Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accepted manuscript Gradual Trust and Distrust in Recommender Systems

Trust networks among users of a recommender system (RS) prove beneficial to the quality and amount of the recommendations. Since trust is often a gradual phenomenon, fuzzy relations are the pre-eminent tools for modeling such networks. However, as current trust-enhanced RSs do not work with the notion of distrust, they cannot differentiate unknown users from malicious users, nor represent inconsistency. These are serious drawbacks in large networks where many users are unknown to each other and might provide contradictory information. In this paper, we advocate the use of a trust model in which trust scores are (trust,distrust)-couples, drawn from a bilattice that preserves valuable trust provenance information including gradual trust, distrust, ignorance, and inconsistency. We pay particular attention to deriving trust information through a trusted third party, which becomes especially challenging when also distrust is involved.
Trends and Characteristics of Pediatric Dentistry Patients Treated under General Anesthesia.

PURPOSE The aims of this study were to describe the demographic characteristics of pediatric dentistry patients undergoing dental rehabilitation under general anesthesia (DRGA) at UNC-Chapel Hill during the last 13 years and identify factors associated with multiple (1 versus 2 or more) DRGA visits during that timeframe. STUDY DESIGN Administrative claims data were used to identify children and adolescents (age <18 years) who underwent DRGA between 1/1/2002 and 12/31/2014 at the UNC Hospitals system. Information on children's age, sex and all treatment-associated CDT codes were collected. Descriptive statistics and bivariate tests of association were used for data analyses. RESULTS There were 4,413 DRGAs among 3,973 children (median age=4 years 8 months, males=55%) during the study period. The annual rate of DRGAs increased over time, peaking (n=447) in 2013. Overall, 9% of children had ≥2 visits with repeat rates up to 18%. There was no association between children's sex and receipt of one versus multiple DRGAs; however, craniofacial cases were more likely (p<0.0005) to have multiple DRGAs compared to non-craniofacial ones. CONCLUSION DRGAs are on the increase-with the exception of craniofacial and special health care needs patients, multiple DRGAs may be reflective of sub-optimal adherence to preventive and continuing care recommendations.
Bereavement hallucinations after the loss of a spouse: Associations with psychopathological measures, personality and coping style

Abstract Bereavement hallucinations (BHs) were assessed in 175 conjugally bereaved participants 4 years post loss, to explore whether BHs were: (a) associated with psychological distress and (b) predicted by sociodemographic variables, personality and/or coping style. Participants with BHs scored significantly higher than those without BHs on prolonged grief, post-traumatic stress, depression symptoms, and emotional loneliness. Hierarchical logistic regression analysis showed avoidant coping, openness to experience, and length of marriage to significantly predict BHs, while detached coping was negatively associated with BHs. This study suggests that BHs may be an indicator of psychological distress in bereavement.
Essays on the Production of Human Capital

markdownabstract__Abstract__ 1.1 Background Human capital has been shown to be important for economic growth (e.g. Hanushek and Woessman, 2008). Countries would not flourish and people would be less happy if individuals did not have at least some. Human capital is not fixed, however, as one can increase her human capital by investing in it. One way to do so is through education. People go to school in order to learn skills that are necessary to produce goods with economic value. Moreover, they learn skills that are relevant for later success in life. This might not only be important for their own success, but also for that of others. Persons may benefit from someone else’s education: people can learn from each other, and may be less likely to become a victim of crime if others are higher educated. This is often referred to as positive spillovers or ‘external’ effects. However, people may underinvest in human capital. They may not have the financial resources for education, they may be shortsighted, or simply do not see the value of education. This may not only harm them in terms of a lower probability to be employed or lower wages, it may also harm the society as a whole. External effects, as discussed above, might not be internalized if people do not invest enough in their human capital. Moreover, it might lead to higher educational inequality if some underinvest while others would not. For these reasons, the government interferes with people’s decisions with respect to schooling. That is, governments intervene in the market for education. They do so by jurisdiction, i.e. setting rules and regulations, and by subsidizing education. But how does a government intervene in an effective way? That is one of the main questions that economists of education are studying.
Influence of metabolic syndrome on cataract risk : a meta-analysis of observational studies

