.6 years). TLE for females at age 60 was highest for Chileans (22.8 years) and lowest for Brazilians (20.2 years). CIFLE for men was greatest in Cuba (19.0 years) and least in Brazil (16.7 years). These differences did not appear to be explained by educational level (Men: p = 0.408, women: p = 0.695). Conclusion Increasing age, female sex and low education were associated with higher CI in LAC reflecting patterns found in other countries.
A Survey on Trust-Based Web Service Provision Approaches

The basic tenet of Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is the possibility of building distributed applications on the Web by using Web Services as fundamental building blocks. The proliferation of such services is considered the second wave of evolution in the Internet age, moving the Web from a collection of pages to a collections of services. Consensus is growing that this Web Service “revolution” won’t eventuate until we resolve trust-related issues. Indeed, the intrinsic openness of the SOC vision makes crucial to locate useful services and recognize them as trustworthy. In this paper we review the field of trust-based Web Service selection, providing a structured classification of current approaches and highlighting the main limitations of each class and of the overall field. As a result, we claim that a soft notion of trust lies behind such weaknesses and we advocate the need of a new approach based on a stronger (semantics-based) notion of trust.
Literature and readers’ empathy: A qualitative text manipulation study

The alleged crisis of the humanities is currently fueling renewed interest in the affective benefits of literary reading. Several quantitative studies have shown a positive correlation between literary reading and empathy. However, the literary nature of the stimuli used in these studies has not been defined at a more detailed, stylistic level. In order to explore the stylistic underpinnings of the hypothesized link between literariness and empathy, we conducted a qualitative experiment in which the degree of stylistic foregrounding was manipulated. Subjects (N = 37) read versions of Katherine Mansfield’s “The Fly,” a short story rich in foregrounding, while marking striking and evocative passages of their choosing. Afterwards, they were asked to select three markings and elaborate on their experiences in writing. One group read the original story, while the other read a ‘non-literary’ version, produced by an established author of suspense fiction for young adults, where stylistic foregrounding was reduced. We found that the non-literary version elicited significantly more (p < 0.01) explicitly empathic responses than the original story. This finding stands in contradiction to widely accepted assumptions in recent research, but can be assimilated in alternative models of literariness and affect in literary reading. We present an analysis of the data with a view to offering more than one interpretation of the observed effects of stylistic foregrounding.
Random Deployment of Wireless Sensor Networks : Power of Second Chance

In a pioneering work, Gupta and Kumar [9] studied the critical transmission range needed for the connectivity of random wireless networks. Their result implies that, given a square region of √ n× √ n, the asymptotic number of random nodes (each with transmission range 1) needed to form a connected network is Θ(n ln n) with high probability. This result has been used as cornerstones in deriving a number of asymptotic bounds for random multi-hop wireless networks, such as network capacity [8, 11, 12, 15]. In this paper we show that the asymptotic number of nodes needed for connectivity can be significantly reduced to Θ(n ln ln n) if we are given a “second chance” to deploy nodes. More generally, under some deployment assumption, if we can randomly deploy nodes in k rounds (for a constant k) and the random deployment of the ith round can utilize the information gathered from the previous i− 1 rounds, we show that the number of nodes needed to provide a connected network with high probability is Θ(n ln n). (See Eq (1) for the definition of ln n. ) Similar results hold when we need deploy sensors such that the sensing regions of all sensors cover the region of interest.
A Particle-Partition of Unity Method for the Solution of Elliptic, Parabolic, and Hyperbolic PDEs

In this paper, we present a meshless discretization technique for instationary convection-diffusion problems. It is based on operator splitting, the method of characteristics, and a generalized partition of unity method. We focus on the discretization process and its quality. The method may be used as an h-version or a p-version. Even for general particle distributions, the convergence behavior of the different versions corresponds to that of the respective version of the finite element method on a uniform grid. We discuss the implementational aspects of the proposed method. Furthermore, we present the results of numerical examples, where we considered instationary convection-diffusion, instationary diffusion, linear advection, and elliptic problems.
Bisphosphonates induce apoptosis in human breast cancer cell lines