The purpose of this article was to conduct the association between metabolic syndrome (MetS) and the risk of cataract. PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Cochrane Library were searched for observational studies published before March 2015. Two authors independently extracted information from all included studies. STATA (version 12.0) software was used for data analysis. Fixed-effects or random-effects methods were used for the risk estimates. Publication bias was assessed qualitatively. Heterogeneity was examined using the I2 statistic. Six independent studies were chosen for analysis, with a total of 54398 participants. This meta-analysis confirmed that MetS was associated with increased prevalence of cataract among cohort/case-control studies (RR 1.58, 95% CI: 1.4-1.77) and cross-sectional studies (OR 1.23; 95% CI, 1.05-1.44). In the subgroup meta-analysis by cataract types, MetS was found to be associated with an increased incidence of cataract extraction (OR 1.75; 95% CI, 1.492.06). However, no significant association was observed between Mets and all three cataract subtypes. MetS was significantly associated with cataract only in women (OR 1.29; 95% CI, 1.02-1.63). All individual components of MetS, including obesity, high glucose levels, high blood pressure (HBP), high triglycerides, and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL), were also found to correlate with an increased estimated risk of cataract. The ORs with 95% CI were 1.30 (1.09-1.55), 1.37 (1.1-1.71), 1.39 (1.08-1.79), 1.10 (1.0-1.20), 1.17 (1.04-1.32), respectively. In addition, cataract prevalence tended to increase with the number of MetS components. Overall, our results suggested that MetS was associated with a high risk of cataract.
Preventive care: underused even when free. A tale from Italy

Despite being strongly recommended for health, preventive care is significantly underused even in countries like Italy where it can be obtained for free. We analyze the determinants of pap test and mammography utilization with an empirical model based on human capital theory. One original feature is the simultaneous inclusion of: health beliefs, general practitioner and non-monetary barriers to access. Using a recursive probit model explaining both recourse to prevention and physician visit, we find evidence to support both Grossman's capital depreciation theory (at younger ages) and Cropper's shorter pay-off period theory (at older ages). We also show that health beliefs play a key role and that the general practitioner hardly affects the decision to undergo preventive treatments. Finally, prevention supply does not appear to be a factor and there is considerable geographical heterogeneity.
Survival of women with in fl ammatory breast cancer : a large population-based study †

incidence and mortality since 1990 in 35 countries with Caucasian-majority populations. Ann Oncol 2008; 19(6): 1187–1194. 36. Fischerman K, Mouridsen HT. Danish Breast Cancer Cooperative Group (DBCG). Structure and results of the organization. Acta Oncol 1988; 27(6A): 593–596. 37. Jensena AR, Ewertz M, Cold S et al. Time trends and regional differences in registration, stage distribution, surgical management and survival of breast cancer in Denmark. Eur J Cancer 2003; 39(12): 1783–1793. 38. Andreasen AH, Mouridsen HT, Andersen KW et al. [Improved prognosis of breast cancer]. Ugeskr Laeger 1994; 156(44): 6512–6517. 39. Eaker S, Dickman PW, Bergkvist L et al. Differences in management of older women influence breast cancer survival: results from a population-based database in Sweden. PLoS Med 2006; 3(3): e25. 40. Early breast cancer trialists group. Systemic treatment of early breast-cancer by hormonal, cytotoxic, or immune therapy—133 randomized trials involving 31000 recurrences and 24000 deaths among 75000 women. Lancet1992; 339(8785): 71–85.
Death and population dynamics affect mutation rate estimates and evolvability under stress in bacteria