Breast cancer has a prodigious capacity to metastasize to bone. In women with advanced breast cancer and bone metastases, bisphosphonates reduce the incidence of hypercalcaemia and skeletal morbidity. Recent clinical findings suggest that some bisphosphonates reduce the tumour burden in bone with a consequent increase in survival, raising the possibility that bisphosphonates may have a direct effect on breast cancer cells. We have investigated the in vitro effects of bisphosphonates zoledronate, pamidronate, clodronate and EB 1053 on growth, viability and induction of apoptosis in three human breast cancer cell lines (MDA-MB-231, Hs 578T and MCF-7). Cell growth was monitored by crystal violet dye assay, and cell viability was quantitated by MTS dye reduction. Induction of apoptosis was determined by identification of morphological features of apoptosis using time-lapse videomicroscopy, identifying morphological changes in nucleis using Hoechst staining, quantitation of DNA fragmentation, level of expression of bcl-2 and bax proteins and identification of the proteolytic cleavage of Poly (ADP)-ribose polymerase (PARP). All four bisphosphonates significantly reduced cell viability in all three cell lines. Zoledronate was the most potent bisphosphonate with IC50values of 15, 20 and 3 μM respectively in MDA-MB-231, MCF-7 and Hs 578T cells. Corresponding values for pamidronate were 40, 35 and 25 μM, whereas clodronate and EB 1053 were more than two orders of magnitude less potent. An increase in the proportion of cells having morphological features characteristic of apoptosis, characteristic apoptotic changes in the nucleus, time-dependent increase in the percentage of fragmented chromosomal DNA, down-regulation in bcl-2 protein and proteolytic cleavage of PARP, all indicate that bisphosphonates have direct anti-tumour effects on human breast cancer cells. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaign
The Distribution of Exchange Rate Volatility

Using high-frequency data on Deutschemark and Yen returns against the dollar, we construct model-free estimates of daily exchange rate volatility and correlation, covering an entire decade. In addition to being model-free, our estimates are also approximately free of measurement error under general conditions, which we delineate. Hence, for all practical purposes, we can treat the exchange rate volatilities and correlations as observed rather than latent. We do so, and we characterize their joint distribution, both unconditionally and conditionally. Noteworthy results include a simple normality-inducing volatility transformation, high contemporaneous correlation across volatilities, high correlation between correlation and volatilities, pronounced and highly persistent temporal variation in both volatilities and correlation, clear evidence of long-memory dynamics in both volatilities and correlation, and remarkably precise scaling laws under temporal aggregation.
Identification and Functional Testing of ERCC2 Mutations in a Multi-national Cohort of Patients with Familial Breast- and Ovarian Cancer

The increasing application of gene panels for familial cancer susceptibility disorders will probably lead to an increased proposal of susceptibility gene candidates. Using ERCC2 DNA repair gene as an example, we show that proof of a possible role in cancer susceptibility requires a detailed dissection and characterization of the underlying mutations for genes with diverse cellular functions (in this case mainly DNA repair and basic cellular transcription). In case of ERCC2, panel sequencing of 1345 index cases from 587 German, 405 Lithuanian and 353 Czech families with breast and ovarian cancer (BC/OC) predisposition revealed 25 mutations (3 frameshift, 2 splice-affecting, 20 missense), all absent or very rare in the ExAC database. While 16 mutations were unique, 9 mutations showed up repeatedly with population-specific appearance. Ten out of eleven mutations that were tested exemplarily in cell-based functional assays exert diminished excision repair efficiency and/or decreased transcriptional activation capability. In order to provide evidence for BC/OC predisposition, we performed familial segregation analyses and screened ethnically matching controls. However, unlike the recently published RECQL example, none of our recurrent ERCC2 mutations showed convincing co-segregation with BC/OC or significant overrepresentation in the BC/OC cohort. Interestingly, we detected that some deleterious founder mutations had an unexpectedly high frequency of > 1% in the corresponding populations, suggesting that either homozygous carriers are not clinically recognized or homozygosity for these mutations is embryonically lethal. In conclusion, we provide a useful resource on the mutational landscape of ERCC2 mutations in hereditary BC/OC patients and, as our key finding, we demonstrate the complexity of correct interpretation for the discovery of “bonafide” breast cancer susceptibility genes.
On the Origin of the Rotation Curves of Dark Matter-dominated Galaxies