The stress-induced mutagenesis paradigm postulates that in response to stress, bacteria increase their genome-wide mutation rate, in turn increasing the chances that a descendant is able to withstand the stress. This has implications for antibiotic treatment: exposure to sub-inhibitory doses of antibiotics has been reported to increase bacterial mutation rates, and thus probably the rate at which resistance mutations appear and lead to treatment failure. Measuring mutation rates under stress, however, is problematic, because existing methods assume there is no death. Yet sub-inhibitory stress levels may induce a substantial death rate. Death events need to be compensated by extra replication to reach a given population size, thus giving more opportunities to acquire mutations. We show that ignoring death leads to a systematic overestimation of mutation rates under stress. We developed a system using plasmid segregation to measure death and growth rates simultaneously in bacterial populations. We use it to replicate classical experiments reporting antibiotic-induced mutagenesis. We found that a substantial death rate occurs at the tested sub-inhibitory concentrations, and taking this death into account lowers and sometimes removes the signal for stress-induced mutagenesis. Moreover even when antibiotics increase mutation rate, sub-inhibitory treatments do not increase genetic diversity and evolvability, again because of effects of the antibiotics on population dynamics. Beside showing that population dynamic is a crucial but neglected parameter affecting evolvability, we provide better experimental and computational tools to study evolvability under stress, leading to a re-assessment of the magnitude and significance of the stress-induced mutagenesis paradigm.
Consent and probation: An analogy with contract law

The Journal EJprob recently published a special issue on consent in sentencing. The EPR (2010) refer to consent on numerous occasions, and in most legal systems consent is required at the sentencing stage. However, in many cases, the alternative is custody, which raises concerns over how freely consent is given and whether it is a mere formal exercise. Social scientists have tried to theorise consent building on compliance, legitimacy of justice, or notions such as therapeutic alliance and offender agency. Some have deplored the existence of a ‘contractual governance’. This article shall argue that a renewed analysis of contract law has the potential to respect offenders’ agency and their right to govern their own lives, whilst taking stock of their need for treatment and compensating for their vulnerable condition. It shows that more rather than less contract is needed in order to avoid both punitive governance and neo-paternalism.
Under the Underground: Predicting Private Interactions in Underground Forums

Underground forums where users discuss, buy, and sell illicit services and goods facilitate a better understanding of the economy and organization of cybercriminals. Prior work has shown that in particular private interactions provide a wealth of information about the cybercriminal ecosystem. Yet, those messages are seldom available to analysts, except when there is a leak. To address this problem we propose a supervised machine learning based method able to predict which public \threads will generate private messages, after a partial leak of such messages has occurred. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to develop a solution to overcome the barrier posed by limited to no information on private activity for underground forum analysis. Additionally, we propose an automate method for labeling posts, significantly reducing the cost of our approach in the presence of real unlabeled data. This method can be tuned to focus on the likelihood of users receiving private messages, or \threads triggering private interactions. We evaluate the performance of our methods using data from three real forum leaks. Our results show that public information can indeed be used to predict private activity, although prediction models do not transfer well between forums. We also find that neither the length of the leak period nor the time between the leak and the prediction have significant impact on our technique's performance, and that NLP features dominate the prediction power.
A REVIEW OF THE PUBLIC HEARING PROCESS AS A MEANS OF OBTAINING CITIZEN VIEWS AND VALUES (ABRIDGMENT)

SERIOUS QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN RAISED AS TO THE ADEQUACY AND ACCURACY OF THE PUBLIC HEARING PROCESS AS A MEANS OF GAINING CITIZEN INPUT INTO THE HIGHWAY PLANNING PROCESS. AN ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE IS THE PROPOSED CORRIDOR OF THE NORTHERLY EXTENSION OF THE STADIUM FREEWAY IN MILWAUKEE COUNTY, WISCONSIN. THIS PAPER COMPARES THE ATTITUDES TOWARD THE PROJECT AS EXPRESSED AT THE PUBLIC HEARING (OBTAINED FROM AN ANALYSIS OF THE HEARING TRASCRIPT) WITH THOSE OBTAINED FROM A HOME INTERVIEW SURVEY AND THE USE OF SOCIAL DIAGNOSTIC TECHNIQUES (THROUGH AN INVESTIGATION BY THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN). FROM THE RESULTS OF THE COMPARISON IT IS EVIDENT THAT THE PUBLIC HEARING DID NOT PRESENT AN ACCURATE PICTURE OF CITIZEN ATTIUTDES AND VALUES.
Funding Liquidity Risk, Syndication Behaviour and the Risk Culture of the Australian Venture Capital Industry