Rotation curves of dark matter-dominated galaxies measure the mass profiles of galactic halos and thereby test theories of their cosmological origin. While attention has focused lately on the possible discrepancy at small galactocentric radii between observed rotation curves and the singular density profiles predicted by N-body simulations of the cold dark matter (CDM) model, the observed rotation curves nevertheless contain valuable additional information with which to test the theory and constrain the fundamental cosmological parameters, despite this uncertainty at small radii. An analytical model we derived elsewhere for the postcollapse equilibrium of cosmological halos as truncated, nonsingular, isothermal spheres (TISs) reproduces many of the average properties of halos in CDM simulations to good accuracy, including the density profiles outside the central region. The circular velocity profile of this TIS model, moreover, is in excellent agreement with the observed ones and yields the mass and formation epoch of an observed halo from the parameters of its rotation curve. This allows us to predict correlations among rotation curve parameters, such as the maximum velocity and the radius at which it occurs, for different mass halos forming at different epochs in the CDM model. As an example, we derive the observed vmax-rmax relation analytically, with preference for the flat ΛCDM model.
Long-term monitoring reveals carbon–nitrogen metabolism key to microcystin production in eutrophic lakes

The environmental drivers contributing to cyanobacterial dominance in aquatic systems have been extensively studied. However, understanding of toxic vs. non-toxic cyanobacterial population dynamics and the mechanisms regulating cyanotoxin production remain elusive, both physiologically and ecologically. One reason is the disconnect between laboratory and field-based studies. Here, we combined 3 years of temporal data, including microcystin (MC) concentrations, 16 years of long-term ecological research, and 10 years of molecular data to investigate the potential factors leading to the selection of toxic Microcystis and MC production. Our analysis revealed that nitrogen (N) speciation and inorganic carbon (C) availability might be important drivers of Microcystis population dynamics and that an imbalance in cellular C: N ratios may trigger MC production. More specifically, precipitous declines in ammonium concentrations lead to a transitional period of N stress, even in the presence of high nitrate concentrations, that we call the “toxic phase. ” Following the toxic phase, temperature and cyanobacterial abundance remained elevated but MC concentrations drastically declined. Increases in ammonium due to lake turnover may have led to down regulation of MC synthesis or a shift in the community from toxic to non-toxic species. While total phosphorus (P) to total N ratios were relatively low over the time-series, MC concentrations were highest when total N to total P ratios were also highest. Similarly, high C: N ratios were also strongly correlated to the toxic phase. We propose a metabolic model that corroborates molecular studies and reflects our ecological observations that C and N metabolism may regulate MC production physiologically and ecologically. In particular, we hypothesize that an imbalance between 2-oxoglutarate and ammonium in the cell regulates MC synthesis in the environment.
Cone Beam CT vs. Fan Beam CT: A Comparison of Image Quality and Dose Delivered Between Two Differing CT Imaging Modalities

A comparison of image quality and dose delivered between two differing computed tomography (CT) imaging modalities—fan beam and cone beam—was performed. A literature review of quantitative analyses for various image quality aspects such as uniformity, signal-to-noise ratio, artifact presence, spatial resolution, modulation transfer function (MTF), and low contrast resolution was generated. With these aspects quantified, cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) shows a superior spatial resolution to that of fan beam, while fan beam shows a greater ability to produce clear and anatomically correct images with better soft tissue differentiation. The results indicate that fan beam CT produces superior images to that of on-board imaging (OBI) cone beam CT systems, while providing a considerably less dose to the patient.