Venture capital (VC) is usually invested in high risk technology companies at their early stages of development. In response to the industry risk environment, the VC fund managers have developed a set of risk management practices appropriate for the industry which include investment syndication. Furthermore, the VC funds are supplied by individual and institutional investors with different risk profiles and investment focus, usually in finite amounts and for a limited period of time. The funding agreement between the VC firms and the fund investors combined with the limited amount and time can lead to additional funding liquidity risks as the VC funds are invested in the portfolio companies. In this paper, we develop a simple two period model from a VC firm’s perspective with funding liquidity constraints to demonstrate how funding liquidity risk can influence syndication decisions. We subsequently analyze the implication of the model, derive a set of predictions and validate them with VC investment data from Australia. The analysis shows that syndication has both instrumental function in risk management and behavioral implications on risk culture essential for addressing the emerging frontiers of sustainability risks.
Bradycardia after Tube Thoracostomy for Spontaneous Pneumothorax

We present the case of an elderly patient who became bradycardic after chest tube insertion for spontaneous pneumothorax. Arrhythmia is a rare complication of tube thoracostomy. Unlike other reported cases of chest tube induced arrhythmias, the bradycardia in our patient responded to resuscitative measures without removal or repositioning of the tube. Our patient, who had COPD, presented with shortness of breath due to spontaneous pneumothorax. Moments after tube insertion, patient developed severe bradycardia that responded to Atropine. In patients requiring chest tube insertion, it is important to be prepared to provide cardiopulmonary resuscitative therapy in case the patient develops a life-threatening arrhythmia.
The Hall index of mystical spirituality: an exploration in constructing a short scale of mystical spirituality

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to propose a new nine-item measure of mystical spirituality which would be [as easy as possible] for “ordinary” people (those with little or no theological education) to complete. The measure was developed and tested on data provided by 602 participants within an on-line survey. The Hall Index of Mystical Spirituality displayed excellent properties of internal consistency reliability (reporting an alpha coefficient of .93) and good construct validity, in terms of its location within the four components of psychological space, defined by psychological type theory (reporting a correlation of .30 within the measure of intuition). As a new measure of mystical spirituality further research is needed to test the usefulness of this short scale.
Changes in Multisensory Integration Across the Life Span

The study examined individual contributions of visual and auditory information on multisensory integration across the life span. In the experiment, children, young adults, and older adults participated in a variant of the Sound-Induced Flash Illusion where participants had to either ignore beeps and report how many flashes they saw or ignore flashes and report how many beeps they heard. Collapsed across age, auditory input had a stronger effect on visual processing than vice versa. However, relative contributions of auditory and visual information interacted with age, with young adults showing evidence of auditory dominance (only auditory input affected visual processing), whereas, multisensory integration effects were more symmetrical in children and older adults. The findings have implications for many tasks that require the processing of multisensory information.
Rich Short Text Conversation Using Semantic-Key-Controlled Sequence Generation

With the recent advances of the sequence-to-sequence framework, generation approaches for the short text conversation (STC) become attractive. The traditional sequence-to-sequence approaches for the STC often suffer from poor diversity and general reply without substantiality. It is also hard to control the topic or semantics of the selected reply from multiple generated candidates. In this paper, a novel external-memory-driven sequence-to-sequence learning approach is proposed to address these problems. A tensor of the external memory is constructed to represent interpretable topics or semantics. During generation, a controllable memory trigger is extracted given the input sequence, and a reply is then generated using the memory trigger as well as the sequence-to-sequence model. Experiments show that the proposed approach can generate much richer diversity than the traditional sequence-to-sequence training with attention. Meanwhile, it achieves better quality score in human evaluation. It is also observed that by manually manipulating the memory trigger, it is possible to interpretably guide the topics or semantics of the reply.
Biological hydropersulfides and related polysulfides – a new concept and perspective in redox biology

The chemical biology of thiols (RSH, e.g., cysteine and cysteine‐containing proteins/peptides) has been a topic of extreme interest for many decades due to their reported roles in protein structure/folding, redox signaling, metal ligation, cellular protection, and enzymology. While many of the studies on thiol/sulfur biochemistry have focused on thiols, relatively ignored have been hydropersulfides (RSSH) and higher order polysulfur species (RSSnH, RSSnR, n > 1). Recent and provocative work has alluded to the prevalence and likely physiological importance of RSSH and related RSSnH. RSSH of cysteine (Cys‐SSH) has been found to be prevalent in mammalian systems along with Cys‐SSH‐containing proteins. The RSSH functionality has not been examined to the extent of other biologically relevant sulfur derivatives (e.g., sulfenic acids, disulfides, etc.), whose roles in cell signaling are strongly indicated. The recent finding of Cys‐SSH biosynthesis and translational incorporation into proteins is an unequivocal indication of its fundamental importance and necessitates a more profound look into the physiology of RSSH. In this Review, we discuss the currently reported chemical biology of RSSH (and related species) as a prelude to discussing their possible physiological roles.
Discipline Matters: Refactoring of Preprocessor Directives in the #ifdef  Hell

The C preprocessor is used in many C projects to support variability and portability. However, researchers and practitioners criticize the C preprocessor because of its negative effect on code understanding and maintainability and its error proneness. More importantly, the use of the preprocessor hinders the development of tool support that is standard in other languages, such as automated refactoring. Developers aggravate these problems when using the preprocessor in undisciplined ways (e.g., conditional blocks that do not align with the syntactic structure of the code). In this article, we proposed a catalogue of refactorings and we evaluated the number of application possibilities of the refactorings in practice, the opinion of developers about the usefulness of the refactorings, and whether the refactorings preserve behavior. Overall, we found 5,670 application possibilities for the refactorings in 63 real-world C projects. In addition, we performed an online survey among 246 developers, and we submitted 28 patches to convert undisciplined directives into disciplined ones. According to our results, 63 percent of developers prefer to use the refactored (i.e., disciplined) version of the code instead of the original code with undisciplined preprocessor usage. To verify that the refactorings are indeed behavior preserving, we applied them to more than 36 thousand programs generated automatically using a model of a subset of the C language, running the same test cases in the original and refactored programs. Furthermore, we applied the refactorings to three real-world projects: BusyBox, OpenSSL, and SQLite. This way, we detected and fixed a few behavioral changes, 62 percent caused by unspecified behavior in the C programming language.
Cost-Shifting in Multitiered Welfare States: Responding to Rising Welfare Caseloads in Germany and Switzerland

In this article, we analyze if and how different levels of government off-load clients onto other welfare state programs that are not under their financial responsibility. We hypothesize that the extent to which cost-shifting takes place in a multitiered welfare state depends on the degree of fiscal centralization, and we expect cost-shifting to be more prevalent in federal countries where the constituent units have strong fiscal autonomy. In order to empirically examine this claim, we compare Germany and Switzerland, two federal countries that differ considerably in matters of fiscal centralization. Empirically, we find that in fact cost-shifting occurred irrespective of the degree of fiscal centralization. However, there are differences in how the two countries reacted to cost-shifting practices. Fiscally centralized Germany has been more successful in limiting cost-shifting practices than decentralized Switzerland. By connecting the literature on social policy and fiscal federalism, the article contributes to a broader understanding of the functioning of multitiered welfare states.